From those devotees to Gaia at Reuters:

Merkel, Pelosi say world should unite on climate

By Louis Charbonneau

BERLIN (Reuters) – Climate change is a global problem that requires unity and “multilateral” agreements if it is to be defeated, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Tuesday

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is hosting a Group of Eight (G8) summit in the Baltic resort of Heiligendamm next week, but has so far failed to convince President George W. Bush to sign up to firm targets to combat global warming.

Pelosi is in Germany as part of a European tour to highlight congressional concern about climate change.

“I emphasized that we are of the opinion that we need multilateral agreements in the future if we are to combat this global challenge on a global level,” Merkel told reporters after meeting Pelosi and a bipartisan delegation of key House members.

Bush has been blocking an emerging consensus within the G8 in favor of firm targets for cutting carbon dioxide emissions.

Pelosi, the leader of the opposition Democrats which gained control of both houses of Congress last November, made it clear that she was siding with Merkel against Bush.

“I completely associate myself with the chancellor’s comments that these solutions must be multilateral,” she said…

How many Presidents do we have? Who knew that Representatives could make international treaties?

By the way, since Europe is so omnicient about Global Warming, maybe we should follow their lead on immigration as well.

From the collectivists at the DNC’s Associated Press:

Clinton promotes shared responsibility

By HOLLY RAMER, Associated Press Writer

Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined a broad economic vision Tuesday, saying it’s time to replace an “on your own” society with one based on shared responsibility and prosperity.

The Democratic senator said what the Bush administration touts as an “ownership society” really is an “on your own” society that has widened the gap between rich and poor.

“I prefer a ‘we’re all in it together’ society,” she said. “I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none.”

That means pairing growth with fairness, she said, to ensure that the middle-class succeeds in the global economy, not just corporate CEOs.

“There is no greater force for economic growth than free markets. But markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed,” she said. “Fairness doesn’t just happen. It requires the right government policies.” …

Why doesn’t Ms. Clinton just tell the rest of us how to turn $1,000 into $100,000 overnight by speculating in cattle futures?

From those lovers of crazy theocratic dictatorships at Reuters:

Iran charges three U.S.-Iranian citizens with spying

By Hossein Jaseb

Iran has charged three Iranian-Americans with spying, officials said on Tuesday, just a day after Washington and Tehran held their most high-profile talks in nearly 30 years.

Under Iran’s Islamic sharia law, the charge could carry the death sentence. Judiciary spokesman Alireza Jamshidi said the three were academic Haleh Esfandiari, social scientist Kian Tajbakhsh and journalist Parnaz Azima…

Tehran accuses Washington of using intellectuals and others inside the country to undermine the Islamic Republic through what it calls “velvet revolution.” The United States has dismissed the accusation.

Iran has arrested, detained or prevented a number of U.S.-Iranian citizens from leaving the country, including Esfandiari, director of the U.S. Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars’ Middle East program.

The United States has condemned the arrest of Esfandiari, detained on May 8 and accused of acting against national security and spying.

U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey on Tuesday repeated U.S. calls for the release of the three and said Switzerland, which represents U.S. interests in Iran, still had not had access to them.

“These are individuals that have family ties to Iran (and) have done independent research and other kinds of civil society activities there for many years. They certainly pose no threat or challenge to the regime … ,” Casey said in Washington…

The New York-based Open Society Institute said last week the social scientist and urban planner had been arrested and imprisoned in Iran on or about May 11… 

You see how much better things are now between our two countries, now that we have sat down and “negotiated” with Iran?

The New York-based Open Society Institute said last week the social scientist and urban planner had been arrested and imprisoned in Iran on or about May 11… 

Iran doesn’t know much about the current events, if they think George Soros would be spying for the US.

It’s far more likely these people were agitating against the US. Or perhaps they were pretending to be spies to cause trouble.

Either way, it’s certain they were up to no good. And now we have to bail them out.

From Australia’s ABC News Online:

Venezuela to sue CNN

Venezuela says it will file charges against US cable network CNN for linking President Hugo Chavez to Al Qaeda.

It says it will also sue a Venezuelan TV network for encouraging Mr Chavez’s assassination.

The move comes a day after popular Venezuelan TV network RCTV went off the air after the Chavez Government cancelled its broadcast licence.

Information Minister William Lara has presented what he says is CNN footage displaying pictures of Mr Chavez juxtaposed with those of an Al Qaeda leader.

Mr Lara says CNN also aired a story about the Venezuelan protests but used images taken in Mexico of an unrelated story.

“CNN broadcast a lie which linked President Chavez to violence and murder,” he said.

CNN has issued a statement strongly denying being “engaged in a campaign to discredit or attack Venezuela”.

The news network has acknowledged a video mix-up and “aired a detailed correction and expressed regret for the involuntary error”.

Regarding the Al Qaeda leader, the network says “unrelated news stories can be juxtaposed in a given program segment just as a newspaper page or a news website may have unconnected stories adjacent to each other”…

I think any even incidental viewer of CNN can vouch for them. They certainly would never knowingly disparage Hugo Chavez or any other communist dictator.

Quite the opposite.

Still, why doesn’t Mr. Chavez just close them down?

From the Nashville TV affiliate WSMV:

Ophelia Ford Files Lawsuit Against Senate

Ford Wants Taxpayers To Pay For Litigation

May 29, 2007

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — State Sen. Ophelia Ford is refusing help from her family despite some of them saying she has a drinking problem.

Meanwhile, Ford has filed a suit against the state Senate that could cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.

Even though Ford is the senator from District 29, she is still suing the state senate over a disputed special election that occurred 13 months ago. Election officials later found that dead voters cast ballots in the election…

Mind you, Ms. Ford is suing to retain a seat she has already been re-elected to. But since she is using the taxpayers’ money she has nothing to lose.

Which is a sad testimony to the voters in her district. (Including the dead.)

From those champions of free speech and the right to assemble at the Associated Press:

Venezuelans protest as TV station shuts

By FABIOLA SANCHEZ, Associated Press Writer

CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuelan police fired tear gas and plastic bullets Monday into a crowd of thousands protesting a decision by President Hugo Chavez that forced a television station critical of his leftist government off the air.

Police fired toward the crowd of up to 5,000 protesters from a raised highway, and protesters fled amid clouds of tear gas. They later regrouped in Caracas’ Plaza Brion chanting “freedom!” Some tossed rocks and bottles at police, prompting authorities to scatter demonstrators by firing more gas.

It was the largest of several protests that broke out across Caracas hours after Radio Caracas Television ceased broadcasting at midnight Sunday and was replaced with a new state-funded channel. Chavez had refused to renew RCTV’s broadcast license, accusing it of “subversive” activities and of backing a 2002 coup against him.

Interior Minister Pedro Carreno told state-run television that four students were wounded by gunfire during a pro-RCTV protest staged near a university in the city of Valencia, located 150 kilometers (93 miles) west of Caracas. It was not immediately clear who the assailants were or if they were arrested.

At least three protesters and one police officer were injured in the Caracas skirmishes. Some protesters were seen in television footage hurling spent tear gas canisters back at police.

Office workers poured out of buildings to join student protesters, while organizers called for the demonstration to remain peaceful. RCTV talk show host Miguel Angel Rodriguez led the crowd in chants of, “They will not silence us!” … 

 

 

 

These people don’t seem to appreciate all that Mr. Chavez is doing for them.

From the Howard Dean stooge site, Daily Kos:

“Good Riddance Attention Whore”

by Cindy Sheehan
Mon May 28, 2007

I have endured a lot of smear and hatred since Casey was killed and especially since I became the so-called “Face” of the American anti-war movement. Especially since I renounced any tie I have remaining with the Democratic Party, I have been further trashed on such “liberal blogs” as the Democratic Underground. Being called an “attention whore” and being told “good riddance” are some of the more milder rebukes.

I have come to some heartbreaking conclusions this Memorial Day Morning. These are not spur of the moment reflections, but things I have been meditating on for about a year now. The conclusions that I have slowly and very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.

The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a “tool” of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our “two-party” system?

However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the “left” started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of “right or left”, but “right and wrong.”

I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike. It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on. People of the world look on us Americans as jokes because we allow our political leaders so much murderous latitude and if we don’t find alternatives to this corrupt “two” party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland. I am demonized because I don’t see party affiliation or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person’s heart. If someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?

I have also reached the conclusion that if I am doing what I am doing because I am an “attention whore” then I really need to be committed. I have invested everything I have into trying to bring peace with justice to a country that wants neither. If an individual wants both, then normally he/she is not willing to do more than walk in a protest march or sit behind his/her computer criticizing others. I have spent every available cent I got from the money a “grateful” country gave me when they killed my son and every penny that I have received in speaking or book fees since then. I have sacrificed a 29 year marriage and have traveled for extended periods of time away from Casey’s brother and sisters and my health has suffered and my hospital bills from last summer (when I almost died) are in collection because I have used all my energy trying to stop this country from slaughtering innocent human beings. I have been called every despicable name that small minds can think of and have had my life threatened many times.

The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.

I have also tried to work within a peace movement that often puts personal egos above peace and human life. This group won’t work with that group; he won’t attend an event if she is going to be there; and why does Cindy Sheehan get all the attention anyway? It is hard to work for peace when the very movement that is named after it has so many divisions.

Our brave young men and women in Iraq have been abandoned there indefinitely by their cowardly leaders who move them around like pawns on a chessboard of destruction and the people of Iraq have been doomed to death and fates worse than death by people worried more about elections than people. However, in five, ten, or fifteen years, our troops will come limping home in another abject defeat and ten or twenty years from then, our children’s children will be seeing their loved ones die for no reason, because their grandparents also bought into this corrupt system. George Bush will never be impeached because if the Democrats dig too deeply, they may unearth a few skeletons in their own graves and the system will perpetuate itself in perpetuity.

I am going to take whatever I have left and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost. I will try to maintain and nurture some very positive relationships that I have found in the journey that I was forced into when Casey died and try to repair some of the ones that have fallen apart since I began this single-minded crusade to try and change a paradigm that is now, I am afraid, carved in immovable, unbendable and rigidly mendacious marble.

Camp Casey has served its purpose. It’s for sale. Anyone want to buy five beautiful acres in Crawford, Texas ? I will consider any reasonable offer. I hear George Bush will be moving out soon, too… which makes the property even more valuable.

This is my resignation letter as the “face” of the American anti-war movement. This is not my “Checkers” moment, because I will never give up trying to help people in the world who are harmed by the empire of the good old US of A, but I am finished working in, or outside of this system. This system forcefully resists being helped and eats up the people who try to help it. I am getting out before it totally consumes me or anymore people that I love and the rest of my resources.

Good-bye America… you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can’t make you be that country unless you want it.

It’s up to you now.

The ever-vigilant JohnX posted this on the news forum. But, given the history of this site, we have to memorialize this historic occasion here as well. 

Though, honestly, I believe her resignation from the “peace movement” will last about as long as her well publicized “fast.”

But we can hope.

From the DNC’s Al Jazeera:

Protesters hold pictures of General Abdul Rashid Dostum, a powerful military commander in the Afghan north, in Shiberghan capital of the northern province of Jowzjan May 28, 2007.

Protesters die in Afghan firing

At least 13 people have been killed and more than 32 wounded in Afghanistan when police opened fire to break up a protest against Juma Khan Hamdard, a provincial governor, witnesses say.

More than 1,000 people threw stones at several government offices in Shiberghan, the capital of Jowzjan province, on Monday.

Witnesses said police fired to stop the protesters from raiding the offices.

Rohullah Samun, a provincial government spokesman, said the protesters were supporters of General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who has been a powerful military commander in the Afghan north for several years.

Naqibullah, a doctor at Shiberghan’s main hospital, said: “We’ve got 13 dead and 35 wounded.”

Samun confirmed the casualties but said they were caused by the protesters.

He said police had fired into the air to disperse the protesters who had staged an “uprising against the provincial government” and wanted to bring down the government flag and install that of Dostum’s faction.

He said: “They were militias of Dostum.”

The interior ministry said “tens of gunmen” of Dostum tried to disarm the police and that four police were wounded in the shooting.

The protests came to an end by midday after troops stationed in key government buildings were brought in to help police…

Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek and a former communist, has been involved in a series of coups and regime changes in nearly three decades of Afghan violence…

Leave it to Al Jazeera to call this a “protest.”

Apparently old communists never die — or even fade away.

Via YouTube:

The Saddam Connection To Osama

[Transcription:] … In Germany Mahmud Salim, alleged to be a key military advisor and believed to be privy to bin Laden’s most secret projects, is also apprehended. The US government alleges that he was under secret orders to procure enriched uranium for the purpose of developing nuclear weapons.

These are allegations bin Laden does not now deny. "It would be a sin for Muslims not to try to possess the weapons that would prevent the infidels from inflicting harm on Muslims, but how we could use these weapons if we possessed them is up to us.

With an American price on his head, there weren’t many places bin Laden could go, unless he teamed up with another international pariah, one also with an interest in weapons of mass destruction. Osama believes in the ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend, and someone I should cooperate with.’ That is certainly the current case with Iraq. Saddam Hussein has a long history of harboring terrorists: Carlos the Jackal, Abu Nida, Abu Abbas. The most notorious terrorist of their era all found shelter and support at one time in Baghdad.

Intelligence sources say bin Laden’s long relationship with the Iraqis began as he helped Sudan’s fundamentalist government in their efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Three weeks after the bombing, on August 31st, bin Laden reaches out to his friends in Iraq and Sudan. Iraq’s vice president arrives in Khartoon to show his support for the Sudanese after the US attack. ABC News has learned that during these meetings, senior Sudanese officials, acting on behalf of bin Laden, asked if Saddam Hussein would grant him asylum.

Iraq was indeed interested. ABC News has learned that in December, an Iraqi intelligence chief, named Farouk Hijazi, now Iraq’s ambassador to Turkey, made a secret trip to Afghanistan to meet with bin Laden. Three intelligence agencies tell ABC News they cannot be certain what was discussed, but almost certainly, they say, bin Laden has been told he would be welcome in Baghdad.”

And intelligent sources say that they can only speculate on the purpose of an alliance. What could bin Laden offer Saddam Hussein? Only days after he meets Iraqi officials, bin Laden tells ABC news that his network is wide and there are people prepared to commit terror in his name who he does not even control."

"It’s our job to incite and to instigate. By the grace of God, we have done that."

— Sheila MacVicar, ABC News, January 14, 1999

Were the media watchdogs at ABC News lying to us in 1999 or are they lying now?

From the terrorists’ friend, the New York Times:

Militants Widen Reach as Terror Seeps Out of Iraq

By MICHAEL MOSS and SOUAD MEKHENNET

Published: May 28, 2007

When Muhammad al-Darsi got out of prison in Libya last year after serving time for militant activities, he had one goal: killing Americans in Iraq.

Maj. Gen. Achraf Rifi of Lebanon warned of the fighters from Iraq, “If any country says it is safe from this, they are putting their heads in the sand.”

A recruiter he found on the Internet arranged to meet him on a bridge in Damascus, Syria. But when he got there, Mr. Darsi, 24, said the recruiter told him he was not needed in Iraq. Instead, he was drafted into the war that is seeping out of Iraq.

A team of militants from Iraq had traveled to Jordan, where they were preparing attacks on Americans and Jews, Mr. Darsi said the recruiter told him. He asked Mr. Darsi to join them and blow himself up in a crowd of tourists at Queen Alia Airport in Amman.

“I agreed,” Mr. Darsi said in a nine-page confession to Jordanian authorities after the plot was broken up.

The Iraq war, which for years has drawn militants from around the world, is beginning to export fighters and the tactics they have honed in the insurgency to neighboring countries and beyond, according to American, European and Middle Eastern government officials and interviews with militant leaders in Lebanon, Jordan and London.

Some of the fighters appear to be leaving as part of the waves of Iraqi refugees crossing borders that government officials acknowledge they struggle to control. But others are dispatched from Iraq for specific missions. In the Jordanian airport plot, the authorities said they believed that the bomb maker flew from Baghdad to prepare the explosives for Mr. Darsi.

Estimating the number of fighters leaving Iraq is at least as difficult as it has been to count foreign militants joining the insurgency. But early signs of an exodus are clear, and officials in the United States and the Middle East say the potential for veterans of the insurgency to spread far beyond Iraq is significant.

Maj. Gen. Achraf Rifi, general director of the Internal Security Forces in Lebanon, said in a recent interview that “if any country says it is safe from this, they are putting their heads in the sand.”

Last week, the Lebanese Army found itself in a furious battle against a militant group, Fatah al Islam, whose ranks included as many as 50 veterans of the war in Iraq, according to General Rifi. More than 30 Lebanese soldiers were killed fighting the group at a refugee camp near Tripoli.

The army called for outside support. By Friday, the first of eight planeloads of military supplies had arrived from the United States, which called Fatah al Islam “a brutal group of violent extremists.” …

Of course the New York Times means to convince us with this report that President Bush was mistaken in fighting terrorism in Iraq rather than waiting for them to come here.

But in fact their article proves just the opposite.

From his fans at France’s AFP:

The final moments of RCTV.

Protests in Venezuela as Chavez takes TV channel off air

by Rafael Noboa, Mon May 28

CARACAS (AFP) – Venezuela’s oldest television network went off the air at midnight Sunday in a move slammed by the opposition as a new push by President Hugo Chavez to tighten his grip on the nation’s media.

Police fired water cannon to disperse protesters in Caracas just before RCTV screens showed recorded images of its teary-eyed employees singing the national anthem and then the screen went black.

The channel’s successor, Chavez-backed TVes, began broadcasting about 20 minutes later. TVes president Lil Rodriguez urged Venezuelans to display “responsibility within the framework of the constitution.”

As 53-year-old RCTV faded into history, network president Marcel Granier told US-based Univision television that Chavez was driven by “a megalomaniacal desire to establish a totalitarian dictatorship.”

He told reporters that he was certain that “democracy will return to Venezuela, along with RCTV.”

Using water cannon, police dispersed thousands of stone-throwing protesters outside Venezuela’s telecom authority, which ordered the station off the air.

Chavez supporters held a huge, night-to-dawn public party outside RCTV studios to celebrate the birth of the new “socialist television” and the end of the bitterly anti-Chavez media outlet.

The closure of Venezuela’s oldest network, the latest episode in President Chavez’s socialist revolution, sparked many protests.

Chavez’s political opponents championed RCTV as an opposition voice and sharply criticized his refusal to renew its broadcast license.

Venezuela’s Supreme Court ruled that RCTV must temporarily leave its equipment and broadcast infrastructure in military hands to ensure that TVes can provide quality service.

Granier called the decision “an unconstitutional seizure of our equipment.”

Some 70 to 80 percent of Venezuelans opposed the closure, according to recent polls…

The left’s darling at work.

Of course they are desperately trying to do the same thing here.

From those enablers of terror at Reuters:

U.S. tells Iran to stop backing Iraq militias

By Ross Colvin

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Washington’s top official in Iraq said he told an Iranian delegation that Tehran should stop supporting militias in Iraq but described rare talks between the two foes on Monday as positive.

United States Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said the talks, the first high-profile discussions between the two countries in almost three decades, ended without setting a date for another meeting.

“The talks proceeded positively. What we need to see is Iranian action on the ground,” Crocker told reporters.

There was no immediate comment from the Iranian team after the talks.

“I laid out before the Iranians a number of our direct, specific concerns about their behavior in Iraq, their support for militias that are fighting both the Iraqi security forces and coalition forces,” Crocker said.

“The fact (is) that a lot of the explosives and ammunitions that are used by these groups are coming in from Iran … Such activities … need to cease and … we would be looking for results,” he added.

Crocker said the Iranian delegation, led by Iraq Ambassador Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, did not respond directly to the charges other than to express their support for the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki…

What a laugh.

We might as well bid the tide not to flow.