Life in OUR America, Volume 2, The Livyjr Files Options

[Livyjr]

And speaking of the way things are going in this world of OURS right now, jeffmoskin .........

"Euro at seven-month low after French vote"

By LAURENCE FROST, Associated Press
Last updated: 7:25 p.m., Monday, May 30, 2005

PARIS -- France's resounding "no" vote to the EU constitution sent the euro currency to a seven-month low against the dollar Monday, but analysts said it could be months before investors get the full measure of the emotionally charged vote and its likely fallout.

Stock markets took the constitution's defeat in stride, and there were few signs of the economic cataclysm doomsayers had predicted would follow a referendum defeat for Europe's latest integration blueprint.

"It's business as usual in practical terms," said Lorenzo Codogno, co-head of European economics at Bank of America in London.

Investors will nevertheless be watching closely for any "change in direction in terms of the European integration project," Codogno said.

"But it's not the kind of reaction you expect within two days -- it will take probably weeks or months to assess what are the implications of this vote from a political standpoint."

The euro fell as far as $1.2466 in afternoon European trading, its lowest level since mid-October and more than a cent below the $1.2575 it bought in New York late Friday.

France's benchmark CAC-40 share index dipped 0.8 percent in early Paris trading but eventually closed 0.1 percent higher at 4,135 points.

Germany's DAX ended 0.8 percent higher at 4,480 points, while the Dutch AEX closed up 0.4 percent at 368.42 points.

Markets were closed in the United States for Memorial Day and the London Stock Exchange was closed for a banking holiday.

Shares listed in Poland and the Czech Republic also showed small overall gains, despite warnings that the countries' plans to adopt the euro could be affected by the referendum's defeat.

If sustained, the euro's decline will benefit the 12-nation euro zone, where the currency's recent strength has been sapping growth by reducing the competitiveness of European goods and services at home and abroad.

French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who refused to say whether he had tendered his widely expected resignation Monday even as aides were packing up their offices, had forecast economic "stagnation" and a halt to investment if France rejected the constitution.

French banks and brokerages including Societe Generale and Exane BNP Paribas had also cautioned that a "no" would hit share prices as well as the euro.

Exane economist Jean-Pierre Petit said markets had already priced in France's rejection of the constitution in response to the string of negative opinion polls before the vote.

Now, Petit said, "the market doesn't know" what to expect.

"It's waiting for the French and European political reactions."

Exane is advising clients to expect a "return of the country factor" as the vote -- and its possible echo in Wednesday's Dutch referendum -- strains euro-zone cohesion.

Investors will have to take greater account of individual countries' performances and focus less on sector-wide comparisons, Petit said.

But uncertainties remain.

"We don't know whether the treaty's done for," he said.

"You just have to take a bet on that, and my bet is that it's finished, even if the Dutch vote yes -- which is unlikely anyway."

The jury is also still out on whether the EU setback will encourage or stifle free-market policies and antitrust enforcement in the bloc.

Paris-based Petit saw a "victory for Tony Blair and the British conception of European construction" while, across the Rhine, HVB Group analyst Joerg Kraemer predicted less ambitious moves by the EU in pushing for market-oriented reforms.

French and German business leaders were in closer accord, with the main French employers' organization Medef warning that "heavy consequences" would follow the vote, which it said hurt Europe's ability to "defend its social and economic model" in the wider world.

Juergen Thumann, head of the Federation of German Industry, also called for action to "limit the damage" from France's "no."

"A Europe of varying speeds that leads to a fragmentation of the internal market would be counterproductive," Thumann said.

------

Associated Press Writers Geir Moulson in Berlin and Matt Moore in Frankfurt contributed to this report.

[Livyjr]

FREEDOM IS ON THE MARCH!

How do I know!

Well, I heard George W. Bush say it on the radio last night, and ....

I mean, he couldn't really say it on the radio, if it wasn't true, COULD HE?

"Bush Calls Human Rights Report 'Absurd'"

By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent

1 hour, 50 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Tuesday dismissed a human rights report as "absurd" for its harsh criticism of U.S. treatment of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, saying the allegations were made by prisoners "who hate America."

"It's an absurd allegation."

"The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world," Bush said of the Amnesty International report that compared Guantanamo to a Soviet-era gulag.

In a Rose Garden news conference, Bush defiantly stood by his domestic policy agenda while defending his actions abroad.

He repeatedly pledged to press ahead — "The president has got to push, he's got to keep leading" — despite mounting criticism.

With the death toll climbing daily in Iraq, he said that nation's fledging government is "plenty capable" of defeating insurgents whose attacks on Iraqi civilians and U.S. soldiers have intensified.

Bush spoke after separate air crashes killed four American and four Italian troops in Iraq.

The governor of Anbar province, taken hostage three weeks ago, was killed during clashes between U.S. forces and the insurgents who abducted him.

Standing in the sun, sweat beading on his forehead, Bush said the job of the U.S. forces in Iraq is to help train the nation's own forces to defeat insurgents.

"I think the Iraqi people dealt the insurgents a serious blow when we had the elections," Bush said.

"In other words, what the insurgents fear is democracy because democracy is the opposition of their vision."

On another foreign policy issue, Bush shot back at critics who suggest his diplomatic approach to North Korea is allowing the communist regime to expand its nuclear program.

"If diplomacy is the wrong approach, I guess that means military."

"That's how I view it as either diplomacy or military."

"I am for the diplomacy approach," he said.

"And for those who say we ought to be using our military to stop a problem, I would say that while all options are on the table, we've still got a ways to go to solve this diplomatically."

Bush said he expressed concerns with Russian President Vladimir Putin about legal proceedings against former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Once the richest man in Russia, Khodorkovsky was convicted Tuesday of fraud and tax evasion and sentenced to nine years in prison following a trail widely denounced as politically motivated.

"Here, you're innocent until proven guilty and it appeared to us, at least people in my administration, that it looked like he had been judged guilty prior to having a fair trial," Bush said.

"We're watching the ongoing case."

The president said he has questioned whether the case shows a backsliding away from the rule of law and democracy in Russia and said it will "be interesting to see" how Khodorkovsky's expected appeal is handled by the government.

He said it was a "reasonable decision" to allow Iran to apply for WTO membership as a way to advance diplomatic discussions with Europe on Iran's nuclear program.

On the Amnesty International report, Bush said, "It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of the allegations by people who were held in detention, people who hate America."

The president opened the news conference by urging Congress to pass his stalled energy legislation, restrain the growth of government spending, approve the Central American Free Trade Agreement and overhaul Social Security with a partial privatization plan.

Despite democratic opposition and Republican skittishness about his plans for Social Security, he said he would push forward.

"It's like water cutting through a rock."

"I'm going to keep working and working and working," he said.

"...The people are watching Washington and nothing is happening."

"Except you've got a president who's talking about the issue and a president who's going to keep talking about the issue until we get people to the table."

He declared that the economy is strong, with 3.5 million jobs in two years and an unemployment rate of 5.2 percent.

"Obviously, these are hopeful signs, but Congress can make sure the signs remain hopeful," he said in a five-minute opening statement in the Rose Garden.

After a bruising week on Capitol Hill, Bush urged both political parties to "set aside partisan differences" and work together.

Bush did not challenge the premise of a question about the Supreme Court — that he will soon have a vacancy to fill on the aging court.

He did pledge to consult with Congress about his nominee or nominees at "an appropriate time," though he didn't say how early in the process those talks would come.

Turning to the controversial issue of embryonic stem cell research, Bush said that the extra embryos created during fertility treatments — estimated to now number around 400,000 — should be adopted.

"There's an alternative to the destruction of life," he said.

"But the stem cell issue is really one of federal funding, that's the issue before us, and that is whether or not we use taxpayers' money to destroy life."

"... I don't believe we should."

Though he did not mention tax cuts in his opening argument, Bush said he still wants Congress to make his first-term cuts permanent.

He also pledged not to give up on Social Security reform, despite intense opposition on Capitol Hill.

"The easy path is to say, `Oh, we don't have a problem'."

"'Let's ignore it -- yet again'."

On a lighter note, Bush said he was comfortable with the decision by his staff and Secret Service not to notify him when the White House and Congress were evacuated in May because of an errant airplane.

Noting that his wife, Laura, has said he should have been told of the potential threat, the president joked, "She often disagrees with me."

end quote

I'll tell you what, George, she is not the only one, because at last count, probably most of the world does as well, and with good reason, but since you don't read, you wouldn't know that now, would you, and there's the shame for OUR America, because you are so out of touch with the reality that all of the rest of us must face as a result of your ignorance of what OUR America and the world are really all about!

And what is it now, three-and-a-half more years to go?

Hhhhmmmmm.

At the rate George W. Bush is going, I wonder what sort of world will be left at the end of this man's reign?

And it kind of makes me cringe to think about it!

And that's a fact!

[Livyjr]

FREEDOM IS ON THE MARCH!

How do I know!

Well, I heard George W. Bush say it on the radio last night, and ....

I mean, he couldn't really say it on the radio, if it wasn't true, COULD HE?

"Bush Calls Human Rights Report 'Absurd'"

By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Tuesday dismissed a human rights report as "absurd" for its harsh criticism of U.S. treatment of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, saying the allegations were made by prisoners "who hate America."

"It's an absurd allegation."

"The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world," Bush said of the Amnesty International report that compared Guantanamo to a Soviet-era gulag.

"Amnesty Takes Aim at 'Gulag' in Guantanamo"

By PAISLEY DODDS, Associated Press Writer

25 May 2005

LONDON - Amnesty International castigated the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay as a failure Wednesday, calling it "the gulag of our time" in the human rights group's harshest rebuke yet of American detention policies.

Amnesty urged Washington to shut down the prison at the U.S. Navy's base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where some 540 men are held on suspicion of links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terror network.

Some have been jailed for more than three years without charge.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Amnesty's complaints were "ridiculous and unsupported by the facts."

He said allegations of prisoner mistreatment are investigated.

"We hold people accountable when there's abuse."

"We take steps to prevent it from happening again."

"And we do so in a very public way for the world to see that we lead by example and that we do have values that we hold very dearly and believe in," McClellan told reporters.

In its annual report, Amnesty accused governments around the world of abandoning human rights protections.

It said Sudan failed to protect its people from one of the world's worst humanitarian crises and charged Haiti promoted human rights abusers.

But one of the biggest disappointments in the human rights arena was with the United States, Amnesty said, "after evidence came to light that the U.S. administration had sanctioned interrogation techniques that violated the U.N. Convention against Torture."

"Guantanamo has become the gulag of our time," Amnesty Secretary General Irene Khan said as the London-based group issued a 308-page annual report that accused the United States of shirking its responsibility to set the bar for human rights protections.

The use of the term gulag refers to the extensive system of prison camps in the former Soviet Union, many in remote regions of Siberia and specifically designed to hold political prisoners.

The Soviets took over the system from the czarist government and expanded it after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

Untold thousands of prisoners of the so-called gulags died from hunger, cold, harsh treatment and overwork.

The prison camp at Guantanamo has been in the spotlight over the past year since the FBI cited cases of aggressive interrogation techniques and detainee mistreatment.

The U.S. government has also been criticized for not charging or trying prisoners who are classified as enemy combatants, a vague distinction with fewer legal protections than prisoners of war get under the Geneva Conventions.

Some prisoners have challenged their detentions in U.S. courts but their cases are stalled by appeals filed by the U.S. government and subsequent arguments.

"Not a single case from some 500 men has reached the courts," Khan said.

In a statement, the Defense Department said that "the detention of enemy combatants is not criminal in nature, but to prevent them from continuing to fight against the United States in the War on Terrorism."

It also said that it continued to evaluate whether detainees should be sent home and that review tribunals "provided an appropriate venue for detainees to meaningfully challenge their enemy combatant designation."

"This is an unprecedented level of process being provided to our enemies in a time of war," the statement said.

The Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross, which has also been critical of practices at Guantanamo, is the only independent group to have access to the detainees.

Amnesty has been refused access to the prison, although it was allowed to watch pretrial hearings for 15 detainees who have been charged.

Amnesty has frequently criticized U.S. detention policies instituted after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, but its latest report takes a harsher tone.

It accuses Washington of trying to "sanitize" abuse of detainees and failing to give prisoners legal recourse to challenge their detentions.

The report also takes aim at recent abuse allegations that have surfaced in FBI documents as well as prisoner testimonies, echoing concerns from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The Red Cross said last week it had told U.S. authorities of detainee allegations that Qurans had been desecrated.

It also offered a rare public rebuke in late 2003, calling the prisoners' prolonged detentions "worrying."

Declassified FBI records released Wednesday showed that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay told U.S. interrogators as early as April 2002, just four months after the first detainees arrived from Afghanistan, that U.S. military guards abused them and desecrated the Quran.

Another detainee stated he had been beaten unconscious at Guantanamo Bay early in 2002, a period in which U.S. interrogators were pressing hard for information on al-Qaida.

Amnesty singled out Sudan as one of the worst violators of human rights last year for the devastation caused by conflict in its Darfur region.

At least 180,000 people have died — many from hunger and disease — and about 2 million have fled their homes to escape fighting among rebels, militias and government troops.

Sudan's government not only turned its back on its people, but the United Nations and African Union took too long to try to help those suffering in Darfur, Amnesty said.

Amnesty also criticized the African Union and the international community for not taking action on Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe's party has been accused of rigging elections, repressing opponents and driving agriculture to the brink of collapse.

In Haiti, human rights violators who led the rebellion that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide last year were able to retake key positions, while the government struggled to maintain control from armed groups, Amnesty said.

The group accused Israeli soldiers of operating outside international law by using torture, destroying property and obstructing medical assistance in the West Bank and Gaza.

It also condemned the deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians by Palestinian militants.

In Asia, people were jailed indefinitely without trial in Malaysia and Singapore, religious minorities were persecuted in China and Vietnam and security forces committed extra-judicial killings in Nepal, Thailand and Indonesia, Amnesty said.
___

On the Net:

Amnesty International: http://www.amnesty.org

Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/detainees.html

[jeffmoskin]

"It's an absurd allegation."

George W. Bush reminds me of another deep thinker from the Repub party...

Dan Quayle.

Who is said to have remarked, "That's an absurd allegation. I demand to confront the alligator."

[Livyjr]

"Amnesty Takes Aim at 'Gulag' in Guantanamo"

By PAISLEY DODDS, Associated Press Writer

25 May 2005

LONDON - Amnesty International castigated the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay as a failure Wednesday, calling it "the gulag of our time" in the human rights group's harshest rebuke yet of American detention policies.

Amnesty urged Washington to shut down the prison at the U.S. Navy's base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where some 540 men are held on suspicion of links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terror network.

Some have been jailed for more than three years without charge.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Amnesty's complaints were "ridiculous and unsupported by the facts."

He said allegations of prisoner mistreatment are investigated.

"We hold people accountable when there's abuse."

"We take steps to prevent it from happening again."

"And we do so in a very public way for the world to see that we lead by example and that we do have values that we hold very dearly and believe in," McClellan told reporters.

Well, Scottie, from what you are saying here, then, YOU PERSONALLY DO PUBLICLY ACKNOWLEDGE AND ADMIT THAT THIS ABUSE HAS IN FACT OCCURRED, on George W. Bush's watch, as is charged, and I think that it is good for OUR America that you have decided to come clean here, in this manner, about this disgusting behavior that can only have as its source, the Commander-in Chief, which is your boss, George W. Bush.

SO?

What are these values, then, that you are talking about?

If you really had these values that you talk about, above here, then wouldn't this disgusting stuff that you have just admitted to, simply not happen?

Un-confuse me here, Scottie, if you can?

If you really have these values, then why did this CRAP happen?

And please, none of that tired old song-and-dance, or shuck-and-jive, about just a few rogue soldiers!

Please!

[Livyjr]

George W. Bush reminds me of another deep thinker from the Repub party...

Dan Quayle.

Who is said to have remarked, "That's an absurd allegation."

"I demand to confront the alligator."

George W. Bush, for your information, jeffmoskin, is an intellectual!

How do I know this?

Condoleeza Rice said so!

And of course, if it were not true, well, then she couldn't say it in public, could she?

[Livyjr]

And while we are on this subject of "intellectualism" in OUR America, and people being able to read and write, OR NOT:

"Rates on College Loans to Rise by Record"

2 hours, 28 minutes ago

NEW YORK - Interest rates on federally backed loans for college students are set to jump by a record amount on July 1, the Department of Education said Tuesday.

Based on the results of a Treasury bill auction, the in-school rate on the federal Stafford loan will rise by 1.93 percentage points to 4.7 percent.

The rate for loans in repayment will rise by the same percentage to 5.3 percent, while the PLUS loan rate for parents will rise to 6.1 percent.

The rates are based on the three-month Treasury bill auctioned Tuesday.

That bill carried a discount rate of 2.935 percent.

The discount rate a year ago, before the Federal Reserve started to raise its guiding interest rate, was 1.050 percent.

That resulted in the lowest interest rates ever for student loans.

Students can still consolidate their loans at rates as low as 3.375 percent until July 1.

For the first time, it is also possible to consolidate bank-based Stafford loans while still in school, by putting them in repayment status, then asking to defer payments until graduation.

A graduating student with $20,500 in loans, the average for borrowers last year, will save $2,842 over the course of a 10-year repayment by consolidating before the new rates go into effect, according to the College Loan Corp., a San Diego-based lender.
___

http://studentaid.ed.gov/

http://www.collegeloan.com

[Livyjr]

Well, Scottie, from what you are saying here, then, YOU PERSONALLY DO PUBLICLY ACKNOWLEDGE AND ADMIT THAT THIS ABUSE HAS IN FACT OCCURRED, on George W. Bush's watch, as is charged, and I think that it is good for OUR America that you have decided to come clean here, in this manner, about this disgusting behavior that can only have as its source, the Commander-in Chief, which is your boss, George W. Bush.

SO?

What are these values, then, that you are talking about?

If you really had these values that you talk about, above here, then wouldn't this disgusting stuff that you have just admitted to, simply not happen?

Un-confuse me here, Scottie, if you can?

If you really have these values, then why did this CRAP happen?

And please, none of that tired old song-and-dance, or shuck-and-jive, about just a few rogue soldiers!

Please!

"AP: Gitmo Detainees Say Muslims Were Sold"

By MICHELLE FAUL, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 1 minute ago

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - They fed them well.

The Pakistani tribesmen slaughtered a sheep in honor of their guests, Arabs and Chinese Muslims famished from fleeing U.S. bombing in the Afghan mountains.

But their hosts had ulterior motives: to sell them to the Americans, said the men who are now prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Bounties ranged from $3,000 to $25,000, the detainees testified during military tribunals, according to transcripts the U.S. government gave The Associated Press to comply with a Freedom of Information lawsuit.

A former CIA intelligence officer who helped lead the search for Osama bin Laden told AP the accounts sounded legitimate because U.S. allies regularly got money to help catch Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.

Gary Schroen said he took a suitcase of $3 million in cash into Afghanistan himself to help supply and win over warlords to fight for U.S. Special Forces.

"It wouldn't surprise me if we paid rewards," said Schroen, who retired after 32 years in the CIA soon after the fall of Kabul in late 2001.

He recently published the book "First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan."

Schroen said Afghan warlords like Gen. Rashid Dostum were among those who received bundles of notes.

"It may be that we were giving rewards to people like Dostum because his guys were capturing a lot of Taliban and al-Qaida," he said.

Pakistan has handed hundreds of suspects to the Americans, but Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told the AP, "No one has taken any money."

The U.S. departments of Defense, Justice and State and the Central Intelligence Agency also said they were unaware of bounty payments being made for random prisoners.

The U.S. Rewards for Justice program pays only for information that leads to the capture of suspected terrorists identified by name, said Steve Pike, a State Department spokesman.

Some $57 million has been paid under the program, according to its Web site.

It offers rewards up to $25 million for information leading to the capture of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

But a wide variety of detainees at the U.S. lockup at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, alleged they were sold into capture.

Their names and other identifying information were blacked out in the transcripts from the tribunals, which were held to determine whether prisoners were correctly classified as enemy combatants.

One detainee who said he was an Afghan refugee in Pakistan accused the country's intelligence service of trumping up evidence against him to get bounty money from the U.S.

"When I was in jail, they said I needed to pay them money and if I didn't pay them, they'd make up wrong accusations about me and sell me to the Americans and I'd definitely go to Cuba," he told the tribunal.

"After that I was held for two months and 20 days in their detention, so they could make wrong accusations about me and my (censored), so they could sell us to you."

Another prisoner said he was on his way to Germany in 2001 when he was captured and sold for "a briefcase full of money" then flown to Afghanistan before being sent to Guantanamo.

"It's obvious."

"They knew Americans were looking for Arabs, so they captured Arabs and sold them — just like someone catches a fish and sells it," he said.

The detainee said he was seized by "mafia" operatives somewhere in Europe and sold to Americans because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time — an Arab in a foreign country.

A detainee who said he was a Saudi businessman claimed, "The Pakistani police sold me for money to the Americans."

"This was part of a roundup of all foreigners and Arabs in that area," of Pakistan near the Afghan border, he said, telling the tribunal he went to Pakistan in November 2001 to help Afghan refugees.

The military-appointed representative for one detainee — who said he was a Taliban fighter — said the prisoner told him he and his fellow fighters "were tricked into surrendering to Rashid Dostum's forces."

"Their agreement was that they would give up their arms and return home."

"But Dostum's forces sold them for money to the U.S."

Several detainees who appeared to be ethnic Chinese Muslims — known as Uighurs — described being betrayed by Pakistani tribesmen along with about 100 Arabs.

They said they went to Afghanistan for military training to fight for independence from China.

When U.S. warplanes started bombing near their camp, they fled into the mountains near Tora Bora and hid for weeks, starving.

One detainee said they finally followed a group of Arabs, apparently fighters, being guided by an Afghan to the Pakistani border.

"We crossed into Pakistan and there were tribal people there, and they took us to their houses and they killed a sheep and cooked the meat and we ate," he said.

That night, they were taken to a mosque, where about 100 Arabs also sheltered.

After being fed bread and tea, they were told to leave in groups of 10, taken to a truck, and driven to a Pakistani prison.

From there, they were handed to Americans and flown to Guantanamo.

"When we went to Pakistan the local people treated us like brothers and gave us good food and meat," said another detainee.

But soon, he said, they were in prison in Pakistan where "we heard they sold us to the Pakistani authorities for $5,000 per person."

There have been reports of Arabs being sold to the Americans after the U.S.-led offensive in Afghanistan, but the testimonies offer the most detail from prisoners themselves.

In March 2002, the AP reported that Afghan intelligence offered rewards for the capture of al-Qaida fighters — the day after a five-hour meeting with U.S. Special Forces.

Intelligence officers refused to say if the two events were linked and if the United States was paying the offered reward of 150 million Afghanis, then equivalent to $4,000 a head.

That day, leaflets and loudspeaker announcements promised "the big prize" to those who turned in al-Qaida fighters.

Said one leaflet: "You can receive millions of dollars. ... This is enough to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life — pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all your people."

Helicopters broadcast similar announcements over the Afghan mountains, enticing people to "Hand over the Arabs and feed your families for a lifetime," said Najeeb al-Nauimi, a former Qatar justice minister and leader of a group of Arab lawyers representing nearly 100 detainees.

Al-Nauimi said a consortium of wealthy Arabs, including Saudis, told him they also bought back fellow citizens who had been captured by Pakistanis.

Khalid al-Odha, who started a group fighting to free 12 Kuwaiti detainees, said his imprisoned son, Fawzi, wrote him a letter from Guantanamo Bay about Kuwaitis being sold to the Americans in Afghanistan.

One Kuwaiti who was released, 26-year-old Nasser al-Mutairi, told al-Odha that interrogators said Dostum's forces sold them to the Pakistanis for $5,000 each, and the Pakistanis in turn sold them to the Americans.

"I also heard that Saudis were sold to the Saudi government by the Pakistanis," al-Odha said.

"If I had known that, I would have gone and bought my son back."
___

EDITOR'S NOTE: Chief of Caribbean Services Michelle Faul has covered the prison at Guantanamo Bay since it opened in January 2002. Associated Press writers Paisley Dodds in London and Matthew Pennington in Islamabad, Pakistan contributed to this report.
___

On the Net:

State Department's Rewards for Justice program, http://www.rewardsforjustice.net

[Livyjr]

It's always interesting to hear people after hurricanes, for example, say, "I can't believe it..." 

Then, the next year, they rebuild in the same stupid spot right on the beach-- as if to tell nature that it won’t happen again!

People tend to underestimate the power and fragility of nature.

And speaking of underestimating nature, and its power over OUR lives:

"Hurricane season could renew global warming debate"

By Michael Christie

Mon May 30, 4:57 PM ET

MIAMI (Reuters) - If hurricanes again pound the United States this summer, their roar is likely to be accompanied by the din of another storm -- an angry debate among U.S. scientists over the impact of global warming.

Last season's $45 billion devastation, when 15 tropical storms spawned nine hurricanes in the Atlantic and Caribbean, prompted climatologists to warn of a link to warming temperatures.

But hurricane experts say the unusual series of hurricanes, four of which slammed into Florida in a six-week period, was the result of a natural 15- to 40-year cycle in Atlantic cyclone activity.

After a lull between 1970 and the mid-1990s, the number of storms picked up dramatically from 1995 and higher-than-normal activity is expected for the next five to 30 years as a phenomenon known as the "Atlantic multidecadal mode" holds sway.

"Really, for the folks that are doing work on hurricanes, there isn't a debate (about global warming)," said Chris Landsea of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's hurricane research division in Miami.

Many climatologists disagree.

They say the large, decades-long swings in hurricane activity may mask, but do not rule out, longer term climate change trends.

The warmer waters and increased air moisture that global warming is expected to produce are, after all, the primary fuels that hurricanes feed off during the June to November season.

"Global climate change is happening."

"The environment in which these hurricanes form is clearly changing," said Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.

He is also a lead author of the next major U.N. report on climate change, due in 2007.

Landsea withdrew from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change this year after accusing Trenberth of linking current heightened hurricane activity too closely to global warming.

HOT TOPIC

The public clash highlighted the sensitivity of the climate debate in the United States, which under President Bush dismayed environmentalists by rejecting the Kyoto pact on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Some government scientists, such as James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, have complained they are forced to downplay evidence of climate change, which most scientists link to industrial pollution.

But hurricane experts say their dismissal of global warming in relation to hurricanes is based on science not politics.

According to meteorologist Thomas Knutson of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, higher carbon dioxide levels have probably resulted in a 1/7th of a category increase in Atlantic cyclone intensity in the past century, and likely will raise a storm's potential by half a category in 80 years.

Hurricanes are graded under the Saffir-Simpson scale based on wind speeds, with a Category 5, marked by winds higher than 155 mph (249 kph), the strongest and most destructive.

Similarly, studies by Kerry Emanuel, a professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, indicate the 2 degree Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) increase in sea surface temperatures predicted by the IPCC would raise the upper limit on a storm's intensity by 10 percent.

Landsea said those changes were largely imperceptible given the overall ferocity of hurricanes.

He added that other factors, like the El Nino weather event in the Pacific, and the differences between lower level and upper level winds, called wind shear, play as critical a role as water temperatures in determining whether hurricanes form.

"The folks in the field are unanimous in saying that global warming doesn't have an appreciable impact on hurricanes today and that changes in the future look to be really tiny," Landsea said.

Climatologists take another view, arguing that a 10 percent increase in wind speeds leads to a 20 percent increase in destructive force.

They also point out that many researchers are revising upward their original estimates of how much greenhouse gas emissions are affecting world climate.

"We are so far along, this is happening so much faster than we thought it would happen," said Paul Epstein of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School.

"I think this summer will portend some really strange weather."

end quotes

And right now, I am with him!

But I guess we'll just have to wait until fall, to see .....

[Livyjr]

"I think this summer will portend some really strange weather."

And speaking of "strange", here's a dose of it from George Pataki's EMPIRE State of New York:

"Keeping coyotes at bay - State funds research to develop strategies to keep animals away from people"

By MATT PACENZA, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Wednesday, June 1, 2005

Here's what New York officials fear: In Simi Valley, Calif., a coyote attacked a 3-year-old boy on his front porch last year, biting him on the neck, ear, head, hand, back and face, before police shot and killed the 45-pound animal.

Coyotes are normally timid animals that avoid people, but research has shown that when their turf intersects with cities and suburbs, some hunt pets -- and in extremely rare cases, children.

To ward off the unimaginable in New York, where coyotes are increasingly common, state environmental authorities recently awarded a $428,000 grant to Cornell University researchers to track the terrain and habits of coyotes.

The idea is to develop strategies to discourage coyotes from contact with people.

The research will build on earlier studies, including one recently done by the State Museum's mammal curator, Roland Keys.

He found that in the Pine Bush, because highways and hunters have thinned their numbers, coyotes aren't yet bothering people -- or their pets.

"Coyotes in Albany appear to be living a natural life," Keys said.

"We only found two cats in their diet over a three-year period."

There have been numerous reports of marauding coyotes elsewhere in the Capital Region, however.

State Department of Environmental Conservation wildlife biologist Gordon Batcheller spoke to a woman recently who said a coyote followed her as she walked her dog along a bicycle path near Albany.

Most famously, a turkey hunter was attacked and bitten by a pair of coyotes in Clifton Park in 2001.

It was determined, however, that the coyotes probably assumed the hunter was in fact a turkey -- he was camouflaged and using a turkey call.

Grieving pet owners also regularly blame their missing pets on coyotes.

Keys said other predators are sometimes to blame: Fishers, large members of the weasel family, are known to snag the occasional kitty.

Eastern coyotes are relatively new to the state, having migrated from Canada 70 or 80 years ago.

They've become firmly established since the 1970s, according to the DEC.

Coyotes are New York's biggest predator, weighing up to 50 pounds.

Black bears are bigger, of course, but aren't considered true predators because so much of their diet is not meat.

Research in California has determined there is a pretty clear progression of behavior when coyotes get near people.

The coyotes begin to lose their natural fear of humans after they find food associated with people: garbage, pet food and pets themselves.

Keys calls that progression "the path toward the dark side."

"New York wants to avoid the Darth Vaders among coyotes -- by keeping them in a natural state."

The attacks can be pretty brazen, said Cornell University wildlife professor Paul Curtis, one of the researchers directing the study, which will start in July.

"Small dogs start disappearing off their leashes while their owners are walking them," said Curtis.

"That's usually the last step before they attack people."

While there have been no known instances of coyote attacks on people in New York -- unless you count the turkey hunter -- Curtis said officials have seen everything but.

Most such reports have come from Westchester and Rockland counties, where hunting that may scare off coyotes is rare and habitat is plentiful.

The Cornell project will begin downstate before moving to a second study area upstate, possibly in the Capital Region.

What the Cornell researchers hope they can ultimately do is to interrupt the interactions between coyote and people, once researchers understand where coyotes live and how they behave.

Potential strategies include shooting coyotes with rubber buckshot or paint balls to startle them, or baiting them with food laden with a mild toxin.

"The idea is that they develop an association with getting sick from eating human foods," said Curtis.

Curtis said he thinks what they'll find is that just a few coyotes are responsible for most attacks on pets.

"I would expect that the vast majority don't get in trouble," said Curtis.

"Maybe we can end up just relocating a few animals."

Such strategies aren't necessary in and around the Pine Bush, where Keys and his research assistant, Dan Bogan, studied 21 coyotes over a four-year period.

Keys and Bogan put collars on the coyotes to track their movements.

They also collected their scat, or feces, to see what they were eating.

They found nearly all of their diet was natural, from animals like rabbits, voles (meadow mice) and deer.

They also found the relatively few coyotes in the Pine Bush avoided developed areas.

The reason there are so few coyotes in the Pine Bush is the most interesting part of the study: because people kept killing them.

Eighty percent of the 21 coyotes that Keys and Bogan tracked died during the three-year study.

Seven were shot, six were hit by cars and two died of internal bleeding, most likely from eating animals like voles or mice that had ingested rat poison.

It's not clear if the study of the Pine Bush, where nature is divided by malls and highways like Interstate 90, can be applied to the broader Capital Region.

"Their home range here is fragmented by roads and development," said Bogan.

That is less true in more rural parts of the area.

It's puzzling to the researchers that so many coyotes were shot.

Many were likely killed illegally -- six of the seven were shot outside of the Oct. 1 to March 27 coyote hunting season.

It's legal to shoot a coyote anytime if it's threatening your property, but based upon their study of the coyotes' diet, the researchers doubt that was the case for all six.

A final goal of the Cornell project is to educate people to stop doing things that attract coyotes -- like leaving pet food or bird seed outside -- so that shooting them isn't necessary.

It's also widely recommended that pet owners never let their cats or dogs roam freely outside.

The idea, all the experts say, is to figure out a way to keep coyotes from being something that people fear.

"As long as they are in rural areas, feeding on mice and other mammals, there's no reason for concern," Curtis said.

"We should just enjoy them."

end quotes

They'll be having a "WAR ON COYOTE TERROR" up here, pretty soon, where to keep yourself and your pets safe, you'll have to wrap your house completely with Saran Wrap, and then hide in the basement for the rest of your life, just to be safe, and then, you'll still never know, because an animal that hates America so, probably will just eat the Saran Wrap, and then .........

[Livyjr]

And I wonder how many people reading that will even remember what we are talking about, here, from OUR own national history?

"Revelation troubles Watergate veteran - Editor Harry Rosenfeld says secret sources should stay that way"

By MARK McGUIRE, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Wednesday, June 1, 2005

ALBANY -- Bob Woodward never revealed the identity of his Nixon administration source known only as "Deep Throat" to his then-boss at The Washington Post, Harry M. Rosenfeld.

"I was not told by Woodward," said the former Post assistant managing editor for metropolitan news.

Formerly the editor of the Times Union, Rosenfeld is now the paper's editor-at-large.

"I asked him and we agreed he would not tell me," Rosenfeld said Tuesday, after reports surfaced that a former FBI agent identified himself as Deep Throat of the early 1970s.

"(The source's) job, certainly, if not his life, would be in danger.

"That was a mistake I made," Rosenfeld continued.

"I should have insisted on knowing, me or someone in the hierarchy."

(Benjamin C. Bradlee, the Post's top editor at the time, said he learned the name after President Nixon resigned in 1974.)

But today Rosenfeld isn't taking a position on whether Woodward should confirm Deep Throat's identity after former FBI official W. Mark Felt told Vanity Fair magazine he was the infamous source.

"That's an open question," Rosenfeld said.

Woodward, reporting colleague Carl Bernstein and Bradlee all confirmed Felt was, in fact, the source.

Rosenfeld disagrees with Woodward's long-held position that the reporter could divulge Deep Throat's identity upon the source's death.

"What I have said and written about it is that confidential sources should be kept confidential," Rosenfeld said.

The difference here is that the source himself is waiving anonymity granted by the reporter.

Rosenfeld does have concerns about revealing the identity of Deep Throat even three decades later, especially if disclosure impedes the future use of confidential sources "in a responsible and measured way."

"The importance is to retain the integrity of confidential sources," Rosenfeld said.

"My position doesn't change."

"Anything that detracts from the future availability of confidential sources is not good -- and I suspect it's not good" here.

Rosenfeld said the Bush administration in particular has implemented "a plan to intimidate the press," and unnamed sources are often the only way to get information out of government.

"Confidential sources are extremely important to doing hard-hitting, investigative stories that people in power don't want you to do," he said.

"The press has to fight to maintain its stature as people who will investigate people of power."

"... That's why I've been such a fanatic of keeping confidential sources confidential."

[Livyjr]

"Revelation troubles Watergate veteran - Editor Harry Rosenfeld says secret sources should stay that way" 
 
By MARK McGUIRE, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Wednesday, June 1, 2005

ALBANY -- Bob Woodward never revealed the identity of his Nixon administration source known only as "Deep Throat" to his then-boss at The Washington Post, Harry M. Rosenfeld.

"I was not told by Woodward," said the former Post assistant managing editor for metropolitan news.

Formerly the editor of the Times Union, Rosenfeld is now the paper's editor-at-large.

Rosenfeld said the Bush administration in particular has implemented "a plan to intimidate the press," and unnamed sources are often the only way to get information out of government.

"Confidential sources are extremely important to doing hard-hitting, investigative stories that people in power don't want you to do," he said.

"The press has to fight to maintain its stature as people who will investigate people of power."

Wise words, Harry, wise words, and I wish that there was some substance to them, but as you say, this REPUBLICAN administration that is now in power here in New York State has done quite an effective job of muzzling the press, especially in the Capital District area of the State of New York, where the Albany, New York Times Union IS the prime newspaper, and it don't seem to be much of a public watchdog at all!

Sleeps too much, if you ask me, so, maybe it's a better lapdog, instead!

And what a shame that is for the honest folks out there who are damn sick and tired of the TREASURY of the State of New York being a private "draw" account for the likes of "Big Joe" Bruno, George Pataki and Sheldon Silver, to the tune of a couple of hundred million, at last count!

If we had a newspaper up here in Albany that had some sand, well, you would think that we would hear a lot more about how come "Big Joe", and Pataki and Silver get to dip their hands way down deep in the public treasury with no accountability, whatsoever, BUT, we don't hear a word!

Silence, instead!

SO?

How come, Harry, how come?

[Livyjr]

And is it ever refreshing to hear somebody call a spade a spade, here in OUR America, with respect to these people who do build houses in the most stupid places imaginable, like the surf zone next to the ocean, or on an unstable cliff somewhere, and then cry, and weep and wail, and gnash their teeth and demand government assistance to help them rebuild in the same stupid places, when the inevitable happens, and their alleged "investment" has gone the way of all flesh, back to dust, again!

STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES, AMERICA, and there are no exceptions to the rule, no matter how many fancy credit cards you have in your Gucchi hand-tooled leather credit card holder, or how big or fancy your Mercedes-Benz or Jaguar might be!

"Calif. Landslide Sends 12 Homes Crashing"

By BEN FOX, Associated Press Writer

5 minutes ago

LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. - A landslide sent at least 12 expensive homes crashing down a hill early Wednesday and damaged 15 others in this coastal Orange County enclave.

At least three people were taken to a hospital for minor injuries, officials said.

Crews were apparently able to evacuate most of the residents before the earth gave way.

"The pipes started making funny noises and the toilet sounded like it was about to explode," Carrie Joyce, a fire department office manager who lives in the neighborhood, some 50 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

"I could see one house, huge, we call it the mausoleum, 5,000 square feet or more."

"It had buckled, the retaining wall in the front of it was cracked."

"It just looked like the whole house was going," she said.

Laguna Beach, its shoreline dotted with coves and tide pools, has some of Southern California's most desired real estate, but it has also grappled with fires and mudslides over the years.

Wednesday's slide came on the heels of a near-record winter rainy season.

The damaged homes, located in an area called Blue Bird Canyon about 15 blocks from the ocean, are worth about $1.75 million, which the mayor described as "average" for the area.

Twelve homes were lost and 15 damaged, Mayor Elizabeth Pearson-Schneider said.

Forty more homes were evacuated.

Multistory homes came to rest at odd angles, some nearly intact, others broken apart and trailing debris.

Around the edges of the gash at the top of the hill, several homes jutted out with no earth below parts of their foundations.

One house, snapped in two, had an American flag fluttering from a balcony.

One road simply stopped in midair, beneath it a tangle of debris.

Trees, cars and roadway also spilled down.

"We believe we evacuated the people who could be in harm's way," Pearson-Schneider told KTTV.

"My understanding is that we received a phone call from a couple that began feeling slippage."

"They were quite upset, as you could imagine, and we just told them to get out," he said.

People began reporting problems around 5 a.m. and the hillside gave way between 6 and 7 a.m.

One man, clutching his cat, told KABC-TV his home looked "like it buckled in the middle and broke in half."

"We ran from the house."

"It started coming down."

Two injured children were admitted to South Coast Medical Center in Laguna Beach in good condition, hospital spokeswoman Maggie Baumann said.

A third person there, a 71-year-old woman whose house was destroyed, wasn't injured in the landslide but appeared to be under emotional stress, she said.

The neighborhoods have been hit before by flooding, mudslides and wildfire.

Several homes were red-tagged as uninhabitable in February during the second rainiest season on record in Southern California.

In February 1998, a rainstorm triggered slides that damaged 300 homes, 18 of them seriously.

Two people were killed.

An October 1993 fire swept down into the city and destroyed some 400 homes.

Most were rebuilt within a half-dozen years.

The city's Pageant of the Masters — a festival in which famous artworks are recreated with live actors — has drawn crowds for decades, reinforcing the town's reputation as an art colony.

The community was prominently featured on the MTV hit reality show "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County" that debuted in September.

The show chronicled the lifestyle and love lives of teenagers there.

end quotes

All that money, and no brains, whatsoever, is what it looks like from here, which just goes to show that there really is no correlation whatsoever between money and intelligence, at all!

And the more stupid something is, well, the more money people will pay for it, and there is always someone out there to oblige them, as P.T. Barnum well knew!

Something about suckers being born every minute, or something like that, wasn't it?

At least out there in these exclusive conclaves of southern California like Blue Bird Canyon!

And where, pray tell, were the engineers?

Paid off?

Blind, maybe?

And is there a third alternative?

[jeffmoskin]

All that money, and no brains, whatsoever, is what it looks like from here, which just goes to show that there really is no correlation whatsoever between money and intelligence, at all!

And the more stupid something is, well, the more money people will pay for it, and there is always someone out there to oblige them, as P.T. Barnum well knew!

Something about suckers being born every minute, or something like that, wasn't it?

At least out there in these exclusive conclaves of southern California like Blue Bird Canyon!

And where, pray tell, were the engineers?

Paid off?

Blind, maybe?

And is there a third alternative?

Mother Nature made southern Kah-Lee-FAWN-yah so beautiful, and with perfect weather. Only she didn't want you to build a house here. At least not in the canyons or on the hilltops.

A friend of mine built a house on a Malibu hilltop with a 270 degree view of the Pacific Ocean. It burned to the ground in the 1993 Malibu fire.

Another friend bought a house on the side of a hill, supported by caissons and steel beams on the side over the canyon. That house was totaled in the 1994 quake.

Mother Nature must be listened to.

Or you face the consequences.

[Livyjr]

Mother Nature must be listened to.

Or you face the consequences.

Oh, come on here, jeffmoskin, you're just being mean!

You're scaring me!

I don't want to have any consequences from nature!

It don't have that right!

After all, we humans have mastery over it, and so, it should respect that, and it should do what we tell it to do!

Oh, you mean thing, you, telling us we have to listen to nature!

How is anyone going to make a buck doing that?

[Livyjr]

"Euro at seven-month low after French vote" 
 
By LAURENCE FROST, Associated Press
Last updated: 7:25 p.m., Monday, May 30, 2005

PARIS -- France's resounding "no" vote to the EU constitution sent the euro currency to a seven-month low against the dollar Monday, but analysts said it could be months before investors get the full measure of the emotionally charged vote and its likely fallout.

Stock markets took the constitution's defeat in stride, and there were few signs of the economic cataclysm doomsayers had predicted would follow a referendum defeat for Europe's latest integration blueprint.

"It's business as usual in practical terms," said Lorenzo Codogno, co-head of European economics at Bank of America in London.

Investors will nevertheless be watching closely for any "change in direction in terms of the European integration project," Codogno said.

Exane is advising clients to expect a "return of the country factor" as the vote -- and its possible echo in Wednesday's Dutch referendum -- strains euro-zone cohesion.

And with some late-breaking news just coming in off the wire, here, we interrupt this discussion about nature, and its relationship with US, for the moment, in order to check up on what is going on over there in Europe with regard to this EU and Euro business that could have an impact on the value of OUR dollar, and hence, OUR way of life, such as it is:

"Dutch Voters Reject EU Constitution"

By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press Writer

10 minutes ago

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Dutch voters overwhelmingly rejected the European Union constitution Wednesday, delivering what could be a knockout blow for the charter roundly defeated just days ago by France.

Less than an hour after the polls closed, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende conceded defeat in his campaign to ratify the constitution and said the government would respect the results of the referendum.

"Naturally, I'm very disappointed," he said in a televised statement.

The state broadcaster NOS said that with nearly three-quarters of the results counted, the constitution was losing by a vote of 62 percent to 39 percent, an even worse defeat than the 55 percent "no" vote in France's referendum Sunday.

Turnout was 62 percent, far exceeding even the most optimistic expectations and a reflection of the heated debate in recent days over an issue that has polarized Europeans.

Dutch liberals worried a more united EU could weaken liberal social policies, while conservatives feared losing control of immigration.

Although the referendum was consultative, the high turnout and the decisive margin left no room for the Dutch parliament to turn its back on the people's verdict.

The parliament meets Thursday to discuss the results.

The constitution was designed to further unify the 25-nation bloc and give it more clout on the world stage.

But the draft document needs approval from all the nations to take effect in late 2006, and the "no" vote in both France and the Netherlands — founding members of the bloc — was a clear message European integration has gone awry.

"We must acknowledge that many Europeans doubt that Europe is able to answer the urgent questions of the moment," said German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, leader of the EU's richest nation and a strong proponent of the charter.

"The crisis surrounding the ratification of the European constitution must not become Europe's general crisis."

French President Jacques Chirac, whose support for the constitution was repudiated by his people, said "shows strong expectations, questions and concerns about the development of the European project."

Asked about the vote, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the constitution was a matter for the Europeans.

"The United States is committed to a Europe that is united and strong, and one that works in partnership with us to address our common challenges."

"We've done that in the past, and we want to do that as we move forward in the future," McClellan said.

At EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso urged member governments not to make any hasty judgments about the ratification process and wait for the bloc's mid-June summit to assess the constitution's situation.

"We have a serious problem, but we must continue our work," Barroso said.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said EU leaders needed to analyze what went wrong, but said they should press on.

"This is not the end of the process for the constitution and not at all the end of European integration," he said.

Early in the day, Balkenende had said he was optimistic the Dutch would defy the pollsters and vote on the merits of the constitution rather than their general feeling of malaise.

"The question is: Do we want to have progress today or do we choose a standstill, and for me the choice is obvious," he said.

But voters marking paper ballots with red pencils or pushing electronic buttons clearly had a different view.

At an Amsterdam school, where about a dozen people waited to vote, a reporter had difficulty finding anyone in favor of the constitution.

One said the charter would bolster Europe: "I think it's a good thing if there's a strong Europe," said Jaena Padberg.

"It's good that our rights will be secured."

Some voters said that they were undecided up to the last moment and that it was one of the toughest choices they had faced in a polling booth.

"I can't decide because I don't feel I have enough information," said waitress Flora de Groot, who was determined to vote anyway.

"At first I thought, yes, definitely."

"But now, because what I've heard from other people, I'm leaning toward no."

Opponents said they feared the Netherlands, a nation of 16 million people, would be overwhelmed by a European superstate even though the Dutch pay more per capita than any other country into the collective EU kitty.

Nicolas Ilaria, an immigrant from Suriname, said he was voting no.

"In principle, I'm against bureaucracy and I don't believe everything is working well now," he said as he read a newspaper at an Amsterdam cafe.

Like many others, Ilaria voiced an underlying mistrust of Dutch politicians.

"The government is not telling the truth about what is in the treaty," he said.

Others were concerned a strengthened Europe could force the liberal Dutch to scrap policies such as tolerating marijuana use, prostitution and euthanasia.

Some felt cheated by price increases after they traded in their guilders for the EU's common currency, the euro, in 2002.

Conservatives worried that the EU would take over control of immigration policies.

"Things are going too fast," said Maarten Pijnenburg, in the "no" camp.

"There's not enough control over the power of European politicians" under the new constitution.

The Dutch vote was not expected to have the same dramatic result for domestic politicians as France's referendum — a loss that resulted in Jean-Pierre Raffarin's resignation as prime minister.

Balkenende said before the vote that there would be no political resignations, no matter what the vote.
___

Associated Press writer Toby Sterling in Amsterdam contributed to this report.

[Livyjr]

And with some late-breaking news just coming in off the wire, here, we interrupt this discussion about nature, and its relationship with US, for the moment, in order to check up on what is going on over there in Europe with regard to this EU and Euro business that could have an impact on the value of OUR dollar, and hence, OUR way of life, such as it is:

"Dutch Voters Reject EU Constitution"

By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press Writer

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Dutch voters overwhelmingly rejected the European Union constitution Wednesday, delivering what could be a knockout blow for the charter roundly defeated just days ago by France.

Less than an hour after the polls closed, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende conceded defeat in his campaign to ratify the constitution and said the government would respect the results of the referendum.

"Naturally, I'm very disappointed," he said in a televised statement.

And here is some more late-breaking news that might just have an effect on OUR economy that is already taking a severe hit from what has caused oil prices to surge, which is George W. Bush's so far ham-handed attempt to take over all the oil in Iraq:

"Crude Oil Prices Surge Above $54 a Barrel"

By BRAD FOSS, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 25 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Oil prices jumped by more than $2.50 a barrel on Wednesday in a rally brokers pinned on fears of tight supplies at the end of the year even as they were stunned at the market's volatility.

It was the seventh straight trading session in which crude oil futures have risen, lifting prices above $54 a barrel, and to their highest level in a month.

After climbing above $58 a barrel in early April, oil prices cooled off in mid-May, falling below $47 a barrel amid signs of slowing economic growth.

Now the market psychology appears to have flipped again.

"It doesn't make a lot of sense," said John Kilduff, senior oil analyst at FImat USA in New York.

"But fears about fourth quarter demand are feeding on themselves and a lot of people are scared."

"They don't want to miss the boat again if it looks like crude is going to go back up to $58."

Concerns are rising that strong demand for diesel will leave it and other distillate fuels, including heating oil, scarce later this year.

And there was also talk Wednesday of a refinery snag in Texas.

But the supply-demand fundamentals are basically unchanged from two weeks ago, when oil prices were nearly $8 a barrel cheaper.

Kilduff said "$60 a barrel, which looked highly unlikely just last week, is now once again within the realm of reason."

Light, sweet crude for July delivery rose $2.63, or 5 percent, to settle at $54.60 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Brent crude rose $2.46 to settle at $53.30 a barrel on London's International Petroleum Exchange.

Oil prices have been high and volatile for almost two years because there is little excess production capacity worldwide, leaving the market more vulnerable to unexpected supply disruptions or stronger-than-anticipated demand growth.

Brokers traced the start of Wednesday's rally to heating oil futures, which shot up by 9.05 cents to $1.54 a gallon.

They said the gains then spread to other commodities.

Gasoline futures climbed 7.72 cents to $1.5442.

In addition to rising consumption of gasoline, diesel demand is also strong due to economic growth, with pump prices averaging $2.16 a gallon in the U.S.

Oil analyst Andrew Lebow at Man Financial Inc. in New York said this could limit the buildup of distillate fuel inventories over the next few months, leaving heating oil supplies tight next winter.

"This could be the kickoff of the heating oil season — in June," Lebow said.

Both Kilduff and Lebow said there is ample gasoline in the market right now.

The U.S. Energy Department releases its next petroleum supply snapshot on Thursday.

Analysts said the report would have to show substantial growth in supplies to bring prices down, adding that the hospitalization of Saudi ruler King Fahd might also have been putting upward pressure on prices over the past few days.

In mid-May, prices fell below $47 a barrel in response to steadily rising crude inventories, but a surprise drop in U.S. oil supplies last week brought some nervousness back into the market.

"For a few weeks now, the market has become more difficult to predict and last week's drop just reiterated that," said Daniel Hynes, energy analyst at ANZ Bank in Melbourne, Australia.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration's last petroleum data showed that U.S. commercial crude oil inventories fell 1.6 million barrels to 332.4 million barrels in the week ending May 20 from the previous week.

Still, Hynes said he expects a "slight rise" in crude inventories in the report released Thursday, a day later than normal due to Monday's Memorial Day holiday in the United States.

"Anything less than that, we'll definitely see an upward impact on the prices," he said.

Oil prices are now 24 percent higher than a year ago.

OPEC ministers are scheduled to meet in Vienna on June 15.

The cartel has been pumping at 25-year highs in an attempt to keep prices in check.
___

Associated Press Writers George Jahn in Vienna and Wee Sui Lee in Singapore contributed to this report.

end quotes

People are scared?

You're just figuring this out, here?

What do you think George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and that crowd have been at these last four-plus years, anyway; making people feel comfortable?

What a crock that thought would be.

George W. Bush WANTS people scared, because that is good for his crowd, who make a lot of money off of people being scared!

And look here, right before OUR eyes, it is working, for their benefit, and not OURS, at all, which it was never intended to do in the first place, because to George W. Bush and his crowd, we're little more than a flock of sheep to be sheared, and boy, are we ever accomodating!

BAAAAAA!

[Livyjr]

And here is some more late-breaking news that might just have an effect on OUR economy that is already taking a severe hit from what has caused oil prices to surge, which is George W. Bush's so far ham-handed attempt to take over all the oil in Iraq:

"Crude Oil Prices Surge Above $54 a Barrel"

By BRAD FOSS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Oil prices jumped by more than $2.50 a barrel on Wednesday in a rally brokers pinned on fears of tight supplies at the end of the year even as they were stunned at the market's volatility.

"It doesn't make a lot of sense," said John Kilduff, senior oil analyst at FImat USA in New York.

"But fears about fourth quarter demand are feeding on themselves and a lot of people are scared."

end quotes

People are scared?

You're just figuring this out, here?

What do you think George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and that crowd have been at these last four-plus years, anyway; making people feel comfortable?

What a crock that thought would be.

George W. Bush WANTS people scared, because that is good for his crowd, who make a lot of money off of people being scared!

And look here, right before OUR eyes, it is working, for their benefit, and not OURS, at all, which it was never intended to do in the first place, because to George W. Bush and his crowd, we're little more than a flock of sheep to be sheared, and boy, are we ever accomodating!

BAAAAAA!

And speaking of George W. Bush's crowd, here's one of them now, and my, my, my, I don't think he's a happy camper at all, nor do I think he has one shred of credibility left to him, either:

"Rumsfeld Defends Treatment of Prisoners"

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

45 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld defended the military's handling of detained terror suspects Wednesday while acknowledging that some have been mistreated, "sometimes grievously."

At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld criticized Amnesty International, the human rights group, for calling the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "the gulag of our time."

The group has urged the United States to close the prison, where about 540 men are held on suspicion of links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban or the al-Qaida terror network.

Some have been there for more than three years without charges.

Rumsfeld said the U.S. military has done more than any other force to liberate oppressed people and has gone to great lengths to ensure that detainees are free to practice their religion.

"Indeed, that's why the recent allegation that the U.S. military is running a gulag at Guantanamo Bay is so reprehensible," he said.

The executive director of Amnesty International, William F. Schulz, issued a statement in response, saying that Rumsfeld and other officials "continue to ignore the very real plight of men detained without charge or trial."

On another war topic, Rumsfeld issued a veiled warning to Syria, saying that none of Iraq's neighbors should give haven to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist leader in Iraq who reportedly was wounded recently near the Syrian border.

"Were a neighboring country to take him in and provide medical assistance or haven for him, they obviously would be associating themselves with a major linkage in the al-Qaida network and a person who has a great deal of blood on his hands," Rumsfeld said.

He did not threaten any retaliation but said "people would take note of" any such support for al-Zarqawi.

Appearing alongside Rumsfeld, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the military doesn't know where al-Zarqawi is.

"Our assessment is that he has been wounded."

"The severity, I don't know that we know that," he said.

Rumsfeld said that likening the Guantanamo Bay prison to forced labor camps operated by the former Soviet Union, where millions perished in what became known as the gulag system, is inaccurate and "cannot be excused."

He accused the news media of focusing too much on prisoner abuse allegations and too little on "U.S. policy guidance to treat detainees humanely."

"To try to equate the military's record on detainee treatment to some of the worst atrocities of the past century is a disservice to those who have sacrificed so much to bring freedom to others," he said.

There has been widespread criticism of the Guantanamo Bay operation, which began in January 2002 with the arrival of prisoners captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan.

Thus far four men have been charged; their military trials have been stalled because of appeals in U.S. courts.

After Newsweek magazine reported last month that U.S. officials had confirmed that U.S. guards at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a copy of the Muslim holy book down a toilet, the commander of the detention center undertook an inquiry that concluded there was no such incident.

He did conclude that there had been five instances of Quran mishandling, although he refused to provide any details.

Newsweek has retracted its story.

Rumsfeld twice offered his resignation to President Bush after revelations in April 2004 about mistreatment of Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad.

Photographs taken by U.S. military personnel and published around the world depicted scenes of sexual humiliation and physical abuse.

"Yes, there have been instances where detainees have been mistreated while in U.S. custody, sometimes grievously, but consider these facts," Rumsfeld said Wednesday.

"To date there have been approximately 370 criminal investigations into the charges of misconduct involving detainees" since Sept. 11, 2001.

He did not mention it, but about 130 military personnel have been punished as a result of those investigations.

[Livyjr]

And speaking of George W. Bush's crowd, here's one of them now, and my, my, my, I don't think he's a happy camper at all, nor do I think he has one shred of credibility left to him, either:

"Rumsfeld Defends Treatment of Prisoners"

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld defended the military's handling of detained terror suspects Wednesday while acknowledging that some have been mistreated, "sometimes grievously."

At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld criticized Amnesty International, the human rights group, for calling the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "the gulag of our time."

The group has urged the United States to close the prison, where about 540 men are held on suspicion of links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban or the al-Qaida terror network.

Some have been there for more than three years without charges.

Rumsfeld said the U.S. military has done more than any other force to liberate oppressed people and has gone to great lengths to ensure that detainees are free to practice their religion.

"Indeed, that's why the recent allegation that the U.S. military is running a gulag at Guantanamo Bay is so reprehensible," he said.

The executive director of Amnesty International, William F. Schulz, issued a statement in response, saying that Rumsfeld and other officials "continue to ignore the very real plight of men detained without charge or trial."

And here's another slant on this GITMO GULAG bid-ness, and yes, in fact, I think we'll hear something coming out of Dick Cheney's mouth that will likely mirror what is coming out of Rumsfeld's mouth, which mirrors what is coming out of White House SPOKESBOY Scottie McClellan's mouth, which of course, will mirror what has been put into George W. Bush's mouth, BY DICK CHENEY, and so, all will be right with the world as a result, says GOD:

Politics

• Bush calls Amnesty report 'absurd'

May 31: President Bush calls a human rights group's report about conditions at the U.S. military's prison at Guantanamo Bay "absurd."

"Bush blasts Amnesty report on Guantanamo - President says document is an ‘absurd report’"

The Associated Press

Updated: 2:17 p.m. ET May 31, 2005

WASHINGTON - A human rights group's report about conditions at the U.S. military's prison at Guantanamo Bay is "absurd," President Bush told reporters Tuesday.

The Amnesty International report, released last week, said prisoners at the U.S. Navy base had been mistreated and called for the prison to be shut down.

The president, addressing a news conference at the White House, said the Amnesty document was an “absurd report.”

“It’s absurd."

"It’s an absurd allegation."

"The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world,” Bush said of the report, which compared Guantanamo to a Soviet-era gulag.

He said the Amnesty allegations were based on interviews with detainees, who hated America and were trained to lie.

Bush's remarks echoed similar criticism by Vice President Dick Cheney.

“Frankly, I was offended by it,” Cheney said in the videotaped interview with CNN's Larry King.

“For Amnesty International to suggest that somehow the United States is a violator of human rights, I frankly just don’t take them seriously.”

Washington’s defense of its detention and interrogation practices comes after weeks of international criticism and violent protests by Muslims outraged at reports — which the Pentagon says are false — that an interrogator at Guantanamo had flushed pages of the Quran down a toilet.

Iraq defense

On other issues, Bush said the fledging Iraqi government is “plenty capable” of defeating terrorists whose attacks on Iraqi civilians and U.S. soldiers have intensified.

“What you’re seeing is a group of frustrated and desperate people who kill innocent life and we obviously mourn the loss of every life, but I believe the Iraqi government is plenty capable of dealing with them,” Bush said at a Rose Garden news conference.

Bush spoke after separate air crashes killed four American and four Italian troops in Iraq.

The governor of Anbar province, taken hostage three weeks ago, was killed during clashes between U.S. forces and the insurgents who abducted him.

[Livyjr]

"Revelation troubles Watergate veteran - Editor Harry Rosenfeld says secret sources should stay that way" 
 
By MARK McGUIRE, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Wednesday, June 1, 2005

ALBANY -- Bob Woodward never revealed the identity of his Nixon administration source known only as "Deep Throat" to his then-boss at The Washington Post, Harry M. Rosenfeld.

"I was not told by Woodward," said the former Post assistant managing editor for metropolitan news.

Formerly the editor of the Times Union, Rosenfeld is now the paper's editor-at-large.

"I asked him and we agreed he would not tell me," Rosenfeld said Tuesday, after reports surfaced that a former FBI agent identified himself as Deep Throat of the early 1970s.

"(The source's) job, certainly, if not his life, would be in danger."

"Ex-Prosecutors: 'Deep Throat' Broke Rules"

By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 52 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - W. Mark Felt violated FBI and Justice Department policies by sharing with reporters information about the Watergate scandal, but it's not clear whether he broke any laws, several former federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

Not that anyone at the Justice Department is expressing a desire to prosecute the 91-year-old old Santa Rosa, Calif., resident.

Even if it were determined that the former No. 2 official at the FBI violated laws by providing tips as "Deep Throat," more than 30 years have passed and the statute of limitations on prosecution has expired.

The former prosecutors said that if they were to look into Felt's conversations with The Washington Post's Bob Woodward they would examine whether he violated federal rules that keep grand jury matters secret, whether he disclosed other confidential material that was part of the Watergate investigation or broke privacy rules by revealing the names of people who had yet to be charged with a crime.

"The administrative penalties for some of these things could be severe, including dismissal," said Joseph di Genova, who served as U.S. attorney in Washington during the Reagan administration.

John Barrett, a law professor at St. John's University in New York, said that among the many ironies in the Deep Throat story is that Felt, as the official who ran the FBI on a day-to-day basis, almost certainly had to deal with the sort of employee misconduct that he apparently engaged in.

Determining whether Felt broke any laws would require analyzing each piece of information he either provided or corroborated, said E. Lawrence Barcella Jr., who was a young prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office in Washington at the time of the Watergate break-in.

The idea that Felt broke any laws is misplaced, said Stephen Kohn, chairman of the board of the National Whistleblower Center.

"FBI agents have a First Amendment right to go to the press," Kohn said, citing a 1968 Supreme Court decision that he said protects people who expose government misconduct.

One unanswered question raised both by Barrett, a prosecutor in the Iran-Contra investigation, and di Genova is why Felt chose to work with a reporter instead of taking his concerns about White House interference with the FBI to Congress.

"If the head of the FBI and the Justice Department criminal division are both pipelines to the White House, perhaps you go across the branches of government to Congress, if you're a responsible government official," Barrett said.

Felt's decision to keep quiet, however, made possible another moment that linked him to Nixon, Barrett said.

When Felt was on trial for authorizing illegal break-ins during the 1970s at homes of people associated with the radical Weather Underground, Nixon testified on his behalf.

And after Reagan pardoned Felt in 1981, he received a bottle of champagne and this brief note from the disgraced former president:

"Justice ultimately prevails."