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

[Livyjr]

And of course, being as how this FORUM has as its central theme above a quote that comes DIRECTLY from the days of OUR own nation's birth as a democratic Republic, and being as how we are patriots and citizens in here who are very much interested in the HEALTH of OUR own democracy, which is an eternal duty, we are therefore very much interested in this experiment in democracy that is alleged to be going on over there in Iraq, and so, we are following developments with respect to the formation of its new government over there, which brings us to this following story, where the wrangling is now about, you guessed it, OIL:

World - AFP

"New Iraq cabinet stalls over top oil job, Al-Qaeda posts execution video"

Sun Mar 27, 9:09 AM ET   

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraqi politicians fought over the oil ministry and the role of Islam in the next government, while an Al-Qaeda website posted a video of the purported execution of an Iraqi colonel.

Iraq's parliament, due to meet Tuesday, seemed far from a deal on a coalition government, as the country's ethnic and religious factions bickered nearly two months after Iraq's historic January 30 election.

Parliament, which held its inaugural session on March 16, will try to put to a vote Tuesday the crucial three-man presidency council that will appoint the prime minister even if political parties cannot agree on the rest of the government, Shiite negotiators said.

And before I must leave my post here for another day, here is a further update on what we call in here THE IRAQ SITUATION:

Top Stories - Knight Ridder Newspapers

"Sunnis' exclusion from political process stokes fears of civil war"

1 hour, 32 minutes ago

By Tom Lasseter, Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - While American officials point to the bargaining among Shiite Muslim and Kurdish politicians over an interim Iraqi government as evidence that democracy is taking hold in Iraq, some Iraqi analysts and politicians are increasingly worried about the group that's missing from the equation: Sunni Muslims.

Almost two months after national elections, Iraq's Sunni minority remains fragmented and largely alienated from the horse-trading.

If that continues, the group that's long dominated Iraq could find itself shut out of December's prime ministerial election as it was on Jan. 30, when Sunnis won only a few seats in Iraq's new parliament.

Lawmakers had planned to meet this weekend to form a coalition government that's expected to be dominated by Shiites and Kurds, but the session was postponed at least until Tuesday.

On Sunday, Shiite and Kurdish leaders said that many of the key decisions about the new government had been made.

Both groups stand to receive most of the key positions - prime minister, president and the major cabinet posts - leaving the Sunnis further estranged.

Asked about Kurdish demands for 25 percent of the nation's oil revenues, Faraj al Haidari, a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Party, said that the Kurds are entitled to a considerable stake of the country's wealth because of their suffering under former dictator Saddam Hussein, a Sunni.

"We have to take in consideration that Kurdistan has suffered a lot in the past and it has to get what it deserves now," he said.

Saad Jawad, a senior Shiite political official, said that Kurdish demands for control of the oil-rich Kirkuk area, a crucial issue for Sunni Arabs, have been scaled back to a referendum to be held there at a later date.

Most Iraqis expect the Kurds to bus in as many of their own people as possible to win the vote and make Kirkuk part of an autonomous Kurdistan.

The Kurds have agreed, on paper at least, to absorb their Peshmerga militia into the nation's security forces, but the militia members will remain in Kurdistan.

Politicians and analysts in Iraq agree that the insurgency could broaden and intensify, and perhaps even threaten civil war, if mainstream Sunnis continue to feel disenfranchised.

"A defiant Sunni population would be dangerous," said Mazen al Ramadhani, a political science analyst and professor at Baghdad University.

While Sunnis make up some 20 percent of Iraq's population, they comprise most of its bureaucratic, technological and military elite, largely because of favoritism by Saddam.

"Our presence and representation in the next government is an important and necessary thing to stabilize this country," said Hassan al Hashimy, an official with the Iraqi Islamic Party, a main Sunni group.

Jawad Talib, a senior adviser to the presumptive Shiite prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, agreed.

"If they don't participate, it will destabilize the country," he said.

"I hope that the Sunni clerics won't submit to the terrorists."

In many predominantly Sunni areas, however, Sunni religious organizations called for a boycott of the Jan. 30 elections, and poor security made voting difficult.

In Anbar province, voter turnout was in the single digits.

There have been several attempts to gather the Sunni factions at the table and draft a common platform, but the effort has been plagued by disagreements between Sunnis willing to join the political process and those who dismiss it as a sham.

Now there are signs that some Sunni groups may be digging in their heels.

Leaders of the Muslim Scholars Association, an influential group of hard-line clerics that called for a boycott in January, continue to denounce the bargaining over a new government as an American fabrication.

A conference last week intended to bring major Sunni parties together was poorly attended, and the scholar's association representative used it to rail against the U.S. presence in Iraq and anything connected to it.

"We held the conference for the Sunni people after we started to feel that the sectarian divide is widening and after we realized that we're about to be marginalized," he said before putting in a good word for the Sunni-led insurgency.

"There are bad intentions to distort the reputation of the true, honorable resistance, which should be a crown on the heads of all Iraqis."

"This resistance is a legal act according to all the religions."

Some Sunni leaders have floated the idea of creating a federation of three Sunni provinces, which, under a clause in the nation's transitional law, could veto any constitution passed by the Shiite- and Kurdish-dominated assembly.

But even that's been stymied by infighting among Sunni politicians and tribal sheikhs, some of whom consider any political engagement, even a veto, a tacit acknowledgement of the government's legitimacy.

The naming of the new transitional government, negotiated by the Shiites and Kurds, appears likely to exacerbate the situation.

Although the Kurds, who are Sunnis but identify primarily with their Kurdish ethnicity, are also about 20 percent of the population, they mounted a massive get-out-the-vote drive and gained significant leverage with the Shiite majority.

Muayad Dulame, a Sunni barber in Baghdad, said he worried that the Sunnis are falling further and further behind.

Sitting in a restaurant next to his shop, Dulame said he hoped that Iraq wouldn't go the way of Lebanon, where a 15-year civil war killed thousands.

"We shouldn't be like Lebanon, where the Sunnis, Shiite and Christians are all divided," he said.

"But every time we hear the news, we hear that a Sunni mosque was hit; a Shiite mosque was hit; a Sunni sheikh was killed; a Shiite sheikh was killed."

Knight Ridder Newspapers special correspondents Yasser al Salihee and Mohammed al Awsy contributed to this report.

[Livyjr]

And before I must leave my post here for another day, here is a further update on what we call in here THE IRAQ SITUATION:

Top Stories - Knight Ridder Newspapers

"Sunnis' exclusion from political process stokes fears of civil war"

By Tom Lasseter, Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - While American officials point to the bargaining among Shiite Muslim and Kurdish politicians over an interim Iraqi government as evidence that democracy is taking hold in Iraq, some Iraqi analysts and politicians are increasingly worried about the group that's missing from the equation: Sunni Muslims.

Almost two months after national elections, Iraq's Sunni minority remains fragmented and largely alienated from the horse-trading.

Politicians and analysts in Iraq agree that the insurgency could broaden and intensify, and perhaps even threaten civil war, if mainstream Sunnis continue to feel disenfranchised.

"A defiant Sunni population would be dangerous," said Mazen al Ramadhani, a political science analyst and professor at Baghdad University.

"We held the conference for the Sunni people after we started to feel that the sectarian divide is widening and after we realized that we're about to be marginalized," he said before putting in a good word for the Sunni-led insurgency.

"There are bad intentions to distort the reputation of the true, honorable resistance, which should be a crown on the heads of all Iraqis."

"This resistance is a legal act according to all the religions."

And since I have a couple of minutes left in here, while I listen to Irish music on the radio, here is one more companion story to this one above here on, what else, THE IRAQ SITUATION, brought to us, here in OUR America, courtesy of the fabulous Bush Co.'s:

Politics - AFP

"Seems more foreign fighters entering Iraq: top US general"

Sun Mar 27, 3:40 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Foreign fighters entering Iraq in recent months make up a growing percentage of insurgents battling US troops and the country's fledgling security force, a senior US military commander said.

In an interview with CNN in Mosul, Iraq, General John Abizaid, the commander of US Central Command, which covers Iraq, said that while most insurgents appear to be Iraqis, "The percentage of foreign fighters over the past several months seems to have increased."

He also said the insurgents' ranks likely include "former Baathist criminals."

"It seems to be pretty well established that they tend to cross over from Syria, although we know that there have been some infiltrations from the Saudi border, there have been some from the Iranian border," Abizaid said.

"The Syrians are not doing everything we've asked them to do," Abizaid said, adding that Syria's intelligence services are not being aggressive enough in dismantling "facilitation cells" inside Syria.

In a separate CNN interview, George Casey, the commanding US general of the Multi-National Force in Iraq, told the news network that current insurgent assaults were running at between 50 and 60 attacks a day.

"They (insurgents) are able to maintain the level of violence between 50 and 60 attacks a day," Casey said.

"And the four provinces where the insurgency is still capable is out west, near Fallujah in Anbar province, in the Baghdad area, and Saladdin, which is in the center of the country, around Saddam's home town, and up north, in the Mosul area," Casey said.

Casey said the insurgency had not been broken yet.

"Not yet."

"What it means to me is that they're not nearly as strong or as capable as some people thought they were prior to the elections," he said of the insurgents.

"Since the elections, the Iraqi security forces have gotten more involved, and the Iraqi people have gotten more involved in giving us tips, telling us where insurgents are and where insurgent weapons storage sites and things like that are," Casey said.

Asked for an update on the ongoing US manhunt for Iraq's most-wanted insurgent, the Al-Qaeda linked Jordanian Abu Masab Al-Zarqawi, Abizaid said Al-Zarqawi's followers were certainly operating in western Iraq.

"I think ... you well understand that a big military organization like the US military are pretty good at pressuring the (insurgent) networks, and that is what we're doing."

"A single manhunt is a difficult thing."

"Over time, we keep finding out more and more about his organization, we take more people out of it, and his time is running out," Abizaid predicted.

[Abu Beacon]

And here I got to wondering why it is that WE NEVER HEAR THE BUSH CO. decrying CORRUPTION, and obvious corruption at that, over there in his CLIENT PUPPET STATE of Iraq, when we hear him just about foaming at the mouth in apoplectic fits of pique and rage about some corruption that he says he perceives in the Palestinean Authority?

Could it be that BECAUSE the Bush Co. can't read, that he does not know about this CORRUPTION over there in HIS client puppet state of Iraq?

Is that at all a possibility here?

Or is it that he does not really care?

Could that be it?

Yes, that's it.

A.B.

[Livyjr]

Before I go back to some other things in here, like Mr. A.B.'s words above on where exactly George W. Bush does stand on this matter of government corruption over there in Iraq, and here, too, in OUR America for that matter, I want to post this "prediction" article from yesterday's news about where Wall Street might be heading this week.

This morning, on the financial news, there was a squib about last week being the third straight down week for Wall Street, which makes this article relevant today, as the business week opens up again:

Business - AP

"Wall Street Could See Volatile Week"

27 March 2005

By MICHAEL J. MARTINEZ, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK - With Wall Street's fears of inflation confirmed by the Federal Reserve, investors are now looking for proof that the economy will be strong enough to handle the increased pricing pressure and additional expected Fed interest rate increases.

On Tuesday, the Fed raised its target for the overnight bank loan rate by a quarter point to 2.75 percent, the seventh in its current cycle of increases.

Trading in federal funds futures suggest that investors are betting that central bankers may follow that with a half point hike in either May or June.

That leads Wall Street to two important questions.

Will consumers be able to handle higher prices now that parts of corporate America appear to finally be gaining pricing power?

And will companies be able to continue expanding as the cost of raising capital rises?

The answers will start coming in the week ahead as key pieces of economic data will shed light on the strength of consumer spending and the health of the overall economy.

And that could lead to a volatile week on Wall Street.

Last week, stock indexes tumbled for a third straight week, precipitated by the Fed's statement that inflationary pressures are building in the economy.

Despite falling sharply most of the week, oil futures remained above $54 a barrel as well.

For the week, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 1.76 percent, the Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 1.53 percent and the Nasdaq composite index slid 0.83 percent.

Year-to-date, the Nasdaq remains far behind the other indexes, having lost 8.48 percent, as investors abandoned the technology sector and riskier small-cap companies.

The Dow is down 3.15 percent, and the S&P 500 has fallen 3.34 percent so far this year.

ECONOMIC DATA

In the coming week, investors will get strong gauges of economic health and how consumers, who accounts for two-thirds of economic activity, are faring.

On Friday, the Labor Department will release its monthly job creation report, one of Wall Street's closely watched barometers.

Economists are forecasting that the economy added 225,000 jobs in March, down from a gain of 262,000 in February.

In this case, a number slightly above or below the estimates would be ideal, since very low job growth calls into question the state of the economy, while high job growth could increase consumer demand and result in rising prices.

Also on Friday, the Institute for Supply Management's index will give a reading on the state of industry.

ISM index readings above 50 suggest that manufacturing is expanding, and economists are forecasting that it will come in at 55 for March, down slightly from a 55.3 reading in February.

Again, a surge in growth could prompt the Fed to raise borrowing costs at a faster pace in an attempt to keep prices in line, while sluggish growth will be seeing as troublesome for corporate profits.

Consumer confidence is expected to take a hit in March due to declining stock prices and soaring oil and gasoline prices.

The Conference Board's consumer confidence index, due Tuesday morning, is expected to come in at 103.3 in March, down from 104 in February.

Finally, on Wednesday, the Commerce Department will release its final figures on fourth quarter gross domestic product growth.

Economists are expecting the agency to say that the economy expanded at an annualized rate of 4 percent in last year's final quarter, up from a preliminary estimate of a 3.8 percent growth rate.

EARNINGS

First-quarter earnings season begins in earnest in April, but a handful of companies will be reporting their results in the week ahead.

On Monday, drug store chain Walgreen Co. is expected to report earnings of 48 cents per share, up from 41 cents per share in the year-ago quarter.

The company's stock has seen steady growth over the past year, rising 42.2 percent from its close of $32.51 on March 24, 2004, to close Thursday at $46.23.

Two of the nation's largest electronics retailers will issue their results Wednesday morning.

Best Buy Co. Inc. is expected to earn $1.54 per share, up from $1.42 per share a year ago.

Best Buy shares have fallen 16.5 percent since its best close of 2004, $62 on Nov. 18, finishing Thursday at $51.74.

Rival Circuit City Stores Inc. will report its first earnings statement since rejecting a $17-per-share takeover bid earlier this month from a private equity group.

Wall Street expects Circuit City to earn 55 cents per share, up from 46 cents per share in the year-ago quarter.

The stock has been volatile over the past year, but is still up 48.6 percent from its close of $10.43 on March 24, 2004, finishing Thursday at $15.50.

EVENTS

On Friday, General Motors Corp. — which drastically reduced its earnings forecasts due to sluggish sales — Ford Motor Co. and other automakers will report their March sales.

Many retailers will also start reporting on their monthly sales.

[Livyjr]

Business - AP

"Wall Street Could See Volatile Week"

27 March 2005

By MICHAEL J. MARTINEZ, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK - With Wall Street's fears of inflation confirmed by the Federal Reserve, investors are now looking for proof that the economy will be strong enough to handle the increased pricing pressure and additional expected Fed interest rate increases.

On Tuesday, the Fed raised its target for the overnight bank loan rate by a quarter point to 2.75 percent, the seventh in its current cycle of increases.

Trading in federal funds futures suggest that investors are betting that central bankers may follow that with a half point hike in either May or June.

That leads Wall Street to two important questions.

Will consumers be able to handle higher prices now that parts of corporate America appear to finally be gaining pricing power?

And will companies be able to continue expanding as the cost of raising capital rises?

And here I want to do my bit to ease the fears of these financial boys by removing any doubt whatsoever in their minds THAT I WILL NOT BE BUYING ANYTHING AT ALL, outside of a little food now and then, and a bit of gas, and that is it!

Sorry, boys, but how does that saying go, something about a goose and golden eggs?

SO!

The financial boys just might have to learn how to do what I have had to learn how to do, which is to operate a leather punch, so that when your belt gets too loose, why, you just punch another hole in it, and cinch it a little tighter.

And you know what?

It'll be good for them.

Maybe instill a little character in them, and that's not a bad thing to have as you go through life, unless, of course, you are one of these scam artists that are so prolific out there in OUR America these days, or one of these Bush Co. "SHAKE DOWN ARTIST" Iraqis, who shakes down people for bribes, SO THEY CAN WORK THAT DAY, and survive until the next, when they'll have to pay yet another bribe to do it all over again.

Then, character is a real detriment, isn't it?

And so they have none!

But BID-NESS is good, despite that, so why worry?

[jeffmoskin]

And since I have a couple of minutes left in here, while I listen to Irish music on the radio, here is one more companion story to this one above here on, what else, THE IRAQ SITUATION, brought to us, here in OUR America, courtesy of the fabulous Bush Co.'s:

Politics - AFP

"Seems more foreign fighters entering Iraq: top US general"

Sun Mar 27, 3:40 PM ET 

[b][color=red]WASHINGTON (AFP) - Foreign fighters entering Iraq in recent months make up a growing percentage of insurgents battling US troops and the country's fledgling security force, a senior US military commander said.

Seems to me the George W. Bush, a Born-Again Christian, who reads the bible on a daily basis, might have stumbled accross this passage:

"Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. "(Matthew 26:52)

[Livyjr]

Seems to me the George W. Bush, a Born-Again Christian, who reads the bible on a daily basis, might have stumbled accross this passage:

"Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. "(Matthew 26:52)

On the day 9-11 went down, to the eternal benefit of the Republicans, and the Republican National Committee, and George W. Bush in particular, and well, yes, Rudolph Giuliani, too, and the boys who make those big bucks selling "security", or is that "protection", George W. Bush was stumbling though a children's book about a goat!

A goat!

And he was having trouble with that, apparently trying to figure out exactly how many syllables there might actually be in the word "goat", and just what a goat might actually be in the first place, such as "fur, fish or fowl"!

Then aboard Air Force One on June 4, 2003, Mr. Bush said:

"I'm ALSO not very analytical."

"You know I don't spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things!"

Before that, and before 9-11, actually, when George W. Bush was confounded by how to parse a sentence with the word "goat" in it, on February 21, 2001, in Townsend, Tennessee, OUR George said:

"You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test!"

Well, yeah, maybe, George, BUT WILL HE OR HER HAVE THE SLIGHTEST IDEA WHAT THE WORDS ON THE PAGE ACTUALLY MEAN, such as a goat is a four-legged farmyard animal that is also found in the wild, and can be quite mean, even if not provoked?

And jeffmoskin, come, come, here!

Are you actually presuming that a man who can't figure out how to pronounce the word "goat" would actually be able to take any meaning from your words above, from the Bible?

AND ....

IF he was able to read those words, which is doubtful, THEN HE WOULD SEE HIMSELF, in all likelihood, AS THE ONE SPEAKING THEM, and not as one to whom those words would ever apply!

Don't you know, jeffmoskin, that GEORGE W. BUSH IS GOD'S "SMITER" DOWN HERE ON THIS EARTH OF OURS, GOD'S DESTROYER OF ALL INIQUITY that is not directly under the absolute control of HIS REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE and one or another of Tom Delay's various PAC's?

Shame, shame, jeffmoskin!

God's gonna getcha, if you keep on pretending like you are that George W. Bush is just another mortal soul down here on this earth of OURS like we are!

Better keep on keeping your earflaps down if you keep thinking things like George W. Bush is accountable for HIS actions in the same manner that we are accountable for our own!

WHEN YOU ARE GOD, jeffmoskin, as George W. Bush is, WHAT NEED HAVE YOU OF A "JESUS", OR ANY WORDS THAT HE MIGHT HAVE SAID, TO US?

WHEN YOU ARE SUCH A GOD AS IS GEORGE W. BUSH, then "Jesus" is for the other folks, which is US!

And that is just the way it is!

And if you don't believe me, well, ask Billy Graham, and for a few dollars sent into the right numbered account somewhere or other to keep the "MINISTRY" going, and to pay all those expenses associated with having such a "TELEVISION MINISTRY" in the first place, why, jeffmoskin, Mr. Billy Graham just might set you straight here as to WHO GOD And George W. Bush really are, and why those words above then, DO NOT APPLY TO GEORGE W. BUSH!

George is the FATHER and Jesus sits at HIS right hand, and if Jesus knows what's good for him this time, unlike the last time when he got lippy and uppity with the GOD Tiberius Caesar and got nailed to the torture pole for his trouble, why, this time around, if Jesus has learned anything at all, HE WILL KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT IN THE PRESENCE OF George W. Bush, as we are supposed to also, OR ELSE!

"Put your hands right up there on the wood, Jesus, like a good boy; that's it, you know the drill, and oh, yeah, don't spread your feet, we're facing a budgetary crisis here, and so, we only have three nails to use on you today, so keep your feet together, please!"

[Livyjr]

"Put your hands right up there on the wood, Jesus, like a good boy; that's it, you know the drill, and oh, yeah, don't spread your feet, we're facing a budgetary crisis here, and so, we only have three nails to use on you today, so keep your feet together, please!"

And here I am once again returning from down the hall, and over into the "Religion and Politics" section of "Issues for OUR times", where I spend some time each day, as a rule, in Mr. A.B.'s thread entitled "George W. Bush v. The Holy Bible".

I find that when I am over there, I can be in a different state of mind than I generally am in over here, because to me, this THREAD HERE is completely secular in nature, without overtones of religion entering in, where we really deal with "citizenship issues" in a democratic Republic, while over there, I can be a simple individual IN A DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC who is involved in a free and open discussion of a perhaps "religious", or maybe "spiritual" nature which is taking part over there concerning George W. Bush, and the various parts of the Bible, to include Revelation, which is the last book of the Bible, and perhaps the least read and understood!

Revelation is what I would call "self-authorizing", in that IF you can read it, and take meaning from it IN YOUR OWN LIFE, then IT is meant to be read, BY YOU, at that time!

Or me, in this case, since it is I who am quoting from Revelation over there, in a provocative manner, which is how I see Revelation being used by me right now, anyway, which is as a tool to cause people to have to say to themselves, "HEY!"

"What if ......"

Who is control of the world?

And what if it is not really George W. Bush?

What then?

Stay tuned!

[Livyjr]

And here I want to do my bit to ease the fears of these financial boys by removing any doubt whatsoever in their minds THAT I WILL NOT BE BUYING ANYTHING AT ALL, outside of a little food now and then, and a bit of gas, and that is it!

Sorry, boys, but how does that saying go, something about a goose and golden eggs?

SO!

The financial boys just might have to learn how to do what I have had to learn how to do, which is to operate a leather punch, so that when your belt gets too loose, why, you just punch another hole in it, and cinch it a little tighter.

And you know what?

It'll be good for them.

Business - USATODAY.com

"Bumpy road ahead for stock investors?"

Mon Mar 28, 8:03 AM ET

By Adam Shell, USA TODAY

The road to higher interest rates may be filled with potholes for stock investors.

Last week, the Federal Reserve boosted its target for short-term rates to 2.75% from 2.5%, the seventh increase since June 30, the day the Fed launched its campaign to lift borrowing costs to more normal levels.

But more upsetting to Wall Street, which is already struggling with high-priced oil, is that the Fed hinted that more increases are on the way to ward off inflation.

Rising interest rates don't necessarily rule out rising stock prices.

But it's hard for investors to ignore the potentially depressive effect higher borrowing costs have on economic growth, corporate profits and consumer spending.

"Stocks typically go through a rocky period when the Fed is raising rates," says John Forelli, senior vice president at Independence Investments.

A study by ISI Group found that the eight Fed-tightening cycles since 1970 resulted in recession five times, caused the 1990 savings-and-loan crisis and triggered the 2000 collapse of the Nasdaq composite.

The key question now:

"How high will rates go?" says Janna Sampson of AmSouth Select Equity fund.

Until now, stocks have held their own, even though rates have risen by 1.75 percentage points.

Despite a downdraft last week sparked by the Fed policymakers' acknowledgment that they were worried about a rise in inflation, the Dow Jones industrials closed Thursday at 10,443 - virtually flat with June 30, the day the Fed began nudging rates higher.

Jonathan Golub, U.S. equity strategist at J.P. Morgan funds, says investors have already priced in short-term rates between 4% and 4.5%.

Stocks may still run into resistance.

In the eight instances since 1929 when the Fed has raised rates by as much as 1.75 percentage points, the Standard & Poor's 500 was down 12 months later six out of eight times, says InvesTech Research.

The average performance was a loss of 7.5%.

A study by Ned Davis Research found that the Dow fared worse than its long-run average in the months following a seventh rate increase, although the Dow's underperformance tended to evaporate 12 months later.

The resilience of stocks this time around is credited largely to the economy's ability to keep chugging along at a solid pace and to low yields on longer-term bonds.

Another plus: Short-term rates were at a five-decade low of 1% when the Fed began to raise rates.

That provided a dual benefit.

Not only were investors expecting rates to rise, but the early rate increases did not meaningfully slow the economy.

But with the Fed poised to keep raising rates, and rates almost 2 percentage points higher than when it started, stocks will face increasing headwinds.

"Higher rates are going to start to hurt," says Chris Johnson, analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research.

[Livyjr]

And from the economy, we go the environment, which many people would have us believe, if you can actually believe this yourself, many people would have us believe that the health of OUR environment is IN NO WAY CONNECTED to OUR own health, or the health of the earth itself!

Now that is something to ponder alright, how such a thing as that could ever be, where the environment could somehow be disconnected from both us and the earth!

What a novel idea!

Science - AP

"Bamboo Shortage Threatens Pandas in China"

Mon Mar 28,12:01 PM ET

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer

SHANGHAI, China - Giant pandas in western China could be at risk of starvation because the bamboo plants that they eat are beginning to die off in a cycle that happens about every 60 years, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Sunday.

Workers at the Baishuijiang State Nature Preserve in the northwestern province of Gansu plan to monitor the 102 pandas in the preserve for signs of hunger, according to Xinhua.

Threatened pandas will be moved to areas that still have bamboo, with special attention given to older, feeble animals, it said, citing Zhang Kerong, the preserve's director.

Pandas derive most of their nutrition from arrow bamboo and can starve once the plant enters its dying-off stage.

The stage begins when the bamboo forms flowers, after which the pandas refuse to eat it.

The bamboo then starts to produce seeds before dying.

Blooming happens about once every 60 years, with a new crop taking 10 years to mature.

However, the cycle seems to run along different schedules in different places and an earlier mass die-off of bamboo in the 1980s caused the deaths of about 250 pandas, Xinhua said.

Xinhua said some bamboo also has started blooming in Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces, home to the rest of China's estimated 1,590 wild pandas.

Flowering bamboo now covers more than 17,300 acres of the 544,000-acre preserve, Xinhua said.

It said 22 pandas living in the preserve's Bikou and Rangshuihe areas were directly threatened with starvation.

Zhang said rangers would patrol for ailing animals and rescue those in need.

Local villagers also have been told not to drive away or harm pandas if they enter inhabited areas looking for food.

China regards the panda as an unofficial national mascot, but the animal's limited diet is just one factor threatening its survival.

Panda numbers have declined as its habitat has fallen to farming and development, and the animal's low fertility rate causes it to reproduce at an agonizingly slow rate.

Chinese zoologists have improved the birth rate of giant pandas in captivity through artificial insemination.

The country also has launched a project to clone the animal as a way of boosting its numbers.

[Livyjr]

Bush’s Corporate Cabinet: Others In The Bush League

Karl Rove, advisor to the President.

Called “the governor’s Svengali” by the National Review.

Philip Morris paid political intelligence operative, 1991 to 1996 (starting at $3,000/month).

Shaped governor Bush’s positions on tort “reform.”

Svengali

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svengali

Svengali is the name of a fictional hypnotist in George Du Maurier's 1894 novel, Trilby.

A sensation in its day, the novel created a stereotype of the abusive hypnotist that persists to this day.

Trilby O'Ferrall is literally tone-deaf:

"Svengali would test her ear, as he called it, and strike the C in the middle and then the F just above, and ask which was the highest; and she would declare they were both exactly the same."

He "would either fawn or bully, and could be grossly impertinent."

"He had a kind of cynical humour, which was more offensive than amusing, and always laughed at the wrong thing, at the wrong time, in the wrong place."

"And his laughter was always derisive and full of malice."

Under his hypnotic spell, Trilby becomes a talented singer, performing always in an amnesiac trance.

At a performance in London, Svengali is stricken with a heart attack and is unable to induce the trance.

Trilby is unable to sing in tune and is subjected to "laughter, hoots, hisses, cat-calls, cock-crows."

Not having been hypnotised, she is completely baffled and cannot remember anything about Svengali or her singing career.

When an audience member yells "Oh, ye're Henglish, har yer?"

"Why don't yer sing as yer bought to sing — yer've got voice enough, any'ow!"

"Why don't yer sing in tune?"

She cries, "'I didn't want to sing at all—I only sang because I was asked to sing—that gentleman asked me—that French gentleman with the white waistcoat!"

"I won't sing another note!"

She is stricken with a nervous affliction and dies tragically a day later.

The relation between Svengali and Trilby form only a relatively small portion of the novel, which is mainly an evocation of Bohemian Paris in the 1850s.

The novel has been adapted for the screen many times, the most successful being the 1931 film Svengali starring John Barrymore.

(A 1954 version is described by imdb [ http://www.imdb.org ] users as "unintentionally hilarious".

There was a 1983 television version with Peter O'Toole and Jodie Foster).

The word "Svengali" has entered the language meaning a person who, with evil intent, tries to persuade another to do what is desired.

It is frequently any kind of coach who seems to exercise an extreme degree of domination over a performer (especially if they believe they can only perform in the presence of their coach).

[Livyjr]

And from SVENGALI to AIG, we cover it all in here:

Business - Reuters

"SEC Subpoenas Dozen AIG Execs"

1 hour, 36 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has subpoenaed 12 executives of American International Group Inc. (AIG.N) in an expanding probe of the insurer, sources close to the case said on Monday.

As the SEC put 10 new possibly abusive transactions under scrutiny, news reports said AIG might part company soon with former Chief Executive Maurice Greenberg, who was stripped of the CEO title two weeks ago and named non-executive chairman.

Also involved in the inquiry are the U.S. Justice Department, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, New York state insurance regulators and law firms hired by the company and its independent directors, the sources said.

The law firms -- Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison for the company and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett for the independent directors -- were briefing regulators on Monday.

AIG in the past week fired Michael Murphy, an executive at its American International Co. unit in Bermuda, for failing to cooperate with investigators, an AIG spokesman said on Monday.

Last week, AIG said it fired two top executives after they signaled they would invoke their right to silence in the face of the probe -- chief financial officer Howard Smith and Christian Milton, a vice president of reinsurance.

AIG declined to discuss the substance of the investigation.

The SEC also declined to comment.

Government investigators had focused initially on a deal done in 2000 involving New York-based AIG and General Re, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRKa.N), that may have artificially boosted AIG's reserves, the sources said.

But the SEC probe has since expanded to cover 10 other potentially questionable transactions and possible accounting errors valued at about $1 billion, the sources said.

AIG shares were trading up 2.9 percent, at $57.20 each, on the New York Stock Exchange in late afternoon trading.

They were valued at more than $70 each as recently as mid-February.

Merrill Lynch & Co. analysts said AIG's shares are suffering too much and blamed overall weakness in the stock market, the departure of Greenberg as CEO and the likelihood of company financial restatements.

A delay in filing financial statements and media coverage of AIG have created investor uncertainty, but Merrill said any restatements or charges will be modest relative to the $46 billion in market capitalization it has shed since Feb. 11.

AIG has said it might file its delayed 10-K annual report with the SEC this week, but Prudential Financial analyst John Hall said this looks unlikely.

end quotes

Life in OUR America?

Of course it is!

[jeffmoskin]

And jeffmoskin, come, come, here!

Are you actually presuming that a man who can't figure out how to pronounce the word "goat" would actually be able to take any meaning from your words above, from the Bible?

Shame, shame, jeffmoskin.

Better keep on keeping your earflaps down if you keep thinking things like George W. Bush is accountable for HIS actions in the same manner that we are accountable for our own!

Silly me. What could I have been thinking?

Bush is only the monkey - Cheney is the organ grinder.

Still, I'll keep my ear flaps pulled tight for protection.

[Livyjr]

Silly me.

What could I have been thinking?

You're probably thinking, jeffmoskin, as are many people here in OUR America, that it would be absolutely IMPOSSIBLE for someone like George W. Bush, who seems endowed by nature with less comprehension and intelligence than your standard box of rocks has, that it should actually be totally impossible for someone seemingly totally devoid of any comprehension whatsoever like George W. Bush to actually be president of the whole United States, is probably what you were thinking!

And thinking that it would be, or actually should be, impossible for a man like George W. Bush, who seemingly cannot read, nor comprehend the written word, to be the president of ALL America when he can't apparently read, or comprehend the written word, YOU PROBABLY THINK THAT BECAUSE HE IS PRESIDENT, that he can read and comprehend the written word, and therefore, you probably think that because he says he "reads" the Bible, that he is actually doing more than just looking at the pictures!

And you, like many people here in OUR America, probably think that someone in the position of president of America would, OR SHOULD, be able to read and clearly comprehend those words that YOU quoted from the Bible about "living by the sword", AND IN THAT, YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!

ABSOLUTELY!

Someone, anyone, who is actually president of the United States SHOULD BE ABLE TO CLEARLY COMPREHEND THOSE WORDS that you can clearly comprehend, and understand, and that person WHO IS PRESIDENT, and especially this one who is always mouthing words about how he is a "BORN AGIN" christian, THAT PERSON WHO IS PRESIDENT should then be able to INSTILL IN EACH OF US, BY HIS OR HER EXAMPLE, WHY THOSE WORDS ARE WORDS TO HEED, for each of us, and especially for the leader of what is supposed to be the ONE free and open democratic Republic on the face of this earth!

Sadly, George W. Bush is not that man!

Nor is he that kind of president, or leader!

And you thought he was!

And it's okay, jeffmoskin; nothing wrong with your thoughts here, IT'S THE MAN IN THE OFFICE OF OUR PRESIDENT WHO IS DEFICIENT, and not you!

"I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what's moving."

"I rarely read the stories, and get briefed BY PEOPLE WHO ARE PROBABLY read the news themselves!"

- George W. Bush, Washington, D.C.; September 21, 2003

[Livyjr]

"I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what's moving."

"I rarely read the stories, and get briefed BY PEOPLE WHO ARE PROBABLY read the news themselves!"

- George W. Bush, Washington, D.C.; September 21, 2003

And speaking of the need to be able to read and comprehend what you are reading just to be a responsible citizen of this democracy, let alone the person who would call himself president of ALL America, what have we here?

"The Iraq War and America's Tradition of Foreign Policy Idealism: Three Recent Books Illuminate the Subject"

By ANTHONY DWORKIN

Monday, Mar. 28, 2005

Alan Curtis, "Patriotism, Democracy, and Common Sense: Restoring America's Promise At Home and Abroad" (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2004)

Jussi M. Hanhimaki, "The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy" (Oxford Univ. Press 2004)

Michael Walzer, "Arguing About War" (Yale Univ. Press 2004)

Not since Vietnam has foreign policy been at the center of political debate in America in the way that it is now.

For two years, the U.S. has been divided by passionate arguments about whether the Iraq war was morally justifiable or politically wise.

Meanwhile, the unsettled aftermath of the U.S. occupation ensures that these debates are unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.

Strikingly, the debate over Iraq - and about President Bush's international policies in general - has scrambled some traditional (albeit simplistic) assumptions about ideology and foreign policy.

Since the time of Woodrow Wilson, moral idealism in foreign policy has generally been seen as a Democratic position.

But it is a Republican president who now purports to espouse an idealistic approach to world affairs, seeking to establish a new international order on the basis of ending tyranny and advancing freedom.

In pushing the expansion of democracy, Bush said in his recent inaugural speech, "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one."

By contrast, the Democratic candidate in last year's presidential election, Senator John Kerry, emphasized primarily the costly and counterproductive nature of the war in Iraq, describing it as an unnecessary distraction from the more important objective of defeating Al Qaeda.

In contrast to Bush, Kerry took a position closer to the foreign policy tradition of realism - an outlook which aims at the promotion of national security, wealth, and power through conventional diplomatic means.

Realists, who distrust talk of a world order based on values like democracy or self-determination, have more often been associated with the Republican political tradition.

Of course, many people opposed the war in Iraq precisely because they thought it was immoral - thus adopting an idealist anti-war view.

But at a minimum, the national debate over Bush's global policies illustrates how contested the notions of national interest and morality in foreign policy have become.

Can President Bush, with his doctrine of regime change, really claim to be heir to the long American tradition of moral idealism in foreign policy?

And can the Democrats find a way to oppose him that rises above strategic realism, to incorporate a moral vision of their own?

In their different ways, the three books I will review here all provide openings to consider these important questions.

Hanhimaki on Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger, who was responsible for the foreign policy of the Nixon and Ford administrations as national security adviser and secretary of state, is generally regarded as the arch-practitioner of realpolitik in American diplomatic history.

The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, by the Finnish academic Jussi Hanhimaki, provides a thorough and judicious account of Kissinger's record.

Kissinger's view of world affairs was clearly set out in the foreign policy report to the U.S. Congress that he drafted for the recently-inaugurated President Nixon in February 1969.

The document said that America would regard its Communist adversaries "as nations pursuing their own interests as they perceive these interests, just as we follow our interests as we see them."

The report added that the structure of peace would come "from a realistic accommodation of conflicting interests."

In other words, Kissinger hoped to shift the tenor of America's relations with Russia and China from an ideologically-motivated hostility to an approach that more closely resembled the nineteenth-century European balance of power.

Kissinger believed that the United States should treat its Cold War enemies not as ideological adversaries, but rather as rival powers, alternately collaborating with them and playing them off against each other to maximize America's strategic advantage.

Hence, using his favorite method of back-channel diplomacy, Kissinger pushed forward détente with the Soviet Union, and reopened relations with China that had been frozen since the revolution twenty-two years earlier.

Hanhimaki explores Kissinger's handling of American foreign policy through a detailed narrative that is based, in large part, on many files that have only recently been opened.

The book confirms that Kissinger was a highly skilled and assiduous negotiator - for instance, in his shuttle diplomacy between Israel and Egypt in the aftermath of the 1973 October (or Yom Kippur) War.

But it also makes clear the limitations - moral and strategic - inherent in Kissinger's realpolitik.

The moral case against Kissinger is familiar, based upon the secret bombing of Cambodia, his backing of Pakistan during the crisis over East Pakistan/Bangladesh in 1971, his part in the campaign to undermine Salvador Allende in Chile, and his tacit endorsement of Indonesian President Mohamed Suharto's invasion of East Timor in 1975.

Hanhimaki doesn't seek to minimize the human cost of these policies, but neither does he portray them as abnormally wicked in the context of the times.

His real concern is to point out the strategic failures of Kissinger's foreign policy- and it is here that his book is at its most persuasive.

By viewing every regional conflict in the context of great-power rivalry, Kissinger failed to acknowledge their local and regional causes.

The result generally was that his elaborately constructed schemes had little staying power, and often left a legacy that harmed America's longer-term interests.

In Vietnam, for example, Kissinger's combination of "peace through strength" (meaning a series of aggressive bombing raids while negotiations continued) and back-channel negotiations with the Soviet Union and China did produce a peace settlement in 1973 - but it was never likely to last.

Two years later, the South Vietnamese were overrun by North Vietnam, and the U.S.-backed Cambodian government of Lon Nol had also fallen to the brutal Khmer Rouge.

Similarly, in the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971 and the Angolan civil war that began in 1975, Kissinger threw American weight behind discreditable leaders who would end up on the losing side.

Hanhimaki concludes that Kissinger's central failing was that - for all his claims to be rethinking the ground rules of American foreign policy - he did not succeed in challenging the basic Cold War orthodoxy that saw everything through the lens of a single global struggle:

"His policies relied on preconceived notions, not particularly innovative for their time, about the overarching significance of American credibility and the Soviet-American relationship."

By the end of Kissinger's time in charge of U.S. foreign policy, even his vaunted relationships with the Soviet Union and China were faltering.

At home, détente was coming under attack from politicians like Democratic senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who wanted to tie economic relations with the Soviet Union to improvements in their human rights record.

(It is an historical irony that many of the neoconservatives associated with the policies of George W. Bush worked with Jackson around this time and were deeply influenced by his critique of the amoral realism of Kissinger's foreign policy.)

Meanwhile, the relationship with China had reached an impasse over the issue of Taiwan.

Kissinger's high-handed and secretive style - he once described himself as the Lone Ranger of U.S. foreign policy - meant that he built up little domestic support for his policies.

Although opinion polls showed that he himself retained a high level of public approval throughout his career in public life, Kissinger felt little need to base his actions on values that were widely shared among the American public.

No wonder, then, that in the 1976 election, Jimmy Carter was able to defeat President Ford in part through his promises of a more moral foreign policy.

"A foreign policy based on secrecy has had to be closely guarded and amoral," Carter charged during the campaign.

Walzer on War

The same year Carter took office, the political theorist and social critic Michael Walzer published his influential book Just and Unjust Wars.

The book was an intellectual response to the war in Vietnam, and its achievement was to jump-start a revival of the tradition of just war theory as a moral standard for assessing the use of military force in modern times.

Since then, Walzer has continued to write on the relationship between war and morality.

His new book, Arguing About War, is a collection of his recent essays on the subject.

The volume divides into a set of theoretical chapters exploring various aspects of the morality of armed conflict, and a series of practical essays in which Walzer applies "just war" thinking to recent real-world conflicts.

War is, of course, the most violent and destructive face of foreign policy - the one that has the most far-reaching consequences for human life - and it is also the time when national security is most urgently at stake.

The question of morality in warfare therefore represents the debate about the role of values in foreign policy in its most consequential and difficult form.

Among the most interesting aspects of Walzer's book are his reflections on how the situation today differs from that of the Vietnam era, when his first book on the subject was written.

In one essay, entitled "The Triumph of Just War Theory," he presents a generally optimistic account of how moral standards are incorporated into contemporary war-fighting.

After Vietnam, Walzer writes, both military officers and statesmen realized that the way a war was fought could be a decisive factor in whether it was successful: the United States lost in Vietnam in large part because civilians in Vietnam were alienated by the brutal way the conflict was conducted.

Summing up these lessons, Walzer argues that "there are now reasons of state for fighting justly."

"One might almost say that justice has become a military necessity."

This essay was written in 2002, and today Walzer might acknowledge that his confidence in the triumph of just war theory was premature.

There is no doubt that the U.S. armed forces make a much greater effort now to avoid harming civilians than in the Vietnam era; for instance, possible targets are reviewed by military lawyers to make sure that they comply with the requirements of the laws of war.

But there is another area of war-fighting where recent American conduct has in fact been worse in recent conflicts than it was in Vietnam.

This is, of course, in the treatment of prisoners.

The U.S. Army recently announced that 27 detainees had been killed in U.S. custody since August 2002.

Many hundreds of people have been held as "unlawful combatants" in Guantanamo for as long as three years, without the protection of prisoner of war status or any meaningful due process rights.

By contrast, in Vietnam, the U.S. Army treated prisoners well and gave prisoner of war status to guerrilla fighters who had a weaker claim to it, under a narrow reading of the law, than do Taliban captives from Afghanistan today.

A key difference, of course, is that large numbers of Americans were being held as captives by the North Vietnamese in Vietnam.

Concern over how they were being treated provided a powerful incentive for the U.S. Army to observe decent standards itself.

Another difference that Walzer sees between the Vietnam era and today lies in the aftermath of war.

Traditionally, "just war" thinking has concentrated on the circumstances in which it is right to go to war (jus ad bellum), and the way you should fight once war has started (jus in bello).

But Walzer argues convincingly that contemporary wars require a much greater attention to post-war justice, dealing with issues like occupation and democratization.

In his section on recent conflicts, Walzer collects a series of impressive essays on Iraq.

He argues that the war in Iraq was not a just war, because it was launched before it was necessary:

"Though disarming Iraq is a legitimate goal, morally and politically, it is a goal that we could almost certainly have achieved with measures short of full-scale war."

Walzer also argues persuasively that overthrowing tyranny cannot be a legitimate justification for invading another country, unless it is necessary to prevent an ongoing campaign of massacre or ethnic cleansing.

Essays on "Patriotism, Democracy and Common Sense"

The question of Iraq also hangs over the third of the books reviewed in this article, a collection of essays entitled Patriotism, Democracy and Common Sense.

This is a wide-ranging selection of articles, all written from a broadly progressive viewpoint, and designed to set out an alternative vision to the policies of the Bush administration.

The essays in the book vary greatly in quality, but there are a few thoughtful and persuasive chapters on foreign policy.

Perhaps the best is an essay by Jessica Tuchman Matthews about "the challenge of managing dominance."

Matthews argues pragmatically that the Bush administration's triumphalism is short-sighted, because America's current dominance is unlikely to last.

She says that, instead, we should "approach this historical moment with a keen sense of the limits that we confront."

We should place less faith in what can be achieved through force of arms, particularly given the obvious difficulties of building a decent post-war society in Iraq, and place more emphasis on diplomacy and democracy assistance.

Matthews says the Democrats have flubbed the challenge of coming up with a decent national security policy of their own.

She outlines what the elements of such a policy might be: reliance on alliances rather than short-term coalitions; building strong international institutions to deal with new global challenges; and a better balance in spending between diplomacy and force.

In her conclusion, Matthews addresses head-on the claim that President Bush's aggressive democracy promotion is a contemporary updating of the policies of Woodrow Wilson, the archetypal moral idealist in foreign policy.

Although Wilson believed in the promotion of democracy, Matthews points out, he also believed that America should be embedded "in international organizations and rules to which we were not an exception, but an integral part."

The Bush administration, by contrast, believes America should stand alone above the international community and be unconstrained.

Reading these three books together gives the clear impression that the relationship between values and national interest in foreign policy is more complex than it is often made out to be.

For instance, many people who abhor the cynical way that Kissinger looked at conflicts in Angola, Cambodia or East Pakistan might nevertheless be sympathetic to his claims that détente produced appreciable benefits like the Helsinki agreements of 1975.

The same people might also be profoundly opposed to the war in Iraq - a conflict that was promoted by officials who cut their teeth attacking Kissinger for his "value-free" approach to the Soviet Union in the 1970's.

In foreign policy debates - at least in democratic societies - there is never going to be one position that is agreed by all parties to be the "moral" one and another that is agreed to best represent the "national interest."

Instead, there are likely to be an interlocking series of arguments in which both parties claim the mantle of justice and strategic value for their favored course of action.

And in a democracy, it is the voters who will ultimately decide which group has made the better overall case.

Anthony Dworkin is editor of the Crimes of War website http://www.crimesofwar.org an online journal covering international law and armed conflict.

[Livyjr]

SURREAL: having the intense irrational reality of a dream!

Which certainly defines and describes what this Bush Co. seems like to me, ESPECIALLY AFTER this most wierd PRESS CONFERENCE in Seoul that Miss Condoleeza just held, where AFTER her thugs took down a man hard and MUZZLED HIM, by exercise of overwhelming physical force, ON HIM, to prevent him from even having, let alone exercising, his right to FREE SPEECH in SOUTH KOREA, which is supposed to be a sovereign nation INDEPENDENT OF the United States, WHERE Miss Condoleeza would only be a guest, herself; Miss Condoleeza then goes on to tell these Korean internet reporters that this act of brutality that they had just witnessed Miss Condoleeza's thugs committing on this man, TO SUPPRESS FREE SPEECH, WAS IN FACT, DEMOCRACY, GEORGE W. BUSH-STYLE, IN ACTION!

What a JOKE!

"ANY OF YOU KOREANS OUT THERE THINKING CONDOLEEZA RICE AIN'T TOUGHER THAN ANY MAN, OR THAT SHE IS AFRAID TO USE VIOLENCE HERSELF AS A TOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY ON BEHALF OF GEORGE W. BUSH, GUESS AGAIN!"

And here, as a kind of "internet reporter", myself, and one at that who is most definitely interested in TRUE DEMOCRACY, what I would like to ask Miss Condoleeza on behalf of OUR America is WHO POPPED THAT ITALIAN GUY over there in Iraq?

Has anyone figured that out yet, Miss Condoleeza, OR IS IT A NATIONAL SECRET!

And if you are thinking of sending your thugs my way to wrestle me down and MUFFLE me, send a bunch!

Sometimes, in fact, a lot of times when I am posting "news" in here, EVEN THOUGH it is "main stream" news from "mainstream" sources, I get this intense feeling of SURREALTY, as though we were getting a direct feed from way down to the bottom of the RABBIT HOLE, where Alice went!

TWEEDLE-DEE, and TWEEDLE-DUM, but it's really George W. Bush and Dick Cheney!

The CHESHIRE CAT!

But no, wait, it's Condoleeza Rice!

And what's this next?

I don't know, but if someone suggests the MAD HATTER'S TEA PARTY, I won't argue that choice!

Business - BusinessWeek Online

"Who Wants Anatoly Chubais Dead?"

Tue Mar 29, 8:13 AM ET

By Jason Bush

As Russian electricity boss Anatoly Chubais was chauffeured into work from his country house 40 kilometers west of Moscow on the morning of Mar. 17, would-be assassins awaited him.

First they tried to blow up his armored BMW with a roadside bomb.

Then they opened fire with Kalashnikovs, spraying Chubais' car and an escorting Jeep containing his bodyguards.

A brief firefight ensued, and the failed killers fled into the woods beside the road.

No one was hurt.

That much everyone agrees on.

But from here the story gets murkier.

Since the roadside ambush, Russia has been awash with competing theories about who tried to kill Chubais and why.

Chubais, after all, makes no ordinary target.

In addition to occupying the directorship of United Energy Systems, Russia's state-owned electricity monopoly -- which is among the largest companies in the country -- he serves as leader of one of Russia's two biggest liberal parties, the Union of Right Forces.

UNLIKELY SUSPECT.

Tensions have run high in Russia of late.

Recent months have seen the climax to the long-running battle between President Putin and the Yukos oil company, terrorist attacks in Moscow and Beslan, public protests over benefit reforms, and the election protests in neighboring Ukraine, which sent shock waves through Moscow's political Establishment.

Does the attempt to kill a leading businessman and politician signify instability in Russia's own political system?

That depends on which theory you believe.

The official version of events sure seems hard to swallow.

Within hours of the attack, the police arrested their prime suspect, Vladimir Kvachkov, a 57-year-old retired colonel who formerly worked for the GRU, Russia's military intelligence.

According to eyewitnesses, two camouflaged assassins piled into a waiting getaway car, a green Saab 9000, as they tried to make their escape.

Witnesses made note of the license plate, and police quickly traced the car to its owner -- Kvachkov's wife.

Later that day, they found the offending vehicle parked outside the couple's Moscow apartment, where they also discovered traces of explosives.

They arrested Kvachkov on the spot.

An open and shut case?

Perhaps -- if you can view Kvachkov as simply an incompetent amateur, driving away in his own car in full view of others and then parking it outside his residence.

If this sounds strange, the alleged motive strains credibility even further.

Kvachkov owns a dacha near Chubais', not far from the site of the ambush.

According to police sources quoted in the Russian media, Kvachkov is said to have felt personal animosity toward Chubais because of a minor road incident or a dispute over land.

PLAYING COY.

Russians are a suspicious people.

No surprise, then, that many believe Kvachkov was framed.

"This is the first time in the history of high-profile contract killings that the suspect involved has been accused of doing something as ridiculous as shooting at the target with his own pistol, stabbing him with his own knife, or fleeing the scene in his own Saab," Yulia Latynina, a well-known journalist and political commentator, wrote in the Moscow Times on Mar. 23.

One other problem with the personal grudge theory:

Chubais himself said from the start that he knows who hired his assailants, but won't say who.

If the assassins were guns for hire as Chubais maintains (and everybody else assumes true), whoever hired them made a careless choice by picking Chubais' neighbor to carry out the job.

Chubais has dropped some hints in the past as to who he thinks wants to get him.

In an interview with the Financial Times in November, he said he had already survived three assassination attempts, "the last of which was done about 18 months ago and has purely political motives."

"These people hate me because they said I sold off Russia."

ECONOMIC MOTIVE.

That's a reference to Chubais' controversial role as the top economic adviser to then-President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s.

Chubais' radical privatization program made him unpopular because it seemed mainly to benefit a handful of billionaire oligarchs.

In that interview, Chubais seemed to imply that militant nationalists or communists wanted to kill him as punishment for his economic reforms.

This theory, however, has few takers as an explanation for the most recent assassination bid.

Aggrieved citizens rarely vent their anger over economic policies by resorting to Kalashnikovs.

Instead, most people who have ventured an opinion think Chubais was targeted because of a high-level dispute about money or power -- the usual motive for such hits.

So was it business or politics?

Or both?

On the face of it, the business theory looks intriguing.

Since 1998, when Chubais took on the task of reforming United Energy Systems, he has spearheaded a plan to split up the power giant.

It's already being broken into separate generation and distribution companies, slated for eventual privatization.

UKRAINE PRECEDENT.

A number of leading political figures have publicly declared that they think the reforms led to the attack.

"In my opinion this is another gangster showdown during which the energy system is being redivided," Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov told the newspaper Argumenty I Fakty on Mar. 23.

However, electricity sector analysts remain skeptical.

They can see little benefit from getting rid of Chubais now.

Most of the key decisions affecting the planned reform have already received government approval.

"Bumping off Chubais wouldn't solve the problem."

"The reform process is well under way now," says Stephen O'Sullivan, head of research at Moscow investment bank United Financial Group.

That leaves the possibility that Chubais' affiliation with Russia's liberal opposition triggered the attack.

True, the party amounts to only a tiny faction that doesn't seem much of a threat to the Kremlin.

But it won a heavyweight supporter recently when former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov threw in his lot with it.

And the Kremlin is undoubtedly growing jittery because of events in neighboring Ukraine, where a revolution led by Western-leaning opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko toppled the government last year.

Yushchenko was the target of an assassination bid last year, generally assumed to have been the work of elements in the former Ukrainian regime.

MORE HYPOTHESES.

The political theory seems a dubious proposition, however.

Chubais is unpopular not only with many voters but also with other leading liberal politicians, making him more of a political liability for the opposition than an asset.

One possibility is that, having spent many years near the top echelons of power, Chubais has compromising information on someone important.

There are other, stranger theories, such as that Chubais staged the attack himself as a publicity stunt.

Whatever the truth, investors in Russia must surely hope that, after all the drama of recent months, the excitement and political intrigue will die down a bit between now and 2008, when President Vladimir Putin will step down.

Russia being Russia, though, you can probably bet safely that investors will be disappointed.

[Livyjr]

And every now and then, a story such as this next one will "catch my eye", and so, I will "capture" it for inclusion in here, in this record which we are creating in here of LIFE in OUR America!

Does it have any meaning?

Too early to tell, but since it is a thing of interest, I am including it!

Strange times we live in, and this is a part of that "strangeness", and so:

Science - AP

"Scientists Puzzled No Tsunami After Quake"

Tue Mar 29,11:05 AM ET

By JAYMES SONG, Associated Press Writer

EWA BEACH, Hawaii - Tsunami experts could not understand why Monday's forceful earthquake off Indonesia failed to produce massive waves similar to those generated by the Dec. 26 quake that killed at least 175,000 people in the same region.

A magnitude 8.7 quake shook Indonesia's west coast, killing hundreds of people and spreading panic that another devastating tsunami was on the way.

There was no tsunami, but a small wave was detected by a tide gauge on Cocos Island near Australia, about 1,500 miles south of the epicenter, according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center on Oahu.

"I'm baffled an earthquake this size didn't trigger a tsunami near the epicenter," said Robert Cessaro, a geophysicist at the center, which is operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

It is responsible for monitoring seismic and ocean conditions in the Pacific and alerting Pacific Rim nations and U.S. agencies.

Center Director Charles McCreery said earthquakes of at least 8.0 magnitude usually generate major tsunamis.

"We expected some destructive tsunami with some distant destructive effects."

"It was surprising," he said.

The latest event also demonstrated "there's a whole world of uncertainty about trying to judge a tsunami based on the earthquake data," he said.

The warning center initially estimated the Dec. 26 earthquake to have a magnitude of 8.0, but it turned out to be larger, with a magnitude of 9.0.

Monday's preliminary estimate was magnitude 8.5 but had no destructive tsunami.

"The one we initially thought was bigger turns out to have no effect," McCreery said.

"The one we initially thought was smaller had a huge effect."

"This is the challenge of tsunami warning."

The warning center, established in 1949, came under heavy criticism following the December tsunami for not being more aggressive about warning Asian nations and possibly saving thousands of lives.

Earlier this month, a group of 58 European tsunami survivors and relatives of victims sued NOAA and other agencies, alleging the center did not do enough to warn people about the disaster.

"Although we certainly wish that somehow the event unfolded in a way that we could've done more for the region, we really did all we could under the circumstances," McCreery said.

Since then, several Indian Ocean nations have established communications with the center and are now on its alert list.

On Monday, the facility was able to alert those nations.

The Indian Ocean has no warning center similar to the one in Hawaii.
___

On the Net:

Pacific Tsunami Warning Center: http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/

[Livyjr]

And every now and then, a story such as this next one will "catch my eye", and so, I will "capture" it for inclusion in here, in this record which we are creating in here of LIFE in OUR America!

Does it have any meaning?

Too early to tell, but since it is a thing of interest, I am including it!

Strange times we live in, and this is a part of that "strangeness", and so:

Science - AP

"Scientists Puzzled No Tsunami After Quake"

Tue Mar 29,11:05 AM ET   

By JAYMES SONG, Associated Press Writer

EWA BEACH, Hawaii - Tsunami experts could not understand why Monday's forceful earthquake off Indonesia failed to produce massive waves similar to those generated by the Dec. 26 quake that killed at least 175,000 people in the same region.

The warning center, established in 1949, came under heavy criticism following the December tsunami for not being more aggressive about warning Asian nations and possibly saving thousands of lives.

Earlier this month, a group of 58 European tsunami survivors and relatives of victims sued NOAA and other agencies, alleging the center did not do enough to warn people about the disaster.

"Although we certainly wish that somehow the event unfolded in a way that we could've done more for the region, we really did all we could under the circumstances," McCreery said.

And since this earthquake business apparently is a "hot topic" right now in OUR America, especially for the "END TIMES" folks who are following along in Revelations, I want to include this companion article on these earthquakes, for the record!

Science - AP

"Latest Earthquakes Surprise Seismologists"

Tue Mar 29, 3:24 PM ET

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The latest deadly earthquake off the coast of Indonesia wasn't unexpected but may have arrived earlier than experts anticipated.

After the December 26 quake that sent out a devastating tsunami, every seismologist knew that the earthquake potential of nearby faults had increased, Yale University seismologist Jeffrey Park said in a telephone interview.

"But I don't think any one of us would have predicted it would have occurred in three months, at this magnitude," he said.

Dave Oppenheimer, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., noted that the December quake, to the north, released a lot of stress, but also increased the stress on nearby fault zones.

The area of Monday's quake had a major tremor in 1861 and had been storing up tension since then, he said, so the December quake dumped stress onto an area that was ready to go.

Another section, southeast of Monday's quake, last shook in 1833, Oppenheimer added.

"Will it go tomorrow, will it go in two months, two years, two decades ... we don't know, but it will occur," he said.

Aftershocks are common following large quakes, Oppenheimer said, and he called Monday's tremor a large aftershock from the December quake.

But Park declined to call it an aftershock, since it wasn't located in the same fault section.

"That doesn't mean that the two aren't connected; they very likely are connected," he said.

But what seismologists don't understand is the time lag, he said, noting that in the Anatolian fault zone in Turkey and in California, the time scale can be decades.

A 1971 quake in California loaded extra stress on a nearby fault that ruptured in the 1994 Northridge quake, Park said.

"So the correlation is pretty clear but the cause, in terms of knowing the cause well enough to predict when the next one is going to occur, that's still mysterious," he said.

Asked about the likelihood of another powerful Indonesian quake, he responded:

"If you would ask me what the odds are in the next three months, I'd say they are low."

"In the next 15 years I'd say there is reason to be concerned."

"I'd say let's get that tsunami warning system out there," he said.

Indeed, a new tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean was scheduled to begin service on Friday, but got an initial tryout Monday, relaying warnings from Japan and the United States that the quake had the potential to cause another great wave.

Ultimately, no serious tsunami was reported, but one could arrive with any future quake, and Oppenheimer noted that there may have been a tsunami that knocked out communications in rural areas and the damage will only be discovered later.

The full Indian Ocean tsunami warning system is expected to go into service by 2006.

Why the December quake generated a devastating tsunami and Monday's didn't isn't yet understood, but there are several possibilities, he said.

To generate those great waves, there has to be vertical movement of the sea floor, he said, and Monday's quake was deeper in the Earth than December's, so there may have been less direct effect on the ocean bottom.

Also, he said, it occurred beneath an island, reducing the sea floor effects.

In addition, the quake orientation was different.

In December the quake energy went east and west, toward Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia.

Monday the orientation was south-southeast, directing the energy into open ocean and Antarctica.

Park said in some ways the Sumatra quakes are a wake-up call after a long period of relative seismic quiet following a series of major quakes in the 1950s and 1960s.

"There's probably nothing ominous or portentous in that, by itself," he said.

"The largest quakes are relatively rare."

Indeed, Monday's 8.7 quake was the second most powerful since 1964, he said, following the December Sumatra quake which had a magnitude estimated at 9.0 or more.

The December quake was unusual, he added, noting that it persisted for a relatively long time, 400 to 500 seconds — roughly 6 1/2 to 8 1/2 minutes.

In the 20th century there were only about a half-dozen quakes as large as Monday's and four occurred along one boundary where the giant plates that make up the surface of the planet grind together.

That boundary stretches from Russia's Kamchatka peninsula along the Aleutian Islands to Alaska.
___

On the Net:

U.S. Geological Survey: http://www.usgs.gov

[Livyjr]

And before I must leave my post here for another day, here is a further update on what we call in here THE IRAQ SITUATION:

Top Stories - Knight Ridder Newspapers

"Sunnis' exclusion from political process stokes fears of civil war"

By Tom Lasseter, Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - While American officials point to the bargaining among Shiite Muslim and Kurdish politicians over an interim Iraqi government as evidence that democracy is taking hold in Iraq, some Iraqi analysts and politicians are increasingly worried about the group that's missing from the equation: Sunni Muslims.

Almost two months after national elections, Iraq's Sunni minority remains fragmented and largely alienated from the horse-trading.

If that continues, the group that's long dominated Iraq could find itself shut out of December's prime ministerial election as it was on Jan. 30, when Sunnis won only a few seats in Iraq's new parliament.

Lawmakers had planned to meet this weekend to form a coalition government that's expected to be dominated by Shiites and Kurds, but the session was postponed at least until Tuesday.

And of course, what would a day in OUR America be like without Iraq?

Middle East - AP

"Iraq Assembly Meeting Ends in Angry Words"

2 hours, 26 minutes ago

By SINAN SALAHEDDIN, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - It was supposed to be a big day for Iraqi democracy — the choosing of a speaker for the newly elected parliament.

It ended in angry words.

For nearly three hours, lawmakers huddled in hallways, trying to cut a deal that would give the speaker's job to a Sunni as part of an effort to heal the country's ethnic wounds.

In the chamber of the convention center-turned-legislature — the same building where Saddam Hussein's 99 percent "election" landslides used to be formally announced — members waited for the horse-trading to yield results, then listened to readings from the Quran, then argued.

As patience wore thin, shouted exchanges broke out over whether to delay choosing the speaker.

Some insisted the time for agreement was now — at this first meeting of the parliament since it was sworn in two weeks ago.

"We've been sitting here for two hours just drinking sodas and coffee."

"We were waiting for a decisive decision, but there hasn't been one," said Fattah al-Sheik, a member of the Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance.

For these men and women in robes and shawls, turbans and Western suits, the main task at hand was to find a balance between the Shiites and Kurds, who have a majority of the 275 seats, and the Sunnis who used to run the country under Saddam and whose participation in the new order is critical to Iraq's future.

But President Ghazi al-Yawer, the top candidate, wasn't going to settle for simply the speaker's job, as proposed by the Shiites.

He wanted a vice presidency and a bigger share of Cabinet posts.

As tensions rose, officials kicked out the few reporters allowed in the meeting, closed the doors and yanked the plug on the live TV coverage.

"We demand to know the details of what's happening behind the scenes!" a woman shouted shortly before officials escorted journalists out of the room.

Then interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi left, followed by al-Yawer.

Alliance officials later said Allawi had another appointment.

Hussein al-Sadr, a Shiite cleric and member of Allawi's coalition, was angry.

"What are we going to tell the citizens who jeopardized their lives and cast ballots on Jan. 30?" he asked.

Outside the parliament, some Iraqis wondered whether Iraq's new politicians were ready for democracy.

"They haven't been able to even name a parliament speaker, so how will they rule Iraq when they're only after their personal interests and gains?" said Sahib Jassim, a Sunni.

"They don't care about the Iraqi people."

And some were embarrassed.

"We don't want the world to see stuff like what happened in today's session."

"We were ashamed," said Dawoud Mohammed, a Shiite businessman.

"The security situation is unstable because there is no government."

That "security situation" is never forgotten.

Authorities had warned of possible insurgent attacks, and while the parliament was meeting in the heavily fortified Green Zone of the capital, explosions were heard in the distance.

[Abu Beacon]

s.

As tensions rose, officials kicked out the few reporters allowed in the meeting, closed the doors and yanked the plug on the live TV coverage.

"We demand to know the details of what's happening behind the scenes!" a woman shouted shortly before officials escorted journalists out of the room.


"What are we going to tell the citizens who jeopardized their lives and cast ballots on Jan. 30?" he asked.

Change a name or two and you have a typical secret meeting chaired by the organ grinder, Mr. Cheney himself.

A.B.