Vermont Town to Vote on Bush-Cheney Arrest for War Crimes

Susan Smallheer
Rutland Herald
January 26, 2008

BRATTLEBORO — Brattleboro residents will vote at town meeting on whether President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should be indicted and arrested for war crimes, perjury or obstruction of justice if they ever step foot in Vermont.

The Brattleboro Select Board voted 3-2 Friday to put the controversial item on the Town Meeting Day warning.

According to Town Clerk Annette Cappy, organizers of the Bush-Cheney issue gathered enough signatures, and it was up to the Select Board whether Brattleboro voters would consider the issue in March.

Cappy said residents will get to vote on the matter by paper balloting March 4.

Kurt Daims, 54, of Brattleboro, the organizer of the petition drive, said Friday the debate to get the issue on the ballot was a good one. Opposition to the vote focused on whether the town had any power to endorse the matter.

“It is an advisory thing,” said Daims, a retired prototype machinist and stay-at-home dad of three daughters.

So far, Vermont is the only state Bush hasn’t visited since he became president in 2001.

Daims said the most grievous crime committed by Bush and Cheney was perjury — lying to Congress and U.S. citizens about the basis of a war in Iraq.

He said the latest count showed a total of 600,000 people have died in the war.

Daims also said he believed Bush and Cheney were also guilty of espionage for spying on American people and obstruction of justice, for the politically generated firings of U.S. attorneys.

Voting to put the matter on the town ballot were Chairwoman Audrey Garfield and board members Richard Garrant and Dora Boubalis.

Voting against the idea were board members Richard DeGray and Stephen Steidle.

Daims said the names submitted to the town clerk’s office were the second wave of signatures the petition drive had to collect, because he had to rewrite the wording of the petition.

He said he gathered nearly 500 signatures in about three weeks, and he said most people he encountered were eager to sign it. He started the petition drive about three months ago.

“Everybody I talked to wanted Bush to go,” he said, noting that even members of the local police department supported the drive.

“This is exactly what the charter envisioned as a citizen initiative,” Daims said. “People want to express themselves and they want to say how they feel.”

He said the idea is spreading: Activists in Louisville, Ky., are spearheading a similar drive, and he said activists were also working in Montague, Mass., a Berkshires town.

The article asked the town attorney to “draft indictments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution and publish said indictments for consideration by other authorities.”

The article goes on to say the indictments would be the “law of the town of Brattleboro that the Brattleboro police … arrest and detain George Bush and Richard Cheney in Brattleboro, if they are not duly impeached …”

Daims said people in Brattleboro were willing to “think outside the box” and consider the issue.

Daims had no compunction in comparing Bush and Cheney with one of the most notorious people in history.

“If Hitler were still alive and walked through Brattleboro, I think the local police would arrest him for war crimes,” Daims said.

Covert Bid to Push US Troops into Pakistan

Times of India
January 25, 2008

The United States will soon have boots on the ground inside Pakistan following a decision by the Pentagon to send Special Forces, ostensibly to train Pakistani troops to meet the terrorist challenge that is threatening to destabilise the country.

An internal communication called a planning order has been issued by Admiral William Fallon, commander of the US Central Command, asking US military commanders to develop “new approaches” to help Pakistan combat terrorism, senior defense officials revealed in a background briefing on Wednesday.

“New approaches” appeared to be a euphemism for covert US intervention in Pakistan where anti-American sentiment is high. AP reported that the program envisages a timeline stretching to 2015.

US officials put plenty of gloss on the intervention plan to save Pakistan’s face, saying a central assumption in the approach is that no such US training contribution would be made without the Pakistani government’s prior approval.

But they have also indicated that Pakistan has accepted the new US plan, having left Washington with little choice as its vaunted military ceded territory to Al Qaeda and Taliban elements on its western border, amid reports of troop desertion and surrender.

Details of the US plans were not revealed but Admiral Fallon has been in Pakistan this week holding talks with Pakistan’s new army supremo Ashraf Kiyani, even as it’s “President” Gen. (Retd) Musharraf is on an eight-day tour of Europe.

US officials are now letting it be known that they have Kiyani’s green signal for the operation, even as Musharraf has been protesting any direct US action. Before leaving for Pakistan, Fallon cryptically said US assistance will now be “more robust” and Pakistan had shown greater willingness to accept that help.

Publicly, US officials are repeating ad nauseum that US forces would go to Pakistan only with the approval and at the invitation of the Pakistani government, and their mandate would be strictly to train the Pakistani military in counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operation.

But the real motive - hand’s on monitoring and control — is evident from the fact that such training could be imparted any other place, including in the United States itself, as it happens in the case of joint exercises between India and the US.

Most interventions in Third World countries begin with such ventures involving advisors and trainers, as it happened with the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and Cuba. Although widely regarded as a vassal state, Pakistan had avoided direct involvement of US troops inside its territory to avoid a public backlash from an increasingly anti-American mood in the country.

The US too has been trying to keep the operation low-key but the information has been dribbling out.

On Thursday, the LA Times ran a story saying “the Pentagon is making plans to send military personnel to Pakistan to train its security forces, taking advantage of promising ties with the country’s new top general.”

Across the continent, a Washington Post columnist wrote a spot report from Rawalpindi on the meeting between Fallon and Kiyani that clearly undermined Musharraf, and virtually spelt his political obituary.

In contrast with the Musharraf years, it quoted Fallon saying, “I would expect the army gets a lot more attention now because the guy who’s in charge only has one job…I’m encouraged that he seems to understand the necessity of doing counterinsurgency.”

The reference was to Kiyani, who had emerged as a Washington favorite with glowing portrayals in the U.S media even as Musharraf is being trashed as a has-been who is now a serious liability to the United States.

On his European tour, Musharraf too has been spitting fire, saying the US will be “sadly mistaken” if it thinks a few of its forces can do what 100,000 Pakistani troops is finding it difficult. He has gone as far as saying the US will regret it if it puts boots in the ground inside Pakistan.

Washington’s cover story so far: US troops and planners will go there just to train Pakistani forces.

Musharraf has also been trying to sell Pakistan as a stable entity even as the country is falling apart economically and politically amid widespread shortages of essential commodities and rising anger against his leadership.

On Wednesday, an organization of retired military personnel, including some top generals, asked Musharraf to quit the scene, a demand the itinerant president contemptuously dismissed.

But judging by the noises coming from Washington, the United States has started to shift its attention to Musharraf’s successor as army chief, Gen. Ashraf Kiyani with the intention of bidding its long-favored dictator goodbye.

TV News Report On Fluoride Poisoning

YouTube
January 27, 2008

Doubts over French bank's version of multi-billion euro scam

DPA
Sunday January 27, 2008

Analysts have expressed doubts over Societe Generale's declaration that a single rogue trader was responsible for the fraud that cost it 4.9 billion euros ($7.1 billion).

"If you know the control procedures very well, then it is possible to elude them for a few days, maybe a few weeks. But it's hard to believe that he did this for a year," economist Elie Cohen told France-Info radio Friday.

If the man identified as 31-year-old Jerome Kerviel did manage it alone, it represents "an enormous breakdown" by France's second-largest bank, Cohen said.

The website of the daily Le Figaro reported Friday that, according to material in the hands of the public prosecutor of the Paris suburb of Nanterre, Kerviel allegedly began his scam in February 2007 and worked it until the middle of January 2008.

The bank has filed complaints against Kerviel, who began working for Societe Generale in 2000, for bank forgery and the use of forged documents.

Earlier Friday, the head of France's central bank, the Banque de France, Christian Noyer, said that an investigation into the affair would determine if Kerviel had acted alone and how he had managed to dupe the bank's internal controls without accomplices.

Many analysts in France and abroad were sceptical that a single trader, no matter how clever, could have carried out such a complex scheme for such a, long period of time without an accomplice or the tacit agreement of the bank's management.

Some analysts have suggested that the bank gave Kerviel a free hand in the hope he would be able to make up for losses it suffered because of the US subprime crisis.

On Thursday, Societe Generale also said that it would write down 2.05 billion euros in the fourth quarter of 2007 due to its exposure in the US.

According to Cohen, Kerviel built up positions of some 50 billion euros in trying to cover a series of losses he had suffered.

The Paris-based International Herald Tribune reported Friday that the fraud was not detected until last weekend, when auditors in the bank's risk management office noticed a series of fictitious trades on its books.

Societe Generale then closed out its exposure from Kerviel's trading in a market made volatile by the decision of the US Federal Reserve to cut its benchmark interest rates by three-quarters of a percent.

Kerviel was immediately dismissed, as were four of his superiors in Societe Generale's equities and derivatives division.

On Thursday, Noyer and Societe Generale head Daniel Bouton said they had no idea of Kerviel's whereabouts. But an attorney for Kerviel has told several French media that her client was not on the run and was waiting for formal notification of the charges against him.

The affair has moved several financial institutions to downgrade Societe Generale's shares, the daily Le Monde reported. Germany's Deutsche Bank has changed its recommendation from "buy" to "hold", while the American bank Bear Stearns said that the losses could lead to takeover attempts by competitors.

On Thursday, following revelation of the scam, Societe Generale shares lost more than four percent of their value. On Friday, following a volatile day of trading, the stock lost another 2.56 percent, finishing at 73.87 euros.

Since Jan 1, Societe Generale shares have lost more than one-fourth of their value.

Joseph Stiglitz Warns of Dangerous “Liquidity Trap”

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
UK Telegraph
January 25, 2008

The United States is sliding towards a dangerous 1930s-style “liquidity trap” that cannot easily be stopped by drastic cuts in interest rates, Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz has warned.

“The biggest fear is that long-term bond rates won’t come down in line with short-term rates. We’ll have the reverse of what we’ve seen in recent years, and that is what is frightening the markets,” he told the Daily Telegraph, while trudging through ice and snow in Davos.

“The mechanism of monetary policy is ineffective in these circumstances. I’m not saying it won’t work at all: it will help the banking system but the credit squeeze is going to go on because nobody trusts anybody else. The Fed is pushing on a string,” he said.

The grim comments came as markets continued to suffer wild gyrations, reacting to every sign of contagion spreading to Europe, Asia, and emerging markets.

Wall Street has begun to stabilize on talk of a rescue for the embattled bond insurers, MBIA and Ambac.

The Fed’s 75 basis point rate cut allows the banks to replenish their balance sheet by borrowing at short-term rates and lending longer term, playing the credit ‘carry trade’, hence the 9pc rise in the US financials index yesterday. But confidence remains fragile.

Professor Stiglitz, former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said it takes far too long for monetary policy to work its magic. This will not gain much traction in the midst of a housing crash.

“People have been drawing home equity out of the houses at a rate of $700bn or $800bn a year. It’s been a huge boost to consumption, but that game is now up. House prices are going to continue falling, and lower rates won’t stop that this point,” he said.

“As a Keynesian, I’d say the biggest back for the buck in terms of immediate stimulus would be unemployment assistance and tax rebates for the poor. That will feed through quickly, but set against the magnitude of the problem, even a fiscal stimulus package of $150bn is not going to be enough,” he said.

“The distress is going to be very severe. Around 2m people have lost all their savings,” he did.

NASDAQ president Bob Greifeld expressed a rare note of optimism at the World Economic Forum, predicting a swift rally as the double effects of the monetary and fiscal boost lift spirits.

“I think the stimulus package that’s been proposed by the President, to the extent that this is passed in rapid fashion by Congress, has the ability to forestall a recession,” he said.

“At the moment, our business is doing better than it ever has because the volumes have been incredibly high. So, it’s been very good for us,” he said.

There were scattered signs of improvement across the world today, with Germany’s IFO confidence index defying expectations with a slight rise in January. Japan’s quarterly export volume held up better than expected.

Even so, the global downturn may already have acquired an unstoppable momentum, requiring months or even years to purge the excesses from the bubble.

Professor Stiglitz blamed the whole US economic establishment for failing to regulate the housing and credit markets adequately, allowing huge imbalances to build up.

“The Federal Reserve and the Bush Administration didn’t want to hear anything about these problems. The Fed has finally got around to closing the stable door (on subprime lending), but the after the horse has already bolted,” he said.

The Greatest Grassroots Campaign in Political History IGNORED BY BIG MEDIA

Kemp Moyer
Ponder this
Sunday January 27, 2008

The greatest grassroots campaign in the history of American politics has been summarily ignored and shunned by the large media.

Yes, you read that right. The greatest grassroots campaign in the HISTORY OF AMERICAN POLITICS. IGNORED BY THE MEDIA.

The Ron Paul campaign is centered around a man who is not a media sensation or a media creation. The campaign is centered around an individual who does not seek power and control over others. The campaign is centered around an individual who avoids shadiness and corruption like the plague. A man who is honest, has integrity, and cares fundamentally about America and the amazing freedoms that were granted when the Revolutionaries of 1776 broke off from the yoke of oppressive, central government. These men asserted all individuals’ natural rights.

So a grassroots campaign has grown around this man who fights for the protection of our natural rights via the respect of the U.S. Constitution. The job of the president is to protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. The Constitution protects our rights as free individuals and limits the government from oppressively entering into our lives and controlling us on a whim.

The grassroots campaign that grew around the support of Ron Paul has done everything in their power to earn a respectable place in the national consciousness. Through individual efforts, the Ron Paul grassroots campaign raised $4 million in a single day in early November. Then, in mid-December, the growing group broke the ALL-TIME SINGLE DAY RECORD bringing in $6 million in one 24 hour period. This was reported in the media, but was it reported in the amazing way it should have been? Did this vault Ron Paul into the key “front runners circle” that the large media has had such immense control over? The answer is no. The media summarily ignored Ron Paul and his campaign very soon thereafter.

Ron Paul’s supporters have organized to dominate most local straw polls around the country. They have dominated nearly every online poll and both online and text polls after every single Republican debate. Has this vaulted Ron Paul into the media “front runners circle”? No. They ignore him and figuratively spit on his hard working supporters.

When Ron Paul does get a rare interview or report, at times he is treated fairly, but most often he has been treated like a second class citizen, called a “long shot”, dismissed as a “kook” and treated generally in a way unbecoming of any respectable interviewer. Like I said, there are exceptions, but the rule is patently ugly treatment by a more and more despicable traditional media.

The mis-treatment and lack of respect have forced the grassroots campaign onto the internet and into the streets. The Ron Paul campaign dominates MySpace, Youtube, Digg, Facebook and far outpaces any other candidate in terms of Meetup groups and Meetup members. Does this get reported? No. Ron Paul has signed up over 12,000 volunteers as local precinct coordinators to walk their local neighborhoods passing out literature and getting to know their neighbors. Reported? No.

Ron Paul’s supporters have organized hundreds of marches, thousands of sign wavings, numerous other small fundraisers, as well as starting hundreds of websites dedicated to the race. Ron Paul’s website is the most visited out of any campaign in the Republican race and goes toe-to-toe with Obama’s out of any campaign period. Reported? Not much, if at all.

Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign has seen a tremendous groundswell of independent support form many hundreds of thousands of very passionate, intelligent and caring supporters across the country. Lovers of America, patriots of this great country, individuals dedicated to the Constitution, restrained government, and who care about our natural unalienable rights as independent human beings. This amazing groundswell has been shunned and pushed to the side by the large traditional media. Supporters have been told “he can’t win” and he has been kept out of the big media “winner’s circle”. It is a sham and a travesty.

I am here today to tell you that the Ron Paul 2008 campaign has witnessed the greatest grassroots support in the history of American politics. I am also here to tell you that the large media has ignored and battled against this campaign.

These two facts should tell you something. If you care about your unalienable rights as a free citizen, you should seriously consider supporting Ron Paul. If you care about these rights as well as the government protecting them rather than stripping them away, you should be very annoyed and upset with the old media. I know I am amazed and pretty pissed. From what I have observed, the media do not care about your rights and they do not care about you. If you care about America, you will think about finding an alternative or demanding a change.

The future of freedom and limited government rest in your hands. So far, the media have shown what side they are on.

In liberty,

Kemp Moyer

RFID Panopticon

Kurt Nimmo
Truth News
January 26, 2008

It’s sold in the Washington Post — the CIA’s favorite newspaper — as a wonderful world of convenience come true for consumers:

“RFID-enabled refrigerators could warn about expired milk, generate weekly shopping lists, even send signals to your interactive TV, so that you see ‘personalized’ commercials for foods you have a history of buying. Sniffers in your microwave might read a chip-equipped TV dinner and cook it without instruction… Companies say the RFID tags improve supply-chain efficiency, cut theft, and guarantee that brand-name products are authentic, not counterfeit. At a store, RFID doorways could scan your purchases automatically as you leave, eliminating tedious checkouts.”

Excuse me, but I’ll take the tedium.

The problem, critics say, is that microchipped products might very well do a whole lot more.

With tags in so many objects, relaying information to databases that can be linked to credit and bank cards, almost no aspect of life may soon be safe from the prying eyes of corporations and governments, says Mark Rasch, former head of the computer-crime unit of the U.S. Justice Department.

By placing sniffers in strategic areas, companies can invisibly “rifle through people’s pockets, purses, suitcases, briefcases, luggage — and possibly their kitchens and bedrooms — anytime of the day or night,” says Rasch, now managing director of technology at FTI Consulting Inc., a Baltimore-based company.

In an RFID world, “You’ve got the possibility of unauthorized people learning stuff about who you are, what you’ve bought, how and where you’ve bought it … It’s like saying, ‘Well, who wants to look through my medicine cabinet?’”

He imagines a time when anyone from police to identity thieves to stalkers might scan locked car trunks, garages or home offices from a distance. “Think of it as a high-tech form of Dumpster diving,” says Rasch, who’s also concerned about data gathered by “spy” appliances in the home.

Forget identity thieves and stalkers — a distinct minority — and worry about the government using this technology, not to discover what’s in your medicine cabinet per se — by way of HIPAA and Section 215 of the Patriot Act, they may already know this — but rather to keep track of pesky enemies of the state, or would-be enemies of the state, the sort who actually believe they have a right to challenge the government, or even mildly petition it.

For autocrats, a world embedded with a constellation of ubiquitous RFID sensors would be ideal. “A Panopticon Singularity is the logical outcome if the burgeoning technologies of the singularity are funneled into automating law enforcement,” writes Charlie Stross. “Previous police states were limited by manpower, but the panopticon singularity substitutes technology, and ultimately replaces human conscience with a brilliant but merciless prosthesis.”

As Stross notes, the state will use this technology to go after the malcontents and troublemakers, but they will also use it against pedestrian criminals, those minus political persuasion:

If a panopticon singularity emerges, you’d be well advised to stay away from Massachusetts if you and your partner aren’t married. Don’t think about smoking a joint unless you want to see the inside of one of the labor camps where over 50% of the population sooner or later go. Don’t jaywalk, chew gum in public, smoke, exceed the speed limit, stand in front of fire exit routes, or wear clothing that violates the city dress code (passed on the nod in 1892, and never repealed because everybody knew nobody would enforce it and it would take up valuable legislative time). You won’t be able to watch those old DVD’s of ‘Friends’ you copied during the naughty oughties because if you stick them in your player it’ll call the copyright police on you. You’d better not spend too much time at the bar, or your insurance premiums will rocket and your boss might ask you to undergo therapy. You might be able to read a library book or play a round of a computer game, but your computer will be counting the words you read and monitoring your pulse so that it can bill you for the excitement it has delivered.

In a totalitarian society we “are all criminals,” or at least easy marks ready to be fleeced by a sociopathic elite.

Brown gives gloomy forecast for world economy

The Prime Minister warns that the worst is 'still to come' but says transparency, not overregulation, is the answer for global markets

TIMES ONLINE

Gordon Brown said today that there was "bad news still to come" in the unfolding story of the global credit crunch and market turmoil.

The Prime Minister called for urgent action to increase the transparency of financial dealings as well as a re-think of the pricing of risk which had been "misunderstood" and under-valued.

He told delegates at the World Economic Forum in Davos today: “This is indeed a testing time for the global economy, for all of us who believe that globalization is about free trade.”

But he said: “There is a real danger that we fall for the familiar responses that we have seen in past decades, the first is … heavy handed regulation, the second thing is to resort to protectionism and I see it in America and parts of Europe and the third is to be paralysed into action.”

In a world of global markets, national supervision was not working, he suggested.

"The world needs most of all a better early warning system so people can be in far greater communication," Mr Brown said.

"There is also a danger, I think, with bad news still to come, of being over optimistic ... and overemphasising the silver lining at the expense of some of the clouds."

Mr Brown arrived late in Davos this morning after another delayed flight - but it nothing like as serious as his late departure from Heathrow for China last week after a BA aircraft missed the runway.

The Prime Minister also lamented the lack of a coherent world system for tackling greenhouse gases.

He urged the World Bank to modernise itself into a carbon bank within a year to tackle global climate change.

Only a global fund could persuade developing countries to drop fossil fuels, he said, as he expanded on his call for urgent reform of the world's outdated institutions.

"I cannot see why we do not move immediately for the World Bank to become a world environment bank," Mr Brown said.

"We need an institution that is global, that can provide for countries that want to move to alternative sources of energy but who will simply build coal-fired power stations without an institution that has prepared to loan or give grants.

"If in the next year we do not make progress on a world bank for the environment, because climate change hits the poorest countries hardest, we will be failing in our duties."

He repeated a call he made last year at the World Economic Forum for changes to the United Nations and International Monetary Fund to become a kind of global central bank - an idea given extra urgency by the crises which have dominated discussion at Davos this year.

Mr Brown said: “said: “Let’s be honest ... we’re dealing with institutions, in the IMF and the

World Bank, and the United Nations for that matter, which were built for problems of the 1940s and can’t deal with the new problems that we have in 2008.”

Mr Brown said: “The new problems are not just globalisation at an economic level, but climate change … conflict ridden states …we don’t have proper mechanisms either for dealing with problems like non-state terrorism. We have global pandemics and I don’t think that we have woken up to the power of the internet.”

The Prime Minister said: “If we don’t reform, our global institutions will become irrelevant.”

Mr Brown also called for the setting up of a rapid response force which could send not just troops but police, judges and civil servants into states into failed states.

French TV cites Bilderberg Group Power

Youtube
Friday January 25, 2008

My French is not great but this feature describes the Economic Forum in Davos as a grand spectacle and goes on to discuss who really influences global politics - The Bilderberg Group.

Any French speakers please email translations to admin@infowars.net or add your own to the youtube video

APD rallies for surveillance cameras in high crime areas

Bob Robuck
News 8 Austin
Friday January 25, 2008

New York, San Diego, and Dallas have them, and Austin may get them too--if the Austin Police Department gets its way. Chief Art Acevedo wants to install surveillance cameras on Sixth Street, the Rundberg area of North Austin, 12th and Chicon in East Austin, and the Montopolis neighborhood in East Austin.

The whole point of the high-tech snoops is to curtail crime and put bad people behind bars.

"These technologies are not just effective in terms of reducing crime, but they're very effective in terms of solving crimes," Acevedo said.

Acevedo points to the British terrorist attacks in July 2005 to prove his point. Police cameras played a huge role in tracking down those involved in the bloodshed.

But some, including the American Civil Liberties Union, said the cameras make life difficult for the British. They don't want that way of life here in Austin.

"We don't want to be walking down the streets with voices looming from beyond telling us to put that trash in the trash can, or don't protest, or don't do this, or don't do that," Debbie Russell of the ACLU of Austin said.

Other people said cameras are the only way to control crime in areas where drug deals and violence occur daily.

"I've seen it done in other cities, and it really makes things peaceful where those cameras are," neighbor Paul Henley said.

Federal grants may end up funding the cameras for Austin. APD may also try to use private cameras already on the streets and retired cops to monitor them.

If they are approved by the city, Chief Acevedo said it will take months to get the cameras installed and running. Everything is still in the planning stages.

Ron Paul wins Florida Republican Debate, McCain stumbles on Economy

Stu Norman
Point Spreads
Friday January 25, 2008

There was a strong anti war pro Ron Paul crowd in the Florida Primary Republican Debate audience on the campus of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida tonight. Results from a MSNBC post debate text messaging poll showed Ron Paul leading before the network decided not to post the official results at the end of the post-debate coverage. The move clearly gets conspiracy theorists abuzz on the Ron Paul posting forums. There was no doubt once again that the clear winner of the debate was Ron Paul. Sportsbook.com has Ron Paul at 25 to 1 odds to capture the 2008 Republican Party Presidential Nomination.

“We are moving into a new era,” stated Dr. Ron Paul.

Paul has yet to win a primary but his second place finish in the Nevada Caucus followed by his second place in yesterday’s Louisiana Caucus has boosted his campaign. Republican Presidential hopefuls such as John McCain, Mike Huckabee and Rudy Guiliani do not have the dough to survive that far beyond Florida giving Paul a nice advantage to outlast the other lower tiered candidates and gobble up some of their support once they leave the race.

Unlike the Democratic Party debate for the South Carolina Primary race, the Republicans had a nonaggression pact before the start of the Florida Primary debate. All of the candidates were cordial and refrained from attacking each other. Another difference between the two debates were the stances on the Iraqi War. It was very clear that all of the Republican Candidates, with the except of anti-war candidate Paul, will go into fall Presidential Race saying the war in Iraqi was worth it. It is looking more and more like it will be a PRO WAR vs ANTI WAR Presidential Race in 2008.

If Republican Presidential front runner John McCain wins the Florida Republican Primary, he should lock up the Republican Party's 2008 Presidential Nomination. Sportsbook.com has John McCain at 4 to 7 odds to secure the 2008 Republican Presidential Nomination. The elder statesmen with the silver hair stumbled tonight when he was asked a question on the United States Economy by Ron Paul.

McCain has been endorsement by former New York Senator Alfonse D’Amato, a blow to Guiliani campaign. The endorsement could be a sign that the Poker Player Alliance is making some head way against the current “War on Internet Gambling ” taking place in Washington. The Poker Players Alliance (PPA) is an American nonprofit Interest group of over 840,000 members that was formed "to speak with one voice to promote poker, ensure its integrity, and, most importantly, to protect the players' rights." The PPA formed to serve as an advocacy group to Washington in order to establish a legal framework of rights and protections for United States online poker players. Alfonse D'Amato is chairman of the PPA.

The Rudy Guiliani campaign got another dagger when the New York Times endorsed John McCain saying “he is ready to be president...it is a difficult era....he can beat Hillary Clinton."

All of these endorsements, including the recent one from Rambo, won’t help McCain with the GOP conservative base which does not like him. A lost in the Florida Primary will certainly be a blow to the cash strapped candidate who needs a win or strong finish to secure additional campaign contributions. Mitt Romney has already spent $40 million dollars of his own funds for his campaign and has plenty more to pour in if needed.

Full article here.

More Russian nuclear fuel delivered to Iran

AFP
Thursday January 24, 2008

Russia delivered a sixth consignment of fuel for Iran's first nuclear power plant in the Gulf port of Bushehr on Thursday which makes it around 80 percent of the consignment, the official IRNA news agency reported.

"The sixth load of nuclear fuel arrived at the Bushehr plant on Thursday morning," said a statement from the Organisation for Production and Development of Nuclear Energy quoted by the news agency.

The delivery brings the nuclear fuel supplied by Russia so far to 66 tonnes or around 80 percent of the total order of 82 tonnes, IRNA said.

Previous deliveries were made on December 17 and 28, and January 18, 20 and 22. Two more consignments are due by February according to a timetable agreed by the two sides.

Late last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the Bushehr reactor would be working at 50 percent capacity by mid-2008.

But the Russian constructors insist the 1,000-megawatt plant will not go on line until the end of the year.

After delivery of the first shipment of fuel, Russia said Iran no longer needed to pursue its own uranium enrichment, a message repeated by US President George W. Bush.

Tehran has so far defied successive UN Security Council ultimatums to suspend enrichment prompting two sets of UN sanctions.

The six major powers, the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- plus Germany drew up a new text on Tuesday to put before the council.

The contents of the text agreed by the foreign ministers of the so called 5+1 were not released.

But a senior US official said the new draft "increases the severity of the sanctions already in place and will also introduce new elements."

Iran on Wednesday described as illegal and ineffective the threat of new UN sanctions and said it would clear up any remaining questions about its nuclear programme in talks with the UN watchdog.

The Western powers fear that Iran's nuclear programme is a cover for a drive to develop a bomb, a charge Tehran strongly denies.

Cheney Wants Surveillance Law Expanded

TOM RAUM
Associated Press
Wednesday, January 23, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Dick Cheney prodded Congress on Wednesday to extend and broaden an expiring surveillance law, saying "fighting the war on terror is a long-term enterprise" that should not come with an expiration date.

"We're reminding Congress that they must act now," Cheney told the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. The law, which authorizes the administration to eavesdrop on e-mails and phone calls to and from suspected terrorists, expires on Feb. 1. Congress is bickering over terms of its extension.

On Tuesday, Senate Republicans blocked an effort by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to extend the stopgap Protect America Act without expanding it, raising stakes for an expected showdown in the Senate later this week on a new version of the law.

"This cause is bigger than the quarrels of party and the agendas of politicians," Cheney said. "And if we in Washington, all of us, can only see our way clear to work together, then the outcome should not be in doubt."

Congress hastily adopted the stopgap act last summer in the face of warnings from the administration about dangerous gaps in the government's ability to gather intelligence in the Internet age.

Administration allies in Congress not only want the expiring law made permanent but amended to give telephone companies and other communications providers immunity from being sued for helping the government eavesdropping and other intelligence-gathering efforts.

Cheney said such providers "face dozens of lawsuits."

"The intelligence community doesn't have the facilities to carry out the kind of international surveillance needed to defend this country since 9-11. In some situations, there is no alternative to seeking assistance from the private sector. This is entirely appropriate," Cheney said.

FULL STORY: CLICK HERE

Ron Paul Comes in Second Again: This Time in Louisiana

Gambling 911
Thursday January 24, 2008

Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul enjoys yet another second place finish in a state caucus. This time it's Louisiana.

The Louisiana contest, however, is not a battleground state in the race for the Republican nomination as candidates have focused on bigger prizes in South Carolina and Florida.

Fred Thompson dropping out of the race helped boost Paul's vote count.

If Thompson had still been in the race, a Louisiana political source explained to NR, his state delegate strength in Louisiana would have been enough to potentially get him all of the state's 47 national delegates. The one big problem, though, is that he dropped out only hours before he finally won something.

John McCain won the state Tuesday.

Louisiana voters have become disenchanted with its state's stance against online gambling. Ron Paul is against Internet gambling prohibition.

Colin Powell Confronted on Depleted Uranium

Jones Report
Wednesday January 23, 2008

Members of WeAreChange Ohio confronted former Secretary of State Colin Powell about the use of depleted uranium in four separate wars-- including Gulf Wars I & II, Kosovo and Bosnia. Powell admitted to its use, but denied its relative harm, repeatedly calling it "useful."

Powell downplays the harmful birth defects those exposed to D.U. have suffered, suggesting that he has been around D.U. himself and suffered no damage.

Audience members also asked the former Secretary of State about falsified intelligence on Iraq, which Powell handily dismissed.

Depleted Uranium has been directed linked with:

Increased rates of immune system disorders and other wide-ranging symptoms, including chronic pain, fatigue and memory loss, have been reported in over one quarter of combat veterans of the 1991 Gulf War. Combustion products from depleted uranium munitions are being considered as one of the potential causes by the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, as DU was used in tank kinetic energy penetrator and machine-gun bullets on a large scale for the first time in the Gulf War. Veterans of the conflicts in the Gulf, Bosnia and Kosovo have been found to have up to 14 times the usual level of chromosome abnormalities in their genes.

Terror law plans to be unveiled

BBC
Thursday January 24, 2008

The government is pressing ahead with plans to allow the police to hold terrorism suspects for up to 42 days before they are charged.

The Counter Terrorism Bill, due to be published later, will propose to extend the limit beyond the current 28 days.

Some senior police officers support the move but it could be beaten by Lib Dem, Tory and rebel Labour MPs.

Attempts to extend the limit to 90 days in 2005 ended in then prime minister Tony Blair's first Commons defeat.

A survey by the Independent newspaper last month suggested 38 Labour MPs were against the 42-day plan, more than the 34 needed to defeat it.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, mindful of a potential rebellion, has been meeting backbenchers to press her case.

'Mass casualties'

She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme there was "a consensus that we face a serious threat from terrorism".

Ms Smith added: "It's growing in scale. It's becoming more complicated in nature. People need to intervene earlier because of the way in which it aims to cause mass casualties with no warning."

She also said that "there may come a time in the future where having to release somebody at 28 days in a very complex investigation might mean that you are not able to go forward and charge them and bring them to prosecution".

Asked whether she was proposing legislation to deal with a hypothetical situation, the home secretary replied: "We are putting in a provision for if it becomes unhypothetical."

Perino Dismisses CPI Study: Truth On How We Sold The Iraq War Is Not ‘Worth Spending Time On’

Think Progress
Thursday January 24, 2008

A new study by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism found that the Bush administration issued 935 false statements about the threat from Iraq in the two years following 9/11. President Bush “led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

In today’s press briefing, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino attacked the study. Perino claimed the study “is so flawed” because it “only looked at members of the administration” and not “people around the world”:

I hardly think that the study is worth spending time on. It is so flawed, in terms of taking anything into context or including — they only looked at members of the administration, rather than looking at members of Congress or people around the world.

Because, as you’ll remember, we were part of a broad coalition of countries that deposed the dictator based on a collective understanding of the intelligence.

Watch it:

(Article continues below)

Perino argues that “we thought as a collective body that there” were WMDs. “The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world,” added spokesperson Scott Stanzel.

The entire world community, however, didn’t endorse the Bush administration’s pre-war claims. For example, the IAEA’s Mohamed ElBaradei, Hans Blix, and other U.N. inspectors were all skeptical of Bush’s WMD allegations. Members of Congress who received the administration’s classified intelligence briefings raised similar concerns.

Dan Froomkin reports today that the Senate Intelligence Committee’s long overdue Phase II report on “whether the White House intentionally deceived the public” prior to the war will be out “before the end of spring.”

Transcript:

QUESTION: Any reaction to the study out from the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism, when they did what they called a count of hundreds of false statements made by the president and top administration officials regarding the threat posed by Iraq. And they counted during the two years after 9/11.

PERINO: I hardly think that the study is worth spending time on. It is so flawed, in terms of taking anything into context or including — they only looked at members of the administration, rather than looking at members of Congress or people around the world.

Because, as you’ll remember, we were part of a broad coalition of countries that deposed the dictator based on a collective understanding of the intelligence. And the other thing that that study fails to do is to say that after realizing that there was no WMD, as we thought as a collective body that there was, that this White House, the president set about to make reforms in the intelligence community to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

Government ordered to disclose draft Iraq dossier

Andrew Sparrow
London Guardian
Thursday January 24, 2008

A Whitehall spin doctor may have played a greater role in the drafting of the famous dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction than the government admitted at the time, the Information Tribunal said today.
In a ruling on a freedom of information request relating to what is alleged to be the first draft of the dossier published in 2002, the tribunal said that the public should be allowed to read the document.

The tribunal made its ruling following a three-year campaign by a researcher who believes that the dossier will undermine the government's claims that the document was entirely drawn up by John Scarlett, the then-head of the joint intelligence committee, and not government spin doctors.

The dossier, which claimed Iraq could launch weapons on of mass destruction within 45 minutes, became the subject of huge controversy when the BBC reported that it had been "sexed up" by Downing Street.

Today's decision relates to an early version of the dossier written by John Williams, a former Daily Mirror journalist who at the time was head of press at the Foreign Office. The so-called "Williams draft" was mentioned during the Hutton inquiry but it was never published and at the time the Foreign Office claimed that it had little influence on the version that was eventually published.

The government always claimed that the dossier eventually published in September 2002 was the work of the joint intelligence committee and its chairman, Scarlett.

But Tony Blair was subsequently accused of "sexing up" the dossier to persuade the public to support the war against Iraq and at the time of the Hutton inquiry there was a fierce debate about the extent to which his spin doctors, and principally his press chief, Alastair Campbell, were involved in the wording of the document.

Willliams, who has now retired from the Foreign Office, apparently started writing his version on September 7 2002, four days after Blair had announced that a dossier on Iraq's WMD would be published.

Full article here.

Britain IS heading for a recession, warns billionaire investor George Soros, but Footsie soars in early trade

UK Daily Mail
Thursday January 24, 2008

Britain and America are heading for a recesssion, one of the world's most powerful financiers said yesterday.

The bleak warning from George Soros follows a rollercoaster week on the financial markets demonstrated yesterday by the FTSE 100, which rose on Tuesday, falling again and the plunging Dow Jones rallying to finish up 300 points.

This morning, the FTSE 100 Index's rollercoaster ride took a new turn today as London's leading shares soared higher in early trading. With Asian stock exchanges also registering advances overnight, the Footsie opened more than 2 per cent, or 125.7 points, higher at 5735.

All eyes are now on the Bank of England to see how it will react to Tuesday's 0.75 per cent rate cut in America.

The most common view is that rates will fall next month from 5.5 to 5.25 per cent and 4.75 per cent by the autumn.

Mr Soros, best-known as the man who cashed in on the pound's withdrawal from the European Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday in the 1990s, said a major downturn is on its way.

Asked on Radio 4's Today programme if a recession was looming, he replied: "I think it will be very difficult to avoid it."

Mr Soros, in Davos for the World Economic Forum - a meetingof top political and business leaders - said America's Federal Reserve had no option but to hit the panic button on Tuesday.

If it had not, he said, America could have risked a repeat of the 1930s Depression.

He was backed up by Nouriel Roubini of Roubini Global Economics and Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley.

Full article here.

Study: Bush, aides made 935 false statements in run-up to war

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush and his top aides publicly made 935 false statements about the security risk posed by Iraq in the two years following September 11, 2001, according to a study released Tuesday by two nonprofit journalism groups.

President Bush addresses the nation as the Iraq war begins in March 2003.

"In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003," reads an overview of the examination, conducted by the Center for Public Integrity and its affiliated group, the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

According to the study, Bush and seven top officials -- including Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice -- made 935 false statements about Iraq during those two years.

The study was based on a searchable database compiled of primary sources, such as official government transcripts and speeches, and secondary sources -- mainly quotes from major media organizations.

The study says Bush made 232 false statements about Iraq and former leader Saddam Hussein's possessing weapons of mass destruction, and 28 false statements about Iraq's links to al Qaeda.

Bush has consistently asserted that at the time he and other officials made the statements, the intelligence community of the U.S. and several other nations, including Britain, believed Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

He has repeatedly said that despite the intelligence flaws, removing Hussein from power was the right thing to do.

The study, released Tuesday, says Powell had the second-highest number of false statements, with 244 about weapons and 10 about Iraq and al Qaeda.

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Press Secretary Ari Fleischer each made 109 false statements, it says. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz made 85, Rice made 56, Cheney made 48 and Scott McLellan, also a press secretary, made 14, the study says.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al Qaeda," the report reads, citing multiple government reports, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the 9/11 Commission and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, which reported that Hussein had suspended Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to revive it.

The overview of the study also calls the media to task, saying most media outlets didn't do enough to investigate the claims.

"Some journalists -- indeed, even some entire news organizations -- have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical," the report reads. "These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq."

The quotes in the study include an August 26, 2002, statement by Cheney to the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," Cheney said. "There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."