Bilderberg 2007: Agenda and Participant List

www.danielestulin.com

In 1954, the most powerful men in the world met for the first time under the auspices of the Dutch royal crown and the Rockefeller family in the luxurious Hotel Bilderberg of the small Dutch town of Oosterbeck. For an entire weekend they debated the future of the world. When it was over, they decided to meet once every year to exchange ideas and analyze international affairs. They named themselves the Bilderberg Club. Since then, they have gathered yearly in a luxurious hotel somewhere in the world to decide the future of humanity.

In more than fifty years of meetings that brings together unprecedented power and money in the same time and place, never has any information been leaked as to what subjects were debated during the Bilderberg Club meetings. Bilderberg, one of the world’s most powerful secret organizations is run out of an 18m2 offices, staffed by one person, using one telephone line and a single fax number. There is no web page and no brass name plate on the door. The independent press has never been allowed in, and no statements have ever been released on the attendees’ conclusions nor has any agenda for a Bilderberg meeting been made public. How, in God’s name, can this be possible when Bilderberg´s elite membership list includes all of the most powerful individuals who run the Planet?

Leaders of the Bilderberg Club argue that this discretion is necessary to allow participants in the debates to speak freely without being on the record or reported publicly. Otherwise, Bilderbergers state, they would be forced to speak in the language of a press release. Doubtlessly, this discretion allows the Bilderberg Club to deliberate more freely, but that does not respond to the fundamental question: What do the world’s most powerful people talk about in these meetings?

Any modern democratic system protects the right to privacy, but doesn’t the public have a right to know what their political leaders are talking about when they meet the wealthiest business leaders of their respective countries?

What guarantees do citizens have that the Bilderberg Club isn’t a centre for influence trafficking and lobbying if they aren’t allowed to know what their representatives talk about at the Club’s secret gatherings? Why are the Davos World Economic Forum and G8 meetings carried in every newspaper, given front page coverage, with thousands of journalists in attendance, while no one covers Bilderberg Club meetings even though they are annually attended by Presidents of the International Monetary Fund, The World Bank, Federal Reserve, chairmen of 100 most powerful corporations in the world such as DaimlerChrysler, Coca Cola, British Petroleum, Chase Manhattan Bank, American Express, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Vice Presidents of the United States, Directors of the CIA and the FBI, General Secretaries of NATO, American Senators and members of Congress, European Prime Ministers and leaders of opposition parties, top editors and CEOs of the leading newspapers in the world. It is surprising that no mainstream corporate media outlets consider a gathering of such figures, whose wealth far exceeds the combined wealth of all United States citizens, to be newsworthy when a trip by any one of them on their own makes headline news on TV.

The delegates at Bilderberg 2007: Istanbul, Turkey May 31-June 3

This year’s delegation will once again include all of the most important politicians, businessmen, central bankers, European Commissioners and executives of the western corporate press. They will be joined at the table by leading representatives of the European Royalty, led by Queen Beatrix, the daughter of the Bilderberg founder, former Nazi, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and Bilderberger President, Etienne Davignon, Vice Chairman, Suez-Tractebel from Belgium. According to Bilderberg Steering Committee list which this author had access to, the following names have now been confirmed as official Bilderberg attendees for this year’s conference (In alphabetical order):

George Alogoskoufis, Minister of Economy and Finance (Greece); Ali Babacan, Minister of Economic Affairs (Turkey); Edward Balls, Economic Secretary to the Treasury (UK); Francisco Pinto Balsemão, Chairman and CEO, IMPRESA, S.G.P.S.; Former Prime Minister (Portugal); José M. Durão Barroso, President, European Commission (Portugal/International); Franco Bernabé, Vice Chariman, Rothschild Europe (Italy); Nicolas Beytout, Editor-in-Chief, Le Figaro (France); Carl Bildt, Former Prime Minister (Sweden); Hubert Burda, Publisher and CEO, Hubert Burda Media Holding (Belgium); Philippe Camus, CEO, EADS (France); Henri de Castries, Chairman of the Management Board and CEO, AXA (France); Juan Luis Cebrian, Grupo PRISA media group (Spain); Kenneth Clark, Member of Parliament (UK); Timothy C. Collins, Senior Managing Director and CEO, Ripplewood Holdings, LLC (USA); Bertrand Collomb, Chairman, Lafarge (France); George A. David, Chairman, Coca-Cola H.B.C. S.A. (USA); Kemal Dervis, Administrator, UNDP (Turkey); Anders Eldrup, President, DONG A/S (Denmark); John Elkann, Vice Chairman, Fiat S.p.A (Italy); Martin S. Feldstein, President and CEO, National Bureau of Economic Research (USA); Timothy F. Geithner, President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of New York (USA); Paul A. Gigot, Editor of the Editorial Page, The Wall Street Journal (USA); Dermot Gleeson, Chairman, AIB Group (Ireland); Donald E. Graham, Chairman and CEO, The Washington Post Company (USA); Victor Halberstadt, Professor of Economics, Leiden University; Former Honorary Secretary General of Bilderberg Meetings (the Netherlands); Jean-Pierre Hansen, CEO, Suez-Tractebel S.A. (Belgium); Richard N. Haass, President, Council on Foreign Relations (USA); Richard C. Holbrooke, Vice Chairman, Perseus, LLC (USA); Jaap G. Hoop de Scheffer, Secretary General, NATO (the Netherlands/International); Allan B. Hubbard, Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, Director National Economic Council (USA); Josef Joffe, Publisher-Editor, Die Zeit (Germany); James A. Johnson, Vice Chairman, Perseus, LLC (USA); Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Senior Managing Director, Lazard Frères & Co. LLC (USA); Anatole Kaletsky, Editor at Large, The Times (UK); John Kerr of Kinlochard, Deputy Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell plc (the Netherlands); Henry A. Kissinger, Chairman, Kissinger Associates (USA); Mustafa V. Koç, Chariman, Koç Holding A.S. (Turkey); Fehmi Koru, Senior Writer, Yeni Safek (Turkey); Bernard Kouchner, Minister of Foreign Affairs (France); Henry R. Kravis, Founding Partner, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (USA); Marie-Josée Kravis, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, Inc. (USA); Neelie Kroes, Commissioner, European Commission (the Netherlands/International); Ed Kronenburg, Director of the Private Office, NATO Headquarters (International); William J. Luti, Special Assistant to the President for Defense Policy and Strategy, National Security Council (USA); Jessica T. Mathews, President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (USA); Frank McKenna, Ambassador to the US, member Carlyle Group (Canada); Thierry de Montbrial, President, French Institute for International Relations (France); Mario Monti, President, Universita Commerciale Luigi Bocconi (Italy); Craig J. Mundie, Chief Technical Officer Advanced Strategies and Policy, Microsoft Corporation (USA); Egil Myklebust, Chairman of the Board of Directors SAS, Norsk Hydro ASA (Norway); Matthias Nass, Deputy Editor, Die Zeit (Germany); Adnrzej Olechowski, Leader Civic Platform (Poland); Jorma Ollila, Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell plc/Nokia (Finland); George Osborne, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer (UK); Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, Minister of Finance (Italy); Richard N. Perle, Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (USA); Heather Reisman, Chair and CEO, Indigo Books & Music Inc. (Canada); David Rockefeller (USA); Matías Rodriguez Inciarte, Executive Vice Chairman, Grupo Santander Bank, (Spain); Dennis B. Ross, Director, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (USA); Otto Schily, Former Minister of Interior Affairs; Member of Parliament; Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs (Germany); Jürgen E. Schrempp, Former Chairman of the Board of Management, DaimlerChrysler AG (Germany); Tøger Seidenfaden, Executive Editor-in-Chief, Politiken (Denmark); Peter D. Sutherland, Chairman, BP plc and Chairman, Goldman Sachs International (Ireland); Giulio Tremonti, Vice President of the Chamber of Deputies (Italy); Jean-Claude Trichet, Governor, European Central Bank (France/International); John Vinocur, Senior Correspondent, International Herald Tribune (USA); Jacob Wallenberg, Chairman, Investor AB (Sweden); Martin H. Wolf, Associate Editor and Economics Commentator, The Financial Times (UK); James D. Wolfensohn, Special Envoy for the Gaza Disengagement (USA); Robert B. Zoellick, Deputy Secretary of State (USA); Klaus Zumwinkel, Chairman of the Board of Management, Deutsche Post AG (USA); Adrian D. Wooldridge, Foreign Correspondent, The Economist.

Amongst the names appearing on the initial list of invitees which this journalist had access to in January 2007 stand out the names of the now disgraced John Browne, British Petroleum’s Chief Executive Officer and the disgraced and fired former chief of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz. It will be interesting to see if either of these men makes an appearance at Bilderberg 2007. The Bilderbergers have no trouble accepting criminals into the fold as long as their misdeeds are conducted away from public spotlight and scrutiny. Once exposed, the culprits are generally discarded. Lord Conrad Black, former chief executive of Hollinger media group is a case in point.

Two others names on the original January 2007 list should raise a few eyebrows. One of them is Bernard Kouchner, the newly appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in the right wing Nicolas Sarkozy government in France. Kouchner is a former founder of ONG Doctors without Borders. He was absent from Bilderberg 2006 in Ottawa, Canada. Could his government position been arranged prior to the French national elections? For my money, the surprise appearance of year award should go to Mahmood Sariolghalam, Associate Professor of International Relations, School of Economic and Political Sciences, National University of Iran. What is an Iranian doing at a NATO alliance controlled Bilderberg conference? We will know soon enough. Bilderberg 2007 is indeed a good time to look behind the scenes.

What will be discussed at Bilderberg 2007?

Aside from the Irak quagmire, energy problems continue to dominate Bilderberger discussions. Oil and natural gas are finite, non-renewable resources. That’s because once used up it cannot be replenished. As the world turns, and as oil and natural gas supplies dwindle while demand soars dramatically, especially with Indian and Chinese booming economies who want all the trinkets and privileges of an American way of life, we, as the Planet, have crossed the midpoint of oil production and discovery. From now on, the only sure thing is that supply will continue to diminish and prices will continue to increase. In these conditions world conflict is a physical certainty. End of oil means end of world’s financial system, something which has already been acknowledged by Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, two full time members of the Bilderberger inner circle. Goldman Sachs oil report, [another full time member of the Bilderberger elite] published on March 30, 2005 increased the oil price range for the year 2005-6 from $55-$80 per barrel to $55-$105. During 2006 meeting, Bilderbergers have confirmed that their short range price estimate for oil for the 2007-08 continues to hover around US$105-150/barrel. No wonder Jose Barroso, President of the European Commission, announced several months ago during the unveiling of the new European energy policy that the time has come for a “post-industrial age.” To bring the world into the post industrial age, you first need to destroy the world´s economic base and create another Great Depression. When people are poor, they don´t spend money, they don´t travel, and they don´t consume.

As the economic impact sinks in, and as the after effects of Peak Oil become evident in the face of breakdown of civilization, the United States will be forced to challenge Europe, Russia and China for the hegemony of control and the ever depleting hydrocarbon, non-renewable reserves most of which are contained in the Middle East. That will be point number two on the Bilderberg 2007 agenda.

Third item on the agenda is European relations with Russia not only in Europe but also in Central Asia. With Moscow making a deal with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan over the transport of gas to Europe, the US geo-strategic goal of driving a wedge between the Central Asian countries and Russia lies in shambles. While the US says this is "not good for Europe", the Europeans are divided. Iran, overnight has become America’s last hope in the energy war.

Iran war, after two years of huffing and puffing by the Bush government is definitely off the table. Furthermore, with France, Russia, Japan and China investing heavily in Iran, the world has drawn a line in the sand and the U.S. will be told at the conference not to cross it. There is blood in the water, and blood in the water usually leads to a good fight.

That notwithstanding, the United States needs to control the region, not only for its oil reserves but, most importantly to help it sustain world economic hegemony. Under this strategic design, regional states will be turned to weak domains of sectarian sheikhs with little or no sovereignty and, by implications, a pathetic agenda of their economic development. Regional chaos favours the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, which in turn reinforces the process of political and social disintegration supported by the Bilderbergers.

With Blair leaving, the UK will be told yet again, that they must, at all cost, do what is necessary to integrate the country into the European Community.

Finally, with Wolfowitz resigning from the World Bank, Bilderberg luminaries will try to come to a consensus on how best to overhaul not only the bank but its sister organization, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), led by a Spaniard, Rodrigo Rato. Wolfowitz became entangled in controversy seven weeks ago after World Bank whistleblowers leaked to the Washington-based non-governmental organization Government Accountability Project (GAP) documents that showed Wolfowitz pushing a high pay raise in a secondment deal to the US State Department for his girlfriend.

We, as a society, are at a crossroads. In almost every corner of the planet, stress points are beginning to fracture. The roads we take from here will determine the very future of humanity. It was former British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, who stated that “the world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”

It is not up to God to bring us back from the “New Dark Age” planned for us. IT IS UP TO US. Whether we go into the next century as an electronic global police state or as free human beings depends on the action we take now. Forewarned is forearmed. We will never find the right answers if we don’t ask the proper questions.

Dobbs: Amnesty Plan Part Of North American Union

Youtube
The new amnesty plan proposed by Capitol Hill is part of a larger agenda to integrate the United States and Mexico.

The political leadership envision no restriction to the flow of poor workers and goods into the United States. And guess who will pay for all of it.

A shocking report on plans to eliminate the mexican border, and bankrupt the U.S. taxpayer.

Educating Rudy Press Conference

Youtube
Congressman Ron Paul and Michael Scheuer educate Rudy Giuliani on American foreign policy (May 24, 2007)

Was Bush Speech Scheduled To Pre-empt The View?

ABC show set to feature 9/11 truth heavyweights cancelled in favor of Bush's Al-Qaeda obsessed press conference
prisonplanet

Did master political strategist Karl Rove schedule and script George Bush's speech in the Rose Garden yesterday to pre-empt the possible appearance of 9/11 truth movement heavyweights on ABC's The View?

That's the suspicion many people outlined to us in e mails and calls yesterday.

Though we learned privately that guest appearances by William Rodriguez and the Loose Change crew on the show hosted by Rosie O'Donnell were cancelled at the start of the week, the ABC website still listed their names as being scheduled.

Presidential news conferences that take place in the daytime and do not relate to any kind of breaking news or national event do not cut into regular programming on major non-news channels, and yet ABC chose to air the speech in its entirety after The View was cancelled for that day.

Many 9/11 truthers now suspect that this was a Rovian ploy to distract attention or in effect completely displace the subject matter raised by Rodriguez and Loose Change that was set to be aired on The View.

In his speech, Bush re-hashed dated and questionable "intelligence" about Al-Qaeda and entered into a sophomoric rant about how the terrorists want to kill our children, invoking the phantom group no less than 19 times.

"Just about everything else that came up during the hour-long news conference was traced to bin Laden's terrorist network," writes Dana Milbank today in the Washington Post.

"They are a threat to your children, David," he advised NBC's David Gregory."

"It's a danger to your children, Jim," Bush informed the New York Times' Jim Rutenberg."
"This last warning was perplexing, because Rutenberg has no children, only a brown chow chow named Little Bear. It was unclear whether Bush was referring to a specific and credible threat to Little Bear or merely indicating there was increased "chatter in the system" about chow chows in general."

Was Bush's relentless propaganda pitch about Al-Qaeda scripted to coincide with the slated appearance of 9/11 truthers on The View, a show that enjoys 30 million viewers over the course of its air time? Was this a Rovian scheme to neutralize 9/11 truth?

In between his 10th and 11th mention of "Al-Qaeda", a sparrow stepped up to the plate to challenge Bush on his crap and put the cowardly Washington press corps to shame by pooping on his shoulder.

Man Treated As Terror Suspect For Taking Photo Of French Fries

fairfieldweekly.com

This was going to be a happy story about how two of my nephews love the french fries on the Bridgeport-Port Jefferson Ferry. “Ferry fries,” they call them. But that story went out the window Sunday night, when I took the photograph below and was threatened with arrest by the Ferry Fascists for doing so.

I was heading back to Connecticut after a weekend with the family when I took the photo. I’d eaten the fries on the way over, but couldn’t stomach another round, so I snapped two photos at the food counter, and as I was putting the camera away, two guys behind the counter started lobbing hostile, accusatory questions in my direction. “Why are you taking pictures of the food?” “I’m writing a review,” I responded, and walked away.

I went outside to take some notes and then headed back into the cabin. I observed that there were two crew members standing near me, and I heard one of them talking about me, and the photo I took. I had been turned in!

I’m of the mindset that when overzealous 9/11-hero wannabes start making ridiculous accusations, I am going to stand up and say something. If I hear you talking about me like I might be a terrorist for taking a picture of french fries, I am going to interrupt and put some perspective on the matter. So I approached the mate and told him I had a complaint about his crew. I didn’t appreciate their hostility. Yes, I was livid. Stone-cold sober, too.

Well, Gilligan didn’t like my tone, and I guess it’s my fault for escalating the situation by lobbing multiple eff-bombs at him, because the next thing I know, Gilligan’s back with two Big Fellows. I gave my name and phone number to Gilligan, and I showed him the picture of the french fries (which, by the way, are disgusting). In fact, I showed him all three of the photos that were on the camera. That should have ended it, but Gilligan demanded that I show him identification, because otherwise the police would get involved. I asked him under what authority he was demanding this of me. It’s the captain’s orders.

“Kiss my ass. I’m not showing you any ID.”

Gilligan goes to consult with the Skipper, comes back, and repeats the threat. Show me ID, or the police will be waiting at the dock.

Now, this is the part of the story where the little man on my shoulder who wants to go home and enjoy the evening whispers in my ear, “It’s not worth it, my boy.” So I take out my ID, and one of the Big Men grabs it. “He doesn’t even drive!” he sneers. “It’s a forgery!” he declares. “This isn’t you in the picture,” Gilligan announces.

Well, the ID is a New York State non-driver’s ID I’ve had forever, and it is, in fact, me in the picture. But Big Man declares that he knows better, since he was a cop for 20 years.

“That’s my ID. Take it or leave it,” I tell them. We pull in to the dock, and I stroll off the boat. No cops. End of story, almost.

Intern Molly Aronica went down to the ferry dock Tuesday morning to get a quote for me. She found Frederick A. Hall, vice president and general manager of the ferry company. “All photographs may be subject to challenge,” he told Molly, “due to the fact that there have been past incidents where possible acts of terrorism have been threatened.”

Fair enough, but this episode was clearly brought to you by the same dangerously moronic mindset that brought you Freedom Fries.

Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric, resurfaces in Iraq

international herald iht.com

KUFA, Iraq: The powerful Iraqi cleric Moktada al-Sadr surfaced in his home base of Kufa in southern Iraq on Friday, delivering a sermon in a local mosque after what American intelligence officials called a four-month sojourn in Iran.

The cleric, addressing a large crowd amid heavy security, called for American forces to leave Iraq and for the Iraqi government to make sure that the Americans leave as soon as possible. He called for and end to fighting between his own Mahdi Army and Iraqi forces and police, asking his followers to conduct peaceful demonstrations instead.

He also requested reconciliation between Shiites and Sunnis.

Sadr left for Iran after the Bush administration announced its new security push in January, and his militia immediately went underground, in an apparent effort to out-wait the Americans and avoid a head-on clash. Members of his political party, however, say he never left.

Now, his return has the potential to profoundly influence politics and the security situation in Iraq, though American officials acknowledge that the political motivations for Sadr's return and even the duration of his stay in Iraq remain unclear.

Sadr's appearance came as the American military announced on Friday that six more soldiers had died in Iraq, five on Thursday and one on Tuesday, according to Reuters. April was the worst month this year for the American military since the invasion, with 104 soldiers killed. About 90 have been killed in May so far.

The prevailing view among American officials familiar with intelligence reports about Sadr's return is that the cleric's aim at a minimum is to raise his political profile in Iraq and possibly strengthen his position in anticipation that provincial elections may be held next year. There have also been reports that his militia has been splintering during his absence, and he may also be trying to reinforce his influence over his supporters.

Some Americans also suggest that he may be trying to take advantage of the absence of one of his main Shiite rivals, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who has come to the United States for medical treatment. Hakim's organization, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, has been vying for influence among Shiites with Sadr's organization.

The broader question is whether Sadr plans to step up his oratory against the American-led coalition and try to mobilize pressure for an American withdrawal or seek a new political accommodation.

"He has a great deal of administrative and management work to do," said Toby Dodge, a Middle East expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "He has to reassert control over an increasingly wayward military organization." Dodge, who recently spent a month in Iraq, added, "Clearly, he needs to make his mind up whether his military organization is a tool of rampant sectarianism or a tool of national reconciliation."

According to American officials familiar with intelligence reports, Sadr slipped into Iraq almost a week ago and was recently at Kufa, his home base near Najaf. Sadr, 33, has had an antagonistic relationship with the United States. Much of his popularity stems from his vehemently anti-American speeches immediately after the invasion in 2003; his militia waged two major uprisings against American troops in 2004.

In April, six ministers from Sadr's movement left the Maliki government, protesting the Iraqi government's refusal to set a schedule for the withdrawal of American forces. But a substantial bloc of Sadr supporters remain in the Iraqi Parliament. Last month, Sadr issued a statement, read by a cousin in Parliament, that praised Iraqis who were resisting the American occupation as "honorable Iraqis" and denounced President Bush as "the greatest evil." Despite his efforts to present himself as an Iraqi nationalist, there have been reports that Sadr's militia has begun to fracture while he has been away and that he was losing influence with some of his more militant followers.

"There clearly are divisions in the Sadrist movement, probably accentuated by Sadr's continuing absence from Iraq," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in March.

Recently, Sadr has been taking a different tack. His supporters have met with Sunni Arab tribal leaders from Anbar Province who have been feuding with the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. The meetings were billed as an effort to forge a nationalist movement to overcome sectarian tensions, and the message appeared calculated to appeal to war-weary Iraqis. Some political analysts saw it as an attempt to expand his political bloc, and his return may also be an effort to advance this agenda.

American officials presume that Sadr, in returning to Iraq, has been assured by the Maliki government that he will not be detained. The United States appears to be taking a wait-and-see attitude, hoping that he will be more flexible in practice than his fiery speeches would suggest. While some American officials expect him to rally support for an American departure from Iraq, others say they hope he may seek some sort of accommodation.

Still, not even American officials privy to classified intelligence on Sadr's return pretend to be certain what he has in mind. "There is a range of speculation on what it might mean," one Defense Department official said. "Some say he will reassert himself. Some are not so sure of that. I don't believe the intelligence community has come to a firm assessment on the meaning of his return to Iraq."

One matter of speculation concerns how long Sadr intends to remain in Iraq. One theory is that he may make an appearance to impress his supporters, condemn the American occupation in a Friday sermon and then head back to Iran.

But another view is that Sadr will be watching the Americans as closely as they are monitoring him. This theory holds that he will continue to stay in southern Iraq and nurture his movement as long as he concludes that there is little chance that the American forces will move against him.

Michael Gordon reported from Washington and Jon Elsen from New York. Iraqi employees of The New York Times reported from Kufa and Najaf.

Iranian leader: Israel may be 'uprooted' - Focus on Iran - MSNBC.com

Iranian leader: Israel may be 'uprooted' - Focus on Iran - MSNBC.com

Iranian leader: Israel may be 'uprooted'
Ahmadinejad warns Jewish state against attacking Lebanon this summer
The Associated Press
Updated: 2:11 p.m. ET May 24, 2007

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday warned Israel it would be “uprooted” if the Jewish state made any move against and attacked Lebanon in the coming summer.

Although there has been discussion among Israeli experts about the possibility of another war against the Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerillas, Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz and other officials have denied plans for such a conflict. A war between the two sides last summer ended in a U.N.-brokered cease-fire.

Israeli troops are in the midst of an offensive against the Palestinian Hamas faction in response to rocket attacks on Israeli border towns, arresting more than 30 senior members of Islamic militant group in the West Bank early Thursday.

“If you think that by bombing and assassinating Palestinian leaders you are preparing ground for new attacks on Lebanon in the summer, I am telling you that you are seriously wrong,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a rally in the city of Isfahan.

“If this year you repeat the same mistake of the last year, the ocean of nations of the region will get angry and will cut the root of the Zionist regime from its stem,” added Ahmadinejad, speaking live on state television.

Ahmadinejad warned Israel that “60 years of invasion and assassination is enough. If you do not cease invasion and massacre, soon the hand of power of the nations of the region will rub you criminals with earth.”

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Ahmadinejad’s comments reflected the Iranian leadership’s support for the “most extreme elements in Lebanon and in the Palestinian Authority.”

“Ahmadinejad funds, trains and arms the most extreme anti-peace elements in the region. If there is any real threat to regional security, it comes from an expansionist fundamentalist Iran,” Regev said.

The 34-day Israeli-Hezbollah war started after the pro-Iranian militants captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross border raid in July 2006. The cease-fire called for the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers and Lebanese troops in southern Lebanon along the border with Israel.

After the inconclusive outcome of the war, Israelis are seen as unlikely to start another one unless they felt they could emerge clearly victorious. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert lost most of his public support after Israel failed to achieve its stated goals—freeing the captured soldiers and crushing Hezbollah.

‘Wiped off the map’
Ahmadinejad has a history of verbal attacks on Israel.

In October 2005, he raised outrage in the West when he declared that Israel’s “Zionist regime should be wiped off the map.” His supporters and some independent analysts have since argued Ahmadinejad’s words were mistranslated from Farsi and actually meant “vanish from the pages of time”—implying Israel would disappear on its own rather be destroyed.

Ahmadinejad appears to be stepping up his confrontational tone at a time when Iran faces renewed pressure by the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear program and just days before direct Iran-U.S. talks in Baghdad on Iraq’s security.

The United States, which has long accused Iran of providing sophisticated explosives to militants in Iraq, has also increased its military presence in the Gulf as a show of force.

Ahmadinejad comments Thursday also likely reflect his attempt to cast himself in the role of a champion of the Palestinian cause. Iran support the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups that refuse to recognize Israel.
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11497240/

Use Your Driver's License as a Debit Card

businessweek
A startup promises to save both drivers and gas station owners a bundle at the pump by cutting credit cards out of the payment process

Aurora Bisig is a big believer in retailer discount cards. At her last count, she had a dozen—from Sam's Club (WMT) to nearly every grocery store in Central Texas. So this March, when the Austin (Tex.) insurance agent pulled into a gas station for a fill-up and saw a sign promising an additional 10¢ off per gallon for signing up with a new e-payment program, she was interested.

She was also pleased to learn that the "RollbackPrice" program wouldn't require her to add another piece of plastic to her overstuffed wallet. Instead, after entering her driver's license number and bank account information online with a two-year-old company called National Payment Card (NPC), she'd be able to pay for gas just by swiping her driver's license (linked directly, via the existing magnetic stripe, to her bank account), and entering a personal identification number.

Gas-station owners are pleased with the program too. Because NPC processes the payment as an e-check with the Automated Clearing House (ACH), a network most commonly used for direct deposits, participating retailers bypass credit card companies such as Visa and Mastercard (MA)—and their processing fees (see BusinessWeek.com, 3/13/07, "Steve Case Takes On the Credit Card Giants").
Cutting Down on Interchange Fees

Also known as interchange fees, these charges add up to more than small change for gas station owners now that the average price of gas is over $3 a gallon. In fact, last year, the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) reported that such stores' credit card fees surged 22% to reach $6.6 billion, making it the industry's second-largest expense—and exceeding the industry's overall profits for the first time ever.

NPC started piloting the patent-pending technology at a handful of gas stations in Texas this January. Since then the company has signed contracts to roll out the system to five regional convenience store chains starting in June. Although only 24 states currently issue licenses with magnetic stripes, NPC can also add e-payment functionality to a chain's existing loyalty cards. One of the first contracts NPC signed was with Flash Foods, a convenience-store chain based in Georgia, a state that doesn't have magnetic-stripe licenses. By 2010, NPC Chief Executive Officer Joe Randazza expects the system will be in place at more than 36,000 locations.

While a $36 traditional credit card purchase could cost a gas station around 86 cents (or more, if it's a rewards card), NPC charges a flat 15¢ fee for each transaction it processes. That means that retailers using NPC's system can afford to pass along an instant discount to customers—creating what's in essence a self-funded loyalty program—while still coming out ahead. Randazza estimates his eight-person company, based in Boca Raton, Fla., will be in the black by late 2008 (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/10/07, "The Problem with Loyalty Programs").
Focusing On Gas Stations

Guy Oliver of MTG Management, which manages three of the Texas gas stations where the NPC system is being piloted, says he's pleased to have some control over his spiraling credit card processing costs. "With Visa and Mastercard, there doesn't seem to be any relief in sight," he says. "We pay more in interchange fees than we do for freight to get the gas to the stations."

Randazza says the technology has applications in other industries, but for now the company is focusing on gas stations and convenience stores, where already-slim profit margins have been particularly hard hit by rising credit card interchange fees (see BusinessWeek.com, 11/17/03, "The Virtually Cashless Society," and 5/1/03, "Big Plastic's Costly Losing Hand").

Another reason for the current focus: It's one of the only markets price-sensitive enough that a few pennies off can count as a serious incentive for consumers.

Based on the reactions she's heard from friends and colleagues in Texas, Bisig says it might take some time to convince people that sharing their license number and bank account information with a retailer is safe—especially shoppers who aren't familiar with other e-payment systems like PayPal (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/23/05, "PayPal Spreads Its Wings").
Fear of Fraud a Factor

In Texas, a spokeswoman for the state's Public Safety Dept. issued a statement advising that consumers use caution when providing any retailer with their driver's license number, and emphasized that DPS does not endorse National Payment Card or any other programs that piggyback on state-issued drivers' licenses.

National Payment Card, for its part, says its stringent security measures make the likelihood of fraud or identity theft very low. Customers' financial information is not stored anywhere on the actual license, and withdrawals are not permitted after more than three failed PIN attempts. The system also sets a maximum weekly limit of $300 in withdrawals, though Randazza says in the case of fraud, customers would only be responsible for the first $50 of that.

Bisig, for one, was satisfied with the system's security precautions. Because her license is PIN-protected, she points out, it's even more secure than using a credit card. While some of her friends have worries about giving out too much of their personal information to a retailer, she reasons, "People give out that much information and more whenever they buy something on the Internet."

Bisig says her biggest complaint is that she can't use her license to pay at more retailers and still has to carry individual loyalty cards for each one. "I wish they could all do it," she says. "It would be so much easier."

Ron Paul On The Record

The Texas Congressman's best quotes on martial law, foreign policy, the economy and more
prisonplanet

Over the years we have had the opportunity to interview Ron Paul many times and in light of the recent runaway success and resonance of his presidential campaign, we decided to compile the Texas Congressman's best quotes on subjects ranging from martial law to the plunging dollar to foreign policy.

Compare these home truths to the cacophony of rehearsed establishment pablum spewed forth by Giuliani, McCain, Romney or any other of the shill candidates.

RON PAUL ON THE POLICE STATE & MARTIAL LAW

"If we don't change our ways we will go the way of Rome and I see that as rather sad.....the worst things happen when you get the so-called Republican conservatives in charge from Nixon on down, big government flourishes under Republicans."

"I think they're concerned about the remnant, the remnant of those individuals who don't buy into stuff and think that they should take care of themselves on their own, that they should have their own guns and their own provisions and they don't want to depend on the government at all and I think that is a threat to those who want to hold power. They don't want any resistance to their authoritarian rule."

"They're putting their back up against the wall and saying, if need be we're going to have martial law."

"We've heard all these statements by the President, by the administration, why they need more militarism at the federal government to keep people in check so nobody knows how this will turn out but I do know that the only thing we can do about it is try to alert the American people to what's going on so they can be prepared."

"It's getting close to it, it's called usurpation of power and it's done in many ways with Congress just going along because they're sound asleep and this certainly is an attack on our Constitution and on our freedoms."

"We might have to hope that our Supreme Court helps us out a little. The Court has been better than the executive branch and a heck of a lot better than the Congress, because we've given the President everything he's asked for and the President has been begging for all this authority, so immediately we have to hope that the courts will save us on some of these things. But once again ultimately its only when the people wake up and say they don't like this... sometimes the people wake up to late. Right now we don't have concentration camps, but like you have pointed out, the authority has been given so that concentration camps can come without Habeas Corpus. I have heard the argument that there is nothing else left in the Bill of Rights. If they can lock you up, what good is freedom of speech or what good is a gun? That is now part of the books, part of the law."

"You know there's nothing that guarantees that they will allow you to air your radio show forever. They have already trampled on our rights, they talking about putting people in prison today without Habeas Corpus... If we don't preserve our fundamental freedoms we can't fight back. I'm convinced of one thing, we could all be very very poor tomorrow and have to start from scratch but if we have our freedoms and we have our sound currency and we have the government off our backs, this country would rebound so quickly."

"I think they are always prepared and everyday they have more powers than before because under these emergency powers acts, the President now has more authority than ever. And the contest that is really going on in this Presidential election is are there enough of us that care about our freedoms versus those who are willing to succumb to the temptations of dictatorship. Just think of the attitude, what it was like right after 9/11 when they passed the Patriot Act, I said 'you know it's not even available, you can't even read it and we're getting ready to vote' they said 'it doesn't matter, the people want us to do something, this looks like we're doing something, it sounds good, there's no way I'm even gonna question this', so they voted for it. They got their signals from the people. it is true that there are a lot of people who wanted something done, the big question is are there more of them or more of us?"

"Congress has generously ignored the Constitution while the President flaunts it, the courts have ignored it and they get in the business of legislating so there's no respect for the rule of law."

RON PAUL ON BIRD FLU

"To me it's so strange that the President can make these proposals and it's even plausible. When he talks about martial law dealing with some epidemic that might come later on and having forced quarantines, doing away with Posse Comitatus in order to deal with natural disasters, and hardly anybody says anything. People must be scared to death."


"I believe it is the President hyping this and Rumsfeld, but it has to be in combination with the people being fearful enough that they will accept the man on the white horse. My first reaction going from my political and medical background is that it's way overly hyped and to think that they have gone this far with it, without a single case in the whole country and they're willing to change the law and turn it into a military state? That is unbelievable! They're determined to have martial law."

RON PAUL ON THE NEO-CONS

"I think the arrogance of power that they have where they themselves are like Communists....in the sense that they decide what is right. The Communist Party said that they decided what was right or wrong, it wasn't a higher source."

RON PAUL ON THE UN, GLOBAL GOVERNMENT & THE NORTH AMERICAN UNION

"Who do we have at the UN, Bolton, the arch Neo-Con warmonger and actually what they've done is taken the Neo-Con position on intervening on the internal affairs of other nations and regime change and they've institutionalized that in the United Nations, now the UN is in the business of regime change."

"I think the goal is one world government - we have not only the U.N. - we have the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, then we have all the subsidiaries like NAFTA and hemispheric governments, highways coming in."

"We have behind the scenes a plan for a North American Union, that's the part that the American people are starting to wake up to, although we have a long way to go to wake up Washington. It's amazing to me how many people outside of Washington are very much aware of the plans with this North American Union, at the same time they are in total denial in Washington, except for the few behind the scenes who are laying the plans and providing the finances."

RON PAUL ON THE DEMOCRAT COWARDS

"Not a whole lot will change because the leadership on the Democratic side, even if they had their way, don't have a different foreign policy. They have been supportive of an interventionist foreign policy in the middle east, and they are not about to back away from that... They are willing to criticize the policy but only as a means to get power."

RON PAUL ON THE PLUNGING DOLLAR & THE ECONOMY

"They all believe in the federal reserve, they are not going to get rid of the IRS and the income tax. I think the dollar is going to keep sliding, which means prices are going to rise, when currencies self destruct, the end goes quickly. There are no signs that there is anything being done in Washington to correct the problem. Spending is going to continue and probably going to get worse, the deficits are going to stay high if foreign policy is not going to change."

"That's also part of the foreign policy to be in position to hold onto natural resources, that's one of the major reasons why we're in the middle east, so yes if there is a financial crisis, they're going to have the guns, and they have control of the natural resources... It's not a good scenario, because what usually happens when you wipe out a currency is that you wipe out the middle class, and we already see this happening. The standard of living is going down."

"They get a temporarily good deal but what it does is encourage us not to be productive, it encourages us not to have manufacturing any longer, we can let others do it cheaper, cheap labour, and then we buy it with cheap money. That is going to come to an end. That means later on there are going to be a lot of changes here. Domestically the interest rates are going to rise, the inflation rate, the price of all goods and services, that will rise, and the economy will weaken, so we have some very serious problems ahead."

"Economically the consequences will be that there's going to be a wholesale rejection of the dollar, because the world has trusted the dollar, especially since the breakdown of the Bretton Woods in 1971, when the linkage of the dollar to gold was broken, they still trusted the dollar as if it were gold, and therefore we can print the money and we can spend the money and foreign countries take our money, then loan it back to us, so they're getting a bum rap."

RON PAUL ON FOREIGN POLICY

"As a Commander in chief you could certainly handle the troops around the world. I would start talking to all our allies and tell them what the plans were and start coming home. We are now spending close to a trillion dollars maintaining our foreign policy. It's a lot bigger than most people realize if you add up the Dod, the supplementals, the interest on the money we spend and taking care of our veterans."

"We have turned our own country into isolationists, diplomatically we don't talk to anybody, we have more enemies than we've ever had before and fewer allies, and at the same time our ability to defend this country is being diminished on a daily basis. We worry about borders, all around he world, we worry about borders in Korea, about borders around Iraq, and what do we do with our own borders? Here we don't do anything."

Bush Urges China to Strengthen Currency

sf gate
President Bush on Thursday told a senior Chinese economic minister that the United States is "watching very carefully" whether Beijing will strengthen the value of its currency.

After a meeting with Vice Premier Wu Yi, the leader of the largest high-level Chinese delegation ever to visit the United States, Bush told reporters the U.S. is "making it clear to China that we value our relationship, but the $233 billion trade deficit must be addressed." Strengthening China's currency, he said, is one way to deal with the deficit.

"This is a complex relationship," Bush said. "There's areas where there's friction, and we just got to work through the friction."

A day after high-level economic talks with senior Bush administration officials, Wu planned meetings Thursday with frustrated congressional leaders. Discussions Wednesday failed to reach a breakthrough in the countries' biggest dispute: China's undervalued currency.

Many lawmakers are considering legislation that would punish Beijing for trade practices that they say have driven U.S. trade deficits to record levels and cost thousands of manufacturing jobs.

Bush, in his comments, urged China to open up financial markets to U.S. companies.

"Not only would it be beneficial to the United States, we happen to think it would be beneficial to the Chinese economy for the consumers to have different options when it comes to savings and purchases," Bush said.

He also called on China to open its market to U.S. beef. "They need to be eating U.S. beef. It's good for them. They'll like it," he said.

China has rejected U.S. requests that it accelerate the revaluing of its currency, the yuan, which American manufacturers contend is undervalued by as much as 40 percent. That makes Chinese products cheaper for Americans and U.S. goods more expensive in China.

After meetings Wednesday between lawmakers and Wu, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said the Chinese told lawmakers they needed more time to overhaul their currency system and make other changes.

Rangel, a Democrat, told reporters that his committee planned to move forward with legislation; some of the bills being considered would impose stiff penalties on Chinese imports.

Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, a leading critic of China, described the frustration he said his colleagues felt. "There's never any action," he said in an interview. "I don't think a press release is going to assuage Congress' worries. We need results."

Despite the criticism, both Wu and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, head of the U.S. delegation at the talks, sounded positive about the importance of the new high-level "strategic economic dialogue" between the countries, which occur twice a year.

The delegations agreed to more than double the number of daily passenger flights between the two nations by 2012, going from 10 to 23. Cargo flights also were increased. The gains fell short of the openings the Bush administration had hoped to achieve.

In the area of financial services, China agreed to a slight expansion in business opportunities for U.S. companies but not the lifting of caps on foreign ownership of banks, securities firms and insurance companies that U.S. firms had sought.

For her part, Wu said it was important to continue direct consultations between the two nations rather than resorting to "threat and sanctions."

U.S. business groups had a decidedly more downbeat response.

"It's clear that this dialogue has been nothing but a cynical Bush administration exercise in spin and public relations," said Kevin Kearns, president of the U.S. Business and Industry Council, which represents small and medium-size manufacturing companies. "The failure of the White House's approach is now clear, so the ball is clearly in Congress' court."

New al CIAda Tapes Feature U.S. Capitol Under 'Attack'

abc news

FLASHBACK: U.S. Government Caught Red-Handed Releasing Staged Al-Qaeda Videos

Al Qaeda has a new opening graphic for its propaganda tapes: the U.S. Capitol under "attack."

"The Islamic State of Iraq...March Toward Washington" reads the headline in English superimposed over a digitally created scene of the U.S. Capitol under attack in the introductory sequence of one tape released on the Internet this week.

Another from al Qaeda's "as Sahab" production arm announces "Holocaust of the Americans in the Land of Khorasan" and shows an image of the U.S. Capitol to introduce a short clip of al Qaeda fighters.

"This is a disturbing new trend," says Laura Mansfield, an Arabic expert who monitors jihadi videos on the Internet.

"Recall that in January 2006, Osama Bin Laden said that plans for attacks in the U.S. were in progress," Mansfield told the Blotter on ABCNews.com. "It may be that this new imagery is designed to motivate terrorist activity in the U.S., but it is certainly intended as a recruiting tool and perhaps intended to reassure al Qaeda's jihadi followers they haven't forgotten their goal of an al Qaeda attack on Washington, D.C.," she said.

Bush Re-Authorizes Martial Law Provisions

prisonplanet

President George W. Bush has sparked much alarm by openly declaring himself to be a dictator in the event of a national emergency under new provisions that will effectively nullify the U.S. constitution, but such an infrastructure has been in place for over 70 years and this merely represents a re-authorization of the infrastructure of martial law.

New legislation signed on May 9, 2007, declares that in the event of a "catastrophic event", the President can take total control over the government and the country, bypassing all other levels of government at the state, federal, local, territorial and tribal levels, and thus ensuring total unprecedented dictatorial power.

The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, which also places the Secretary of Homeland Security in charge of domestic "security", was signed earlier this month without the approval or oversight of Congress and seemingly supercedes the National Emergency Act which allows the president to declare a national emergency but also requires that Congress have the authority to "modify, rescind, or render dormant" such emergency authority if it believes the president has acted inappropriately.

Journalist Jerome Corsi, who has studied the directive also states that it makes no reference to Congress and "its language appears to negate any requirement that the president submit to Congress a determination that a national emergency exists."

In other words the new directive excludes Congress altogether from governance in a state of emergency.

While alluding to the "enduring constitutional government", the directive actually ensures the end of constitutional government as each branch, the executive, legislative and judicial, are stripped of equal authority and must answer directly and solely to the President.

The mainstream media has not reported on the directive and the White House has refused to comment.

Earlier this month it was reported that a high-level group of government and military officials has been quietly preparing an emergency survival program named "The Day After," which would effectively end civil liberties and implement a system of martial law in the event of a catastrophic attack on a U.S. city.

Though anathema to any notion of liberty or freedom, this new legislation has not come out of the blue, it is merely an open declaration of the infrastructure of martial law that the federal government has been building since the turn of the last century, which was first publicly codified in the 1933 war powers act under Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Senate Report 93-549, which was presented at the first session of the 93rd Congress, outlines just a handful of the declared national emergencies or martial law declarations that preceded the latest one.

"Since March 9, 1933, the United States has been in a state of declared national emergency. In fact, there are now in effect four presidentially-proclaimed states of national emergency: In addition to the national emergency declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, there are also the national emergency proclaimed by President Harry S. Truman on December 16, 1950, during the Korean conflict, and the states of national emergency declared by President Richard M. Nixon on March 23, 1970, and August 15, 1971."

In alliance with these open declarations of martial law and the 1947 National Security Act, bills such as the Patriot Act, the John Warner Defense Authorization Act and the Military Commissions Act have all put the final jigsaw pieces in place to complete an infrastructure of dictatorship since 9/11.

We're already living under an infrastructure of martial law and have been since 1933, all that remains for it to be fully implemented is a big enough natural disaster, mass terror attack or other catastrophe that will cause the necessary carnage and panic that affords the federal government enough leeway to implement open dictatorship with the least possible resistance.

New revelations that Bush has openly declared himself to be a dictator are both shocking and demand immediate attention, but they only represent a re-authorization of the tyranny that Americans have been living under for at least the past 74 years.

'World heading towards Iran confrontation'

isreal news
IAEA Head Mohamed ElBaradei: Iran is building knowledge, situation is deteriorating. We are unable to inspect Iranian facilities

The international community and Iran are "heading towards confrontation" over Tehran's nuclear program, Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warned Thursday morning.

ElBaradei was speaking at a two-day conference in Luxembourg aimed at "preventing nuclear catastrophe," organized by Russian Jewish Congress Chairman Viatcheslav Kantor.

"Its very difficult to say how close a country is to nuclear weapons," ElBaradei said during a press conference. "Iran is expanding its knowledge and capacity. It now has over 1000 centrifuges. I have expressed concern over this because the Agency is unable to conduct a robust and full inspection," he added.

"My current priority is to carry out a comprehensive inspection," ElBaradei said, adding that he estimated Iran was "three to eight years" from being capable of producing nuclear weapons.

The IAEA chief has come under criticism in recent days for suggesting that Iran has made so much progress on its nuclear program that the world should accept as "fact" that Iran will have the independent ability to enrich uranium.

On Wednesday, the IAEA released a report saying Iran was operating 1600 centrifuges independently. US officials have described the report as "alarming," while Iran said the report was "devoid of any new points."

"We could end up with a major confrontation," ElBaradei reiterated. "Iran needs to listen to the international community and suspend enrichment, but the international community also needs to engage Iran. We need a comprehensive settlement," he added, saying, "the status quo is unacceptable."

The IAEA head added that the issue represents "an emerging threat in a region that is in an absolute mess right now."

Nuclear weapons expert Mark Fitzpatrick told Ynetnews that ElBaradei's estimates may be too optimistic. "If everything goes smoothly for Iran, it will be 2 - 3 years away from being able to produce nuclear weapons," he said. "It seems Iran is on track to having 3000 centrifuges by the middle of this summer. It will take them about a year to get a hold of the technical issues and another year to enrich the uranium, hence my estimate of two years," he added.

Fitzpatrick noted that up until 2003, no less than 10 indicators were found to strongly suggest that Iran's nuclear program had a military purpose. "After 2003, all those signs stopped," he said. "Did the Iranians stop? Or is it more secretive? There's no reason to believe they stopped," he added.

'Attack on Iran would be catastrophic'

Meanwhile, speaking to Ynetnews, former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said a military strike on Iran would be a "catastrophic" option.

Blix, who is currently Chairman of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, said previous military operations at nuclear programs, such as Israel's strike on Iraq's Osirak plant in 1982, served to slow the nuclear program, but added that only a "durable occupation or regime change" could ensure that the program is not restarted.

"In all likelihood, an attack on Iran would be catastrophic," Blix said, adding that the strike would rally support for Iranian President Ahmadinejad.

Ex-Gonzales aide says she may have 'crossed the line'

la times + video
Her testimony confirms politics were a factor in Justice Dept. personnel decisions, but the extent remains unclear.

WASHINGTON — After three months of congressional hearings into the firing of U.S. attorneys, one thing became clear Wednesday: Partisan politics did play a role in Justice Department personnel decisions.

But lawmakers, who have heard from an array of young political functionaries to the U.S. attorney general himself, still do not know the extent of it.

The parade of Justice Department officials wrapped up Wednesday with the testimony of Monica M. Goodling, 33, a graduate of an evangelical Christian law school whose meteoric rise to the top of the Bush Justice Department crashed and burned this spring when she resigned and hired a lawyer.

She was senior counsel to Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales and was his liaison to the White House.

After weeks of wrangling about the ground rules for her appearance, Goodling — testifying under a grant of immunity from prosecution — acknowledged that she had taken into account the political leanings of applicants for jobs at the Justice Department, including career prosecutors and immigration judges. That may have violated federal civil service laws, and Goodling conceded she may have "crossed the line."

The admission, before a packed House Judiciary Committee hearing, was the strongest evidence yet of Bush administration wrongdoing turned up by congressional investigators. For Democrats, it confirmed suspicions about the depths of politicization at the Justice Department under Gonzales.

But still fiercely disputed is the core question of whether officials were systematically assessing U.S. attorneys' fidelity to administration political goals and easing out those found wanting, as Democrats and some of the fired attorneys suspect.

The hearings have failed to produce support for Democrats' most provocative theories: that the firings were driven by a desire to find U.S. attorneys who would pursue legal action — in voting fraud or public corruption matters — in ways that would help Republican candidates.

Now, with Goodling and other Justice officials denying they knew of any such motives, Democrats are turning to the White House for answers. That path could be highly problematic.

The administration has declined to provide unfettered access to the likes of political operative Karl Rove and former White House Counsel Harriet E. Miers. Lawmakers are threatening to issue subpoenas for documents and testimony. The matter could be headed for court.

Democrats on Wednesday expressed indignation and frustration at the state of affairs.

"The only way we can get to the full truth is if Mr. Karl Rove is sitting in the very same seat that you're sitting in," Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas) told Goodling. "And he needs to be here. And he needs to be here posthaste."

While portraying herself as a department loyalist who considered her colleagues part of an extended family, Goodling also lobbed new and explosive charges against Gonzales and Paul J. McNulty, the outgoing deputy attorney general.

Goodling recounted one conversation she had with Gonzales during her final days at the department that suggested the attorney general may have attempted to coordinate with her his version of the events leading up to the firing of the eight prosecutors.

Goodling said Gonzales reviewed the story of the firings with her in March at a meeting she requested in his office to discuss her future.

She said she was "paralyzed" and "distraught" by the swirling controversy and asked Gonzales for a transfer. The attorney general said he would consider the request.

"He then proceeded to say, 'Let me tell you what I can remember,' and he laid out for me his general recollection … of some of the process regarding the replacement of the U.S. attorneys," Goodling said. "He laid out a little bit of it, and then he asked me … if I had any reaction to his iteration."

"It made me a little uncomfortable," Goodling continued.

Democrats seized on the exchange, questioning whether Gonzales was attempting to coordinate stories with his former aide and possibly even to obstruct justice.

Gonzales has told lawmakers that he had not discussed the dismissals with others involved at the department for fear that it might compromise the integrity of the investigation.

"Do you think, Ms. Goodling, the attorney general was trying to shape your recollection?" asked Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.).

Goodling said no but that the encounter left her speechless. "I just did not know if it was a conversation that we should be having, and so I just … didn't say anything," she said.

Senate Democrats offered a harsher assessment. "At the very least, the attorney general may have misled the Senate Judiciary Committee," Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a leading Gonzales critic, said in a statement issued after the House hearing. "At worst, he may have tried to influence Ms. Goodling's testimony."

Goodling also alleged that McNulty, who has testified that he was largely in the dark about the events leading up to the firings, was "not fully candid" with lawmakers and gave testimony to Congress that was "incomplete or inaccurate."

McNulty told a Senate panel Feb. 6 that the decision to fire the U.S. attorneys in December was made solely by the Justice Department when, in fact, the White House had also weighed in.

McNulty has said Goodling and other aides failed to sufficiently brief him on the firings in advance of his testimony. Goodling said the allegation was false.

The Justice Department produced quick denials on behalf of Gonzales and McNulty, saying that neither had acted inappropriately.

"The attorney general has never attempted to influence or shape the testimony or public statements of any witness in this matter, including Ms. Goodling," said spokesman Brian Roehrkasse. "The statements made by the attorney general at this meeting were intended only to comfort her in a very difficult period of her life, as Monica described today when she said he was being kind."

McNulty said he testified truthfully "based on what I knew at that time," and that "Ms. Goodling's characterization of my testimony is wrong and not supported by the extensive record of documents and testimony already provided to Congress."

Goodling also acknowledged that the Justice Department last fall interviewed U.S. attorney candidates for Los Angeles who had not yet gone through the state's bipartisan selection process.

Goodling said the department considered a state commission that has screened candidates since 2001 "rather slow" and believed it did not include all candidates that were deserving.

The Times reported Wednesday that the department interviews, in which Goodling participated, were reined in after the head of the state selection commission, Los Angeles investment banker Gerald L. Parsky, protested to the White House.

Concerns were raised that officials were trying to install a politically connected successor to outgoing U.S. Atty. Debra Wong Yang.

Earlier Wednesday, Goodling — who did opposition research for the Republican National Committee before joining the Justice Department — acknowledged that she had gone overboard in considering the political backgrounds of candidates for jobs as career prosecutors. She also said she occasionally scanned Federal Election Commission websites to check out applicants' political contributions.

"You crossed the line on civil service laws, is that right?" asked Rep. Robert C. Scott (D-Va.).

"I believe I crossed the line," Goodling replied. "But I didn't mean to."

She said she could not recall the number of cases in which she allowed politics to affect her judgment.

She downplayed her involvement in the firing of the eight U.S. attorneys, saying that she acted more as a traffic cop, forwarding assessments and other information to higher-ups at the Justice Department and White House.

She offered investigators few leads on connecting the scandal to the White House. She said she never discussed the firings with Rove or Miers, although she acknowledged attending a meeting with Rove after the scandal broke and exchanging e-mail with Miers.

House leaders said the testimony was significant, and they vowed to stay on the trail.

"It's imperative that we begin to obtain more cooperation from the White House," House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) said after the hearing. "We've learned today that trust has been violated, that false statements have been made under oath — not Monica Goodling — and that there was a possible obstruction of justice as well as perjury.

"This is known as the bread crumb theory of investigation," he added. "We keep getting closer and closer to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave."

*

rick.schmitt@latimes.com

*

(INFOBOX BELOW)

Key players

Paul J. McNulty

Deputy attorney general, No. 2 person at the Justice Department.

• Testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Feb. 6.

• Downplayed his role and that of the White House in the firings. Later, he reportedly told a lawmaker he "had not been entirely candid" in his testimony.

• Announced his resignation May 14.

D. Kyle Sampson

Chief of staff, the attorney general's top aide, who compiled the list of prosecutors to be fired.

• Testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 29.

• Told the panel that despite Gonzales' earlier denials, the attorney general was deeply involved in discussions that led to the firing of the eight U.S. attorneys.

• Resigned March 12.

James B. Comey

Deputy attorney general under former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft.

• Testified twice, before the House and Senate Judiciary committees, May 3 and May 15.

• Said most of the fired U.S. attorneys were among the finest. He recalled that Gonzales, when he was White House counsel in 2004, went to Ashcroft's hospital bedside to get him to sign off on a disputed national security order that Comey had opposed as acting attorney general.

• Left the Justice Department in 2005 after Gonzales was appointed.

Monica M. Goodling

Justice Department's White House liaison, worked with Sampson on personnel matters.

• Testified Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee after receiving immunity from prosecution.

• Acknowledged that she considered political loyalty to the GOP when evaluating Justice Department employees, a possible violation of civil service and other laws.

• Resigned April 6.

Alberto R. Gonzales

U.S. attorney general, the nation's top law enforcement official.

• Testified twice, before the Senate and House Judiciary committees, April 19 and May 10.

• Acknowledged that the firing of eight U.S. attorneys could have been handled better but defended the dismissals as appropriate and based on performance, not politics.

• Despite calls for his resignation from Democrats and even some Republicans, he remains as attorney general and has President Bush's support.

Bush Authorizes New Covert Action Against Iran

The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a "nonlethal presidential finding" that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran's currency and international financial transactions.

"I can't confirm or deny whether such a program exists or whether the president signed it, but it would be consistent with an overall American approach trying to find ways to put pressure on the regime," said Bruce Riedel, a recently retired CIA senior official who dealt with Iran and other countries in the region.
A National Security Council spokesperson, Gordon Johndroe, said, "The White House does not comment on intelligence matters." A CIA spokesperson said, "As a matter of course, we do not comment on allegations of covert activity."

The sources say the CIA developed the covert plan over the last year and received approval from White House officials and other officials in the intelligence community.

Officials say the covert plan is designed to pressure Iran to stop its nuclear enrichment program and end aid to insurgents in Iraq.

"There are some channels where the United States government may want to do things without its hand showing, and legally, therefore, the administration would, if it's doing that, need an intelligence finding and would need to tell the Congress," said ABC News consultant Richard Clarke, a former White House counterterrorism official.

Current and former intelligence officials say the approval of the covert action means the Bush administration, for the time being, has decided not to pursue a military option against Iran.

"Vice President Cheney helped to lead the side favoring a military strike," said former CIA official Riedel, "but I think they have come to the conclusion that a military strike has more downsides than upsides."

The covert action plan comes as U.S. officials have confirmed Iran had dramatically increased its ability to produce nuclear weapons material, at a pace that experts said would give them the ability to build a nuclear bomb in two years.

Riedel says economic pressure on Iran may be the most effective tool available to the CIA, particularly in going after secret accounts used to fund the nuclear program.

"The kind of dealings that the Iranian Revolution Guards are going to do, in terms of purchasing nuclear and missile components, are likely to be extremely secret, and you're going to have to work very, very hard to find them, and that's exactly the kind of thing the CIA's nonproliferation center and others would be expert at trying to look into," Riedel said.

Under the law, the CIA needs an official presidential finding to carry out such covert actions. The CIA is permitted to mount covert "collection" operations without a presidential finding.

"Presidential findings" are kept secret but reported to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other key congressional leaders.

The "nonlethal" aspect of the presidential finding means CIA officers may not use deadly force in carrying out the secret operations against Iran.

Still, some fear that even a nonlethal covert CIA program carries great risks.

"I think everybody in the region knows that there is a proxy war already afoot with the United States supporting anti-Iranian elements in the region as well as opposition groups within Iran," said Vali Nasr, adjunct senior fellow for Mideast studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"And this covert action is now being escalated by the new U.S. directive, and that can very quickly lead to Iranian retaliation and a cycle of escalation can follow," Nasr said.

Other "lethal" findings have authorized CIA covert actions against al Qaeda, terrorism and nuclear proliferation.

Also briefed on the CIA proposal, according to intelligence sources, were National Security Advisor Steve Hadley and Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams.

"The entire plan has been blessed by Abrams, in particular," said one intelligence source familiar with the plan. "And Hadley had to put his chop on it."

Abrams' last involvement with attempting to destabilize a foreign government led to criminal charges.

He pleaded guilty in October 1991 to two misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress about the Reagan administration's ill-fated efforts to destabilize the Nicaraguan Sandinista government in Central America, known as the Iran-Contra affair. Abrams was later pardoned by President George H. W. Bush in December 1992.

In June 2001, Abrams was named by then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to head the National Security Council's office for democracy, human rights and international operations. On Feb. 2, 2005, National Security Advisor Hadley appointed Abrams deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor for global democracy strategy, one of the nation's most senior national security positions.

As earlier reported on the Blotter on ABCNews.com, the United States has supported and encouraged an Iranian militant group, Jundullah, that has conducted deadly raids inside Iran from bases on the rugged Iran-Pakistan-Afghanistan "tri-border region."

U.S. officials deny any "direct funding" of Jundullah groups but say the leader of Jundullah was in regular contact with U.S. officials.

American intelligence sources say Jundullah has received money and weapons through the Afghanistan and Pakistan military and Pakistan's intelligence service. Pakistan has officially denied any connection.

A report broadcast on Iranian TV last Sunday said Iranian authorities had captured 10 men crossing the border with $500,000 in cash along with "maps of sensitive areas" and "modern spy equipment."

A senior Pakistani official told ABCNews.com the 10 men were members of Jundullah.

The leader of the Jundullah group, according to the Pakistani official, has been recruiting and training "hundreds of men" for "unspecified missions" across the border in Iran.

Will Republicans Destroy Themselves Before They Destroy America?

lew rockwell.com
The fallout now taints us all.

As everyone except for a dwindling band of Bush supporters now knows, the US is in a terrible situation in Iraq from which it cannot extract itself. For Bush and Cheney, their own pride and delusion are more compelling than US casualties, the destruction of Iraq and its people, and the inflaming of sectarian strife and anti-American violence throughout the Middle East.

Congress is complicit in the great strategic blunder. Republican flag-wavers led Americans like lemmings into the abyss. The Democrats have already abandoned the electorate that gave them Control of Congress six months ago in the false hope that the Democrats would corral the White House Moron and lead America out of the abyss.

Like the Republicans, the Democrats serve the few special-interest groups that benefit, or believe that they benefit, from the war. By now we all know who these groups are: the oil industry, the military-security complex, and the Israel Lobby, AIPAC. This contrived war, based on lies and deception, serves no other interest.

There is no longer any question whatsoever, not a single sliver of doubt, that Americans were deceived into this disastrous war. The President of the United States lied to the American people, as did the Vice President, the National Security Advisor, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Undersecretary of Defense, as did every neoconservative in the Bush administration, think tanks, and media.

The fact that the American people were lied to and deceived does not absolve them from blame. The lie was transparent, the logic nonexistent, the true facts available and easy to discover.

America failed, because the American people failed. The American people failed, because their self-righteousness and their hubris made them easy saps for deception.

Even now after five years of a disastrous policy, Republicans cannot accept the facts about the US invasion and failed occupation of Iraq. At the recent "debate" between Republican presidential candidates in South Carolina, US Representative Ron Paul dared to tell the truth. Rep. Paul said that our difficulties in the Middle East are "blowback" from our government’s determined attempts to exercise hegemony over the Middle East.

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, a person who sunk so low as to frame innocents while serving as US Attorney in order to boost his name recognition, played the self-righteous card to extreme. How dare Ron Paul suggest that US policy toward Muslims has anything whatsoever to do with attacks on the US! With all the outrage he could muster, Giuliani asked Rep. Paul "to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn’t really mean that."

The thunderous applause from the Republican audience to Giuliani’s put-down of the only honest person present underlines that the Republican Party is incapable of leadership to end a futile and lost war that under international standards is a war crime, an unprovoked naked aggression based entirely on lies, deception and a secret agenda.

At other times, the Republican audience applauded in support of torture and greeted John McCain’s protest against the practice with cold silence.

In the opening years of the 21st century the Republicans have made it clear that they are willing to sacrifice the US Constitution and Bill of Rights in order to wage "war against terrorism." This willingness makes the Republican Party a more dangerous threat to Americans than Muslim terrorists. Muslim terrorists cannot destroy our country’s reputation, trash our civil liberties and wreck our system of accountable government, but the Republican Party has done a thorough job of it.

The Democratic Party is complicit in the Republican Party’s crimes, but unlike the Republican electorate, the Democratic electorate does not support the occupation, the domestic police state measures, and the Bush administration’s decision to send more combat troops to Iraq. Although none of the current frontrunners for the Democratic presidential nomination are independent of the special interests that benefit from the war, it might still be possible for a Democrat to emerge who will represent the Democratic electorate instead of the special interests.

Republican support for Bush’s contrived war against Iraq has diminished the Republican Party. Intelligent and decent people have abandoned the party, which has morphed into a Brownshirt Party with which fewer people are willing to be associated. The diminished Republican ranks will make it difficult for the party to steal any more elections.

If we are fortunate, Republicans will complete their self-destruction before they extinguish the Constitution and destroy America.

Microsoft develops 'big brother' software

THE INQUIRER
BACKROOM BOFFINS at Microsoft have had a breakthrough in developing software which can accurately guess your name, age, gender and potentially even your location, by analysing patterns in your web browsing history.

The big idea is to prevent people from protecting their online identity by telling porkies about their personal details.

According to New Scientist, Volish software engineer Jian Hu from Microsoft's research lab in Beijing said that there are strong correlations between the sites that people visit and their personal characteristics. For example, 74 per cent of women seek health and medical information online, while only 58 per cent of men do. And 34 per cent of women surf the internet for information about religion, whereas 25 per cent of men do the same.

Another Volish boffin said that Hua-Jun Zeng said software could get its raw information from a new type of "cookie" program that records the pages visited or even your own cache of web pages. So far the software can only guess gender and age with any accuracy, the next stage is to predict your occupation, level of qualifications, and perhaps your location.

Debunkers Deny Existence Of NAU, JFK Conspiracy

Attitude of blind denial and dismissal threatens future of America
infowars

A recent Seattle Times article that scoffs at the very thought of a North American Union being implemented and dismisses it as a conspiracy theory sums up the biggest threat to freedom in America today, blind ignorance in the face of troubling facts.

"Forget conspiracy theories about JFK's assassination, black helicopters, Sept. 11, 2001. This is the big one." writes Philip Dine

"We're talking about the secret plan to build a superhighway, a giant 10- to 12-lane production, from the Yucatán to the Yukon. This "SuperCorridor" would allow the really big part of the plan to take place: the merging of the governments of Canada, the United States and Mexico. Say goodbye to the dollar, and maybe even the English language.

The rumor is sweeping the Internet, radio and magazines, spread by bloggers, broadcasters and writers who cite the "proof" in the writings of a respected American University professor, in a task force put together by the Council on Foreign Relations and in the workings of the Commerce Department. "

Dine goes on to surmise that the entire subject of the North American Union is an urban myth that "feeds on American fear of immigration and globalization".

The John Birch Society has an excellent response to Dine, which goes something along the lines of:

If the NAU is a myth why is it that...

* 18 states have introduced resolutions calling on their federal representatives to halt work on the North American Union (they include Virginia and South Carolina)
* 3 of these states (Idaho, Montana and Oklahoma) have passed their resolutions
* Oklahoma, which is in the path of the NAFTA superhighway component of the North American Union passed their resolution in the Senate 97-0. (see Basic Search Form link - top left - type in SCR10 )
* 22 U.S. Congressmen, including NC's Virginia Foxx and Walter Jones, along with all three Republican Congressmen running for President, have signed on as co-sponsors of HCR40, which calls on the executive branch to end all work on the North American Union and NAFTA superhighway
* Even the Sierra Club of Canada is sounding the alarm against the North American Union

We would add that if the North American Union is a myth why is it that Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) documents released under the FOIA show that a wide range of US administrative law is being re-written in stealth under this program to "integrate" and "harmonize" with administrative law in Mexico and Canada, just as has become commonplace within the EU.

The documents contain references to upwards of 13 working groups within an entire organized infrastructure that has drawn from officials within most areas of administrative government including U.S. departments of State, Homeland Security, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Transportation, Energy, Health and Human Services, and the office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Mr Dine simply dismisses the SPP by quoting a spokesman for the Commerce Department who describes SPP as "standard intergovernmental diplomacy and coordination that occurs all the time". The fact is though that standard intergovernmental coordination is required by law to adhere to Congressional oversight, something which the SPP agreement completely bypassed.

Dine also calls the slated single North American currency, the amero, a myth despite the fact that Robert Pastor, "the American University professor to whom conspiracy theorists point as 'the father of the NAU'" as he puts it, has authored a book and chairs confabs promoting the adoption of the amero as a common monetary currency to replace the dollar and the peso.

Just a conspiracy theory huh? Not according to Steve Previs of Jefferies International who stated on CNBC, "I think one thing for people who are dollar based need to focus on is the Amero, that's the one thing that nobody is talking about that I think is going to have a big impact... on everybody's life in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico..."

The recent news that the United States and the European Union have signed up to a new transatlantic economic partnership that will see regulatory standards "harmonized" and will lay the basis for a merging of the US and EU into one single market , is also presumably a conspiracy theory.

The most telling aspect of Dine's Seattle Times article is his immediate connection of The NAU to " conspiracy theories about JFK's assassination ", a sure fire way of spotting a debunkaholic from a mile off.

A recent poll indicates that 80% of Americans believe the JFK murder was a conspiracy, older polls have been as high as 90% - are all these people misinformed or are they simply aware that the facts do not fit the story they have been sold on that issue?

For further clarification of what constitutes a debunkaholic, witness a classic piece of debunking here on the JFK assassination by a former Clinton official and lobbyist for the nation of Pakistan prior to 9/11, Lanny Davis:

Davis cites little green men and suggests that anything posted on the internet is a conspiracy. He also states that rattling around the internet now is the absurd suggestion that new evidence indicating a conspiracy in the JFK murder has come to light. He fails to mention that the new information comes from a former top FBI scientist along with Texas A&M University researchers and was reported in the Washington Post. Davis also neglects to mention new revelations from E. Howard Hunt, the former CIA agent and Watergate conspirator, who admitted on his deathbed that he was part of a CIA conspiracy to assassinate JFK.

This is the mind set of the debunker. It has become all too easy for those who do not have the strength of character to stand up and be counted to dismiss anything they do not like the sound of as urban myth or conspiracy theory.

While there are many valiant truthseekers and active minds among us, on the opposite side a whole generation of debunkers has also emerged. A society of people who almost instinctively seize upon any issue and automatically explain any worrisome aspects as untrue or misunderstood because to do otherwise would mean having to set aside a great deal of their lives to search hard to find out what is really happening in the world around them.

The debunker generation, the fallout from a fast food culture of rampant consumerism, culturally and spiritually exhausted yet still yearning for more and more in less and less time, would rather look away than face the reality of what is really unfolding before their eyes.

Worse still are the high priests of the debunking generation who seem to declare themselves as some kind of pseudo psychologists, who rather than debate the bare facts of an issue will continually slip into an analysis of the internal mind. These debunkers dismiss anything they don't want to hear as "comfort seeking" or "reality escapism" conspiracy. 9/11 truthers for example are often roundly categorized as "people who want to believe they cannot do anything about the dangers we face in the world because they are too lazy and so invent theories and fit the facts to them".

The great irony here of course is that it is the debunkers themselves who are guilty of the crimes they have charged everyone else with and not the other way round.

Related article: 9/11 Debunkers Hide From Slam Dunk Evidence Of Controlled Demolition