"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.

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!

"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

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."

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!

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?

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

"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

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 .....

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 .........

"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."

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?

"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?

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.

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?

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.

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!

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.

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.

"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."

And speaking about nature, and scaring people, and well, news that sounds just plain wierd, which is probably why its coming from George Pataki's EMPIRE instead of some other state in the union, what is this?

"Food issues put on legislative menu - Fatal hot dog choking incident prompts bill for warning labels; allergies, other problems addressed"

By MARK JOHNSON, Associated Press
First published: Monday, May 30, 2005

ALBANY -- State lawmakers are watching what you eat.

A host of bills pending in the state Legislature cover numerous food issues, from allergic reactions to monosodium glutamate to potential children's choking hazards.

"J.T.'s Law," named after a 3-year-old boy who choked to death on a hot dog, would mandate warning labels on foods that "pose a demonstrably high risk of choking to children."

If it passes, New York would be the first state to require labels for choking risks.

Another bill would require chain restaurants to post nutritional information about their offerings, including calories, fat and sugar, similar to the data found on packaged foods.

But such efforts don't necessarily sit well with groups who believe government is becoming too intrusive in the affairs of the public and private business.

Restaurant owners say many of the proposals also would pose an unnecessary burden on them.

"We're living in a time when our legislators are overzealous in managing people's lives," said state Conservative Party Chairman Michael Long.

"Government has a responsibility to protect citizens, but some responsibilities fall on the citizens themselves."

J.T's Law, sponsored by Sen. Dean Skelos and Assemblyman Bob Barra, both Nassau County Republicans, would establish an Office of Choking Hazard Evaluation within the state Health Department.

That office would establish criteria for determining which foods pose choking risks.

Such foods would be banned from sale in the state unless they have a warning label.

"Every time there is some unfortunate mishap, you can't get a doorway big enough to fit all the lawmakers trying to run out and pass a bill they believe will solve the problem," Long said.

Tom Foulkes, a spokesman for the National Restaurant Association, said a sign or label would be unlikely to stop a child from choking.

"I don't know how you would determine and specifically identify foods that would be choking hazards," he added.

Foulkes said many restaurants already post nutritional information on their menus and Web sites.

It would be difficult for many restaurants with changing menus to keep up with mandated requirements, he said.

Doug Farquhar of the National Conference of State Legislatures said many state legislatures around the country are taking up food issues because of inaction at the federal level on topics like nutritional labeling.

"There is a lot of pressure on state legislatures to deal with issues you would expect the federal government to address," he said.

"The federal government is just not interested in new policy and regulations right now."

Another measure being considered by New York lawmakers would require restaurants to notify the public if they serve food containing monosodium glutamate, commonly known as MSG.

The additive can cause MSG syndrome, with symptoms including nausea and headaches that can last up to two days.

Yet another requires food service establishments to post notice if they use latex gloves because of allergies to the synthetic fabric.

"For food allergies, an individual needs to be aware of how the food was made," said Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, a Brooklyn Democrat who in the past has proposed a 1 percent tax on junk food, video games and TV commercials to fund anti-obesity programs.

"Those people in our population who suffer a reaction to food they eat, we need to bring this to their attention and make them aware."

About 11 million Americans suffer from food allergies and about 200 die every year from food-allergy reactions.

"What we're trying to accomplish is making the consumer aware of what is happening in the industry," Ortiz said.

"We're giving the consumer the opportunity to make better choices."

end quotes

How about starting with some instructions to parents to teach their kids not to bolt their food down whole, like J.T. did, so that they won't choke to death on it, Felix.

"J.T.'s Law"?

When I was young, "J.T's Law" would have been an admonition from my parents to not be a damn fool like that kid was, and take time to chew my food before swallowing, unless I wanted to end up dead on the floor like him, and believe me, that would have been "law" enough!

And now this kid is a hero?

Go figure!

And while we're on the subject of "just plain wrong-headedness" in here, here comes the CHAMPION at it, now:

Analysis

"Bush's Political Capital Spent, Voices in Both Parties Suggest - Poll Numbers Sag as Setbacks Mount at Home and Abroad"

By Peter Baker and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 31, 2005; Page A02

Two days after winning reelection last fall, President Bush declared that he had earned plenty of "political capital, and now I intend to spend it."

Six months later, according to Republicans and Democrats alike, his bank account has been significantly drained.

In the past week alone, the Republican-led House defied his veto threat and passed legislation promoting stem cell research; Senate Democrats blocked confirmation, at least temporarily, of his choice for U.N. ambassador; and a rump group of GOP senators abandoned the president in his battle to win floor votes for all of his judicial nominees.

With his approval ratings in public opinion polls at the lowest level of his presidency, Bush has been stymied so far in his campaign to restructure Social Security.

On the international front, violence has surged again in Iraq in recent weeks, dispelling much of the optimism generated by the purple-stained-finger elections back in January, while allies such as Egypt and Uzbekistan have complicated his campaign to spread democracy.

The series of setbacks on the domestic front could signal that the president has weakened leverage over his party, a situation that could embolden the opposition, according to analysts and politicians from both sides.

Bush faces the potential of a summer of discontent when his capacity to muscle political Washington into following his lead seems to have diminished and few easy victories appear on the horizon.

"He has really burned up whatever mandate he had from that last election," said Leon E. Panetta, who served as White House chief of staff during President Bill Clinton's second term.

"You can't slam-dunk issues in Washington."

"You can't just say, 'This is what I want done' and by mandate get it done."

"It's a lesson everybody has to learn, and sometimes you learn it the hard way."

Through more than four years in the White House, the signature of Bush's leadership has been that he does not panic in the face of bad poll numbers.

Yet many Republicans on Capitol Hill and in the lobbyist corridor of K Street worry about a season of drift and complain that the White House has not listened to their concerns.

In recent meetings, House Republicans have discussed putting more pressure on the White House to move beyond Social Security and talk up different issues, such as health care and tax reform, according to Republican officials who asked not to be named to avoid angering Bush's team.

"There is a growing sense of frustration with the president and the White House, quite frankly," said an influential Republican member of Congress.

"The term I hear most often is 'tin ear,' " especially when it comes to pushing Social Security so aggressively at a time when the public is worried more about jobs and gasoline prices."

"We could not have a worse message at a worse time."

Many experienced Washington hands believe that Bush has the opportunity to reestablish his clout if he focuses his efforts.

"Every president goes through patches like this," Newt Gingrich, the Republican former House speaker, said in an interview.

"[President Ronald] Reagan had a difficult patch in August '81, but he came back and was strongly successful."

"Clinton, if you'll remember, in June or July of '95 looked like he couldn't get anything done and then won reelection."

"These things come and go."

To get back on track, Gingrich said, Bush should pare down his Social Security plan to its central element, personal investment accounts funded by payroll taxes.

"I don't think he can get complex reform through," Gingrich said.

"It's too hard with the AARP opposing you and all of the Democrats lined up against it."

Bush has had a hard time persuading Congress to go along with his agenda, in part because surveys show that much of the public has soured on him and his priorities.

In the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, taken last month, 47 percent of Americans approved of Bush's performance, tying the lowest marks he ever received in that survey, back in mid-2004, when Democrats were airing tens of millions of dollars' worth of campaign attack ads.

Similarly, just 31 percent approved of his handling of Social Security, an all-time low in the Post-ABC poll, while only 40 percent gave him good marks for his stewardship of the economy and 42 percent for his management of Iraq, both ratings close to the lowest ever recorded in those areas.

Other surveys have recorded similar findings, with Bush's approval rating as low as 43 percent.

Such weakness has unleashed the first mutterings of those dreaded second-term words, "lame duck," however premature it might be with 3 1/2 years left in his tenure.

"The Democrats are doing everything they can to make this president a lame duck," Republican consultant Ed Rollins complained on Fox News on Friday.

William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, wrote recently about "the impression -- and the reality -- of disarray" in urging Bush to wage a strong fight for the nomination of John R. Bolton as U.N. ambassador.

"He's not a lame duck yet, but there are rumblings," said Robert Dallek, a presidential historian.

Dallek said Bush's recent travails remind him of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who overreached in his second term by trying to pack the Supreme Court, a move that backfired.

"Second terms are treacherous, and presidents enter into a minefield where they really must shepherd their credibility and political capital," he said.

Bush started off his second term with a string of important victories, pushing through measures to make it harder to file class-action lawsuits against big corporations and to wipe out debts by filing for personal bankruptcy.

Congress passed its first budget resolution in years, largely along the lines of Bush's proposals, and gave him nearly everything he asked for in an $82 billion supplemental appropriations bill to pay for war costs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The White House rejects talk of drift by pointing to such victories.

Asked at a briefing last week about the possible "onset of lame-duck status around here," White House press secretary Scott McClellan ticked off a list of accomplishments.

"This Congress has been in place for just over four months now, and we have made significant progress," he said.

Addressing the troubled Social Security plan, he added:

"Sometimes the legislative process isn't going to move as fast as we would all like, particularly on an issue that was this difficult."

Another senior White House official, who asked to remain anonymous to offer a franker assessment, acknowledged the perception problem.

"I will admit it's a challenge to shine the light on the progress," the official said.

"The victories have been overshadowed by partisan drama."

Nowhere was there more drama than in the Senate last week, when 14 senators from both parties forged a deal without White House approval that would allow some, but not all, of Bush's stalled judicial nominees to receive floor votes.

The deal on judges was followed quickly by a vote to shut down a filibuster on Bolton's nomination, a vote that Bush and the GOP lost.

The House also rejected Bush by passing a measure easing his restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, with 50 Republicans joining most Democrats despite the threat of a presidential veto.

The Senate has also advanced a more expensive highway bill than Bush has deemed acceptable, while his efforts to win passage for a Central American trade pact and an immigration guest worker program are stalled.

Overseas, violence in Iraq has killed about 700 civilians and at least 63 U.S. troops this month, frustrating efforts to stabilize the situation after January's successful parliamentary elections.

The governments of two U.S. allies resorted to crackdowns on opponents.

In Uzbekistan, government forces opened fire on demonstrators, killing hundreds, while in Egypt, pro-government gangs beat up protesters after a visit by Laura Bush.

In some ways, allies said, Bush has run into resistance because he swings for the fences, taking on especially hard issues.

By making Social Security the centerpiece of his domestic blueprint, he guaranteed a tough legislative campaign.

But it has begun to take its toll on the rest of his agenda as well.

The White House had hoped to be far enough along with Social Security by summer to launch his second top priority, overhaul of the tax code.

That is likely to be delayed until next year.

Bush's chief strategist, Karl Rove, is said by colleagues to remain optimistic that Congress will deliver Social Security legislation that includes personal accounts.

But other aides privately are beginning to talk about whether they could accept a deal that does not include the accounts.

John D. Podesta, a top Clinton aide who runs the Center for American Progress, a research institute that promotes ideas that counter conservative policies, said Bush made the mistake of trying to turn a successful election strategy of catering to his base into a governing philosophy that excludes Democrats.

"What surprises me is that they seem to be unable to adjust particularly to the circumstances," Podesta said.

"They promoted their Social Security case."

"It bombed."

"I would have thought they would have tried to change the subject or tried a different strategy."

"'You're with us or against us' works well when you're fighting al Qaeda, but it doesn't with Social Security, and they don't seem to have another play in the book."

Kenneth M. Duberstein, who was White House chief of staff during Reagan's second term, said after the congressional recess Bush needs "to seize the momentum" on energy legislation, the Central American free trade pact, spending bills and a Social Security solvency plan.

"After all, the president is always in the driver's seat, as all presidents are, and he cannot be distracted by speed bumps and detours along the way," Duberstein said.

"The president needs to define victories in ways that he can achieve them."

end quotes

"'You're with us or against us' works well when you're fighting al Qaeda, but it doesn't with Social Security, and they don't seem to have another play in the book."

Could that be attributed to the fact that the man in the driver's seat don't know how to drive?

Or put another way, that we are dealing with a man in the White House who don't have the brains God gave a goose?

"My way or the highway?"

Yeah, right, George!

And here is an article of interest, I thought, for the predictions therein that General Clark makes, and so, as a milestone on this trail through life that we are all traversing in here, assuming that one is in here besides me to see these words, I will post it as a mile marker, on this day, and then, we will see ......

"Pullback coming, Clark tells Cornell grads"

Associated Press

First published: Sunday, May 29, 2005

ITHACA -- Retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark said Saturday Americans should "expect a substantial pullout of American troops" from Iraq by the end of the summer.

Clark, a speaker at the senior convocation at Cornell University, told reporters the war "is having a terrible strain" on American troops and their families.

The pullout, he predicted, would be a policy strategy of the Bush administration.

At the same time, Clark said, "I believe the administration is pursuing the only sensible, possible strategy in Iraq."

Still, Clark criticized many of the administration's policies.

He said the President erred by first going after Iraq and not North Korea because of the threat of nuclear proliferation posed by that country.

He called Bush's actions "an upside-down policy."

The former supreme allied commander of NATO said the proposed pullout of American forces from Europe would be "a mistake."

Concerning the proposed military base closings around the country, Clark said, "the armed forces are not about money but about people's commitment."

An unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, Clark said he hasn't ruled out a political future.

But freedom for whom?

Who exactly has George W. Bush set free, and from what?

"Iraq Puts Civilian Toll at 12,000 - Insurgency Claiming About 20 People a Day"

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 3, 2005; Page A01

BAGHDAD, June 2 -- Violence in the course of the 18-month-long insurgency has claimed the lives of 12,000 Iraqis, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said Thursday, giving the first official count for the largest category of victims of bombings, ambushes and other increasingly deadly attacks.

At least 36 more Iraqi civilians, security force members and officials were killed Thursday in attacks that underscored the ruthlessness and growing randomness of much of the violence.

The day's victims included 12 people killed when a suicide attacker drove a vehicle loaded with explosives into a restaurant near the northern city of Kirkuk.

In Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on a market area crowded with civilians, killing nine, the Defense Ministry said.

The U.S. military reported that two soldiers were killed Wednesday, by a bomb and by small-arms fire, in the western city of Ramadi.

Thursday's violence demonstrated the ability of insurgents to keep up attacks despite a week-old security operation in Baghdad billed as the most aggressive yet by Iraq's new government, in office for less than two months.

The checkpoints and raids that leaders have dubbed Operation Lightning have brought all roads in and out of the capital under government control, said Jabr, the minister in charge of Iraq's police forces.

The actions are meant to expose insurgent hideouts in the city, he told reporters from some foreign news organizations, adding, "Within the next few months, we can deal with all of the killings and assassinations."

Jabr said security forces had detained 700 "terrorists" and killed 28 during the operation.

The Defense Ministry said Wednesday that 680 people had been detained but that all but 95 had been released for lack of evidence warranting prosecution.

Interior Ministry statistics showed 12,000 civilians killed by insurgents in the last year and a half, Jabr said.

The figure breaks down to an average of more than 20 civilians killed by bombings and other attacks each day.

Authorities estimate that more than 10,500 of the victims were Shiite Muslims, based on the locations of the deaths, Jabr said.

There have been 1,663 U.S. military deaths since the United States led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, according to the Pentagon's official count.

Bombings and other insurgent strikes have killed thousands of Iraqi security force members.

No official totals have been released for those dead, or for the total number of civilian casualties since the start of the war.

The U.S. military says it does not keep a comprehensive tally of people it has killed in combat, although it has released numbers of dead in major operations and has acknowledged civilians it has killed if it has become generally known that those people died during a U.S. firefight or attack.

Jabr said the government figures showed that Shiites had suffered the bulk of insurgent attacks.

No Sunni Muslim mosques, for example, had been destroyed, he said.

Iraq's insurgency is led largely by members of the Sunni Arab minority that was toppled from power with Saddam Hussein.

Foreign Arab fighters are largely blamed for the suicide bombings that now claim most of the lives.

Jabr, in some of his first extended remarks to reporters since becoming interior minister, said he saw no legitimacy in the cause of the Sunni Arab fighters.

"I have not seen any 'resistance,' " Jabr said in response to a question about clemency for so-called resistance fighters who lay down their arms.

"There is terror, and all sides have agreed that anyone raising guns and killing Iraqis is a terrorist."

Jabr denied that the police operation in Baghdad was unduly focusing on Sunnis, saying many of the operation's commanders were Sunnis.

He also said the new government was trying to reform the Interior Ministry, including expelling officials and officers found to have tortured detainees or others.

As an opposition member under Hussein, he said, he had lost 10 members of his family to torture.

"I would not accept that anyone practice torture against anyone," he said, adding that he would "personally follow up" on all such allegations.

Jabr also denied reports that members of the Badr militia, Shiite fighters trained in exile in Iran, were complicit in the killing of Sunni clerics last month.

Investigation showed that no Badr members were involved, he said.

The true killers are "terrorists who are killing Shiite clerics and Sunnis to incite strife," he said.

The day's violence included two car bombs near the northern oil city of Kirkuk.

A bomb attack at a roadside restaurant apparently targeted bodyguards of one of Iraq's deputy prime ministers, Rosh Nouri Shaways, said Col. Abbas Mohammed Amin, police chief of Tuz, where the attack occurred.

Shaways, an ethnic Kurd, was not present, but five of his guards and seven other people were killed, according to police and defense officials.

Two more people died at Arafah, the site of one of Iraq's first oil wells.

A suicide car bomber there detonated his explosives at the entrance to a compound for the national oil company and the U.S. and British consulates, Lt. Col. Adel Zain Abidin said.

In Baqubah, in central Iraq, a suicide car bomber killed Hussein Alwan Tamimi, the deputy chairman of the Diyala provincial council, as he was accompanying his ill sister to the hospital, according to a fellow council member, Khadija Khuda Yakhsh.

Four of the official's bodyguards also died.

The sister was wounded.

In Mosul, also in the north, attackers blew up two motorcycles rigged with explosives next to a coffee shop frequented by police officers, killing five people, the Associated Press reported.

Gunmen firing randomly from three speeding cars killed nine Iraqis in a crowded market area in Baghdad, a Defense Ministry official told the AP.

Interior Ministry officials gave a slightly different account, saying the victims had been waiting at a bus stop.

A bomb caused the deaths of three motorists at Mahmudiyah, 15 miles south of Baghdad, and attackers with guns and a bomb killed a woman in Baghdad's Dora neighborhood, police and hospital officials told the AP.

In political developments, negotiators were unable to find a formula by which more Sunni Arabs would help draft the country's constitution.

Writing a new constitution is the main mandate of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari's government, which faces a mid-August deadline to finish a draft that can be put before voters.

Sunnis largely boycotted Jan. 30 elections for the National Assembly and as a result are underrepresented on the constitution-writing committee.

Sunni blocs came forward for the first time last month to say that they wanted a role.

The drafting of the charter has started while negotiators decide whether political parties, regional votes or other means should be used to pick Sunni delegates.

"National Assembly members are willing to make this succeed," a Sunni negotiator, Salih Mutlak, said after talks Thursday.

"They cannot write the constitution in the absence of the Sunni representation," he added.

"If they do, it will be rejected by the people."

Special correspondents Salih Saif Aldin in central Iraq, Marwan Ani in Kirkuk and Bassam Sebti and Khalid Saffar in Baghdad contributed to this report.

And in the meantime ......

"Iraqi Official Appeals for Greater U.S. Role"

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 3, 2005; Page A19

To prevent the breakdown of Iraq's troubled transition and a potential civil war, Iraq's new government appealed to the Bush administration yesterday to take a much more assertive role, particularly on four key political and military issues, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials.

In talks with Vice President Cheney yesterday and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari requested greater U.S. and coalition help in crafting a new constitution.

The deadline is now less than three months away, but deliberations have been slowed as Iraq still works on the composition of a constitutional committee.

With time running out for writing the constitution and then holding elections in December for a permanent government, Zebari warned that the United States has withdrawn too much, leaving the new government struggling to cope and endangering the long-term prospects for success.

"This entire project -- of regime change and building democracy and encouraging reforms and American prestige -- has really reached a critical mass for us and for them," Zebari said in an interview yesterday.

"We've come through difficult times and made a great deal of progress, at a great cost and loss."

"If we are unable to write a constitution with consensus, what is the alternative?"

"This process would be prolonged and people will start to walk away."

"Walking away means the possibility of chaos, division or even civil war."

"There are people who are fomenting that [conflict] now."

Iraq's current interim government, which was elected in January but was unable to select a cabinet and to take over until last month, asked Washington to help bring the Sunni minority into the political process.

Zebari asked the administration to use its leverage with major Sunni leaders, such as Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah, to weigh in with Iraq's Sunni leaders to get them to end a virtual boycott of the political process.

Zebari also asked the United States for additional staff and resources to accelerate the creation of a new Iraqi army and police force, particularly with insurgent attacks increasingly targeting the new Iraqi security forces.

Finally, the Iraqi government asked Washington to speed up the confirmation of its new ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad.

Iraq has been without a top U.S. envoy since John D. Negroponte returned to Washington in mid-March to become the administration's new director of national intelligence.

Khalilzad, who until recently was ambassador to Afghanistan, is due to appear in Senate confirmation hearings next week, according to the State Department.

"This is a critical period and he is not there," Zebari said.

The number two diplomatic post in Baghdad, the largest U.S. embassy in the world, has also gone through a transition over the past month.

In general, Zebari said the United States has pulled back too much in Iraq, after what many Iraqis considered heavy-handed leadership during the 14-month U.S. rule of Iraq.

"There is something between too much and not enough," Zebari said.

Washington, he said, now needs to be "more focused and more engaged" and not say "this is yours, hands off."

Failing to meet established deadlines for the democratic transition would be "the end of trying to transform Iraq," he warned.

U.S. officials said the administration is working on getting Khalilzad confirmed, but it is still unclear when he will be dispatched to Baghdad.

After the talks with Rice, a senior U.S. official said the administration is aware of the Iraqi concerns and is working on ways to address the other three issues in light of the time constraints, but he did not provide specifics.

The Bush administration has attempted to orchestrate a phased transfer of authority in Iraq since the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

In the first phase, the occupation government led by U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer lasted for 14 months.

It was followed by an appointed Iraqi government that ruled with U.S. assistance from June 2004 through the elections in January and the formation of the interim government last month.

The current, third phase is supposed to last through the writing of a constitution, due in mid-August; a constitutional referendum in October; and the elections for a permanent government in December.

There is a provision to extend this phase for six months, but Iraqi and U.S. officials want to stick to the schedule.

Zebari's request comes as U.S. experts on Iraq, including former U.S. officials in Iraq, also express concern that the momentum generated by Iraq's historic January elections is being lost.

"Since the election, Iraq has been in a period of political deadlock and drift, which has not fully been resolved even with the formation quite late in the game of a transitional government led by Ibrahim Jafaari," said Larry Diamond, who worked in the occupation government last year and is the author of a new book, "Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq."

"We have been hurt quite badly by the prolonged absence of a U.S. ambassador," he said.

U.S. analysts say the Bush administration now faces a tough balancing act -- helping Iraq with its political transition without appearing to be dictating the outcome, particularly of a new constitution, in ways that would trigger challenges to its legitimacy.

"We're in a dilemma."

"We want it to appear that the Iraqis are making all the decisions -- and pretty much they are."

"As long as U.S. interests are not directly at stake, we've allowed Iraqis to run the show and make their own mistakes and be responsible."

"The problem is when there aren't results, we're blamed," said Judith Yaphe, a former CIA analyst now at the National Defense University.

"If this fails, it's our fault."

"If it succeeds, it's their success."

"That's the reality," she said.

And on another front, constitution-wise, we have this:

"EU Constitution Worries Aspiring Members"

By WILLIAM J. KOLE, Associated Press Writer

57 minutes ago

VIENNA, Austria - Stuck on the sidelines, the nations with the most to lose in the European Union's deadlock over its proposed new constitution could be the countries that don't yet belong.

As Europeans took stock Thursday of the charter's troubles, leaders and ordinary citizens in Turkey and across the former Soviet bloc worried that the crisis might conspire against their dreams of joining the EU.

Having worked tirelessly and against all odds to prepare for membership, many couldn't help but wonder whether Europe is coming apart just when they're getting their acts together.

This week's momentous repudiations by the Dutch and the French — both founding members of the now 25-nation EU — "shattered the very concept for a European Union," said Ivan Krastev, a political analyst in Bulgaria, which hopes to join with neighboring Romania in 2007.

Bulgaria's independent Dnevnik newspaper echoed that bleak outlook, saying "the collapse of enlargement verges on national tragedy."

"We witnessed Europeans rejecting something that we are struggling to achieve," said Cetin Kargin, 41, a jeweler in Turkey.

The mostly Muslim nation hopes to begin membership talks in October, but many Turks now worry that EU leaders will be too distracted to bother.

Across Eastern Europe, where eight countries joined the bloc a year ago along with Cyprus and Malta, and others have been scrambling to become credible candidates, the sense of frustration was palpable.

Spurred by dreams of unprecedented prosperity, stability and freedom of movement, EU candidates like Romania have spent the last decade constructing democracies and building market economies from scratch.

Having invested so much, they have the most at stake.

Many reacted cautiously to the constitution's latest setback, widely seen as a backlash against the growing power of EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, and of the very expansion process that opened the club to the "new Europe."

The resistance to the treaty, whose backers believed could lead to a better-oiled economy and a higher profile for Europe internationally, "could influence the future development of the EU" by freezing enlargement, acknowledged Dmytro Svystkov, a spokesman for Ukraine's Foreign Ministry.

But the former Soviet republic "hopes that the EU's difficult internal reform will not have negative consequences for Ukraine's future membership," Svystkov said, adding that the EU's "attractiveness in the eyes of would-be members has not decreased."

In Turkey, it may work the other way.

Ordinary Turks — tired of hearing that many Europeans don't want their Islamic influence in the EU, and mindful that the country's bid has fed the angst fueling opposition to the constitution — are losing interest in membership, analyst Duygu Bazoglu Sezer contends.

"Most have been expecting economic benefits."

"They will sense that the European Union is now on a downslide," said Sezer, a professor of political science at Ankara's Bilkent University.

"The promising world has now perhaps lost its dynamism."

"That is the message that is beaming out."

To be sure, the huge economic benefits to be gained from membership in a bloc that's now home to 450 million people with the potential to rival the North American Free Trade Agreement grouping of Canada, Mexico and the United States will remain within grasp — with or without a charter.

For EU wannabes, membership will continue to represent a ticket to prosperity regardless of the grander themes of political union.

"It's still worth getting into the EU for economic reasons, and I don't think it will be worse for us than now," said Denisa Somesean, a student of dentistry in Romania.

She said the EU will go on as "a counterbalance to American dominance."

Leaders and citizens in some of the bloc's newest members, meanwhile, have been readjusting their expectations.

Countries like Hungary and the Czech Republic didn't strike it rich overnight when they joined a year ago, and they don't expect living standards to improve quickly now that EU leaders are preoccupied with salvaging the constitution.

"I felt proud when we joined the EU a year ago."

"Now I feel the European family is falling apart," said Zoltan Csikos, 39, a Budapest accountant.

Slovakia, another EU newcomer, warned that the failure to adopt a constitution "could weaken the position of Europe in the world, or its economic growth, and it could disturb the further integration of the union."

Words of comfort came from an unusual source: Czech President Vaclav Klaus, an avowed Euroskeptic who sought to put things in perspective.

"Nothing is changing in Europe," he told the Pravo newspaper.

"Europe has been functioning without a constitution for half a century and will be functioning for another half a century."

American dominance?

In what, exactly?

"Payrolls Grow by Just 78,000 in May"

By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer

43 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Employers throttled back hiring in May, boosting jobs by just 78,000, the government reported Friday.

The most sluggish pace of payroll expansion in nearly two years dramatized the erratic behavior of the nation's job market.

Despite the slow growth in payrolls, the Labor Department's latest snapshot of the jobs picture in the United States showed that the civilian unemployment rate actually dipped fractionally last month — to 5.1 percent.

That was down a notch from April's 5.2 percent jobless rate and was the lowest overall since September 2001.

The payroll gain of 78,000 followed a hiring spurt of 274,000 in April.

Job cuts last month were reported in manufacturing, leisure and hospitality and professional and business.

Those losses tempered gains elsewhere.

The generally lackluster performance surprised economists.

Before the report was released, they were predicting jobs to grow by around 175,000 and the jobless rate to hold steady at 5.2 percent.

"Clearly there some disappointment here," said Anthony Chan, senior economist at JP Morgan Asset Management.

"But this may be a gift to financial markets and Main Street because the Federal Reserve might not have to be so aggressive in raising rates."

"In that regard, it is almost a good report."

The employment report often can offer seemingly conflicting pictures of what is happening in the labor market because figures are based on two separate statistical surveys.

And there clearly was a mismatch between the two surveys in the report released Friday.

The unemployment rate is calculated on the basis of a survey of 60,000 households, sort of a poll of the jobs market.

That survey showed that 376,000 people said they found employment last month, outpacing the number of people who couldn't find work.

But economists tend to give more credence to a much broader survey of business payrolls, one which examines 400,000 work sites.

And that's the one that showed only 78,000 jobs added to payrolls.

President Bush wants to see the economy and the job market in good shape, especially as he tries to sell the public and Congress on his vision for revamping Social Security, which includes letting workers set up individual investment accounts.

Earlier this week, the president declared that the economy was strong, with more than 3.5 million new jobs added in two years.

"Obviously, these are hopeful signs," he told a news conference Tuesday.

"But Congress can make sure that the signs remain hopeful."

The 78,000 gain new jobs registered in May was the smallest since August 2003, when payrolls grew by a tiny 2,000.

Some analysts believe the high energy prices, rising costs for health care and certain raw materials could be making some employers cautious.

Oil prices surged to a new all-time closing high of $57.27 a barrel at the beginning of April and are now hovering above $54 a barrel.

To thwart an inflation flare-up, the Federal Reserve has boosted short-term interest rates eight times — each in modest, quarter-point moves — since last June.

Economists still expect another increase when the Fed meets next at the end of this month.

But Chan and other economists believed the report raised the odds that the Fed might take a pause or order fewer rate increases in the future.

Workers' average hourly earnings rose to $16.03 in May, up from $16 in April.

The average time that the unemployed spent in their search for work in May was 18.8 weeks, an improvement from the from average of 19.6 weeks registered the month before.

On the payroll front, the report showed that manufacturers cut 7,000 jobs in May, following a loss of 9,000 in April.

Leisure and hospitality companies shed 6,000 jobs last month, compared with a gain of 63,000 in April.

Professional and business services trimmed payrolls by 1,000 in May, a deterioration compared to an increase of 33,000 reported in April.

Retailers added more than 10,000 jobs in May, a deceleration from the nearly 27,000 added in April.

Construction companies boosted payrolls by 20,000 last month, compared with 48,000 in April.

Hhhhmmmm?

"U.S. criticizes Gulf allies on human trafficking"

By Saul Hudson

Fri Jun 3,12:51 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States criticized four Gulf Arab allies as some of the world's worst offenders in permitting human trafficking on Friday in a rebuke Washington hopes will promote improved human rights in the Middle East.

The State Department downgraded Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to the lowest level of compliance in the report, which evaluates countries' efforts in fighting the trafficking of thousands of people forced into servitude or the sex trade every year.

Victims in the region were mainly domestic servants and laborers but also included boy camel jockeys, according to the report.

It cited the case of a 17-year-old orphan, Lusa, kidnapped from Uzbekistan and was sold into a slavery ring in UAE.

She was eventually "no longer usable" as a prostitute and the emirates' immigration service said she should serve a two-year prison sentence for entering the country illegally.

Officials from the Gulf countries were not immediately available to comment on the one-step downgrade, which ranks them with such countries as Burma, North Korea and Sudan.

"This report shows that in this administration we will not pull our punches even with our friends."

"We appreciate their cooperation in other areas but they just don't have a good track record fighting this," a State Department official said on condition of anonymity.

Each of the four nations has oil resources vital to Washington and also gave logistical support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The lowest category in the congressionally mandated annual report is called Tier 3, which lists countries that "do not fully comply with the minimum standards (laid down by U.S. law) and are not making significant efforts to do so."

WOMEN AND CHILDREN

While victims generally come from Asia to work as domestic servants and laborers, the main concern over the UAE is the sexual exploitation of women, according to the report.

In the cases of Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, the State Department also said boys were trafficked and forced to work as camel jockeys.

In Qatar, the government banned the use of child jockeys in May.

Rights groups say several thousand boys, some as young as three, work as jockeys in the Gulf Arab region's lucrative races.

Bolivia, Jamaica, Cambodia and Togo also were downgraded to Tier 3 this year.

Cuba, Ecuador and Venezuela were already there.

Nations in the lowest category may be subject to sanctions, including the withholding of U.S. aid that is not for humanitarian or trade purposes, if they do not improve their records in three months.

President Bush has the right to waive sanctions, which, even if applied, would not likely have much practical effect on the wealthy Gulf oil exporters.

Bush urged Saudi Arabia this year to be a leader of reform in the Middle East and said he would make rights and democracy a central plank of U.S. relations with countries in the region.

While State Department reports have criticized Arab allies before over rights issues, the trafficking critique is unusual because it put so much focus on the region.

In no other region were there as many downgrades to the lowest category.

Many governments, particularly those rebuked in the State Department's annual rights reports, complain the United States has little credibility in criticizing other nations because of scandals in recent years involving U.S. abuse of prisoners.

end quotes

And there is where it always gets back to, doesn't it; that under this present incumbent's administration, OUR America is just as dirty as these lowest down offenders, here, and that is really something to go and shout from the rooftops, now isn't it, America?

I' ve been away for a few days. But the world must be okay because the page one story is the Michael Jackson Trial.

And good to hear from you, jeffmoskin, as always!

When I don't hear from you, of course, I get quite nervous that maybe a blood-thirsty western coyote has finally gotten tired of eating poodles and cats out there in Malibu, and so, has maybe set its sights on something more substantial, or maybe one of those mountain lions rampant out there on Sunset Boulevard has had you holed up in your car, unable to get to your computer to call for help from the rest of OUR America, or that an earthquake has finally shrugged the whole of California off of the earth's back and into the sea .....

And yes, you must be right, here, about all being well with the world, if all we have to hear about is the Michael Jackson trial, which seems to be nothing but high farce, to me, anyway, from the point of the "SHOW" that these lawyers are putting on for all the world to see, out there in the land of AH-NOLD, the alleged GROPING REPUBLICAN GUBERNATOR of what is called in many other parts of OUR America, and especially here in the admittedly culturally-deprived hinterlands, "LA-LA LAND", and other such loving epitaphs that only serve to show OUR provincialism, and lack of total understanding of what the phrase "be all you can be" really entails in life.

Years ago, through that miracle of modern technology known as the satellite dish, which I understand picks up its signals for re-broadcast down here on earth from out there in outer space, somewhere, which then makes rural yokels like myself think that California must be out there, someplace, as well, since these shows on satellite television are coming "from there", which is in outer space as we understand it, in our simple ways, here, I was able to sit here in this admittedly culutally backwards place that I reside in, and watch the O.J. Simpson SHOW TRIAL OF THE CALIFORNIA YEAR, and as I watched Marsha Clark, the District Attorney of somewhere out there perform her act on television, all I could think of was that admonition to lawyers about "NEVER ASK A QUESTION IN A TRIAL BEFORE A JURY THAT YOU YOURSELF DON'T ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWER TO", because in that trial, Marsha seemed to have thrown that advice right out the window, assuming that she ever knew it in the first place, because outside of making sure that her hair was going to look good on television that day, she didn't seem to have a grasp on much else, and certainly what HER OWN WITNESSES were going to say on the stand, when she was questioning them, on direct testimony.

One day, I saw her actually cross-examining, on what was supposed to be direct, one of her own witnesses, a cop out there, on violations of chain-of-custody of the blood samples by a member of the police, out there, and Marsha, to me, anyway, had no idea, at the time she asked the question that led to the cross-examination of her own witness, what her witness was going to say in answer to her own question, which should have been prepared way in advance of any credible tiral, but that is the power of show BID-NESS, I guess, that it has now virtually permeated the entire fabric of OUR lives here in OUR America, where the Michael Jackson trial is now the SHOW TRIAL OF THE CALIFORNIA YEAR, and the attorneys still have no idea at all what their own witnesses are going to really say, as was the case with Jay Leno, who, in the media hype before the trial, was supposed to be going to say that the alleged victim had hit him up for some money of some kind, which Jay Leno himself then said was not at all the case, when he himself took the stand, and was put under direct questioning by the actors out there portraying lawyers in this show trial.

And the other day, maybe yesterday, I happened to see a photograph of poor Michael standing there with an umbrella over his head to shade him from the sun, or cosmic rays, or something anyway, looking like he hadn't a single clue as to what was really going on out there, except a chance for him to be seen by his fans everyday for what now seems like an eternity!

And so it goes, eh, jeffmoskin?

Poor Michael was born with sufficient melatonin in his skin to protect him from those harmful rays. Somewhere, somehow, something happened.

Boy, oh boy, did it ever!

Modern times, I think they are called!

And what times they are indeed, eh, jeffmoskin!

Never a dull moment for anyone, at least out there in "Schwarzenegger-Land" when poor Michael Jackson is around the courthouse out there.

SO?

Do you think he is as totally clueless, then, as he appears, when he is standing there with his umbrella opened out to keep further cosmic rays from impacting on his nose, or what?

And returning here, for a moment, at least, to this issue of Lebanon, and Hezbollah, who I believe are up there on George W. Bush's long list of his many enemies in this world of OURS, we have something going on that George is not going to like, I think anyway, since friends of his enemies are 'agin' him, and his, and so:

"Lebanon Voters Show Support for Hezbollah"

By HUSSEIN DAKROUB, Associated Press Writer

2 hours, 32 minutes ago

BINT JBEIL, Lebanon - Voters walked past veiled young women handing out campaign fliers Sunday in southern Lebanon, where the front-runner was Hezbollah and the vote was seen as a referendum on whether the Syrian-backed militant group will be allowed to stay armed.

The regional balloting marked the second of four rounds of voting to be held on consecutive Sundays in the first election in three decades to be held without Syrian troops in the country.

Emboldened by the Syrian troop withdrawal in April, the opposition hopes the elections will end Damascus' control of the legislature and the campaigning was cast as a contest between pro- and anti-Syrian camps.

But the vote in southern Lebanon was geared toward rejecting international pressure to disarm Hezbollah in line with a U.N. Security Council resolution, which was sponsored by the U.S. and France.

Hezbollah, labeled a terrorist organization by Washington, teamed up with its rival, the Amal movement, for the parliamentary elections in the largely Shiite Muslim south.

The joint ticket was expected to easily sweep the 23 seats in that region, which borders Israel.

Voters expressed strong support for Hezbollah, which fought Israel during an 18-year occupation and is credited with forcing Israeli troops to withdraw from the region.

Outside one polling station, loudspeakers mounted on cars belted out militant songs and speeches by the group's leaders.

Amal also fought Israeli forces in the early years but the group was later overshadowed by Hezbollah, whose name means Party of God.

The balloting in the south was peaceful, but Druse supporters of opposition leader Walid Jumblatt and rival Talal Arsalan clashed in central Lebanon, where voters are to go to the polls next Sunday.

Seven people were wounded in the gunfire in the mountain resort of Sofar before troops intervened and separated the two sides, the official National News Agency reported in the first major election-related violence.

In the south, Lebanese security officials said a Katyusha rocket set to be fired on Israel from a border area was dismantled by security forces late Saturday before it was launched.

In last Sunday's polls in Beirut, anti-Syrian opposition candidates took most of the capital's 19 parliamentary seats.

Hezbollah is fielding 14 candidates across Lebanon, hoping to build on the nine seats it holds in the 128-member legislature.

It won one seat in Beirut.

Outside a polling station in the port city of Tyre, a picture of party leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah with a 'Yes' written on it hung near a portrait of President Bush wearing a cowboy hat and the word 'No' written on the bottom.

At the entrance of Bint Jbeil, a Shiite town several miles from the Israeli border, a yellow Hezbollah banner read: "Free people make free elections."

"We should show our support for the resistance and those who were martyred for the sake of liberating this country," Kamel Hamka, 77, said.

He said one of his sons was killed during a guerrilla operation against Israelis in 1986, and he sent five children to America and one to Australia to escape the Israeli occupation.

"If it weren't for the resistance and the martyrs, I wouldn't be here voting today," he said.

The area has seen occasional tension with the Jewish state since the Israeli troop withdrawal from a border security zone in southern Lebanon in 2000.

Hezbollah expects strong voter support will give it greater political influence to confront international pressure to disarm now that its Syrian backers have withdrawn from the country.

The group also is supported by Iran.

The elections came after last week's assassination of an anti-Syrian journalist and continuing calls by the opposition for President Emile Lahoud's resignation and amid lingering anger over the Feb. 14 assassination of Rafik Hariri.

Hariri's killing triggered mass protests at home and anger from governments abroad that ultimately drove out the Syrian army.

The opposition blamed Syria and its Lebanese government allies for the killing, charges they both denied.

Lebanese were choosing from 53 candidates in the south, although six were uncontested.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who heads the Amal movement, also urged supporters to turn out in large numbers "to vote against Resolution 1559."

The U.N. resolution required Syrian troops to leave Lebanon and demanded militias surrender their weapons.

The United States also has called for the group to disarm.

Hezbollah has refused, however, and Lebanese authorities have rejected U.S. and U.N. demands to dismantle the party, saying it is a resistance movement, not a militia.

Syria maintained troops in Lebanon since 1976, when they were sent as peacekeepers during that country's 1975-1990 civil war.

The troops remained until April, while Syria dominated Lebanon's politics.

And it is interesting that even over in a place like Lebanon, with no real tradition of its own that I know of concerning cowboys, real cowboys, that is, ones who do not mistreat women and children, that those people can recognize with such certainty that despite any hat he might put on his head to make him look like a cowboy, that in reality, George W. Bush is no cowboy at all, unless in the perjorative sense, which is someone like George W. Bush who is out of control because he doesn't think that laws apply to him, and so he does not abide by any, to the detriment of the whole wide world who must suffer for his arrogance in that regard; his belief that he has the right to order the deaths of women and children in this world with impunity, calling them nothing but "collateral damage" in the process, as though they were barnyard animals, or something, that just got in his way!

And since that brings us to the subject of Iraq .......

"Wartime Prosecutions Come Under Scrutiny"

By TIM WHITMIRE, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 9 minutes ago

Military officials say the number of crimes alleged against U.S. military personnel in Iraq is minuscule compared to the mammoth task of trying to bring peace to the country, and many who have opposed prosecuting soldiers argue that top brass is overzealously second-guessing soldiers' actions in the field.

But some observers question the punishments, or say the crimes suggest a need for increased efforts to protect soldiers from combat stress.

"There have been some convictions in which the sentences are amazingly light," said Gary D. Solis, a retired Marine who teaches law at the U.S. Military Academy.

In the 27 months since the Iraq war began, at least 10 servicemembers have been convicted of a wide array of charges stemming from the deaths of Iraqi civilians.

A soldier who admitted executing a wounded Iraqi teenager received three years in prison.

His co-defendant got a one-year term.

A captain convicted of charges in the fatal shooting of another wounded Iraqi was dismissed from the armed forces, but received no prison time.

But only one sentence has exceeded three years, and last month two men — a Marine lieutenant and an Army sergeant — were cleared entirely of murder charges.

Still pending are courts-martial on murder charges for six Army soldiers.

Many of the deaths have been horrific.

Prosecutors said one man drowned after Army soldiers forced him into the Tigris River as punishment for breaking a curfew.

The lieutenant who allegedly ordered the action received 45 days on an assault conviction.

A prisoner died after being dragged out of his holding cell by the neck, stripped naked and left outside for seven hours.

The Marine major who commanded the facility was convicted of dereliction of duty and maltreatment and dismissed from the service.

And at Fort Carson, Colo., three Army soldiers are awaiting courts-martial on murder charges in the death of an Iraqi general who was allegedly placed headfirst in a sleeping bag, tied up with electrical cord and crushed by soldiers who sat and stood on him during an interrogation.

Circumstances can make convictions hard to obtain.

In the alleged drowning case, charges were downgraded after prosecutors were unable to produce the victim's body.

In other cases, defendants have argued that they used lethal force in self-defense.

Maj. Douglas Powell, a Marine Corps spokesman, said close investigation often reveals soldiers acted justifiably.

"I think what doesn't get told is the many cases where Marines have not engaged, not fired, not taken appropriate actions that they would be justified to take ... and it did result in saving innocent life," Powell said.

A series of cases stemming from the execution of gravely wounded Iraqis have resulted in sentences of three years or less.

Defendants and their lawyers have described the slayings as "mercy killings," though the Geneva Convention expressly forbids the execution of the wounded.

During Vietnam, America's most recent lengthy war, 95 soldiers and 27 Marines were convicted of murder.

But the two wars were very different.

More than 1,670 American military personnel have died in Iraq so far, compared to nearly 60,000 Americans who died over more than a decade in Vietnam.

Approximately 140,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq; the peak U.S. force in Vietnam numbered 550,000.

Solis said alleged war crimes in Iraq also may be more strictly reported and investigated than during Vietnam.

"(You) don't know if you have more strict enforcement or if you have more strict reporting of events," he said.

Each U.S. military branch handles crimes committed by its troops through its own investigatory system, with prosecutorial decisions made by offices of a Judge Advocate General.

Prosecuting cases within an all-military judicial system ensures that defendants are held to military standards — but also allows defense lawyers to tailor arguments for judges and jurors who may be more sympathetic than the general public to defendants making decisions in a war zone.

So far in Iraq, three American soldiers have been convicted of murder.

Pvt. Federico Daniel Merida of the North Carolina National Guard received 25 years in prison after being convicted in the shooting death of a 17-year-old Iraqi soldier with whom he had consensual sex.

Army Staff Sgt. Johnny Horne pleaded guilty to unpremeditated murder in the execution of a severely wounded Iraqi teenager during fighting in Baghdad and received three years.

Co-defendant Staff Sgt. Cardenas J. Alban was convicted of murder in the same case and given a one-year sentence.

In two recent cases, a soldier and a Marine were cleared of charges they murdered suspected insurgents.

A Marine commander at North Carolina's Camp Lejeune cleared 2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano of charges in the death of two Iraqi civilians on May 26; hours later, Army jurors at Fort Hood, Texas, acquitted Staff Sgt. Shane Werst of charges he killed an unarmed Iraqi.

In both cases, defense lawyers said the men acted in self-defense.

Pantano received extensive support from conservatives and veterans after his mother created a lobbying group to support "the man who puts his life on the line again and again, who makes life-or-death decisions in the blazing heat, exhaustion, fear and confusion of war."

Further complicating that case, Pantano acknowledged shooting his victims more than 60 times and hanging a sign over their corpses as a warning.

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a private defense policy group, was among several observers who expressed surprise that Pantano was not punished at all.

"We don't send people out there to mutilate enemy corpses," he said.

"I don't think that it's going to play very well in Iraq."

Pantano had plenty of support from fellow veterans, as was evident Friday, when he met with supporters at a fish fry at an American Legion post in Wilmington, N.C.

Harold Davis, a 75-year-old Korean War veteran, had tears in his eyes as he told Pantano that the military never would have charged a serviceman during Korea.

"I don't see how they could do that," he said.

The Legion post's commander, Michael Gregorio, a Marine veteran of Vietnam, said it's not fair to second-guess troops fighting a war against non-uniformed insurgents.

"You're not rushing a hill" in Iraq, he said.

"You're stopping people who are civilians ... who could become insurgents in a matter of seconds."

Pike believes combat stress is to blame for many civilian killings.

He noted that military officials' understanding of mental health has improved greatly since Vietnam.

Col. Elspeth Ritchie, a psychiatrist, consults to the Army's surgeon general on mental health issues and said the Army has worked hard to improve services.

Mental health personnel are now deployed at forward operating bases to eat and sleep with troops and offer treatment close to the front lines, she said.

Units rotate in and out of the war zone as a group, allowing greater cohesion and improved morale compared to Vietnam, when soldiers served tours of duty as individuals.

An assessment of mental health needs conducted in Iraq in the fall of 2003 showed deficiencies, Ritchie said, and changes were made.

A report on a follow-up evaluation, conducted last fall, is expected within weeks.

"We all recognize that this is a nasty war and it is going to have psychological effects on our soldiers and our veterans," she said.

"We're trying to be very proactive."

Associated Press Writer Martha Waggoner contributed to this story from Wilmington, N.C.

On the Net:

Pantano Web site: http://www.defendthedefenders.org

Army mental health assistance: http://www.armyonesource.com

Ah, yes, the Viet Nam justification, all over again, they don't like us, they are Vietnamese, we are here to kill Vietnamese who do not like us, because they are the enemy!

Now, of course, one must of necessity replace the word Vietnamese with Iraqi, but the formula remains the same - they are not Americans, so kill them!

Who cares?

Not George W. Bush, nor Dick Cheney, and when you are in their military, that is all that counts!

They don't care about human life!

They are there for the oil!

SO?

What's this, then:

"Iraq too dependent on oil, must diversify - govt"

Sun Jun 5, 7:16 AM ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq relies far too heavily on oil exports for generating revenue, a senior government official said on Sunday, as he urged Iraqis to diversify production and create alternative sources of income.

"Ninety-five percent of Iraq's national income is dependent on oil and that's an oddity," Laith Kubba, spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, told a news conference.

"If we take a country like Saudi Arabia, it's 60 percent, and in another oil producing country it might be 40 percent."

"Iraq is in an exceptional situation," he said.

Last year, Iraq's government had revenues of around $20 billion, nearly $18 billion of which came from oil exports.

What that figure shows as much as anything else, Kubba said, was that under Saddam Hussein's rule Iraqis grew complacent, believing that oil revenue would provide for all expenditure.

"It proves that the Iraqi economy is dependent -- people wait for someone to give them money, but there isn't real production," he said.

"The idea of waiting and thinking that improvement will come only from the government is over."

He said Iraqi ministries also had to learn to rein in their spending, pointing out that if they had been left to spend as they had wanted last year, the government would have run up a $4 billion deficit -- around 20 percent of income.

Iraq currently produces about 2.1 million barrels of oil a day, about 1.3 million of which are exported.

At current prices of around $50 a barrel, that's income of about $65 million a day or $23 billion a year.

Before the war that ousted Saddam, oil production was running at around 2.9 million barrels a day, of which 2.1 million were exported.

The decline in exports and production is due to near constant sabotage attacks on oil pipelines, which has also delayed efforts to overhaul the entire infrastructure and make Iraq a modern, more efficient exporter.

While the current high price of crude oil is a huge boon, Kubba said, Iraq could not rely on that state of affairs continuing and needed to diversify the economy.

"We can't stay at this level even if oil prices remain as they are," he said.

"The real solution is to launch the abilities of Iraqis to produce for themselves."

"Iraqis are vital and productive people but currently there is a state of unrest and panic."

And those words above here, by this Iraqi gentleman, about the days needing to be over, and soon, in Iraq of the idea of waiting and thinking that improvement will come to the people of Iraq from this present incumbent's administration, of course, brings us back to the subject of "politics", here in OUR America, where but for panic on the part of a lot of people that was induced in them before the elections by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice and company, we might have had some very necessary "regime change" here of our own:

"Edwards Undecided About Running in 2008"

By GARY TANNER, Associated Press Writer

Sun Jun 5, 8:21 AM ET

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Former Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards said Saturday that he has not decided whether he will run for president in 2008.

The former U.S. senator from North Carolina said his family is focused on the recovery of his wife, who was diagnosed with breast cancer the day after the 2004 general election.

"Our first priority right now is making sure Elizabeth gets well," Edwards said at an annual state Democratic fundraising dinner.

"There's a lot of work left to be done."

Edwards also disagreed with Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean's controversial comment in a speech to liberal activists Thursday that many Republicans "have never made an honest living in their lives."

"The chairman of the DNC is not the spokesman for the party," Edwards said.

"He's a voice."

"I don't agree with it."

On Saturday, Dean continued his barrage on conservatives while visiting Montana, lambasting the Bush administration for its fiscal irresponsibility and war on terror.

He said President Bush needs to get tough on real threats to national security, nations like North Korea and Iran that claim to have nuclear weapons, rather than nations like Iraq, where no weapons of mass destruction were ever found.

"I would make the argument that America is safer when Democrats are in the White House, than when Republicans are in the White House," Dean said in a speech to Democratic supporters.

There was no immediate response from the GOP to Dean's comments Saturday, but RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said after Thursday's speech that Dean's "priority is to generate mudslinging headlines rather than engage in substantive debate."

Associated Press Writer Sarah Cooke contributed to this report from Helena, Mont.

end quotes

Sounds like this REPUBLICAN SPOKESWOMAN, Tracey Schmitt, is pretty upset that Dean is trying to take advantage of a tactic that the REPUBLICANS themselves have been employing so very successfully these last so many years, this "mudslinging", instead of substantive debate, that they used to first get George W. Bush into the White House, after they sobered him up enough to be able to appear in public without spitting tobacco "chaw juice" all over the place, including on women's shoes, or was it pocket books, and to then keep him there, despite having many other better qualified candidates to choose from, such as anybody other than George W. Bush.

SO?

How is that saying?

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?"

Sounds to me like the REPUBLICANS just don't like flattery!

It must offend their party's sense of humility, or something.

"Iraq Admits Targeting Sunnis in Crackdown"

By SAMEER N. YACOUB, Associated Press Writer

35 minutes ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Shiite-led Iraqi government acknowledged Sunday that its forces may have targeted innocent Sunni Muslims in a drive to crush the insurgency in southwestern Baghdad and its suburbs.

Saddam Hussein will go on trial within two months on a dozen charges of crimes against humanity, a spokesman for the prime minister said.

Authorities in the northern city of Mosul announced the arrest of yet another key terrorist leader of the al-Qaida in Iraq terrorist organization and its Ansar al-Sunnah affilate, the second in seven days, on charges of organizing and financing killing sprees.

The terrorist organization is led by Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who carries a $25 million bounty.

"There is an improvement in security and in the performance of the security forces, but members of the army and police do cause mistakes, which do happen," said Laith Kuba, a spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

There were also some claims that "soldiers took advantage and helped themselves to cash and other items."

"One doesn't rule it out."

"I think the army needs more disciplinary measures in these cases," Kuba said.

In recent days, Sunni Muslim organizations charged that many innocent Iraqis were arrested and most were Sunni's, the minority that dominated the country during Saddam's rule and are believed to form the backbone of the violent insurgency.

Regardless of the complaints and the acknowledged mistakes, the crackdown — dubbed Operation Lighting — entered its second week Sunday and appeared to have somewhat blunted insurgent attacks in the capital.

The charges of over-zealous behavior by the military and police as they seek to roust the insurgents coincide with government efforts to include Sunni Arabs in the political process, and to get them involved in drafting Iraq's new constitution.

Sunni approval is necessary for the charter's adoption in a national referendum.

It is to be ready by mid-August and approved in an October plebescite.

"We should not forget the bigger picture, which is that the security forces have a duty to combat the (terrorist) cells that take out their anger and violence on the Iraqi people," Kuba said.

"This is not a public relations exercise, this is a tough confrontation, and it is with the best troops we have in our hands."

Although the government has not provided fresh figures on the number of Iraqis arrested so far, the Interior Ministry said last Thursday that 700 people had been detained.

The U.S. military said Friday it had detained at least 200 more during a two-day sweep south of Baghdad in an area known as the Triangle of Death.

The worst mistake, already acknowledged by top government officials, occurred on the second day of Operation Lightning, when U.S. forces arrested and later released the leader of Iraq's largest Sunni Arab political party.

Kuba said that at least 200 other people had been released so far.

Operation Lightning aimed in its first week to seal Baghdad's entry points to prevent access to the capital for car bombers.

It also focused on areas of southern and western Baghdad — which have predominantly Sunni Arab populations and are the capital's most violent districts.

"Our military has taken the offensive now, taking the fight to the insurgents."

"This operation really will ensure better security for the capital," Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told CNN's "Late Edition" during a visit to Washington.

A key element of Washington's exit strategy from Iraq hinges on the ability of Iraq's American-trained police and military to take control of security.

The insurgency has killed at least 836 people since the government took power just over one month ago.

Zebari also said Saddam's trial, which Kuba predicted would begin within two months, would have a positive "impact on the security situation" in Iraq, and should begin the "sooner the better."

But Saddam's trial could prove to be highly divisive in an already turbulent Iraq that shows signs of deepening secular divisions.

Starting the court proceedings in two months would overlap with the writing of the constitution.

"There should be no objection that a trial should take place within that time," Kuba said.

"It is the government's view that the trial of Saddam should take place as soon as possible."

Kuba added that before Saddam's trial starts, the National Assembly must "legitimize" the special tribunal that will hear the case against him and his chief aides.

The process will begin soon, Kuba said, without elaborating.

The prime minister's spokesman said prosecutors had narrowed their case against Saddam to about a dozen well-documented charges.

A list of allegations supplied by the tribunal consists of 14 charges, including the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, where an estimated 5,000 people were killed and 10,000 others were hurt on March 16, 1988.

In Mosul, authorities said, the captured the purported financier of the al-Qaida in Iraq group's cell in that northern city.

Mutlaq Mahmoud Mutlaq Abdullah, also known as Abu Raad, was arrested on May 29 and is considered a key facilitator and financier for a militant identified by the alias Abu Talha, the purported head of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terror cell in Mosul.

Also Sunday, Australia's top Islamic cleric said he had seen hostage Douglas Wood and said the 63-year-old California-based Australian engineer is "still alive and in honest hands."

Sheik Taj El Din al-Hilaly is in Iraq on a mission to secure Wood's release and said the kidnap victim had received medication for his heart condition.

The Australian was abducted in late April and a militant group calling itself the Shura Council of the Mujahedeen of Iraq released a video recording on May 1 that showed the captive pleading for Australia to withdraw its 1,400 troops from Iraq.

Mohammed Ghazi, a translator working for the U.S.-led forces in Kirkuk, was killed by gunmen as he was walking to his home, said police Lt. Hawar Mohammed.

Gunmen in a speeding car opened fire on Iraqi security forces Sunday in eastern Baghdad, killing a policewoman and injuring a policeman, Col. Ahmed al-Alawi said.

Police are routinely targeted by insurgents who regard them as U.S. collaborators.

An Iraqi truck driver was killed by gunmen in a second drive-by shooting during the afternoon, this time in western Baghdad's Abu Ghraib district while he was transporting concrete blast walls for the U.S. military, said police Lt. Akram al-Zubaee.

Associated Press writers Paul Garwood, Sinan Salaheddin and Patrick Quinn in Baghdad contributed to this report.

At the risk of showing sympathy, and admitting no opinion on the case which I have intentionally avoided, I think he is a tragic soul whose childhood was robbed by his parent's "act". Now, at middle age, he is trying to have a childhood.

Innocent or guilty, he is truly pathetic.

More pathetic is the fact that he is made the center of a TV media circus.

BTW: The MODS "Pinned" your thread.

Ah, there but for the grace of God go we, jeffmoskin, and that can always be so.

But as to this show trial, I do have to agree with you, it is quite a spectacle, and I for one have a hard time believing any of it is real!

Show BID-NESS has permeated every corner of OUR America, it seems, from the White House right on down to OUR town halls, and especially school board meetings, which here, are broadcast as though they were very important affairs, with all the actors up there on stage getting in their bows for the night, in the hopes of being noticed as a "presence" who comes across well on TV, so that they can then get a shot at the next higher political office that is always waiting right around the corner.

The whole thing is pathetic to me, and there right in the middle of it, is Michael, who doesn't look as if he even has a clue.

Neverland Ranch!

Somebody told me that Michael has gone off with Peter Pan and Tinker Bell when he goes there, in his mind, anyway, and .......

As to the thread, well, you're pinned to, jeffmoskin, so how about that?

After all, by now, you're a part of the show as much as I am, in terms of making sure that some degree of intellectual honesty and integrity is maintained in here, and so ....

Just watch that pin when you sit down!

I wasn't paying attention, and I sat right on it and WOW .....

And speaking of intellectual honesty, and integrity, especially in what is called the "media" these days, as opposed to "news", and with good reason, I just received this following from a correspondent on the internet, and since we are on that subject right now, honesty and integrity, especially with respect to Newsweek, or PROPAGANDAWEEK, as I call it, because to me, it has been a willing shill for this Bush Co. machine since before the 2004 presidential elections, we have as follows:

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - Media analysis, critiques and activism

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2529

MEDIA ADVISORY: Lessons from Newsweek's Retraction

June 1, 2005

In the rush to condemn Newsweek's May 9 report about abuse of the Quran at Guantanamo, little attention has been paid to a technique the magazine used in reporting its original story: submitting articles to government officials prior to publication.

According to Newsweek's accounts of the reporting behind the brief "Periscope" item that caused so much controversy, a draft of the item was actually given to a military official for review.

Wrote assistant managing editor Even Thomas in a post-controversy reexamination (5/23/05):

"Newsweek national security correspondent John Barry, realizing the sensitivity of the story, provided a draft of the Newsweek 'Periscope' item to a senior Defense official, asking, 'Is this accurate or not?'"

Newsweek's editor-in-chief Richard M. Smith later explained (5/30/05), "One of the frustrating aspects of our initial inquiry is that we seem to have taken so many appropriate steps in reporting the Guantanamo story…."

"We sought comment from one military spokesman (he declined) and provided the entire story to a senior Defense Department official, who disputed one assertion (which we changed) and said nothing about the charge of abusing the Quran."

Given the relative media silence over the matter, one would conclude that this action raised few ethical questions among mainstream reporters.

Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz commented in an online chat (5/16/05), "Newsweek did the right thing by running a draft of the item by a senior Pentagon official, and it's odd that the Pentagon didn't raise any red flags."

Post ombudsman Michael Getler agreed (5/22/05) that Newsweek "did the right thing in taking the item to two Pentagon officials for comment before publication."

But is showing articles to government officials prepublication really "the right thing" to do?

Such advance looks can't help but imply that journalists are asking for permission to publish critical articles about the government--a dangerous impression to give if the news media hope to maintain a free press.

The prepublication review also invites officials to give feedback not only on facts but on questions of balance, organization and tone as well--areas in which government officials have no special expertise, but which as interested parties to the story they have every incentive to weigh in on.

Of course, checking facts is an important part of the journalistic process.

But fact-checking traditionally involves asking sources about the facts in a report, not giving sources a chance to review the entire report ahead of time.

This not only protects the story from attempts by sources to participate in the editing process, it's also less fallible than Newsweek's method.

When an official is shown a story in advance and makes no comment about a particular allegation, that can mean many things: "That's true"; "I don't know if that's true or not"; "That's less important than other things I'd like to comment on"; "I hope publishing this false report blows up in your face."

If Newsweek had taken the more time-consuming approach of fact-checking by asking about specific allegations in the story, it would have not only insulated its journalism from the potential for official interference, it might have gotten a more useful response when it asked about the alleged Quran incident.

While the practice of having officials vet stories in advance has received little attention, conventional wisdom holds that the real ethical lesson of the Newsweek incident is to avoid anonymous sources.

In a letter to readers in the magazine's May 30 issue, Newsweek's Smith vowed, "We will raise the standards for the use of anonymous sources throughout the magazine."

"Historically, unnamed sources have helped to break or advance stories of great national importance, but overuse can lead to distrust among readers and carelessness among journalists."

While there's no denying that unnamed sources are overused, the kind of anonymity granted in the May 9 "Periscope" item--protecting a source who is breaking government secrecy to expose official wrongdoing--is actually the most justifiable, and such uses make up a small minority of the anonymous sources who appear in the news media every day.

Overwhelmingly, the officials who are quoted without being identified are not whistleblowers, but rather government officials looking to spin the news in favor of themselves and their bosses.

Sure enough, a few pages from that editor's note, Newsweek ran a piece on a meeting between George W. Bush and Egyptian prime minister Ahmed Nazif.

The meeting occurred behind closed doors, so Newsweek's only source for what happened there was an anonymous White House official--remaining unnamed, the magazine said, "because the meeting was private"--who, unsurprisingly, took the opportunity to boast about Bush's performance.

In the source's version, Bush "counseled patience," "emphasized his commitment to nation-building" and showed a "more nurturing approach" during the meeting.

"It's not a simplistic foreign policy," Newsweek quoted the source.

"It's not just a shoot-from-the-hip, idealistic thing."

This more common use of anonymous sources--to give administration officials a chance to flatter themselves--raised few if any eyebrows among the critics who supposedly objected to Newsweek's reliance on the unnamed.

When asked to explain the discrepancy between the White House's criticism of Newsweek's anonymous sourcing of its Quran item and the fact that the White House itself regularly gives anonymous briefings to reporters, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said (5/17/05) it was acceptable to quote anonymous "officials who are helping to provide context to on-the-record comments made by people like the President or the Secretary of State or others"; the real problem was that "some media organizations have used anonymous sources that are hiding behind that anonymity in order to generate negative attacks."

It's easy to see why the White House press secretary would approve of anonymous sources when they help the administration and condemn them when they don't.

What's more puzzling is that some in the media seem to be judging anonymous sources the same way.

FAIR produces CounterSpin, a weekly radio show heard on over 130 stations in the U.S. and Canada. To find the CounterSpin station nearest you, visit http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=5

Feel free to respond to FAIR ( fair@fair.org ).

We can't reply to everything, but we will look at each message. We especially appreciate documented examples of media bias or censorship. And please send copies of your email correspondence with media outlets, including any responses, to fair@fair.org .

You can subscribe to FAIR-L at our web site: http://www.fair.org . Our subscriber list is kept confidential.

FAIR
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I don't want anything to do with me being stored on a computer here in George W. Bush's slip-shod version of America for these reasons which follow:

THEY ARE NOT SECURE, AND THEY'RE BECOMING LESS SO, ALL THE TIME, NOW!

See what I mean:

Live Vote as of 5:00 P.M. EST:

How concerned are you about identity theft? * 2273 responses

Very much so. 71%

Somewhat. 23%

Not at all. 3%

I've already been hit. 3%

"Citi notifies 3.9 million customers of lost data - Computer tapes with personal information lost in transit"

The Associated Press

Updated: 2:16 p.m. ET June 6, 2005

NEW YORK - CitiFinancial, the consumer finance division of Citigroup Inc., said Monday it has begun notifying some 3.9 million U.S. customers that computer tapes containing information about their accounts — including Social Security numbers and payment histories — have been lost.

Citigroup, which is based in New York, said the tapes were lost by the courier UPS Inc. in transit to a credit bureau.

The bank said the tapes contained information about both active and closed accounts at CitiFinancial’s branch network.

It said they did not contain information from CitiFinancial Auto, CitiFinancial Mortgage or any other Citigroup business.

The statement said that CitiFinancial “had no reason to believe that this information has been used inappropriately, nor has it received any reports of unauthorized activity.”

Norman Black, a spokesman for Atlanta-based UPS, confirmed that the tapes were missing.

“Despite an exhaustive search for this package, we’ve been unable to find it,” Black said.

It was the latest in a series of data losses or breaches that have forced financial institutions and other data collectors to warn customers that their personal information may be at risk.

Last month, media and entertainment company Time Warner Inc. said that computer backup tapes containing data on 600,000 individuals were lost by an outside data storage firm.

The data were on current and former employees going back to 1986, as well as some of their dependents and beneficiaries, the company said.

It did not include personal data on Time Warner customers, the company said.

Also in May, more than 100,000 customers of Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., both headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., were notified that their financial records may have been stolen by bank employees and sold to collection agencies.

In all, nearly 700,000 customers of four banks may be affected, according to police in Hackensack, N.J., where the investigation was centered.

And in April, online discount broker Ameritrade Holding Corp. said it had informed some 200,000 current and former customers that a backup computer tape with personal information had been lost.

Kevin Kessinger, executive vice president of Citigroup’s Global Consumer Group and president of Consumer Finance North America, told The Associated Press that the tapes left CitiFinancial on May 2 and were discovered missing on May 20.

Notification of customers was delayed at the request of the Secret Service, which is investigating the loss of the tapes, he said.

Kessinger said the bank’s letter encouraged consumers to review activity on all their accounts to make sure nothing suspicious was occurring.

He said CitiFinancial also was arranging for all affected customers to sign up free of charge with a credit monitoring service for 90 days.

And, he said, if a customer is victimized, they will get free help from Citigroup’s Identity Theft resolution service.

“Clearly we regret that this happened with our customers,” Kessinger said.

“We’re trying to be upfront — to communicate and to talk about what the issues are.”

CitiFinancial said in its statement that the data loss “occurred in spite of the enhanced security procedures we require of our couriers.”

It said there was little risk of the accounts being compromised because most customers already had received their loans and that no additional credit could be issued without the customers’ approval.

Debby Hopkins, chief operations and technology officer for Citigroup, said that the tapes were produced “in a sophisticated mainframe data center environment” and would be difficult to decode without the right equipment and special software.

Hopkins said that most Citigroup units send data electronically in encrypted form and that CitiFinancial data will be sent that way starting in July.

Well, it sure does sound as if this new Pope has a friend in Karl Rove, which would mean he has a friend in George W. Bush, as well, and that could prove interesting in these next couple of years, indeed:

"Pope condemns gay marriages as fake and anarchic"

By Philip Pullella

51 minutes ago

ROME (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, in his first clear pronouncement on gay marriages since his election, on Monday condemned same-sex unions as fake and expressions of "anarchic freedom" that threatened the future of the family.

The Pope, who was elected in April, also condemned divorce, artificial birth control, trial marriages and free-style unions, saying all of these practices were dangerous for the family.

"Today's various forms of dissolution of marriage, free unions, trial marriages as well as the pseudo-matrimonies between people of the same sex are instead expressions of anarchic freedom which falsely tries to pass itself off as the true liberation of man," he said.

The Pope spoke to families at Rome's St. John's Cathedral on an issue that has become highly controversial around the world, particularly in Europe and the United States.

In April, parliament in traditionally Catholic Spain gave initial approval to a law legalizing gay marriage.

It is widely expected to be approved by the Senate and to become law.

Gay marriages are already legal in several European countries.

However, just last week, California's Assembly killed off a bill that would have allowed gay marriage in the most populous U.S. state.

U.S. President Bush favors a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages.

The Pope, who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger headed the Vatican's doctrinal department for more than two decades, said "pseudo freedoms" such as gay marriages were based on what he called the "banalisation of the human body" and of man himself.

Aurelio Mancuso, president of Arcigay, Italy's largest gay rights group, hit back at the Pope.

"Ratzinger pretends not to understand that gay unions are no threat to heterosexual marriages," he said in a statement.

FAMILY'S VITAL ROLE

The Pope, who read his 14-page speech in a steady, professorial manner while seated at a writing table, spoke of the family's vital role for the future of society.

"Matrimony and the family are not, in reality, a casual sociological construction or the fruit of specific historic and economic situations," he said.

In a clear reference to contraception, the Pope said couples went against the nature of love itself when they "systematically shut off" the possibility of "the gift of life."

The 78-year-old Pope's wide-ranging speech, interrupted by applause several times, touched on themes such as human sexuality and freedom.

It clearly showed his background as one of the Roman Catholic Church's leading theologians.

"The greatest expression of freedom is not the search for pleasure," he said, adding that society seemed to want to tear down the moral goalposts he said were needed for its future.

"Today, a particularly insidious obstacle to (moral) education is the overwhelming presence in our society and culture of a type of relativism that recognizes nothing as definitive...," he said.

Ratzinger has already backed a controversial campaign by bishops who have urged voters to boycott an emotionally-charged referendum in Italy this weekend that would lift bans on embryo research.

The Pope's words on Monday were no surprise.

In an address to fellow cardinals before the start of the conclave that elected him in April, he denounced what he called an "anything goes" mentality that marked modern times.

end quotes

Whoa!

In an address to fellow cardinals before the start of the conclave that elected him in April, this Pope denounced what he called an "anything goes" mentality that marked modern times?

Wow!

Sounds like he would be against George W. Bush, and Karl Rove, and the REPUBLICANS in OUR America, then, because "ANYTHING GOES" is their trademark!

SO!

Interesting times ahead in OUR America, indeed!

And from out there in jeffmoskin's land of California, what do we have here?

Head's up, jeffmoskin, the REPUBLICANS are coming!

RUN!

RUN!

And keep your temples covered too, 'cause you just never know .....

"Republicans See Glimmer of Hope in Calif."

By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer

Mon Jun 6, 7:52 AM ET

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Every six weeks, the Republican Party chairman has traveled to California, a large and solidly Democratic Party stronghold.

With Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor and the state's most conservative areas growing rapidly, Republicans are sensing an opportunity.

Democrats have won the last four presidential contests in California and maintain overwhelming majorities in the congressional delegation and legislature.

But Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman insists GOP prospects are improving, thanks to demographic changes and Schwarzenegger's star power.

"There's tremendous opportunity here because of the governor and his leadership, and because of President Bush and his leadership," Mehlman said in a recent interview.

Mehlman nonetheless faces steep challenges in making his party competitive in California.

Bush lost the state by 10 points to Democrat John Kerry last November, and Schwarzenegger is engaged in a bruising battle with teachers, nurses and other Democrat-leaning interest groups over government reform measures he's proposed to curtail their influence.

Polls show the governor's popularity has dropped below 50 percent.

But analysts have noted several population shifts that suggest potential for Republicans to expand their reach.

California is home to nearly 37 million people — one of every eight Americans — and is projected to add as many as 11 million more in the next two decades, roughly the equivalent of the state of Ohio.

But while population growth is slowing in left-leaning coastal areas like Los Angeles and San Francisco, it is accelerating in more conservative regions such as the Central Valley and the Inland Empire area east of Los Angeles.

The state's large Hispanic population, long staunchly Democratic, has become somewhat less so in recent years.

Bush won 32 percent of California's Hispanic vote in 2004, up from 28 percent in 2000.

Schwarzenegger won about a third of Hispanic voters in the 2003 recall election even though Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a Hispanic, was also on the ballot.

Mehlman has seized on those trends, traveling to California every six weeks this year for outreach work in Hispanic, black and Asian American areas.

On a recent visit, he addressed a Hispanic community center south of Los Angeles and a black leadership forum in Sacramento, and held several fundraisers and meetings with GOP lawmakers.

In his outreach to ethnic minorities, Mehlman said he stresses the party's commitment to economic self-reliance and traditional family values.

Still, most analysts believe Republicans have a long way to go to repair the party's image among Hispanic voters, after a 1994 ballot initiative promoted by GOP Gov. Pete Wilson to deny social services to illegal immigrants.

Since then, Hispanics have lined up solidly with Democrats.

Art Torres, chairman of the California Democratic Party, said Republicans since the Richard Nixon era have spoken of outreach to Hispanic voters but have done little to increase their numbers in the GOP.

"The bottom line is that the dynamics of the national Republican Party have produced a consistent pattern of behavior."

"In even numbered years they talk a good game, but they don't deliver on issues of jobs, education and health care," he said.

But Torres didn't dispute that Republicans may make inroads in California if Democrats aren't vigilant about their own outreach and recruitment efforts.

"I always worry about the next election."

"I never take anything for granted and that includes the Latino community, and that means going to red areas of the state where we don't usually show up where we need to," Torres said.

Schwarzenegger may have complicated Republican efforts to recruit Hispanic voters with his criticism of the federal government for lax border controls and his praise for the so-called Minuteman Project, a controversial civilian patrol that has helped capture hundreds of illegal immigrants in Arizona.

Bush has denounced the group as vigilantes.

In California, Mehlman calls for a comprehensive immigration policy that includes better border enforcement and a guest worker program for migrants already in the United States.

"We need to understand we'll never control the border unless and until we also recognize the reality that there are certain jobs Americans don't want that folks are going to come here for," Mehlman said.

Schwarzenegger's immigration comments aren't the first time he has publicly broken with administration policy.

He also supports gay rights, legalized abortion and stricter gun controls, and has cut sharply to the left of the administration on environmental issues.

Last week, he unveiled an aggressive plan to combat global warming by setting goals for reducing California's emission of greenhouse gases.

Mehlman said he's comfortable with the nation's best-known Republican governor taking positions at odds with the Bush administration, and he downplayed a magazine interview last month in which Schwarzenegger said growing the Republican Party was not part of his mission.

"We're a big party, and we're a party where people will disagree on some issues while agreeing on what it means to be a Republican," Mehlman said.

end quotes

And Ken, what does it mean to be a REPUBLICAN?

Can you edify us, so we will know?

Or is it a secret only some few chosen like yourself can know?

And from the other end of the REPUBLICAN spectrum in OUR America, what's this from George Pataki's EMPIRE state?

The emporer is being dis-respected here, or what?

"New York Board Rejects NYC Stadium Plan"

By MARC HUMBERT, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 35 minutes ago

ALBANY, N.Y. - New York City's bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics suffered a setback Monday when a powerful state board rejected critical public funding for a $2 billion stadium on Manhattan's West side.

The financing board failed to approve $300 million in state money for the stadium that would also serve as home to the New York Jets.

The plan, which needed unanimous approval from the three-member board, received only one vote.

New York is in competition with Paris, London, Madrid and Moscow for the 2012 Games.

Earlier Monday, the International Olympic Committee released a report ranking Paris highest among the finalists and indicating that construction of the stadium is crucial to New York's chances.

The state board could reconsider the issue again later.

But without the support of member Sheldon Silver — the state Assembly Speaker who came out against the plan less than an hour before vote was taken — the state funding cannot move forward.

"This plan is at best, premature," Silver said, indicating he was willing to continue talking about the issue.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg had heavily lobbied Silver in recent days for support of the stadium.

"If we don't have a stadium, we cannot get the Olympics," Bloomberg said after Silver's announcement.

"I had not been able to persuade him."

The mayor said he would talk with members of the U.S. Olympic Committee about how to proceed.

Silver said the West Side stadium project and its related commercial development would hamper efforts to redevelop lower Manhattan, which he represents, in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that brought down the World Trade Center towers.

"Am I to sell out the community I have fought for?" Silver said at a state Capitol news conference.

The speaker renewed his call for officials to consider putting the stadium in Queens.

Silver, Republican Gov. George Pataki and state Senate Republican Majority Leader Joseph Bruno each have a voting representative on the three-member PACB.

Only the representative for Pataki, a stadium backer, voted for the funding plan.

Representatives of Silver and Bruno, who had remained on the fence, abstained.

The meeting, which was scheduled to begin at 3 p.m., was delayed more than an hour in part because of more than 100 vocal stadium supporters who showed up and continued behind-the-scene talks.

Earlier Monday, Bruno had said he was willing to approve the funding contingent on approval of New York City's Olympic bid.

He offered that as an amendment at the PACB meeting, but the motion failed to gain a second.

Bruno said even before the PACB's meeting that negotiations might continue beyond Monday.

Dan Doctoroff, the main supporter of the city's 2012 bid, said after the report came out:

"We have, as they (IOC) pointed out, really only one liability and that liability is thus far our inability to deliver a guaranteed done Olympic stadium."

The stadium plan has been contentious from the start.

Supporters, including Pataki and Bloomberg, have touted its economic development potential.

Detractors, including the owner of the neighboring Madison Square Garden, have questioned everything from the process that would allow the Jets to buy the property where the stadium would be built to the wisdom of spending large amounts of public money.

The NFL has said the Jets can host the 2010 Super Bowl, but only if the team has the new stadium.

The Jets currently play their home games in New Jersey, along with the New York Giants at Giants Stadium.

New York officials have said they fear the Jets, without a Manhattan stadium, will stay in New Jersey where the Giants are going to build their own new stadium.

Associated Press Writers Deepti Hajela and Sara Kugler in New York City and Mark Johnson in Albany contributed to this report.

On the Net:

http://www.nyc2012.org

http://www.olympic.org

How about that?

There IS a God after all.

I can't think of a more worthless waste of money (oh, in truth, I'm sure I could if pressed) than the West Side Stadium.

At a time when studio apartments sell for a million bucks; one might think that the City that never sleeps could use a few extra places for people who prefer to sleep.

How about a low cost housing project, somewhat akin to the Metropolitan Life complex on the east side in the 50s?

Or Alphabet City (Avenues A B C and D) done in the 60s?

There are 8 million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.

Twenty Six Acres. That's how much "land" is available. At least, the air rights are available as I presume the tracks are still needed for the trains to get in and out of Manhattan.

But just think what you could build FOR THE PEOPLE OF NEW YORK CITY with that kind of space!

Instead of a stadium.

And jeffmoskin, here I thought that you were a man of compassion!

Here we have this poor BILLIONAIRE up here, this Robert Wood "Woody" Johnson IV, and well, jeffmoskin, just like everybody else out there, well, hey, the guy needs a dime or two, and so, where's your sense of charity, here?

And as to this boondoggle being over?

Don't bet on it!

Old "Big Joe" Bruno, the "MAIN MAN" in state government up here, well, on the radio this morning, he was making all kinds of noise about waiting until the Olympic Committee says some more, and in the meantime, the lobbyists are still out there, trying to buy off as many of these politicians as they can to get this WELFARE DEAL for this poor BILLIONAIRE through the "system", and old "Big Joe", well, he's pretty canny, and he knows the value of playing hard to get, and so ....

And here is something for the Democrats out there to think about, which is the image that this Howard Dean fellow projects FOR THE PARTY!

Something to think about, indeed, especially in the light of this last election, which thanks to whatever, and whomever, was lost by the Democrats, when it should have been a "slam-dunk":

"Richardson Distances Himself From Dean"

By TIM McCAHILL, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 54 minutes ago

BEDFORD, N.H. - Howard Dean is not the Democratic Party's spokesman, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, the latest party leader to distance himself from the outspoken chairman, said Tuesday.

"I believe Governor Dean is a good chairman."

"He's doing a good job," Richardson, the head of the Democratic Governors' Association, told reporters at the start of a two-day visit to New Hampshire.

"He's not the spokesman for the party."

"It's governors, it's senators, it's party leaders."

Last weekend, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., and 2004 vice presidential candidate John Edwards criticized Dean for his recent remarks.

Dean told a group of progressives that Republicans "never made an honest living in their lives," a comment he was forced to explain a day later.

The one-time presidential candidate also said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who has not been accused of any crime, ought to go back to Houston where he can serve his jail sentence.

Richardson said Dean is doing a good job as party chairman, but added: "Nobody's error-free."

"I wouldn't have made the comments he did."

Edwards said that Dean is not the party's spokesman.

"He's a voice."

"I don't agree with it."

Biden said, "I don't think he speaks for the majority of Democrats."

In response, Karen Finney, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, said Dean "is a voice for the party and we have a number of voices who speak for the party."

Richardson has been mentioned as a possible 2008 presidential candidate, but he played down any speculation during his foray to New Hampshire, site of the first presidential primary.

"My message to voters is keep your powder dry."

"We've still got 3 1/2 years," he said.

Richardson spoke at a political breakfast Tuesday that is a common stop for potential White House hopefuls.

He was also scheduled to meet with state and local Democrats in New Hampshire.

___

A possible 2008 presidential candidate criticized last year's nominee, John Kerry, on Tuesday for adhering too rigidly to Democratic Party doctrine.

"One of my critiques of Senator Kerry, and I campaigned hard for Senator Kerry, was I can't tell you where he ever broke with anything in Democratic orthodoxy," Virginia Gov. Mark Warner said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"We've got to rethink the way we talk to the American people, what we lay out as to where we're headed."

Warner was in Iowa, site of the party caucuses that kick off the quadrennial nominating process, to talk about high school education and prepare for a meeting later this year of the National Governors Association.

He is chairman of the organization.

Warner traveled with Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, another possible 2008 candidate, and did little to quiet speculation about his future aspirations.

"I can honestly say, to quote my colleague from California, 'I'll be back,'" Warner said, a reference to the movie line often uttered by actor-turned-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The criticism of Kerry was the latest from a Democrat.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in a Rolling Stone magazine interview that Kerry ignored rural America in his presidential bid.

Warner said Democrats must find a way to expand the party's appeal.

If Democrats continue to "hope that if everything breaks right we can get to a 17th state and somehow 270 electoral votes, we do this country a disservice and we do the Democratic Party a disservice," Warner said.

"Democrats aren't the majority party in this country."

"We've got to convince some other folks to think about voting Democratic."
___

Associated Press Writers Mike Glover in Des Moines, Iowa, and Will Lester in Washington contributed to this report.

WRONG.

We've got ONE and a half year.

Because if we don't win the House back in 06, there may not be a country left to hold elections by 08.