June 30, 2005. Wetaskiwin, Canada. Photographer states: Near the wetaskiwin Co-op I had to help push two motorists out of the 2 foot deep water. The storm cloud on The horison caused all the flooding.
Friday, July 01, 2005
July 1, 2005. ENOUGH ALREADY !! Dear God I want to sweep him up in my arms and take him home to stop his crying. I can't stand the sound already. But, it wouldn't be his home, it would be mine and he wouldn't be happy anyway. The Caption: Malvern Chishazhe, 7, cried Thursday after the Zimbabwe police razed his family's home at a squatter camp west of Harare. Demolition of the camp, which once housed 10,000 people, was completed yesterday.
Morning Papers - continued...
Sydney Morning Herald
Search for missing flood pair called off
By Jano Gibson, Harriet Alexander and AAP
June 30, 2005 - 6:11PM
A search for a young Gold Coast couple missing after their stranded car was swept away by floodwater has been called off for the night.
The couple - a 25-year-old man and a 21-year-old woman - were travelling in a Toyota LandCruiser ute.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/flood-pair-missing-after-phone-plea-cut-out/2005/06/30/1119724728081.html
Women bought for $18,000, sex-slave trial hears
By Malcolm Brown
June 30, 2005 - 1:37PM
The operators of an Australian sex-slave racket bought women from Thailand and other countries for $18,000 each, a court heard today.
The four accused - Danny Kwok, Hosea Yoe, Jenny Ong and her son Raymond Tan - allegedly conspired to bring eight women from Thailand and Indonesia to Australia as sex slaves.
The women were all of legal age, the NSW Distraict Court was told.
``The girls who were recruited were placed in circumstances of what might be described as debt bondage,'' prosecutor Robert Sutherland said.
The racket was uncovered in 2003 after three women escaped from a home unit in Auburn.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/women-bought-for-18000-sexslave-trial-hears/2005/06/30/1119724737520.html
Big wet forces thousands to flee
By Stephen Gibbs, Matthew Thompson and AAP
July 1, 2005
Lismore will be declared a natural disaster zone today but its new levee, finished only a month ago, has prevented the Wilsons River filling the main streets of the flood-prone city.
By last night about 3000 residents and 60 businesses had been told to evacuate.
A young couple were believed swept away on the Gold Coast as up to half a metre of rain turned roads into rivers, stranding motorists and flooding cars and homes.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/big-wet-forces-thousands-to-flee/2005/06/30/1119724757181.html
The New York Times
Several Squatters Die as Zimbabwe Police Destroy Camp
By MICHAEL WINES
Published: July 1, 2005
JOHANNESBURG, June 30 - The Zimbabwe police finished demolishing a squatter camp outside Harare that once had at least 10,000 residents on Thursday, killing as many as four people, a day after a United Nations envoy met with President Robert G. Mugabe to discuss the refugee crisis that similar mass evictions have set off.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/01/international/africa/01zimbabwe.html?hp
Rove wants to set up a 'barrier' to stonewall any conclusion by investigators. Evidently, Judith Miller is the only person 'principled' enough to do exactly that. Rove knew where to hit now didn't he?
Top Editor at Time Inc. Made a Difficult Decision His Own
By LORNE MANLY and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: July 1, 2005
In the months leading up to the decisive court rulings this week on whether Time Inc. had to turn over documents to a grand jury, its editor in chief, Norman Pearlstine, pored over histories of how other editors, publishers and public officials had handled cases where the ultimate law of the land went against them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/01/politics/01comply.html?hp&ex=1120276800&en=6f7f3888a2680124&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Senate Approves Central American Free Trade Pact
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Published: July 1, 2005
WASHINGTON, June 30 - After a bitter and prolonged battle over the promises and perils of foreign trade, the Senate voted on Thursday to approve the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
The vote of 54 to 45, which came after weeks of efforts to placate angry sugar producers and other interest groups, was a major victory for President Bush at a time when Republicans and Democrats alike have been alarmed about soaring imports from low-cost countries.
The vote set the stage for an even more difficult fight in the House, where opposition to the trade pact is strong among lawmakers from textile regions in the South, manufacturing states in the Midwest and sugar- producing areas
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/01/politics/01trade.html?hp&ex=1120276800&en=6dfa955be55d9cfe&ei=5094&partner=homepage
War of Words
By BROOKE SHIELDS
Published: July 1, 2005
London
I WAS hoping it wouldn't come to this, but after Tom Cruise's interview with Matt Lauer on the NBC show "Today" last week, I feel compelled to speak not just for myself but also for the hundreds of thousands of women who have suffered from postpartum depression. While Mr. Cruise says that Mr. Lauer and I do not "understand the history of psychiatry," I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Mr. Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/01/opinion/01shields.html?hp
The Mao Myth Thrives, but Don't Mention Its Dark Side
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
Published: July 1, 2005
YENAN, China - Horribly outnumbered, poorly armed and constantly under attack, 80,000 Communist fighters set out on foot from a base in China's southeastern Jiangxi Province in October 1934 hoping above all to avoid getting wiped out by their Nationalist enemies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/01/international/asia/01yenan.html?hp
Chosun
U.S. Anti-Terror Steps Raise Concerns for N.K. Progress
There was concern Wednesday over diplomatic efforts to get North Korea to return to six-party talks on its nuclear program when the U.S. adopted anti-terror measures that specifically target North Korean companies that it says are involved in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The executive order by President George W. Bush empowers authorities to seize the U.S. assets of companies suspected of aiding and abetting WMD proliferation and targets three North Korean companies -- Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation, Tanchon Commercial Bank and the Korea Ryonbong General Corporation. A Congress report puts the U.S. assets of the three companies at a total of US$32 million. The measure also targets five Iranian and Syrian companies.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200506/200506300035.html
Civic Group Releases Dozens of Nude Soldier Photos
A human rights group on Wednesday released dozens of nude photos of young conscripts, keeping the spotlight for a second week on brutal hazing practices in the Korean military. The military has explained similar pictures made public last week as horseplay, but the new images suggest the practice of forcing conscripts to strip as a form of humiliation is widespread.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200506/200506290008.html
Wrong Click Publicises Workings of U.S. Korea Policy
A confidential report for the Korean Embassy in Washington on key players in the U.S.’ Korea policies is no longer so confidential after it was accidentally e-mailed to 800 subscribers of a daily political tip sheet containing news and gossip from around the country.
The report titled "Players in Korea Policy in Washington, D.C." is an analysis of the powers that make Korea policy in the U.S. administration and was supposed to be sent only to the Korean embassy.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200506/200506300020.html
Korean Air Becomes World’s Busiest Cargo Carrier
Korean Air has become the world’s busiest air cargo transporter thanks to soaring exports of electronics and IT products, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said Thursday.
In its report on global airlines’ performance in cargo transport in 2004, the body said Korean Air took the lead with 8.164 billion ton.km, a 20.1 percent increase from the previous year. Ton,km, the unit for cargo traffic performance, is calculated by multiplying volume of cargo traffic by flight distance.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200506/200506300028.html
Korea's Economy Is Losing Its Hold
China No Promised Land for Korean Textile Firms
Chinese Workers Slam Koreans
Korean textile businesses that moved to China to survive in the face of spiraling costs at home are closing down, having been defeated in competition with their local counterparts. Ten out of 16 firms that settled in Qingdao, Shandong Province, it is said, have already shut down or moved on to Southeast Asia where wages are lower.
The technological gap in the textile industry between Korea and China has all but gone, and that means Chinese companies are pouring cheaper products into our country. One report has it that every six or seven out of 10 items of clothing sold here are Chinese. The Korean textile industry is being overwhelmed by our giant neighbor.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200506/200506300046.html
Whale’ Blows USFK Escape-from-Korea Drill
Busan-Fukuoka Ferry in Whale Alert
An unidentified object presumed to be a whale scuppered a simulated escape from the peninsula by the U.S. Forces in Korea in April when it collided with the ferry they were using for the drill and forced it to return to Busan Port, it was revealed Thursday.
The USFK said 32 American troops and their families were aboard the 267-ton ferryboat Kobee 5 that left Busan for Fukuoka, Japan on April 29 but turned back following a collision with an unidentified object. The personnel were training for an evacuation in the event of a war on the Korean Peninsula.
"The non-combatants repatriation training is conducted regularly twice a year anywhere U.S. troops and civilians are stationed using ships or aircraft," the USFK said.
Americans aboard the ferry included women and children, none of whom were injured in the collision.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200506/200506300037.html
The Cheney Observer
This chronic stump speech is to stimulate "The Base" so they don't loose them. It's got nothing to do with addressing THE NATION. Bush and the Repuglicans when they 'pull this stuff' could not care less about what The Nation wants or wants to hear. Bush HAS to keep his marginal support center stage in order to maintain the voter base. The saddest aspect to this is that many military families including those he visits fine merits in the Iraqi conflict because their loved ones died there for a noble cause. Bush and 'his media' then turns around and USES those families to promote the politics. Bush's presidency is only possible because of the margins he finds and builds, now main stream America. That is why the federal government is a mess. The margins of this society have been that because they are the extremes and not the 'happy' median.
A record of deception
By Scot Lehigh July 1, 2005
HERE'S THE question President Bush's Tuesday address to the nation raises.
Having framed the Iraq war in a dishonest way, can the president really expect the informed public to believe his presentation about how the stabilization effort is going?
Certainly Bush's speech started on a highly deceptive note, portraying the grinding conflict in Iraq as a necessary response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/07/01/a_record_of_deception/
Cheney defends CAFTA agreement
By Jim Monk, WDAY Radio
Published Thursday, June 30, 2005
Vice President Dick Cheney is defending the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
In an exclusive interview on WDAY's HotTalk Thursday morning, Cheney said the Bush Administration is "very sensitive" to the concerns of the sugar industry.
Cheney says CAFTA will have no adverse effect on sugar growers and says he fails to see why the sugar industry would oppose the bill.
http://www.in-forum.com/articles/index.cfm?id=96423§ion=News
Most in poll call Gov. Bush's motive political
Mirroring national polls that suggest uneasiness with intervention in the Terri Schiavo case, voters in Florida overwhelmingly oppose Gov. Jeb Bush's request for an investigation in the case, a poll showed.
BY LESLEY CLARK
lclark@herald.com
Florida voters are convinced Gov. Jeb Bush is intervening in the Terri Schiavo case for political reasons and disapprove by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, according to a new poll that nevertheless shows the Republican governor's popularity is largely untouched.
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/12029125.htm
President Bush's brother Jeb Bush in serious trouble
Published on 30 June 2005 Source: TNC Release
President George Bush’s brother, Jeb Bush, is in serious trouble while hundreds of US hospitals fight bankruptcy.
Jeb Bush`s smile will soon vanish! (©2005 State of Florida)
The President's brother is in serious trouble. It has been discovered that Florida's Medicaid Program has been defrauding the federal government for over 30 years with their Medicaid Program. 100% of the federal funding Florida received under Medicaid since 1974 has been illegal as Florida's State Created Medicaid Forms and Applications have never complied with federal law.
HHS in Washington sent Florida three written Directives instructing them to check all the state's Medicaid forms & applications to make sure they complied with federal disclosure laws and if not to immediately modify all forms to be in compliance.
http://www.newcriminologist.co.uk/news.asp?id=-660038393
Jilted
The Bush brothers kick Katherine Harris to the curb.
By Brian Montopoli
Posted Thursday, June 30, 2005, at 2:16 PM PT
Don't leave me this way
Odds are that you haven't thought about Katherine Harris for a while. When she was Florida secretary of state in 2000, of course, Harris' maneuvering helped George W. Bush carry Florida, and with it the presidency. For her role in the election, she was skewered as nakedly partisan and parodied on Saturday Night Live as an ambitious harpy caked in enough makeup to embarrass a drag queen. But Harris took her lumps, expecting the Republican Party to eventually repay her for her efforts. Instead, the president and his brother Jeb are now trying to sink her.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2121746/
DeLay Commends Treasury Dept. on TRIA Report; House Will Review Treasury's Recommendations
6/30/2005 3:44:00 PM
To: National Desk
Contact: Shannon Flaherty of the Office of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, 202-225-4000
WASHINGTON, June 30 /U.S. Newswire/ -- House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) today commended the Treasury Department for completing its review of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) and submitting its recommendation that TRIA not be extended in its current form. The Treasury Department's report states that extending TRIA will have little impact on the economy and may hinder the development of the post 9/11 insurance market.
"As Congress begins its debate on the future of terrorism insurance, it's imperative that we remember TRIA was intended to be a temporary program. Any solution must depend on the ingenuity of the private insurance markets and not the involvement of the federal government as a re-insurer or permanent backstop," DeLay said. "I'm confident that Chairman Oxley and his committee will thoroughly review this study, and I look forward to addressing this issue in the House."
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=49768
China to fill its strategic petroleum reserve from 4th Quarter
China will start filling its strategic petroleum reserve from the fourth quarter this year, said Zhang Guobao, deputy director of China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) in New Orleans, the United States on June 28, 2005, according to report by Xinhuanet.
http://english.people.com.cn/200506/30/eng20050630_193355.html
The trend of China's petroleum consumption
Last Updated(Beijing Time):2005-07-01 13:59
By Chen Geng
With the recovery of the world economy and the acceleration of the globalization process, as well as the rapid development of China's national economy and the ever-greater openness of the Chinese market, the macro-economic situations in and out of China have been taking place profound changes.
From the perspective of the situation of the domestic economic development, China is now at the development stage, when its degrees of industrialization, urbanization, marketization and internationalization grow incessantly, and the contradiction of resources constraints gradually emerged and will loom larger and larger with the ever-growing economy scale and resources consumption.
Currently and for some time in future, China's petroleum security is facing and will continue to face relatively grim situation. There are in general five basic judgments as follows:
http://en.ce.cn/Insight/200507/01/t20050701_4104015.shtml
MANN TALK: Who Elects a Tom DeLay and Why?
by Perry Mann
Hinton, WV (Special to HNN) - Donald Kaul is a witty, intelligent and knowledgeable columnist who retired from the Des Moines Register. But he didn't stay retired long. The reason he didn't I suspect is that he could not endure quietly George Bush and the neocons' upending and dumping the socially benevolent structures built by the New Deal and their committing other political and economic atrocities. So rather than rest on his laurels, he returned to the ring and has been delivering smart blows to the backsides of the conservatives since, much to my delight and edification.
In his article in the June 8, 2005 edition of "Liberal Opinion," he reveals how Republicans get elected and in the process speculates perspicaciously how come Republicans are Republicans. He sets forth four how-comes.
1. Kaul:"Some people are Republicans by birth, or habit or conversion. They identify with the GOP and simply cannot bring themselves to vote for a Democrat, no matter what."
Some voters are Republicans by birth because their genetic constitutions are lacking in those genes that endow their constitutions with empathy and imagination and that grant them the mental powers to discern that every person's acts and destiny are a product of nature and nurture and thus to some extent, if not completely, are determined and thus are to some extent society's faults or virtues. God may rule with a pair of dice. Accountability may be illusionary.
Some say my daddy was a Republican and so am I, by God. And some like the Dixiecrats convert to the GOP as soon as the Democrats exhibit by legislation---to wit: the civil rights act---a degree of empathy and imagination and compassion for the downtrodden.
2. Kaul: "Some people are rich. They don't need a safety net. They're attached to a bungee cord. They think that what's good for them is good for the country and they have their Mercedes to prove it."
They have wealth and they know the best way to keep and increase it is to vote Republican, because Republican politicians believe as they do that all their wealth is hard earned (always hard earned even if inherited), legally gotten and divinely approved and that no law or tax should impede further acquisitions. And they need not concern themselves that a Republican politician will ever propose a tax or vote for any bill that is designed to distribute equitably this nation's income. People who are poor are poor because they lack character and are lazy and indulgent.
3. Kaul: "Some people consider the wall between church and state an impediment to a moral society and see the Republican Party as a means to tear it down. They often are the some people who read the Bible mainly in order to memorize its prejudices."
The notion that morality resides only in churches, church members and the Bible and that morality descended from God only to prophets is a belief engendered by ignorance and perpetuated by indoctrination. There was morality here long before Christ and Christianity and long before Mohammed and Islam. The pagans read nature with perception and diligence and discovered long ago every moral concept since written in any religion. The ethics ascribed to the Roman and Greek thinkers, particularly, Socrates, attests gloriously thereto. Socrates and Christ could spend compatibly an evening together owing to their common moral natures.
Where does a homophobe go to find religious and divine support for his prejudice against homosexuals? Where else but Leviticus and Acts, particularly St. Paul's pronouncements thereon? Did anyone who turns to these scriptures for homophobic support ever consider that perhaps the author of these scriptures were homophobes and were doing nothing but expressing their prejudice and claiming it was God's? To believe in the inerrancy of the Bible is a moral and intellectual surrender, to which one becomes addicted in view of the alternative: sailing the seas of uncertainty with the goal to discover a port of secular speculation and understanding of why man in this vastness--- other than to eat, work, rest and procreate---exists. The easy way to certainty is the belief in inerrancy.
4. Kaul: "Some people are dumb as dirt. We have raised successive generations of Americans who are accustomed to getting their information from television, where there is none. Thus they are easy prey to cynical campaign tactics that unfairly demonize opponents and mask true intentions. "
There have always been dirt-dumb people. They were here before TV and they will be here after TV. They are dirt-dumb because they have no incentive to be other than dirt-dumb or the dicey powers of genes and environment have worked against them being other than dirt-dumb. And such ignorance is the greatest danger to democracy, because ignorance makes voters susceptible to demagoguery. Some people with a Ph.D. are dirt-dumb in some areas or appear to be. There is a Ph.D. who has a made a name for himself in the so-called science of Creationism. He teaches that the Great Deluge that floated Noah's Ark was responsible for all the geological layers, layers that reputable geologists and evolutionists believe took millions of years to deposit. And he teaches that the earth is 10,000 years old, a figure some 4 billion years short of the years evolutionists count.
These four how-comes explain the election and re-election and the advancement of Tom DeLay to the high office of House Majority leader and the election and re-election of George Bush. Many voted for them because they wouldn't think of voting for a Democrat. Many voted for them because
they are rich and they know that DeLay and Bush will do every thing they can to keep them rich. Many fundamentalists voted for them because they want to tear down the wall between church and state and they know in their hearts that DeLay and Bush want to tear it down also. And many voted for them because they are dirt-dumb, politically and often otherwise, and thus are easy prey to "cynical campaign tactics," a shameful expediency that Republicans, under the leadership of Karl Rove, have mastered and practiced without scruples.
History records the rot that sets in when a monarchy or a republic reaches the heights of its affluence, power, expansion and global hegemony. Any reading of America today confirms that historical rot has set in and that this country is on the downside of its rise and fall. A democracy that elevates men of the nature of DeLay and Bush arguably is in a state of decay.
Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting attorney of Summers County and a regular columnist for the Nicholas Chronicle in Summersville. Born in Charleston, W.Va. in 1921, he lives in Hinton. The portrait accompanying this column is by Robert Shetterley from his book
"Americans Who Tell The Truth."
http://www.huntingtonnews.net/editor/050629-mann-tomdelay.html
The secret world of Washington
The Capitol's grubby secret is the swarm of lobbyists in a sea of money, washing around the Congress and Senate. But one lobbyist may have just over-reached himself.
By Rupert Cornwell
30 June 2005
It all began in 2000 when the Mississippi band of Choctaw Indians, grown rich on the operations of casinos on their tribal land, decided they needed some allies in Washington to help protect their wealth from competitors. Not unreasonably, they chose to retain the services of Jack Abramoff, the king of Washington lobbyists. What happened next has become an American morality tale of our times.
Over the next two years, the Choctaws paid Mr Abramoff and his colleague Michael Scanlon some $15m (£8.3m). Alas, the esteem was not reciprocated. In a series of e-mails, the pair referred to the Choctaws and other Indian tribal clients as, among other things, "troglodytes" and "monkeys". Of that $15m, it is alleged, Mr Abramoff and Mr Scanlon channelled off up to $7m.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/features/story.jsp?story=650629
William Greene's angry and mobile rapid response machine
Greene, a protégé of the 'Godfather' of right wing direct mail, Richard Viguerie, is an Internet 'guru' whose star is rapidly rising
Shortly after the Senate reached its "compromise" -- avoiding a Republican-imposed "nuclear option" to end Democratic filibustering -- William Greene was angry, yet again. The right wing founder of RightMarch.com called on its "base of over one million conservative activists to take action against the Senate 'compromisers' who cut a bad deal."
When Terry Schiavo's parents needed fundraising firepower to keep their daughter's case afloat, they called on Greene. He is currently defending the embattled and ethically challenged House Majority Leader, Rep. Tom DeLay, as well as the beleaguered John Bolton, President Bush's nominee be the next US ambassador to the United Nations.
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=19288
'Maddog' Joining DeLay's Team
Kevin Madden, who was President Bush's campaign press secretary for the Northeast and Ohio and is now press secretary to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, is taking on one of the more formidable communications jobs in Washington.
On July 11, he will become communications director to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), who faces persistent questions about travel and campaign-finance issues.
DeLay also is outspoken on conservative causes and does much of the official speaking on the House Republican agenda, adding to his office's load.
Madden, 33, is known to friends as "Maddog." He graduated from State University of New York College at Cortland, where he played lacrosse, and worked for Rep. John E. Sweeney (R-N.Y.).
A source close to DeLay said: "Madden's aggressive work ethic is a good fit for the office and his optimistic, upbeat personality should inject a new energy."
Madden replaces Dan Allen, a former communications director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Allen joined the DeLay office in January and had his last day there on Friday. He is joining the Republican media firm of Scott Howell and Co. as vice president of political and corporate communication.
Staff writer Mike Allen contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/29/AR2005062902835.html
Is Cheney Lying, Or Does He Just Not Have The Facts?
By Jack Lepiarz
June 29, 2005
In a recent interview Dick Cheney said that the insurgency in Iraq, which has tormented the U.S. for the past two years, is now in its "last throes." I.E., the insurgency won't last much longer. However, Donald Rumsfeld, said in his own interview on June 26th, that the "last throes" could last for up to twelve years, directly referencing Mr. Cheney's comments earlier.
Sounds like a discrepancy to me.
...I hate to do this, but I cannot help but be reminded of Vietnam. Now, I do not believe that Iraq is another Vietnam--yet. However, I draw striking resemblance between Mr. Cheney's remarks and the repeated assurances of the Johnson and Nixon Adminstrations that the VietCong were about to collapse. It was not until the Tet Offensive of 1969 that people finally began to realize how much the administrations had been lying to them.
So, is Cheney lying to us? Unfortunately, I cannot say an answer. I would say, given historical similarities and the statements of others that he is, but maybe he's not. Maybe we actually can get out of Iraq with a real "Mission Accomplished" (even though we never found the WMD's!). But I doubt it. My feeling is that this is another attempt by Mr. Cheney to keep public opinion for the war up, and try to keep those in Iraq that they will be able to go home soon.
http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/june/article468.html
Bush And Cheney Should Resign
http://www.watchblog.com/democrats/...
Bush And Cheney Should Resign Andre M. Hernandez June 29, 2005
Even the people who supported this corrupt administration have to admit that this has gone too far. The Downing Street Memos and the shocking revelations that have come out during the Haliburton Reconstruction Hearings have gone beyond the smoking gun needed to overhaul a system that has no fail safes to protect the American peoples interests. Bush and Cheney are two of the most corrupt leaders of this or any other nation in our history.
The Downing Street Memos prove that the Bush administration lied to us about WMDs and the attempt to secure Uranium from Africa by Saddam Hussein. The ice cream truck that the Pentagon called a mobile weapons lab was just an ice cream truck. The tubing that could be used to make WMDs was just tubing. Those of you who supported the Bush administration don’t seem to remember the lies that were told to get both parties to back this war.
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=6721
Wrong Click Publicises Workings of U.S. Korea Policy
A confidential report for the Korean Embassy in Washington on key players in the U.S.’ Korea policies is no longer so confidential after it was accidentally e-mailed to 800 subscribers of a daily political tip sheet containing news and gossip from around the country.
The report titled "Players in Korea Policy in Washington, D.C." is an analysis of the powers that make Korea policy in the U.S. administration and was supposed to be sent only to the Korean embassy.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200506/200506300020.html
VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Veep Throat
By Eric Mink
Of the Post-Dispatch
06/29/2005
Post-Dispatch Columnist Eric Mink
Dreaming of a Caribbean vacation? Consider a sunny little patch of America on the southeast coast of Cuba! Officially, she's the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, but you can call her Gitmo!
Visitors ("detainees," technically) are having the time of their lives at Gitmo, says Richard B. "Dick" Cheney, who, besides being vice president of the United States, recently appointed himself chief spokesman for the Guantanamo Bay Department of Travel and Tourism.
"They got a brand new facility down at Guantanamo," Cheney told CNN's Wolf Blitzer last Thursday. "We spent a lot of money to build it. They're very well-treated down there. They're living in the tropics. They're well fed. They've got everything they could possibly want."
I kind of wish the ever-dizzy Blitzer had asked a couple of follow-ups: "Everything they could possibly want, Mr. Vice President? Like a fair and impartial process to see if they even belong there? Like freedom and reunion with their families, if they don't? Like not being stripped naked, smeared with fake menstrual blood, urinated on, chained to the floor and worse?"
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/columnists.nsf/ericmink/story/C2E1A3A1510709A78625702F0032274D?OpenDocument
Who Performed Military Service
Democrats
David Bonior: Staff Sgt., Air Force 1968-72
Leonard Boswell: Lt. Col., Army 1956-76; Vietnam, DFCs, etc
Jimmy Carter: Lt. Commander in the Navy 1946-53
Wesley Clark: Army 1966-2000, Vietnam, Silver star, purple heart
Max Cleland: Captain, Army 1965-68; Silver/Bronze stars, Vietnam
Bill Clinton: Did not serve
Tom Daschle: 1st Lt., Air Force SAC 1969-72
Gray Davis: Army Captain in Vietnam, Bronze star
Michael Dukakis: Army 1955-57
John Edwards: Did not serve
Richard Gephardt: Air National Guard, 1965-71
John Glenn: WWII and Korea; six DFCs; Air Medal w/18 Clusters
Al Gore: enlisted Aug. 1969; sent to Vietnam as journalist
Tom Harkin: Lt., Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74
Howell Heflin: Silver star
Fritz Hollings: Army officer in WWII; Bronze star
Daniel Inouye: Army 1943-47; Medal of Honor, WWII
Ted Kennedy: Army, 1951-53
Bob Kerrey: Lt. j.g. Navy 1966-69; Medal of Honor, Vietnam
John Kerry: Lt., Navy 1966-70; Silver/Bronze stars, purple hearts
Tom Lantos: Served in Hungarian underground in WWII
Jim McDermott: Navy 1968-70
George McGovern: Silver star & DFC during WWII
Zell Miller: Marine Corps, 1953-56
Walter Mondale: Army 1951-53
Pete Peterson: Air Force Captain, POW. Purple Heart, Silver star, etc
Charles Rangel: Staff Sgt., Army 1948-52; Bronze star, Korea
Jack Reed: Army Ranger, 1971-79; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91
Chuck Robb: U.S. Marine Corps, 1961-70, Vietnam
Pete stark: Air Force 1955-57
Mike Thompson: Staff sergeant, 173rd Airborne, Purple Heart
Republicans
Spencer Abraham: Did not serve
Eliot Abrams: Did not serve
Richard Armitage: Navy, three tours in Vietnam
John Ashcroft: Did not serve
Roy Blunt: Did not serve
Michael Bloomberg: Did not serve
George H.W. Bush: Youngest Navy pilot in WW II; awarded DFC
George W. Bush: Texas Air Nat. Guard; didn't take physical; suspended from flying
Jeb Bush: Did not serve
Saxby Chambliss: Did not serve. Attacked Cleland's patriotism
Dick Cheney: Did not serve
Christopher Cox: Did not serve
Tom DeLay: Did not serve
Bob Dole: Army in WWII, Bronze star, two purple hearts
Bob Dornan: Enlisted after fighting was over in Korea
John Engler: Did not serve
Douglas Feith: Did not serve
Gerald Ford: Lt. Commander, Navy in WWII
Bill Frist: Did not serve
Newt Gingrich: Did not serve
Rudy Giuliani: Did not serve
Lindsey Graham: National Guard lawyer
Phil Gramm: Did not serve
Chuck Hagel: Served in Vietnam, two Bronze stars and purple heart
Dennis Hastert: Did not serve
Tim Hutchison: Did not serve
Jack Kemp: Did not serve. "Knee problem," continued in NFL for 8 years
Jon Kyl: Did not serve
Trent Lott: Did not serve
Richard Lugar: Intelligence officer in Navy 1957-60
John McCain: POW in Vietnam, Legion of Merit, Silver star, DFC, many more
Mitch McConnell: Did not serve
John McHugh: Did not serve
George Pataki: Did not serve
Richard Perle: Did not serve
Colin Powell: 35 years in Army, 4-star general
Dan Quayle: Journalism unit of the Indiana National Guard
Ronald Reagan: Served in WWII making movies
Tom Ridge: Army in Vietnam, Bronze star
Dana Rohrabacher: Did not serve
Karl Rove: Did not serve
Don Rumsfeld: served in Navy (1954-57) as flight instructor
Rick Santorum: Did not serve
Arnold Schwarzenegger: AWOL from Austrian army base
Richard Shelby: Did not serve
JC Watts: Did not serve
Vin Weber: Did not serve
Paul Wolfowitz: Did not serve
Recent Supreme Court rulings unsettling for DeLay, Cornyn
Republicans hope to keep a closer watch on judicial branch
By SAMANTHA LEVINE
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - Several recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court have brought renewed criticism against the federal judiciary from some of Texas' leading Republicans in Congress.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, of Sugar Land, and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn railed against the high court's 5-4 ruling last week giving government authorities the right to seize and transfer private property for public use projects.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3245257
DeLay inquiry set to move; GOP ethics chairman backs down
John Byrne
The Republican Chairman of the House Ethics Committee has retreated on a bid to have his chief of staff become co-director for the Committee, paving the way for ethics investigations of House members, including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), RAW STORY has learned.
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/DeLay_inquiry_set_to_move_Chairman_of_Ethics_committee_backs_0629.html
Connelly: METRO's version of Pimp My Ride
Rich Connelly writes the following in the latest issue of the Houston Press:
Metro has famously made some "adjustments" to the $2 billion transportation plan approved by voters in 2003. Basically, areas of town represented by influential Congressmen Tom DeLay and John Culberson, both former rail opponents, will now be getting rail; minority communities promised rail will be getting...buses tricked out to look like trains. It's like the most expensive episode ever of Pimp My Ride. Immediately after the plan was announced, the Houston Chronicle dispatched a staffer to Las Vegas to report that people there really, really love their fake-train buses, so who knows why the minority community here is complaining?
Mayor White's announcement of his new transit plan strongly implied that Reps. DeLay and Culberson had endorsed it, even though DeLay's press office had little to say about the plan and Culberson has since issued two statements denying that he endorsed the plan or helped to design it.
http://www.bloghouston.net/item/1442/catid/8
Senate gives approval to energy measure
Conservation emphasized more than in House bill
By H. JOSEF HEBERT
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The Senate approved an energy bill Tuesday that was more favorable to conservation, wind farms and ethanol and less kind to oil and gas producers than legislation passed by the House.
RESOURCES
Graphic: House, Senate Energy Plans
Whether the sharp differences can be resolved may depend on how much pressure President Bush can bring to bear. The president urged the lawmakers to resolve their differences quickly and send him a bill before August.
Hard bargaining lies ahead, especially with a pesky issue surrounding the gasoline additive MTBE remaining a potential deal breaker — as it was two years ago.
The House, particularly Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Sugar Land, wants to protect oil companies and refiners who produced MTBE from environmental lawsuits brought by communities whose drinking water has been contaminated by the additive. DeLay said an attempt is being made to "come up with a solution" to the MTBE issue but gave no details.
Supporters of the Senate bill, which has broad bipartisan backing and is silent on MTBE, say such liability protection would send the bill to defeat. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said the House needs to work out a compromise on MTBE that can pass Senate muster.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/energy/3245480
Bass responds to ad, touts own MtBE cleanup plan
By JOHN DiSTASO
Senior Political Reporter
Rep. Charles Bass was one of two U.S. House members targeted for criticism in an environmental group's ad campaign yesterday for supporting a liability waiver for oil companies that produced the gasoline additive MtBE.
The New Hampshire Republican said the full-page ad in the New Hampshire Union Leader and other newspapers linking Bass to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, misrepresents his position. The ad was paid for by the Friends of the Earth.
http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showfast.html?article=56964
Russian Journal Daily
Chinese leader: Bilateral cooperation on the up
June 30, 2005 Posted: 20:54 Moscow time (16:54 GMT)
MOSCOW — Russia and China are increasing their cooperation every year, Chinese President Hu Jintao said Thursday at a meeting with the chairman of parliament's upper chamber. Bilateral cooperation is especially active in the trade and economic sphere and in the energy sector, said Sergei Mironov, the Speaker of Russia's Federation Council.
http://www.russiajournal.com/news/cnews-article.shtml?nd=48436
Russia, China to sign agreement on status of forces in July
June 29, 2005 Posted: 18:40 Moscow time (14:40 GMT)
See Also:
MOSCOW — Russia and China will sign an unprecedented agreement on the status of forces involved in a joint military exercise, Cooperation-2005, in late July, the Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday.
http://www.russiajournal.com/news/cnews-article.shtml?nd=48432
China, Russia to increase trade turnover
June 16, 2005 Posted: 12:19 Moscow time (08:19 GMT)
See Also:
BEIJING — Russia and China are not satisfied with the current trade turnover and structure. Speaking in the airport of Beijing on Thursday, Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the Russian parliament's lower chamber, said, "I do not think that our countries are satisfied with the volume we have reached today, $21 billion or with the structure of the trade."
http://www.russiajournal.com/news/cnews-article.shtml?nd=48360
Putin ratifies agreement on Russian-Chinese border
WORLD/CIS » :: Jun 01, 2005 Posted: 23:13 Moscow time (19:13 GMT)
MOSCOW — President of Russia Vladimir Putin has signed the federal law on ratification of the supplementary agreement between Russia and China on the Russian-Chinese state border in the east, the press service of the Russian President has informed. The law was adopted by the State Duma on May 20, 2005, and ratified by the Federation Council on May 25.
The chiefs of the two states signed the agreement in October 2004. The agreement specifies the border along two stretches in the Chita and Khabarovsk regions. The report of the Russian government says that the agreement finally settles border and territorial disputes between the countries, and is meant to facilitate intensification of strategic partnership and further development of near-border regions of the Russian Far East. China ratified the agreement in April 2005. /RosBusinessConsulting/
http://www.russiajournal.com/news/cnewswire.shtml?nw=48269
U.S. congressman Hyde against Russia's expulsion from G8
June 01, 2005 Posted: 23:10 Moscow time (19:10 GMT)
Hot Topics:
MOSCOW — U.S. congressman Henry J. Hyde does not back proposals to expel Russia from G8 in connection with the nine-year sentence to former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky. I do not share the opinion that Russia should be expelled from G8, Hyde, the chairman of the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives of the U.S. Congress, said on Wednesday.
http://www.russiajournal.com/news/cnews-article.shtml?nd=48268
Russia, India, Brazil, China to compete with Western nations in hi-tech
June 30, 2005 Posted: 21:07 Moscow time (17:07 GMT)
See Also:
MOSCOW — Russia, India, Brazil, and China will be able to compete with industrialized nations in five years with developing innovations, Ernst & Young Global experts say.
The intellectual level of specialists in these countries is the key factor in attracting investors to Western Europe, but the market in Central and Eastern European countries has transformed from cheap homemade products to a market with vast potential, according to James S. Turley, Managing Partner of Ernst & Young.
http://www.russiajournal.com/news/cnews-article.shtml?nd=48442
continued ...
Search for missing flood pair called off
By Jano Gibson, Harriet Alexander and AAP
June 30, 2005 - 6:11PM
A search for a young Gold Coast couple missing after their stranded car was swept away by floodwater has been called off for the night.
The couple - a 25-year-old man and a 21-year-old woman - were travelling in a Toyota LandCruiser ute.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/flood-pair-missing-after-phone-plea-cut-out/2005/06/30/1119724728081.html
Women bought for $18,000, sex-slave trial hears
By Malcolm Brown
June 30, 2005 - 1:37PM
The operators of an Australian sex-slave racket bought women from Thailand and other countries for $18,000 each, a court heard today.
The four accused - Danny Kwok, Hosea Yoe, Jenny Ong and her son Raymond Tan - allegedly conspired to bring eight women from Thailand and Indonesia to Australia as sex slaves.
The women were all of legal age, the NSW Distraict Court was told.
``The girls who were recruited were placed in circumstances of what might be described as debt bondage,'' prosecutor Robert Sutherland said.
The racket was uncovered in 2003 after three women escaped from a home unit in Auburn.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/women-bought-for-18000-sexslave-trial-hears/2005/06/30/1119724737520.html
Big wet forces thousands to flee
By Stephen Gibbs, Matthew Thompson and AAP
July 1, 2005
Lismore will be declared a natural disaster zone today but its new levee, finished only a month ago, has prevented the Wilsons River filling the main streets of the flood-prone city.
By last night about 3000 residents and 60 businesses had been told to evacuate.
A young couple were believed swept away on the Gold Coast as up to half a metre of rain turned roads into rivers, stranding motorists and flooding cars and homes.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/big-wet-forces-thousands-to-flee/2005/06/30/1119724757181.html
The New York Times
Several Squatters Die as Zimbabwe Police Destroy Camp
By MICHAEL WINES
Published: July 1, 2005
JOHANNESBURG, June 30 - The Zimbabwe police finished demolishing a squatter camp outside Harare that once had at least 10,000 residents on Thursday, killing as many as four people, a day after a United Nations envoy met with President Robert G. Mugabe to discuss the refugee crisis that similar mass evictions have set off.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/01/international/africa/01zimbabwe.html?hp
Rove wants to set up a 'barrier' to stonewall any conclusion by investigators. Evidently, Judith Miller is the only person 'principled' enough to do exactly that. Rove knew where to hit now didn't he?
Top Editor at Time Inc. Made a Difficult Decision His Own
By LORNE MANLY and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: July 1, 2005
In the months leading up to the decisive court rulings this week on whether Time Inc. had to turn over documents to a grand jury, its editor in chief, Norman Pearlstine, pored over histories of how other editors, publishers and public officials had handled cases where the ultimate law of the land went against them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/01/politics/01comply.html?hp&ex=1120276800&en=6f7f3888a2680124&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Senate Approves Central American Free Trade Pact
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Published: July 1, 2005
WASHINGTON, June 30 - After a bitter and prolonged battle over the promises and perils of foreign trade, the Senate voted on Thursday to approve the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
The vote of 54 to 45, which came after weeks of efforts to placate angry sugar producers and other interest groups, was a major victory for President Bush at a time when Republicans and Democrats alike have been alarmed about soaring imports from low-cost countries.
The vote set the stage for an even more difficult fight in the House, where opposition to the trade pact is strong among lawmakers from textile regions in the South, manufacturing states in the Midwest and sugar- producing areas
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/01/politics/01trade.html?hp&ex=1120276800&en=6dfa955be55d9cfe&ei=5094&partner=homepage
War of Words
By BROOKE SHIELDS
Published: July 1, 2005
London
I WAS hoping it wouldn't come to this, but after Tom Cruise's interview with Matt Lauer on the NBC show "Today" last week, I feel compelled to speak not just for myself but also for the hundreds of thousands of women who have suffered from postpartum depression. While Mr. Cruise says that Mr. Lauer and I do not "understand the history of psychiatry," I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Mr. Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/01/opinion/01shields.html?hp
The Mao Myth Thrives, but Don't Mention Its Dark Side
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
Published: July 1, 2005
YENAN, China - Horribly outnumbered, poorly armed and constantly under attack, 80,000 Communist fighters set out on foot from a base in China's southeastern Jiangxi Province in October 1934 hoping above all to avoid getting wiped out by their Nationalist enemies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/01/international/asia/01yenan.html?hp
Chosun
U.S. Anti-Terror Steps Raise Concerns for N.K. Progress
There was concern Wednesday over diplomatic efforts to get North Korea to return to six-party talks on its nuclear program when the U.S. adopted anti-terror measures that specifically target North Korean companies that it says are involved in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The executive order by President George W. Bush empowers authorities to seize the U.S. assets of companies suspected of aiding and abetting WMD proliferation and targets three North Korean companies -- Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation, Tanchon Commercial Bank and the Korea Ryonbong General Corporation. A Congress report puts the U.S. assets of the three companies at a total of US$32 million. The measure also targets five Iranian and Syrian companies.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200506/200506300035.html
Civic Group Releases Dozens of Nude Soldier Photos
A human rights group on Wednesday released dozens of nude photos of young conscripts, keeping the spotlight for a second week on brutal hazing practices in the Korean military. The military has explained similar pictures made public last week as horseplay, but the new images suggest the practice of forcing conscripts to strip as a form of humiliation is widespread.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200506/200506290008.html
Wrong Click Publicises Workings of U.S. Korea Policy
A confidential report for the Korean Embassy in Washington on key players in the U.S.’ Korea policies is no longer so confidential after it was accidentally e-mailed to 800 subscribers of a daily political tip sheet containing news and gossip from around the country.
The report titled "Players in Korea Policy in Washington, D.C." is an analysis of the powers that make Korea policy in the U.S. administration and was supposed to be sent only to the Korean embassy.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200506/200506300020.html
Korean Air Becomes World’s Busiest Cargo Carrier
Korean Air has become the world’s busiest air cargo transporter thanks to soaring exports of electronics and IT products, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said Thursday.
In its report on global airlines’ performance in cargo transport in 2004, the body said Korean Air took the lead with 8.164 billion ton.km, a 20.1 percent increase from the previous year. Ton,km, the unit for cargo traffic performance, is calculated by multiplying volume of cargo traffic by flight distance.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200506/200506300028.html
Korea's Economy Is Losing Its Hold
China No Promised Land for Korean Textile Firms
Chinese Workers Slam Koreans
Korean textile businesses that moved to China to survive in the face of spiraling costs at home are closing down, having been defeated in competition with their local counterparts. Ten out of 16 firms that settled in Qingdao, Shandong Province, it is said, have already shut down or moved on to Southeast Asia where wages are lower.
The technological gap in the textile industry between Korea and China has all but gone, and that means Chinese companies are pouring cheaper products into our country. One report has it that every six or seven out of 10 items of clothing sold here are Chinese. The Korean textile industry is being overwhelmed by our giant neighbor.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200506/200506300046.html
Whale’ Blows USFK Escape-from-Korea Drill
Busan-Fukuoka Ferry in Whale Alert
An unidentified object presumed to be a whale scuppered a simulated escape from the peninsula by the U.S. Forces in Korea in April when it collided with the ferry they were using for the drill and forced it to return to Busan Port, it was revealed Thursday.
The USFK said 32 American troops and their families were aboard the 267-ton ferryboat Kobee 5 that left Busan for Fukuoka, Japan on April 29 but turned back following a collision with an unidentified object. The personnel were training for an evacuation in the event of a war on the Korean Peninsula.
"The non-combatants repatriation training is conducted regularly twice a year anywhere U.S. troops and civilians are stationed using ships or aircraft," the USFK said.
Americans aboard the ferry included women and children, none of whom were injured in the collision.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200506/200506300037.html
The Cheney Observer
This chronic stump speech is to stimulate "The Base" so they don't loose them. It's got nothing to do with addressing THE NATION. Bush and the Repuglicans when they 'pull this stuff' could not care less about what The Nation wants or wants to hear. Bush HAS to keep his marginal support center stage in order to maintain the voter base. The saddest aspect to this is that many military families including those he visits fine merits in the Iraqi conflict because their loved ones died there for a noble cause. Bush and 'his media' then turns around and USES those families to promote the politics. Bush's presidency is only possible because of the margins he finds and builds, now main stream America. That is why the federal government is a mess. The margins of this society have been that because they are the extremes and not the 'happy' median.
A record of deception
By Scot Lehigh July 1, 2005
HERE'S THE question President Bush's Tuesday address to the nation raises.
Having framed the Iraq war in a dishonest way, can the president really expect the informed public to believe his presentation about how the stabilization effort is going?
Certainly Bush's speech started on a highly deceptive note, portraying the grinding conflict in Iraq as a necessary response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/07/01/a_record_of_deception/
Cheney defends CAFTA agreement
By Jim Monk, WDAY Radio
Published Thursday, June 30, 2005
Vice President Dick Cheney is defending the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
In an exclusive interview on WDAY's HotTalk Thursday morning, Cheney said the Bush Administration is "very sensitive" to the concerns of the sugar industry.
Cheney says CAFTA will have no adverse effect on sugar growers and says he fails to see why the sugar industry would oppose the bill.
http://www.in-forum.com/articles/index.cfm?id=96423§ion=News
Most in poll call Gov. Bush's motive political
Mirroring national polls that suggest uneasiness with intervention in the Terri Schiavo case, voters in Florida overwhelmingly oppose Gov. Jeb Bush's request for an investigation in the case, a poll showed.
BY LESLEY CLARK
lclark@herald.com
Florida voters are convinced Gov. Jeb Bush is intervening in the Terri Schiavo case for political reasons and disapprove by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, according to a new poll that nevertheless shows the Republican governor's popularity is largely untouched.
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/12029125.htm
President Bush's brother Jeb Bush in serious trouble
Published on 30 June 2005 Source: TNC Release
President George Bush’s brother, Jeb Bush, is in serious trouble while hundreds of US hospitals fight bankruptcy.
Jeb Bush`s smile will soon vanish! (©2005 State of Florida)
The President's brother is in serious trouble. It has been discovered that Florida's Medicaid Program has been defrauding the federal government for over 30 years with their Medicaid Program. 100% of the federal funding Florida received under Medicaid since 1974 has been illegal as Florida's State Created Medicaid Forms and Applications have never complied with federal law.
HHS in Washington sent Florida three written Directives instructing them to check all the state's Medicaid forms & applications to make sure they complied with federal disclosure laws and if not to immediately modify all forms to be in compliance.
http://www.newcriminologist.co.uk/news.asp?id=-660038393
Jilted
The Bush brothers kick Katherine Harris to the curb.
By Brian Montopoli
Posted Thursday, June 30, 2005, at 2:16 PM PT
Don't leave me this way
Odds are that you haven't thought about Katherine Harris for a while. When she was Florida secretary of state in 2000, of course, Harris' maneuvering helped George W. Bush carry Florida, and with it the presidency. For her role in the election, she was skewered as nakedly partisan and parodied on Saturday Night Live as an ambitious harpy caked in enough makeup to embarrass a drag queen. But Harris took her lumps, expecting the Republican Party to eventually repay her for her efforts. Instead, the president and his brother Jeb are now trying to sink her.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2121746/
DeLay Commends Treasury Dept. on TRIA Report; House Will Review Treasury's Recommendations
6/30/2005 3:44:00 PM
To: National Desk
Contact: Shannon Flaherty of the Office of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, 202-225-4000
WASHINGTON, June 30 /U.S. Newswire/ -- House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) today commended the Treasury Department for completing its review of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) and submitting its recommendation that TRIA not be extended in its current form. The Treasury Department's report states that extending TRIA will have little impact on the economy and may hinder the development of the post 9/11 insurance market.
"As Congress begins its debate on the future of terrorism insurance, it's imperative that we remember TRIA was intended to be a temporary program. Any solution must depend on the ingenuity of the private insurance markets and not the involvement of the federal government as a re-insurer or permanent backstop," DeLay said. "I'm confident that Chairman Oxley and his committee will thoroughly review this study, and I look forward to addressing this issue in the House."
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=49768
China to fill its strategic petroleum reserve from 4th Quarter
China will start filling its strategic petroleum reserve from the fourth quarter this year, said Zhang Guobao, deputy director of China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) in New Orleans, the United States on June 28, 2005, according to report by Xinhuanet.
http://english.people.com.cn/200506/30/eng20050630_193355.html
The trend of China's petroleum consumption
Last Updated(Beijing Time):2005-07-01 13:59
By Chen Geng
With the recovery of the world economy and the acceleration of the globalization process, as well as the rapid development of China's national economy and the ever-greater openness of the Chinese market, the macro-economic situations in and out of China have been taking place profound changes.
From the perspective of the situation of the domestic economic development, China is now at the development stage, when its degrees of industrialization, urbanization, marketization and internationalization grow incessantly, and the contradiction of resources constraints gradually emerged and will loom larger and larger with the ever-growing economy scale and resources consumption.
Currently and for some time in future, China's petroleum security is facing and will continue to face relatively grim situation. There are in general five basic judgments as follows:
http://en.ce.cn/Insight/200507/01/t20050701_4104015.shtml
MANN TALK: Who Elects a Tom DeLay and Why?
by Perry Mann
Hinton, WV (Special to HNN) - Donald Kaul is a witty, intelligent and knowledgeable columnist who retired from the Des Moines Register. But he didn't stay retired long. The reason he didn't I suspect is that he could not endure quietly George Bush and the neocons' upending and dumping the socially benevolent structures built by the New Deal and their committing other political and economic atrocities. So rather than rest on his laurels, he returned to the ring and has been delivering smart blows to the backsides of the conservatives since, much to my delight and edification.
In his article in the June 8, 2005 edition of "Liberal Opinion," he reveals how Republicans get elected and in the process speculates perspicaciously how come Republicans are Republicans. He sets forth four how-comes.
1. Kaul:"Some people are Republicans by birth, or habit or conversion. They identify with the GOP and simply cannot bring themselves to vote for a Democrat, no matter what."
Some voters are Republicans by birth because their genetic constitutions are lacking in those genes that endow their constitutions with empathy and imagination and that grant them the mental powers to discern that every person's acts and destiny are a product of nature and nurture and thus to some extent, if not completely, are determined and thus are to some extent society's faults or virtues. God may rule with a pair of dice. Accountability may be illusionary.
Some say my daddy was a Republican and so am I, by God. And some like the Dixiecrats convert to the GOP as soon as the Democrats exhibit by legislation---to wit: the civil rights act---a degree of empathy and imagination and compassion for the downtrodden.
2. Kaul: "Some people are rich. They don't need a safety net. They're attached to a bungee cord. They think that what's good for them is good for the country and they have their Mercedes to prove it."
They have wealth and they know the best way to keep and increase it is to vote Republican, because Republican politicians believe as they do that all their wealth is hard earned (always hard earned even if inherited), legally gotten and divinely approved and that no law or tax should impede further acquisitions. And they need not concern themselves that a Republican politician will ever propose a tax or vote for any bill that is designed to distribute equitably this nation's income. People who are poor are poor because they lack character and are lazy and indulgent.
3. Kaul: "Some people consider the wall between church and state an impediment to a moral society and see the Republican Party as a means to tear it down. They often are the some people who read the Bible mainly in order to memorize its prejudices."
The notion that morality resides only in churches, church members and the Bible and that morality descended from God only to prophets is a belief engendered by ignorance and perpetuated by indoctrination. There was morality here long before Christ and Christianity and long before Mohammed and Islam. The pagans read nature with perception and diligence and discovered long ago every moral concept since written in any religion. The ethics ascribed to the Roman and Greek thinkers, particularly, Socrates, attests gloriously thereto. Socrates and Christ could spend compatibly an evening together owing to their common moral natures.
Where does a homophobe go to find religious and divine support for his prejudice against homosexuals? Where else but Leviticus and Acts, particularly St. Paul's pronouncements thereon? Did anyone who turns to these scriptures for homophobic support ever consider that perhaps the author of these scriptures were homophobes and were doing nothing but expressing their prejudice and claiming it was God's? To believe in the inerrancy of the Bible is a moral and intellectual surrender, to which one becomes addicted in view of the alternative: sailing the seas of uncertainty with the goal to discover a port of secular speculation and understanding of why man in this vastness--- other than to eat, work, rest and procreate---exists. The easy way to certainty is the belief in inerrancy.
4. Kaul: "Some people are dumb as dirt. We have raised successive generations of Americans who are accustomed to getting their information from television, where there is none. Thus they are easy prey to cynical campaign tactics that unfairly demonize opponents and mask true intentions. "
There have always been dirt-dumb people. They were here before TV and they will be here after TV. They are dirt-dumb because they have no incentive to be other than dirt-dumb or the dicey powers of genes and environment have worked against them being other than dirt-dumb. And such ignorance is the greatest danger to democracy, because ignorance makes voters susceptible to demagoguery. Some people with a Ph.D. are dirt-dumb in some areas or appear to be. There is a Ph.D. who has a made a name for himself in the so-called science of Creationism. He teaches that the Great Deluge that floated Noah's Ark was responsible for all the geological layers, layers that reputable geologists and evolutionists believe took millions of years to deposit. And he teaches that the earth is 10,000 years old, a figure some 4 billion years short of the years evolutionists count.
These four how-comes explain the election and re-election and the advancement of Tom DeLay to the high office of House Majority leader and the election and re-election of George Bush. Many voted for them because they wouldn't think of voting for a Democrat. Many voted for them because
they are rich and they know that DeLay and Bush will do every thing they can to keep them rich. Many fundamentalists voted for them because they want to tear down the wall between church and state and they know in their hearts that DeLay and Bush want to tear it down also. And many voted for them because they are dirt-dumb, politically and often otherwise, and thus are easy prey to "cynical campaign tactics," a shameful expediency that Republicans, under the leadership of Karl Rove, have mastered and practiced without scruples.
History records the rot that sets in when a monarchy or a republic reaches the heights of its affluence, power, expansion and global hegemony. Any reading of America today confirms that historical rot has set in and that this country is on the downside of its rise and fall. A democracy that elevates men of the nature of DeLay and Bush arguably is in a state of decay.
Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting attorney of Summers County and a regular columnist for the Nicholas Chronicle in Summersville. Born in Charleston, W.Va. in 1921, he lives in Hinton. The portrait accompanying this column is by Robert Shetterley from his book
"Americans Who Tell The Truth."
http://www.huntingtonnews.net/editor/050629-mann-tomdelay.html
The secret world of Washington
The Capitol's grubby secret is the swarm of lobbyists in a sea of money, washing around the Congress and Senate. But one lobbyist may have just over-reached himself.
By Rupert Cornwell
30 June 2005
It all began in 2000 when the Mississippi band of Choctaw Indians, grown rich on the operations of casinos on their tribal land, decided they needed some allies in Washington to help protect their wealth from competitors. Not unreasonably, they chose to retain the services of Jack Abramoff, the king of Washington lobbyists. What happened next has become an American morality tale of our times.
Over the next two years, the Choctaws paid Mr Abramoff and his colleague Michael Scanlon some $15m (£8.3m). Alas, the esteem was not reciprocated. In a series of e-mails, the pair referred to the Choctaws and other Indian tribal clients as, among other things, "troglodytes" and "monkeys". Of that $15m, it is alleged, Mr Abramoff and Mr Scanlon channelled off up to $7m.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/features/story.jsp?story=650629
William Greene's angry and mobile rapid response machine
Greene, a protégé of the 'Godfather' of right wing direct mail, Richard Viguerie, is an Internet 'guru' whose star is rapidly rising
Shortly after the Senate reached its "compromise" -- avoiding a Republican-imposed "nuclear option" to end Democratic filibustering -- William Greene was angry, yet again. The right wing founder of RightMarch.com called on its "base of over one million conservative activists to take action against the Senate 'compromisers' who cut a bad deal."
When Terry Schiavo's parents needed fundraising firepower to keep their daughter's case afloat, they called on Greene. He is currently defending the embattled and ethically challenged House Majority Leader, Rep. Tom DeLay, as well as the beleaguered John Bolton, President Bush's nominee be the next US ambassador to the United Nations.
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=19288
'Maddog' Joining DeLay's Team
Kevin Madden, who was President Bush's campaign press secretary for the Northeast and Ohio and is now press secretary to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, is taking on one of the more formidable communications jobs in Washington.
On July 11, he will become communications director to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), who faces persistent questions about travel and campaign-finance issues.
DeLay also is outspoken on conservative causes and does much of the official speaking on the House Republican agenda, adding to his office's load.
Madden, 33, is known to friends as "Maddog." He graduated from State University of New York College at Cortland, where he played lacrosse, and worked for Rep. John E. Sweeney (R-N.Y.).
A source close to DeLay said: "Madden's aggressive work ethic is a good fit for the office and his optimistic, upbeat personality should inject a new energy."
Madden replaces Dan Allen, a former communications director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Allen joined the DeLay office in January and had his last day there on Friday. He is joining the Republican media firm of Scott Howell and Co. as vice president of political and corporate communication.
Staff writer Mike Allen contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/29/AR2005062902835.html
Is Cheney Lying, Or Does He Just Not Have The Facts?
By Jack Lepiarz
June 29, 2005
In a recent interview Dick Cheney said that the insurgency in Iraq, which has tormented the U.S. for the past two years, is now in its "last throes." I.E., the insurgency won't last much longer. However, Donald Rumsfeld, said in his own interview on June 26th, that the "last throes" could last for up to twelve years, directly referencing Mr. Cheney's comments earlier.
Sounds like a discrepancy to me.
...I hate to do this, but I cannot help but be reminded of Vietnam. Now, I do not believe that Iraq is another Vietnam--yet. However, I draw striking resemblance between Mr. Cheney's remarks and the repeated assurances of the Johnson and Nixon Adminstrations that the VietCong were about to collapse. It was not until the Tet Offensive of 1969 that people finally began to realize how much the administrations had been lying to them.
So, is Cheney lying to us? Unfortunately, I cannot say an answer. I would say, given historical similarities and the statements of others that he is, but maybe he's not. Maybe we actually can get out of Iraq with a real "Mission Accomplished" (even though we never found the WMD's!). But I doubt it. My feeling is that this is another attempt by Mr. Cheney to keep public opinion for the war up, and try to keep those in Iraq that they will be able to go home soon.
http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/june/article468.html
Bush And Cheney Should Resign
http://www.watchblog.com/democrats/...
Bush And Cheney Should Resign Andre M. Hernandez June 29, 2005
Even the people who supported this corrupt administration have to admit that this has gone too far. The Downing Street Memos and the shocking revelations that have come out during the Haliburton Reconstruction Hearings have gone beyond the smoking gun needed to overhaul a system that has no fail safes to protect the American peoples interests. Bush and Cheney are two of the most corrupt leaders of this or any other nation in our history.
The Downing Street Memos prove that the Bush administration lied to us about WMDs and the attempt to secure Uranium from Africa by Saddam Hussein. The ice cream truck that the Pentagon called a mobile weapons lab was just an ice cream truck. The tubing that could be used to make WMDs was just tubing. Those of you who supported the Bush administration don’t seem to remember the lies that were told to get both parties to back this war.
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=6721
Wrong Click Publicises Workings of U.S. Korea Policy
A confidential report for the Korean Embassy in Washington on key players in the U.S.’ Korea policies is no longer so confidential after it was accidentally e-mailed to 800 subscribers of a daily political tip sheet containing news and gossip from around the country.
The report titled "Players in Korea Policy in Washington, D.C." is an analysis of the powers that make Korea policy in the U.S. administration and was supposed to be sent only to the Korean embassy.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200506/200506300020.html
VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Veep Throat
By Eric Mink
Of the Post-Dispatch
06/29/2005
Post-Dispatch Columnist Eric Mink
Dreaming of a Caribbean vacation? Consider a sunny little patch of America on the southeast coast of Cuba! Officially, she's the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, but you can call her Gitmo!
Visitors ("detainees," technically) are having the time of their lives at Gitmo, says Richard B. "Dick" Cheney, who, besides being vice president of the United States, recently appointed himself chief spokesman for the Guantanamo Bay Department of Travel and Tourism.
"They got a brand new facility down at Guantanamo," Cheney told CNN's Wolf Blitzer last Thursday. "We spent a lot of money to build it. They're very well-treated down there. They're living in the tropics. They're well fed. They've got everything they could possibly want."
I kind of wish the ever-dizzy Blitzer had asked a couple of follow-ups: "Everything they could possibly want, Mr. Vice President? Like a fair and impartial process to see if they even belong there? Like freedom and reunion with their families, if they don't? Like not being stripped naked, smeared with fake menstrual blood, urinated on, chained to the floor and worse?"
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/columnists.nsf/ericmink/story/C2E1A3A1510709A78625702F0032274D?OpenDocument
Who Performed Military Service
Democrats
David Bonior: Staff Sgt., Air Force 1968-72
Leonard Boswell: Lt. Col., Army 1956-76; Vietnam, DFCs, etc
Jimmy Carter: Lt. Commander in the Navy 1946-53
Wesley Clark: Army 1966-2000, Vietnam, Silver star, purple heart
Max Cleland: Captain, Army 1965-68; Silver/Bronze stars, Vietnam
Bill Clinton: Did not serve
Tom Daschle: 1st Lt., Air Force SAC 1969-72
Gray Davis: Army Captain in Vietnam, Bronze star
Michael Dukakis: Army 1955-57
John Edwards: Did not serve
Richard Gephardt: Air National Guard, 1965-71
John Glenn: WWII and Korea; six DFCs; Air Medal w/18 Clusters
Al Gore: enlisted Aug. 1969; sent to Vietnam as journalist
Tom Harkin: Lt., Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74
Howell Heflin: Silver star
Fritz Hollings: Army officer in WWII; Bronze star
Daniel Inouye: Army 1943-47; Medal of Honor, WWII
Ted Kennedy: Army, 1951-53
Bob Kerrey: Lt. j.g. Navy 1966-69; Medal of Honor, Vietnam
John Kerry: Lt., Navy 1966-70; Silver/Bronze stars, purple hearts
Tom Lantos: Served in Hungarian underground in WWII
Jim McDermott: Navy 1968-70
George McGovern: Silver star & DFC during WWII
Zell Miller: Marine Corps, 1953-56
Walter Mondale: Army 1951-53
Pete Peterson: Air Force Captain, POW. Purple Heart, Silver star, etc
Charles Rangel: Staff Sgt., Army 1948-52; Bronze star, Korea
Jack Reed: Army Ranger, 1971-79; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91
Chuck Robb: U.S. Marine Corps, 1961-70, Vietnam
Pete stark: Air Force 1955-57
Mike Thompson: Staff sergeant, 173rd Airborne, Purple Heart
Republicans
Spencer Abraham: Did not serve
Eliot Abrams: Did not serve
Richard Armitage: Navy, three tours in Vietnam
John Ashcroft: Did not serve
Roy Blunt: Did not serve
Michael Bloomberg: Did not serve
George H.W. Bush: Youngest Navy pilot in WW II; awarded DFC
George W. Bush: Texas Air Nat. Guard; didn't take physical; suspended from flying
Jeb Bush: Did not serve
Saxby Chambliss: Did not serve. Attacked Cleland's patriotism
Dick Cheney: Did not serve
Christopher Cox: Did not serve
Tom DeLay: Did not serve
Bob Dole: Army in WWII, Bronze star, two purple hearts
Bob Dornan: Enlisted after fighting was over in Korea
John Engler: Did not serve
Douglas Feith: Did not serve
Gerald Ford: Lt. Commander, Navy in WWII
Bill Frist: Did not serve
Newt Gingrich: Did not serve
Rudy Giuliani: Did not serve
Lindsey Graham: National Guard lawyer
Phil Gramm: Did not serve
Chuck Hagel: Served in Vietnam, two Bronze stars and purple heart
Dennis Hastert: Did not serve
Tim Hutchison: Did not serve
Jack Kemp: Did not serve. "Knee problem," continued in NFL for 8 years
Jon Kyl: Did not serve
Trent Lott: Did not serve
Richard Lugar: Intelligence officer in Navy 1957-60
John McCain: POW in Vietnam, Legion of Merit, Silver star, DFC, many more
Mitch McConnell: Did not serve
John McHugh: Did not serve
George Pataki: Did not serve
Richard Perle: Did not serve
Colin Powell: 35 years in Army, 4-star general
Dan Quayle: Journalism unit of the Indiana National Guard
Ronald Reagan: Served in WWII making movies
Tom Ridge: Army in Vietnam, Bronze star
Dana Rohrabacher: Did not serve
Karl Rove: Did not serve
Don Rumsfeld: served in Navy (1954-57) as flight instructor
Rick Santorum: Did not serve
Arnold Schwarzenegger: AWOL from Austrian army base
Richard Shelby: Did not serve
JC Watts: Did not serve
Vin Weber: Did not serve
Paul Wolfowitz: Did not serve
Recent Supreme Court rulings unsettling for DeLay, Cornyn
Republicans hope to keep a closer watch on judicial branch
By SAMANTHA LEVINE
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - Several recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court have brought renewed criticism against the federal judiciary from some of Texas' leading Republicans in Congress.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, of Sugar Land, and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn railed against the high court's 5-4 ruling last week giving government authorities the right to seize and transfer private property for public use projects.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3245257
DeLay inquiry set to move; GOP ethics chairman backs down
John Byrne
The Republican Chairman of the House Ethics Committee has retreated on a bid to have his chief of staff become co-director for the Committee, paving the way for ethics investigations of House members, including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), RAW STORY has learned.
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/DeLay_inquiry_set_to_move_Chairman_of_Ethics_committee_backs_0629.html
Connelly: METRO's version of Pimp My Ride
Rich Connelly writes the following in the latest issue of the Houston Press:
Metro has famously made some "adjustments" to the $2 billion transportation plan approved by voters in 2003. Basically, areas of town represented by influential Congressmen Tom DeLay and John Culberson, both former rail opponents, will now be getting rail; minority communities promised rail will be getting...buses tricked out to look like trains. It's like the most expensive episode ever of Pimp My Ride. Immediately after the plan was announced, the Houston Chronicle dispatched a staffer to Las Vegas to report that people there really, really love their fake-train buses, so who knows why the minority community here is complaining?
Mayor White's announcement of his new transit plan strongly implied that Reps. DeLay and Culberson had endorsed it, even though DeLay's press office had little to say about the plan and Culberson has since issued two statements denying that he endorsed the plan or helped to design it.
http://www.bloghouston.net/item/1442/catid/8
Senate gives approval to energy measure
Conservation emphasized more than in House bill
By H. JOSEF HEBERT
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The Senate approved an energy bill Tuesday that was more favorable to conservation, wind farms and ethanol and less kind to oil and gas producers than legislation passed by the House.
RESOURCES
Graphic: House, Senate Energy Plans
Whether the sharp differences can be resolved may depend on how much pressure President Bush can bring to bear. The president urged the lawmakers to resolve their differences quickly and send him a bill before August.
Hard bargaining lies ahead, especially with a pesky issue surrounding the gasoline additive MTBE remaining a potential deal breaker — as it was two years ago.
The House, particularly Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Sugar Land, wants to protect oil companies and refiners who produced MTBE from environmental lawsuits brought by communities whose drinking water has been contaminated by the additive. DeLay said an attempt is being made to "come up with a solution" to the MTBE issue but gave no details.
Supporters of the Senate bill, which has broad bipartisan backing and is silent on MTBE, say such liability protection would send the bill to defeat. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said the House needs to work out a compromise on MTBE that can pass Senate muster.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/energy/3245480
Bass responds to ad, touts own MtBE cleanup plan
By JOHN DiSTASO
Senior Political Reporter
Rep. Charles Bass was one of two U.S. House members targeted for criticism in an environmental group's ad campaign yesterday for supporting a liability waiver for oil companies that produced the gasoline additive MtBE.
The New Hampshire Republican said the full-page ad in the New Hampshire Union Leader and other newspapers linking Bass to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, misrepresents his position. The ad was paid for by the Friends of the Earth.
http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showfast.html?article=56964
Russian Journal Daily
Chinese leader: Bilateral cooperation on the up
June 30, 2005 Posted: 20:54 Moscow time (16:54 GMT)
MOSCOW — Russia and China are increasing their cooperation every year, Chinese President Hu Jintao said Thursday at a meeting with the chairman of parliament's upper chamber. Bilateral cooperation is especially active in the trade and economic sphere and in the energy sector, said Sergei Mironov, the Speaker of Russia's Federation Council.
http://www.russiajournal.com/news/cnews-article.shtml?nd=48436
Russia, China to sign agreement on status of forces in July
June 29, 2005 Posted: 18:40 Moscow time (14:40 GMT)
See Also:
MOSCOW — Russia and China will sign an unprecedented agreement on the status of forces involved in a joint military exercise, Cooperation-2005, in late July, the Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday.
http://www.russiajournal.com/news/cnews-article.shtml?nd=48432
China, Russia to increase trade turnover
June 16, 2005 Posted: 12:19 Moscow time (08:19 GMT)
See Also:
BEIJING — Russia and China are not satisfied with the current trade turnover and structure. Speaking in the airport of Beijing on Thursday, Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the Russian parliament's lower chamber, said, "I do not think that our countries are satisfied with the volume we have reached today, $21 billion or with the structure of the trade."
http://www.russiajournal.com/news/cnews-article.shtml?nd=48360
Putin ratifies agreement on Russian-Chinese border
WORLD/CIS » :: Jun 01, 2005 Posted: 23:13 Moscow time (19:13 GMT)
MOSCOW — President of Russia Vladimir Putin has signed the federal law on ratification of the supplementary agreement between Russia and China on the Russian-Chinese state border in the east, the press service of the Russian President has informed. The law was adopted by the State Duma on May 20, 2005, and ratified by the Federation Council on May 25.
The chiefs of the two states signed the agreement in October 2004. The agreement specifies the border along two stretches in the Chita and Khabarovsk regions. The report of the Russian government says that the agreement finally settles border and territorial disputes between the countries, and is meant to facilitate intensification of strategic partnership and further development of near-border regions of the Russian Far East. China ratified the agreement in April 2005. /RosBusinessConsulting/
http://www.russiajournal.com/news/cnewswire.shtml?nw=48269
U.S. congressman Hyde against Russia's expulsion from G8
June 01, 2005 Posted: 23:10 Moscow time (19:10 GMT)
Hot Topics:
MOSCOW — U.S. congressman Henry J. Hyde does not back proposals to expel Russia from G8 in connection with the nine-year sentence to former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky. I do not share the opinion that Russia should be expelled from G8, Hyde, the chairman of the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives of the U.S. Congress, said on Wednesday.
http://www.russiajournal.com/news/cnews-article.shtml?nd=48268
Russia, India, Brazil, China to compete with Western nations in hi-tech
June 30, 2005 Posted: 21:07 Moscow time (17:07 GMT)
See Also:
MOSCOW — Russia, India, Brazil, and China will be able to compete with industrialized nations in five years with developing innovations, Ernst & Young Global experts say.
The intellectual level of specialists in these countries is the key factor in attracting investors to Western Europe, but the market in Central and Eastern European countries has transformed from cheap homemade products to a market with vast potential, according to James S. Turley, Managing Partner of Ernst & Young.
http://www.russiajournal.com/news/cnews-article.shtml?nd=48442
continued ...
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Morning Papers Today and Tomorrow - continued . . .
Journalism at Risk
Reporter shot to death in Iraq
By Tom Lasseter / Knight Ridder
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Yasser Salihee, an Iraqi special correspondent for Knight Ridder, was shot to death in Baghdad last Friday.
The shot appears to have been fired by a U.S. military sniper, though there were Iraqi soldiers in the area who also may have been shooting at the time.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3174
Reporters ordered to answer questions:-
WASHINGTON June 30, 2005 12:11:20 AM IST
Four reporters have been ordered to answer questions about their sources regarding an investigation of former U.S. nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee.
http://news.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=92710&cat=World
US Calls for Release of Jailed Iranian Journalist
By David Gollust
State Department
29 June 2005
Akbar Ganji (File photo)
The United States Wednesday called for the immediate release of Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji, imprisoned since 2000 after reporting on alleged government involvement in extra-judicial killings. Mr. Ganji is reported to be in poor health.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-06-29-voa77.cfm
Journalists to be jailed next week, judge warns
Unless they comply with a court order and disclose who passed along CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to them, Matt Cooper and Judith Miller can expect to go to jail and Time magazine can expect a substantial daily fine after a final hearing next Wednesday, Judge Thomas Hogan ruled today.
June 29, 2005 · Saying "there are no other avenues left," U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan on Wednesday told The New York Times' Judith Miller and Time's Matthew Cooper that they should be prepared to go to jail next Wednesday if they do not reveal their confidential sources to a grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA operative's identity.
http://www.rcfp.org/news/2005/0629-con-journa.html
Three jailed journalists on hunger-strike
Reporters Without Borders expressed great concern today at the plight of three imprisoned independent journalists - Mario Enrique Mayo, Adolfo Fernández Sainz and Ivan Hernández Carillo - who have been on hunger-strike for the past 10 days in the town of Holguin (eastern Cuba). They are demanding proper food and medicine for prisoners who have serious illnesses.
"Most jailed independent journalists in Cuba, especially Mayo, are being held in bad conditions that gravely endanger their lives," it said. "Their transfer to prisons hundreds of kilometres from their families exposes them even more to illness and lack of food." It called for the release for "humanitarian reasons" of Mayo and other journalists who were ill
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=7844
Three journalists jailed in the capital but not in...
Kufuor
Source: CPJ Posted: Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Since the abolition of Criminal Libel from Ghana's Criminal Code in 2001, freedom of expression, whether in the media or in private, cannot be criminalized by any court.
Ghana is therefore enjoying a surfeit of media pluralism that is unparalleled. However, in other parts of Africa and the world criminal libel is still alive and wreaking havoc.
Below is an alert from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) a New York-based, independent, nonprofit organization that works to safeguard press freedom worldwide, on some of the happenings elsewhere on the African continent, reminiscent of the PNDC/NDC days in Ghana
http://www.accra-mail.com/mailnews.asp?id=13316
US court shuns reporters' appeal
The two reporters face up to 18 months in jail for contempt of court
The US Supreme Court has refused to take up the case of two journalists who would not reveal their sources in a leak probe involving a CIA agent.
Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time face up to 18 months in jail for contempt of court.
The two journalists, their employers and rights groups said they were dismayed by the court's decision.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4629615.stm
The Belfast Telegraph
US in new push to restore devolution
Bush and Rice in Ulster offer
By Noel McAdam
30 June 2005
President George Bush and US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice are ready to become directly involved in renewed efforts to restore devolution.
Secretary of State Peter Hain also said there was no difference between the British, Irish and American governments over expectations of the IRA's expected statement.
With Taoiseach Bertie Ahern saying he anticipates the statement by August, unionists have made clear the Provisionals must come up with actions other than words alone and not only decommission all their weapons but end recruitment and training, intelligence gathering and targeting and involvement in all violence and expulsions.
Concluding a four-day stateside visit Mr Hain said Dr Rice had in particular "made a direct offer of personal engagement by her and by the President".
"The American administration is very engaged in what we are doing in Northern Ireland and are very interested."
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=650580
Seventeen rural police stations are set to close
By Jonathan McCambridge
30 June 2005
The Chief Constable was set to recommend today that 17 rural police stations should close as the latest stage of an ongoing review of PSNI bases.
Most of the bases affected are in Fermanagh and several already operate on a part-time basis.
Sir Hugh Orde is expected to make the recommendations, which have angered unionist politicians, at a private session of the Policing Board today.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=650587
'A few brave souls'
Bridgeen pays her tribute to those who helped murder inquiry
By Marie Foy
30 June 2005
The partner of murder victim Robert McCartney has spoken of the "few brave souls" who have come forward to help police track down his killers.
Bridgeen Hagans also poignantly renewed her appeal for help in the family's quest for justice.
Ms Hagans touchingly said that the knife which was driven deep into Mr McCartney had "severed much more than the artery to his heart".
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=650537
Poverty strategy 'fails to deliver'
Group's concern at lack of budget
By Marie Foy
30 June 2005
An anti-poverty lobby group yesterday hit out at a new Government strategy document aimed at tackling the problem because it does not include a budget.
The group spoke out after the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister Anti-Poverty Unit issued its second development strategy paper, called the NEW TSN.
But according to the Northern Ireland Anti-Poverty Network (NIAPN), the document includes no budget and sets no targets.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=650538
Globalising the debate on poverty
Eamonn McCann
30 June 2005
"We believe that people intent on violence should stay away from Gleneagles. If they don't, they should be ejected by whatever means are necessary."
The message comes on the Globalise Resistance website, setting out the clear distinction between those who believe that the G8 leaders are potential saviours of Africa, and those who believe that they are among the main villains of the piece.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/features/story.jsp?story=650546
Give students fair deal at tribunals
30 June 2005
Your editorial of May 31 called for more transparency in the workings of the University of Ulster.
I hope you meant this plea to be applied to disciplinary tribunals adjudicating on 20-year-old students, which appear to be lacking in fair play.
I hear of the atmosphere of: "You are guilty, prove your innocence" - no presumption of innocence - judgment by a number of adult academics versus a 20-year-old accompanied by another 20-year-old with no experience - the sudden adjournment of the appeal when the 20-year-old has collected four witnesses to prove his innocence, no legal representation allowed - no relatives or members of the public admitted - suspension before appeals are heard. It reminds me of the Whitelaw tribunals of 1973.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/letters/story.jsp?story=650552
St. Louis Post Dispatch
CRIMINAL JUSTICE: Prosecutors: Pay them or lose them
By JENNIFER M. JOYCE
06/28/2005
Your mother, your sister, your aunt or daughter. Any of them could have fallen prey to Bobby Collins Jr. But thanks to a seasoned prosecutor in our office, Catherine Crowley, he never will violate another woman.
In July 2002, Collins was arrested on circumstantial evidence for stealing a woman's purse. On a hunch, Crowley asked police to do a DNA test on a ski mask found among Collins' possessions. The DNA recovered from the ski mask linked Collins to a vicious rape in St. Louis and implicated him in another rape in Colorado.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/editorialcommentary/story/360F50869BBCCDEA8625702E00324B6F?OpenDocument
Boeing names 3M chief as its CEO
By Tim McLaughlin
Of the Post-Dispatch
06/30/2005
James McNerney
Boeing Co. named James McNerney Jr. as the new leader of the aerospace and defense giant Thursday, picking the 3M Co. chief over two senior Boeing executives in a move that could be disruptive if they decide to leave the company's largest divisions.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/stories.nsf/story/20C3F4C04A36DE0086257030004340C5?OpenDocument
Praxair finds no asbestos in air
By David Hunn
Of the Post-Dispatch
06/29/2005
Officials said Wednesday that the people of Lafayette Square can breathe easier.
Test results released by industrial gas company Praxair found no asbestos in the air around the historic homes in the St. Louis neighborhood, company officials said late Wednesday afternoon.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/107FC5C5BE9468AF86257030001191F1?OpenDocument
CHINA: Hands off the oil
06/30/2005
IF THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT offered to buy Boeing's fighter-jet plant in north St. Louis County, they would be told, in the ever-so-polite language of diplomacy, to buzz off. Military superiority is vital to America's national security. It's simply not for sale.
That's just the response America should give to China's $18.5 billion bid for the Unocal Corp., the big California oil firm. America imports about 60 percent of its oil. Without it, the U.S. economy would freeze up. Access to energy is vital to our economic security. It shouldn't be for sale to the Chinese.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/editorialcommentary/story/D219366D0D7E78DD86257030003225A7?OpenDocument
Michael Moore Today
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
Partners In Crime?;
Secret air campaign against Iraq?
Downing Street memo, other documents may show war really started earlier than March 2003.
By Tom Regan / Christian Science Monitor
Most American media have focused on the allegations from the Downing Street memo that the Bush administration was going to "fix" the intelligence in order to justify the war against Iraq. Now the reporter who broke the original story says they have missed a more substantial allegation to arise from the same set of leaked documents.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3173
Downing Street memo, other documents may show Iraq war really started before Congress approved military action
US finds 16 dead from Afghan crash, others missing
By David Brunnstrom 1 hour, 44 minutes ago
KABUL (Reuters) - U.S. forces have recovered the bodies of 16 American troops from a helicopter shot down in
Afghanistan but some ground troops were unaccounted for, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
The casualties, during a battle with al Qaeda militants in mountainous Kunar province bordering Pakistan, were the heaviest for U.S. forces in a combat incident in Afghanistan since they invaded and overthrew the Taliban in 2001.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050630/ts_nm/afghan_dc_16
Iraq: 8,000 killed in 6 months
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Insurgent attacks in the last six months have killed more than 8,000 Iraqi civilians, police and troops, according to Iraq's interior minister.
Meanwhile Thursday, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said the Iraqi insurgency had probably reached its "high water mark" over the past 12 months.
In an interview with CNN, Iraqi Interior Minister Baqir Jabbur said "terrorists" had killed 8,175 people and wounded another 12,000 since January 2005.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3171
Honor fallen soldiers by ending Iraq war
By Celeste Zappala / Philadelphia Inquirer
This July Fourth weekend, amid the raucous celebration of visitors, concerts, and fireworks, a profoundly quiet event will take place outside Philadelphia's Independence Visitor Center.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3168
Backing for Bush on Iraq is gone, local veterans say
Michael Mayo / South Florida Sun-Sentinal
HOLLYWOOD · The televisions at VFW Post 2500 in Hollywood were tuned to President Bush on Tuesday, but his words weren't getting rapt attention.
About 30 people were around the bar drinking, chatting, smoking as the president talked. "Does it have to be so loud?" asked Barbara Flint as she sat next to Jerry Giblock, a visiting Vietnam veteran.
"He's running scared," said Giblock, 63, a former Post 2500 member who lives in Anchorage, Ala. "His poll numbers are so low, he's got to say something, but the support is gone. It's gone. I don't think there's anybody in here who's behind him."
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3166
Taking the Fight to Karl
http://takeittokarl.blogspot.com/
TAKING THE FIGHT TO KARL (ROVE).
The New Zealand Herald
Thousands evacuated as floods hit NSW
30.06.05 4.00pm
Thousands of residents have been evacuated from their northern NSW homes as emergency crews brace for further flooding when rivers hit their peak later today.
The State Emergency Service (SES) has ordered residents to evacuate north and south Lismore, and has also told business owners and residents to leave the CBD.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10333553
Two feared dead in Gold Coast floods
A woman rushes through a lunchtime downpour in Sydney yesterday. Picture / Reuters
01.07.05
By Greg Ansley
Two people are feared dead after thousands of people were evacuated from their homes as torrential rain flooded southern Queensland and northern New South Wales yesterday.
Record downfalls were dumped on a country still gripped by the worst drought in a century.
The two people feared dead are thought to have been swept from one of dozens of cars trapped by rapidly rising rivers, and the Gold Coast was paralysed as water ran waist-deep through some of its densest shopping precincts.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10333618
Flood-ravaged town 'will be hit again'
A house destroyed in Matata in May's flood. Picture / Rotorua Daily Post
30.06.05 10.05pm
By Juliet Rowan
Geological experts have found that some parts of flood-hit Matata are unsafe to live in because of the danger of further landslides.
Areas of the Bay of Plenty town are at risk from "debris flows" - flood waters churned up with silt, sand and rubble to the consistency of wet concrete and able to carry huge boulders, they said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10333426
Woman and child missing on Ninety Mile Beach
01.07.05 9.00am
A woman and a seven-year-old girl are missing on Ninety Mile Beach after their car apparently ran out of fuel late last night.
Police said two cars were being driven on the beach last night when one ran short of fuel and headed back.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10333681
Fed raises US rates for ninth time in row
01.07.05 9.00am
WASHINGTON - The Federal Reserve raised key US interest rates a quarter-percentage point this morning for a ninth straight time and gave no sign a year-long campaign of increases was nearing an end.
The US central bank's policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee unanimously voted to lift the benchmark federal funds rate -- charged on overnight loans between banks and intended to influence credit costs throughout the economy -- to 3.25 per cent, as economists had expected.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=3&ObjectID=10333679
Woman had 'hots for me' says pack-rape accused
29.06.05 1.00pm
A man accused of pack-raping a woman at Mount Maunganui 16 years ago, said today he was flattered that she "had the hots" for him.
The 47-year-old is the second of four men accused of raping a 20-year-old woman in January 1989 to give evidence in a trial before the High Court at Wellington.
The identity of the accused and many elements of the case are suppressed.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10333338
Wrongful Australian detention report leaked
29.06.05 1.25pm
CANBERRA - Christine Rau today demanded to see a full copy of the report into her sister's wrongful detention after scathing extracts were published today.
In leaked extracts published in The Australian, inquiry head and former federal police commissioner Mick Palmer said Cornelia Rau spent five weeks in Baxter detention centre before being assessed by a psychiatrist even though she arrived there in a distressed and confused state.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10333350
Taiwan trader buys $359m in shares by mistake
29.06.05
TAIPEI - A Taiwan stock trader mistakenly bought $T7.9 billion ($NZ359 million) worth of shares with a mis-stroke of her computer.
The trader with Fubon Securities mis-keyed in a small order from Merrill Lynch on Monday, creating confusion when many small firms inexplicably surged the 7 percent trading limit.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10333245
Michael Richardson: Asia heads for over-fishing crisis as demand just keeps growing
28.06.05
When Taiwan's Government sent two navy frigates last week into an area of the East China Sea disputed with Japan and China, it was intending to make political points at home and abroad.
But the intent was not just to defend Taipeh's claim to sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands north of Taiwan, known in Japan as the Senkaku, it was also to protect the rights of Taiwanese fishermen who had complained of harassment from Japanese patrol boats.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=466&ObjectID=10332968
Sex slaves recruited to Australia, court told
01.07.05 6.20am
Southeast Asian women were recruited and placed under contract bondage in Australia to service up to 900 clients each in the sex industry, a court has been told.
Danny Kwok, Hosea Yoe, Jenny Ong and her son Raymond Tan are standing trial in the New South Wales District Court for allegedly conspiring to bring eight women from Thailand and Indonesia to Australia as sex slaves.
The women were all of legal age.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10333609
CIA agents more 'Austin than 007'
01.07.05
WASHINGTON - CIA agents charged with kidnapping a Muslim cleric in Milan appear to have bungled their way into an international incident by ignoring the most basic rules of the spy trade, experts say.
Far from the suave discretion of James Bond, experts say the operatives who snatched radical Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr on February 17, 2003, sound more like the bumbling secret agent Austin Powers.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10333611
Old rockers anchor Live 8 line-up
Organiser Bob Geldof hopes Live8 will pressure rich countries at this month's G8 summit to alleviate Africa's poverty. Picture / Reuters
01.07.05
Wrinkly rockers never die, they just do charity gigs.
Teenage pop fans hoping to hail their heroes at Sunday's Live 8 concerts are in for a rude awakening when headline acts hit the stage.
It is more likely to be their parents singing along to veteran rock stars who wrote the soundtrack to their lives all those years ago.
Irish rocker Bob Geldof, whose aim is to pressure rich countries to alleviate poverty in Africa at July's G8 summit of Western industrialised nations, has his sights set high and makes no apology for the acts.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10333569
Africans in the dark about Bob's big gigs
Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour will be the face of Africa at Live 8. Picture / Reuters
01.07.05
It's after midnight and Youssou N'Dour has just walked into his studio in Senegal's capital Dakar. He takes the microphone and the haunting tones of the man who will be the main face of Africa at Live 8 fill the room.
"The very fact of announcing Live 8 ... has pushed people to take decisions, but we want more," the Senegalese music icon said in a break between recordings.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10333567
Arroyo's scandal-prone husband to leave Philippines
Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo
30.06.05
By Manny Mogato
MANILA - Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo moved dramatically to reduce pressure on her government from graft allegations, saying her scandal-prone husband had agreed to leave the country.
She did not say how long her husband would remain abroad, but analysts doubted whether the move would protect her from further attacks and noted that it could be seen as a sign of growing weakness, or desperation.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10333455
Problems in pipeline for Russia's oil dream
01.07.05
MOSCOW - Russia's plan to build an oil pipeline to the Pacific, equivalent to adding another Libya to the world oil market, risks foundering over money, politics, the environment and the question of where the oil will come from.
The US$11.5 billion plan, mooted four years ago by the Russian pipeline monopoly Transneft, promises Russia its biggest economic fillip since a financial meltdown in 1998.
At 4130km, almost as long as Chile, the pipeline, if it goes ahead, will pump 80 million tonnes of oil a year (1.6 million barrels a day) to the Pacific, where growing Chinese demand is gobbling up more and more of the oil shipped to the region.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10333592
continued . . .
Reporter shot to death in Iraq
By Tom Lasseter / Knight Ridder
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Yasser Salihee, an Iraqi special correspondent for Knight Ridder, was shot to death in Baghdad last Friday.
The shot appears to have been fired by a U.S. military sniper, though there were Iraqi soldiers in the area who also may have been shooting at the time.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3174
Reporters ordered to answer questions:-
WASHINGTON June 30, 2005 12:11:20 AM IST
Four reporters have been ordered to answer questions about their sources regarding an investigation of former U.S. nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee.
http://news.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=92710&cat=World
US Calls for Release of Jailed Iranian Journalist
By David Gollust
State Department
29 June 2005
Akbar Ganji (File photo)
The United States Wednesday called for the immediate release of Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji, imprisoned since 2000 after reporting on alleged government involvement in extra-judicial killings. Mr. Ganji is reported to be in poor health.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-06-29-voa77.cfm
Journalists to be jailed next week, judge warns
Unless they comply with a court order and disclose who passed along CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to them, Matt Cooper and Judith Miller can expect to go to jail and Time magazine can expect a substantial daily fine after a final hearing next Wednesday, Judge Thomas Hogan ruled today.
June 29, 2005 · Saying "there are no other avenues left," U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan on Wednesday told The New York Times' Judith Miller and Time's Matthew Cooper that they should be prepared to go to jail next Wednesday if they do not reveal their confidential sources to a grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA operative's identity.
http://www.rcfp.org/news/2005/0629-con-journa.html
Three jailed journalists on hunger-strike
Reporters Without Borders expressed great concern today at the plight of three imprisoned independent journalists - Mario Enrique Mayo, Adolfo Fernández Sainz and Ivan Hernández Carillo - who have been on hunger-strike for the past 10 days in the town of Holguin (eastern Cuba). They are demanding proper food and medicine for prisoners who have serious illnesses.
"Most jailed independent journalists in Cuba, especially Mayo, are being held in bad conditions that gravely endanger their lives," it said. "Their transfer to prisons hundreds of kilometres from their families exposes them even more to illness and lack of food." It called for the release for "humanitarian reasons" of Mayo and other journalists who were ill
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=7844
Three journalists jailed in the capital but not in...
Kufuor
Source: CPJ Posted: Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Since the abolition of Criminal Libel from Ghana's Criminal Code in 2001, freedom of expression, whether in the media or in private, cannot be criminalized by any court.
Ghana is therefore enjoying a surfeit of media pluralism that is unparalleled. However, in other parts of Africa and the world criminal libel is still alive and wreaking havoc.
Below is an alert from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) a New York-based, independent, nonprofit organization that works to safeguard press freedom worldwide, on some of the happenings elsewhere on the African continent, reminiscent of the PNDC/NDC days in Ghana
http://www.accra-mail.com/mailnews.asp?id=13316
US court shuns reporters' appeal
The two reporters face up to 18 months in jail for contempt of court
The US Supreme Court has refused to take up the case of two journalists who would not reveal their sources in a leak probe involving a CIA agent.
Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time face up to 18 months in jail for contempt of court.
The two journalists, their employers and rights groups said they were dismayed by the court's decision.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4629615.stm
The Belfast Telegraph
US in new push to restore devolution
Bush and Rice in Ulster offer
By Noel McAdam
30 June 2005
President George Bush and US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice are ready to become directly involved in renewed efforts to restore devolution.
Secretary of State Peter Hain also said there was no difference between the British, Irish and American governments over expectations of the IRA's expected statement.
With Taoiseach Bertie Ahern saying he anticipates the statement by August, unionists have made clear the Provisionals must come up with actions other than words alone and not only decommission all their weapons but end recruitment and training, intelligence gathering and targeting and involvement in all violence and expulsions.
Concluding a four-day stateside visit Mr Hain said Dr Rice had in particular "made a direct offer of personal engagement by her and by the President".
"The American administration is very engaged in what we are doing in Northern Ireland and are very interested."
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=650580
Seventeen rural police stations are set to close
By Jonathan McCambridge
30 June 2005
The Chief Constable was set to recommend today that 17 rural police stations should close as the latest stage of an ongoing review of PSNI bases.
Most of the bases affected are in Fermanagh and several already operate on a part-time basis.
Sir Hugh Orde is expected to make the recommendations, which have angered unionist politicians, at a private session of the Policing Board today.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=650587
'A few brave souls'
Bridgeen pays her tribute to those who helped murder inquiry
By Marie Foy
30 June 2005
The partner of murder victim Robert McCartney has spoken of the "few brave souls" who have come forward to help police track down his killers.
Bridgeen Hagans also poignantly renewed her appeal for help in the family's quest for justice.
Ms Hagans touchingly said that the knife which was driven deep into Mr McCartney had "severed much more than the artery to his heart".
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=650537
Poverty strategy 'fails to deliver'
Group's concern at lack of budget
By Marie Foy
30 June 2005
An anti-poverty lobby group yesterday hit out at a new Government strategy document aimed at tackling the problem because it does not include a budget.
The group spoke out after the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister Anti-Poverty Unit issued its second development strategy paper, called the NEW TSN.
But according to the Northern Ireland Anti-Poverty Network (NIAPN), the document includes no budget and sets no targets.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=650538
Globalising the debate on poverty
Eamonn McCann
30 June 2005
"We believe that people intent on violence should stay away from Gleneagles. If they don't, they should be ejected by whatever means are necessary."
The message comes on the Globalise Resistance website, setting out the clear distinction between those who believe that the G8 leaders are potential saviours of Africa, and those who believe that they are among the main villains of the piece.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/features/story.jsp?story=650546
Give students fair deal at tribunals
30 June 2005
Your editorial of May 31 called for more transparency in the workings of the University of Ulster.
I hope you meant this plea to be applied to disciplinary tribunals adjudicating on 20-year-old students, which appear to be lacking in fair play.
I hear of the atmosphere of: "You are guilty, prove your innocence" - no presumption of innocence - judgment by a number of adult academics versus a 20-year-old accompanied by another 20-year-old with no experience - the sudden adjournment of the appeal when the 20-year-old has collected four witnesses to prove his innocence, no legal representation allowed - no relatives or members of the public admitted - suspension before appeals are heard. It reminds me of the Whitelaw tribunals of 1973.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/letters/story.jsp?story=650552
St. Louis Post Dispatch
CRIMINAL JUSTICE: Prosecutors: Pay them or lose them
By JENNIFER M. JOYCE
06/28/2005
Your mother, your sister, your aunt or daughter. Any of them could have fallen prey to Bobby Collins Jr. But thanks to a seasoned prosecutor in our office, Catherine Crowley, he never will violate another woman.
In July 2002, Collins was arrested on circumstantial evidence for stealing a woman's purse. On a hunch, Crowley asked police to do a DNA test on a ski mask found among Collins' possessions. The DNA recovered from the ski mask linked Collins to a vicious rape in St. Louis and implicated him in another rape in Colorado.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/editorialcommentary/story/360F50869BBCCDEA8625702E00324B6F?OpenDocument
Boeing names 3M chief as its CEO
By Tim McLaughlin
Of the Post-Dispatch
06/30/2005
James McNerney
Boeing Co. named James McNerney Jr. as the new leader of the aerospace and defense giant Thursday, picking the 3M Co. chief over two senior Boeing executives in a move that could be disruptive if they decide to leave the company's largest divisions.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/stories.nsf/story/20C3F4C04A36DE0086257030004340C5?OpenDocument
Praxair finds no asbestos in air
By David Hunn
Of the Post-Dispatch
06/29/2005
Officials said Wednesday that the people of Lafayette Square can breathe easier.
Test results released by industrial gas company Praxair found no asbestos in the air around the historic homes in the St. Louis neighborhood, company officials said late Wednesday afternoon.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/107FC5C5BE9468AF86257030001191F1?OpenDocument
CHINA: Hands off the oil
06/30/2005
IF THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT offered to buy Boeing's fighter-jet plant in north St. Louis County, they would be told, in the ever-so-polite language of diplomacy, to buzz off. Military superiority is vital to America's national security. It's simply not for sale.
That's just the response America should give to China's $18.5 billion bid for the Unocal Corp., the big California oil firm. America imports about 60 percent of its oil. Without it, the U.S. economy would freeze up. Access to energy is vital to our economic security. It shouldn't be for sale to the Chinese.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/editorialcommentary/story/D219366D0D7E78DD86257030003225A7?OpenDocument
Michael Moore Today
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
Partners In Crime?;
Secret air campaign against Iraq?
Downing Street memo, other documents may show war really started earlier than March 2003.
By Tom Regan / Christian Science Monitor
Most American media have focused on the allegations from the Downing Street memo that the Bush administration was going to "fix" the intelligence in order to justify the war against Iraq. Now the reporter who broke the original story says they have missed a more substantial allegation to arise from the same set of leaked documents.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3173
Downing Street memo, other documents may show Iraq war really started before Congress approved military action
US finds 16 dead from Afghan crash, others missing
By David Brunnstrom 1 hour, 44 minutes ago
KABUL (Reuters) - U.S. forces have recovered the bodies of 16 American troops from a helicopter shot down in
Afghanistan but some ground troops were unaccounted for, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
The casualties, during a battle with al Qaeda militants in mountainous Kunar province bordering Pakistan, were the heaviest for U.S. forces in a combat incident in Afghanistan since they invaded and overthrew the Taliban in 2001.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050630/ts_nm/afghan_dc_16
Iraq: 8,000 killed in 6 months
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Insurgent attacks in the last six months have killed more than 8,000 Iraqi civilians, police and troops, according to Iraq's interior minister.
Meanwhile Thursday, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said the Iraqi insurgency had probably reached its "high water mark" over the past 12 months.
In an interview with CNN, Iraqi Interior Minister Baqir Jabbur said "terrorists" had killed 8,175 people and wounded another 12,000 since January 2005.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3171
Honor fallen soldiers by ending Iraq war
By Celeste Zappala / Philadelphia Inquirer
This July Fourth weekend, amid the raucous celebration of visitors, concerts, and fireworks, a profoundly quiet event will take place outside Philadelphia's Independence Visitor Center.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3168
Backing for Bush on Iraq is gone, local veterans say
Michael Mayo / South Florida Sun-Sentinal
HOLLYWOOD · The televisions at VFW Post 2500 in Hollywood were tuned to President Bush on Tuesday, but his words weren't getting rapt attention.
About 30 people were around the bar drinking, chatting, smoking as the president talked. "Does it have to be so loud?" asked Barbara Flint as she sat next to Jerry Giblock, a visiting Vietnam veteran.
"He's running scared," said Giblock, 63, a former Post 2500 member who lives in Anchorage, Ala. "His poll numbers are so low, he's got to say something, but the support is gone. It's gone. I don't think there's anybody in here who's behind him."
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3166
Taking the Fight to Karl
http://takeittokarl.blogspot.com/
TAKING THE FIGHT TO KARL (ROVE).
The New Zealand Herald
Thousands evacuated as floods hit NSW
30.06.05 4.00pm
Thousands of residents have been evacuated from their northern NSW homes as emergency crews brace for further flooding when rivers hit their peak later today.
The State Emergency Service (SES) has ordered residents to evacuate north and south Lismore, and has also told business owners and residents to leave the CBD.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10333553
Two feared dead in Gold Coast floods
A woman rushes through a lunchtime downpour in Sydney yesterday. Picture / Reuters
01.07.05
By Greg Ansley
Two people are feared dead after thousands of people were evacuated from their homes as torrential rain flooded southern Queensland and northern New South Wales yesterday.
Record downfalls were dumped on a country still gripped by the worst drought in a century.
The two people feared dead are thought to have been swept from one of dozens of cars trapped by rapidly rising rivers, and the Gold Coast was paralysed as water ran waist-deep through some of its densest shopping precincts.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10333618
Flood-ravaged town 'will be hit again'
A house destroyed in Matata in May's flood. Picture / Rotorua Daily Post
30.06.05 10.05pm
By Juliet Rowan
Geological experts have found that some parts of flood-hit Matata are unsafe to live in because of the danger of further landslides.
Areas of the Bay of Plenty town are at risk from "debris flows" - flood waters churned up with silt, sand and rubble to the consistency of wet concrete and able to carry huge boulders, they said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10333426
Woman and child missing on Ninety Mile Beach
01.07.05 9.00am
A woman and a seven-year-old girl are missing on Ninety Mile Beach after their car apparently ran out of fuel late last night.
Police said two cars were being driven on the beach last night when one ran short of fuel and headed back.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10333681
Fed raises US rates for ninth time in row
01.07.05 9.00am
WASHINGTON - The Federal Reserve raised key US interest rates a quarter-percentage point this morning for a ninth straight time and gave no sign a year-long campaign of increases was nearing an end.
The US central bank's policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee unanimously voted to lift the benchmark federal funds rate -- charged on overnight loans between banks and intended to influence credit costs throughout the economy -- to 3.25 per cent, as economists had expected.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=3&ObjectID=10333679
Woman had 'hots for me' says pack-rape accused
29.06.05 1.00pm
A man accused of pack-raping a woman at Mount Maunganui 16 years ago, said today he was flattered that she "had the hots" for him.
The 47-year-old is the second of four men accused of raping a 20-year-old woman in January 1989 to give evidence in a trial before the High Court at Wellington.
The identity of the accused and many elements of the case are suppressed.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10333338
Wrongful Australian detention report leaked
29.06.05 1.25pm
CANBERRA - Christine Rau today demanded to see a full copy of the report into her sister's wrongful detention after scathing extracts were published today.
In leaked extracts published in The Australian, inquiry head and former federal police commissioner Mick Palmer said Cornelia Rau spent five weeks in Baxter detention centre before being assessed by a psychiatrist even though she arrived there in a distressed and confused state.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10333350
Taiwan trader buys $359m in shares by mistake
29.06.05
TAIPEI - A Taiwan stock trader mistakenly bought $T7.9 billion ($NZ359 million) worth of shares with a mis-stroke of her computer.
The trader with Fubon Securities mis-keyed in a small order from Merrill Lynch on Monday, creating confusion when many small firms inexplicably surged the 7 percent trading limit.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10333245
Michael Richardson: Asia heads for over-fishing crisis as demand just keeps growing
28.06.05
When Taiwan's Government sent two navy frigates last week into an area of the East China Sea disputed with Japan and China, it was intending to make political points at home and abroad.
But the intent was not just to defend Taipeh's claim to sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands north of Taiwan, known in Japan as the Senkaku, it was also to protect the rights of Taiwanese fishermen who had complained of harassment from Japanese patrol boats.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=466&ObjectID=10332968
Sex slaves recruited to Australia, court told
01.07.05 6.20am
Southeast Asian women were recruited and placed under contract bondage in Australia to service up to 900 clients each in the sex industry, a court has been told.
Danny Kwok, Hosea Yoe, Jenny Ong and her son Raymond Tan are standing trial in the New South Wales District Court for allegedly conspiring to bring eight women from Thailand and Indonesia to Australia as sex slaves.
The women were all of legal age.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10333609
CIA agents more 'Austin than 007'
01.07.05
WASHINGTON - CIA agents charged with kidnapping a Muslim cleric in Milan appear to have bungled their way into an international incident by ignoring the most basic rules of the spy trade, experts say.
Far from the suave discretion of James Bond, experts say the operatives who snatched radical Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr on February 17, 2003, sound more like the bumbling secret agent Austin Powers.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10333611
Old rockers anchor Live 8 line-up
Organiser Bob Geldof hopes Live8 will pressure rich countries at this month's G8 summit to alleviate Africa's poverty. Picture / Reuters
01.07.05
Wrinkly rockers never die, they just do charity gigs.
Teenage pop fans hoping to hail their heroes at Sunday's Live 8 concerts are in for a rude awakening when headline acts hit the stage.
It is more likely to be their parents singing along to veteran rock stars who wrote the soundtrack to their lives all those years ago.
Irish rocker Bob Geldof, whose aim is to pressure rich countries to alleviate poverty in Africa at July's G8 summit of Western industrialised nations, has his sights set high and makes no apology for the acts.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10333569
Africans in the dark about Bob's big gigs
Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour will be the face of Africa at Live 8. Picture / Reuters
01.07.05
It's after midnight and Youssou N'Dour has just walked into his studio in Senegal's capital Dakar. He takes the microphone and the haunting tones of the man who will be the main face of Africa at Live 8 fill the room.
"The very fact of announcing Live 8 ... has pushed people to take decisions, but we want more," the Senegalese music icon said in a break between recordings.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10333567
Arroyo's scandal-prone husband to leave Philippines
Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo
30.06.05
By Manny Mogato
MANILA - Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo moved dramatically to reduce pressure on her government from graft allegations, saying her scandal-prone husband had agreed to leave the country.
She did not say how long her husband would remain abroad, but analysts doubted whether the move would protect her from further attacks and noted that it could be seen as a sign of growing weakness, or desperation.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10333455
Problems in pipeline for Russia's oil dream
01.07.05
MOSCOW - Russia's plan to build an oil pipeline to the Pacific, equivalent to adding another Libya to the world oil market, risks foundering over money, politics, the environment and the question of where the oil will come from.
The US$11.5 billion plan, mooted four years ago by the Russian pipeline monopoly Transneft, promises Russia its biggest economic fillip since a financial meltdown in 1998.
At 4130km, almost as long as Chile, the pipeline, if it goes ahead, will pump 80 million tonnes of oil a year (1.6 million barrels a day) to the Pacific, where growing Chinese demand is gobbling up more and more of the oil shipped to the region.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10333592
continued . . .
June 25, 2005. The neighborhood these beautiful Bald Eagles and their juveniles live is Mount Illamna, Ninilchik, Alaska. This is recent activity of Mount Illamna main steam vent. It's an active volcano. That is the lake below and the near side of that lake is a man standing to the left corner. He is a citizen of a fishing village that was originally a Russian village.
June 25, 2005. The Bald Eagle became 'endangered' because it's young does not have the white neck and head the adult has yet their size is still nearly the same as the adult. They were frequently confused with hawks and shot for sport. This is an adult male and his offspring. They are feeding at the shoreline along with some gulls at Ninilchik, Alaska.
Morning Papers - concluded
The weather in Antarctica (Crystal ice Chime ) is:
A little on the warm side.
Scott Base
Overcast
-11.0°
Updated Thursday 30 Jun 2:59AM
Scott Base
Snow
-12.0°
Updated Thursday 30 Jun 8:59PM
The weather from Glacier Bay National Park (Crystal Wind Chime) is:
55 °F / 13 °C
Overcast
Humidity:
88%
Dew Point:
52 °F / 11 °C
Wind:
7 mph / 11 km/h from the NNW
Pressure:
29.87 in / 1011 hPa
Visibility:
10.0 miles / 16.1 kilometers
UV:
0 out of 16
Clouds (AGL):
Mostly Cloudy 200 ft / 60 m
Overcast 6000 ft / 1828 m
end
A little on the warm side.
Scott Base
Overcast
-11.0°
Updated Thursday 30 Jun 2:59AM
Scott Base
Snow
-12.0°
Updated Thursday 30 Jun 8:59PM
The weather from Glacier Bay National Park (Crystal Wind Chime) is:
55 °F / 13 °C
Overcast
Humidity:
88%
Dew Point:
52 °F / 11 °C
Wind:
7 mph / 11 km/h from the NNW
Pressure:
29.87 in / 1011 hPa
Visibility:
10.0 miles / 16.1 kilometers
UV:
0 out of 16
Clouds (AGL):
Mostly Cloudy 200 ft / 60 m
Overcast 6000 ft / 1828 m
end
June 29, 2005. Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. Photographer states: KING COUNTY CREEK, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. A Type 2 Incident Management team (Doty) is currently assigned. Canadian firefighters were airlifted into the fire zone 6/29/2005. This fire is approximately 10,000 acres and was started by lightning on Fish and Wildlife Service land 13 miles southeast of Sterling, AK. The fire is actively burning in black spruce, mixed hardwoods and dead & down beetle killed spruce. Residences and commercial property are threatened near Funny River and Sterling. Tree torching 1/3 mile ahead of the front was observed on 6/29/2005.
June 29, 2005. Fighting a fire to save the life of a forest. The Photographer states: This is one of three CL-215 Tankers brought in from Canada Wednesday evening to battle the King County Creek fire near Skilak Lake, Alaska. This airplane skims along the surface of a lake and sucks water into it's tank, making it about four times faster in reloading than traditional air tankers.
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