If US Americans weren't so shallow, selfish, spineless, and stupid, Carter would have beaten Reagan!
Carter says majority in U.S. support views in book

By Matthew Bigg Thu Feb 22, 5:36 PM ET

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Jimmy Carter defended his new book on the Middle East on Thursday against sharp criticism from Jewish groups and said a majority of U.S. citizens including many Jews supported its main proposals.

Letters he received since the publication in November of "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid" were largely supportive and included support from many readers who described themselves as U.S. Jews, said the former president.

Jewish groups have expressed outrage at the book, arguing that its title and contents could undermine perceptions of
Israel's legitimacy.

Carter, 82, was addressing a forum at Atlanta's Emory University in which he detailed his involvement in the Middle East culminating in the Camp David Accords in 1978. He gave a robust defense of the book and responded to written questions.

"Israel will never find peace until it is willing to withdraw from its neighbor's land and to permit the Palestinians to exercise their basic human and political rights," he said.

Repression of Palestinians and taking of Palestinian land by Israel resulted from policies pursued by a conservative minority within Israel, he said.

Carter said he condemned all violence and he repeated an apology for a passage that critics said could be interpreted as supporting suicide bombings as a negotiating tactic. The passage would be removed from future editions, he said.

Carter denied accusations that he had said Jews controlled the U.S. media, but said the strength of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States, whose aims he described as legitimate, acted to stifle debate.

For any member of Congress to call for Israel to withdraw to internationally-recognized boundaries would be "politically suicide," he said.

REACTION

Asked what he had learned from reaction to the book, Carter said he was surprised at the "intensity of feeling and genuine concern that some American Jewish citizens have when anyone questions the current policies of the ... Israeli government.

"I can understand the reasons ... that any shaking of almost unanimous support in America for Israel might weaken Israel's position ... as they struggle for their own safety and their own existence," he said.

The book's main points were that Israel should stop persecuting and abusing Palestinians, withdraw to internationally-recognized borders and conduct intense negotiations with its neighbors to bring peace, Carter said.

"Those premises, which are the major premises in my book, have a strong support of American citizens," including many Jews, he said. He added that he guessed the majority of Jews in Israel also agreed with the book's proposals.

A Public Agenda poll last October with the journal Foreign Affairs found that 70 percent of Americans expressed at least partial support for the view that U.S. policies were too "pro-Israel" for the U.S. to be able to broker a Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, received several standing ovations during the forum. Outside, some people criticized his remarks and the book.

"It seems from what he said today that Israel's occupation is at the root of the problem. But I would argue that Palestinian terrorism is at the root of the problem," said Benjamin Braun, 21, a student at Emory of Middle East studies.

If seniors are unable to fear death, they have nothing to lose, which means they have already won. Don't screw with the AARP!
U.S. tourist in Costa Rica kills mugger

By MARIANELA JIMENEZ, Associate Press Writer 1 hour, 5 minutes ago

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica - An American senior citizen killed an alleged mugger with his bare hands, and his traveling companions aboard a tour bus fended off two other assailants in the Atlantic coast city of Limon, police said.

A retired member of the U.S. military aged about 70 put suspect Warner Segura in a head lock and broke his clavicle after the 20-year-old and two other men armed with a knife and gun held up their tour bus, Luis Hernandez, the police chief of Limon, 80 miles east of San Jose, said Thursday. Segura was later declared dead, apparently from asphyxiation.

The two other men fled when the 12 senior citizens started defending themselves during the Wednesday attack. Afterward, the tourists drove Segura to the Red Cross where he was declared dead. The Red Cross also treated one of the tourists for an anxiety attack, Hernandez said.

The tourists left on their Carnival cruise ship after the incident and Hernandez said authorities do not plan to press any charges against them.

"They were in their right to defend themselves after being held up," he said.

Hernandez said Segura had previous charges against him for assaults.

In a media statement, Miami, Fla.-based Carnival Cruise Lines said the Wednesday incident occurred during an outing at a Limon beach which a group of a dozen passengers had arranged on their own.

"According to witnesses, while sightseeing at a local beach, the group of guests were approached by three assailants, one of whom was armed," the statement said.

"The victims struggled with the armed perpetrator, and were able to disarm him. During this process, the gunman's two accomplices fled the scene. In the course of disarming and restraining the assailant, he died from apparent asphyxiation."

Neither the Costa Rican police nor Carnival identified the man involved in the struggle with the mugger.

The cruise line said the guests were questioned by local law enforcement and then returned to the ship. The ship's departure from Limon was slightly delayed to await their return.

"All of the guests involved, who had booked the cruise together as a group, have opted to continue with their vacation plans. Carnival is providing full support and assistance to the guests," according to the statement.

The ship, The Carnival Liberty, continued on its scheduled itinerary, with a port call scheduled in Colon, Panama.

OUR BEST WEAPON AGAINST NUT-JOB RIGHT-WING RELIGIOUS-ZEALOTS!
Atheist group takes on Bush initiative

By RYAN J. FOLEY, Associated Press Writer Thu Feb 22, 4:20 AM ET

MADISON, Wis. - Annie Laurie Gaylor speaks with a soft voice, but her message catches attention: Keep God out of government.

Gaylor has helped transform the Freedom From Religion Foundation from obscurity into the nation's largest group of atheists and agnostics, with a fast-rising membership and increasing legal clout.

Next week, the group started by Gaylor and her mother in the 1970s to take on the religious right will fight its most high-profile battle when the
U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments on its lawsuit against
President Bush's faith-based initiative.

The court will decide whether taxpayers can sue over federal funding that the foundation believes promotes religion. It could be a major ruling for groups that fight to keep church and state separate.

"What's at stake is the right to challenge the establishment of religion by the government," Gaylor said.

The 51-year-old once donned a nun's habit as a college student in 1977 to protest a judge who blamed rape on women who wear provocative clothing.

She uses different tactics these days, though her activism remains strong.

Among its victories, the group has stopped funding for a Milwaukee charity that Bush visited during the 2000 campaign and an Arizona group that preached to children of prisoners.

The case in front of the high court claims White House conferences to promote the faith-based initiative turn into unconstitutional pep rallies for religion.

The initiative helps religious organizations get government funding to provide social services.

George Washington University law professor Ira Lupu called the Madison-based foundation "by far the most aggressive litigating entity against the faith-based initiative."

"When they can prove there's religious content in those programs, they've been quite successful and they've won a few cases," Lupu said. "When they've tried to go after the initiative as a whole, they've been less successful."

Critics say the group imposes such an extreme view of the First Amendment that religious groups can't receive tax dollars for even laudable purposes.

"They are successful in the sense that they have disrupted government funding for faith-based initiatives," said Jordan Lorence of the Alliance Defense Fund, which defends religion in the public arena. "But real people with real problems are no longer getting help because of some of their lawsuits."

The group has grown as its legal challenges mount. It claims 8,500 members in 50 states, with the most coming from California, after adding a record 400 in December.

Members consider themselves freethinkers who form opinions based on reason, not faith.

Gaylor is hoping an advertising campaign on progressive talk radio, the Internet and in liberal magazines helps the group reach 10,000 members this year.

She and husband Dan Barker, a former fundamentalist minister who turned against religion, are co-presidents. Her mother, Anne Nicol Gaylor, founded the group in 1978 to counter religious influence in government after clashing with religious leaders over abortion.

Its leaders say the surge in membership reflects a U.S. population that is becoming less religious and growing liberal alarm since Bush's re-election.

"There was a feeling that there was almost a near religious-right takeover of our government and that we better speak up now," Gaylor said.

The American Religious Identification Survey in 2001 estimated that 29 million Americans had no religion, double the number from 1990. The survey, which was conducted by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, estimated that 1.9 million identified themselves as atheist or agnostic.

Before its battle against the faith-based initiative, the group stopped prayers during the University of Wisconsin's commencement and overturned Good Friday as a state holiday in Wisconsin.

"We've applied some very needed pressure through going to court on keeping state and church separate," said the elder Gaylor, 80. "We hope we've done some educating that will be lasting."

Oh, Look! All the World's bullies didn't show up!
48 nations gather to fight cluster bombs

By DOUG MELLGREN, Associated Press Writer 45 minutes ago

OSLO, Norway - Representatives from 48 nations on Thursday launched a global effort to ban the use, production and stockpiling of cluster bombs by the end of next year, despite the opposition of several of the world's major military powers.

A draft declaration, obtained by The Associated Press, said these weapons — which can linger on former battlefields for years — cause "unacceptable harm." It calls for a treaty banning them by 2008, despite concerns that some countries would not agree to act that quickly.

Norway hopes the treaty would be similar to one outlawing anti-personnel mines, negotiated in Oslo in 1997.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said advocates should push for a treaty by the end of 2008, despite concerns. "I believe any other target will be a wrong signal," he said.

The U.S., China and Russia oppose the ban and did not send representatives to the meeting. Australia,
Israel, India and Pakistan also did not attend.

Cluster bombs are small devices packed with high explosives and loaded into artillery shells, bombs or missiles. When the larger munition explodes, it scatters hundreds of the mini-explosives — called bomblets — over large areas.

A percentage of these bomblets typically fail to explode immediately, but may still detonate if they are picked up or struck — endangering civilians, often children, years after conflicts end.

The draft declaration calls for a treaty that would "prohibit the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of those cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians."

The treaty, the declaration said, should also create a framework for helping victims of cluster bombs, clearing the munitions and "destruction of stockpiles of prohibited cluster munitions," the document said.

It also urged countries to consider banning such weapons before the treaty takes effect. Norway, which is spearheading the initiative, has already done so. Austria announced a moratorium on cluster bombs at the start of the conference.

"This is a critical juncture," Steve Goose of Human Rights Watch told delegates. "Let us hope this meeting will be remembered as the meeting where a large number of countries decided that cluster munitions are not just another weapon."

Goose called cluster bombs "a humanitarian disaster waiting to happen" since they continue to kill long after a conflict has ended.

The Cluster Munition Coalition, an advocacy group co-hosting Wednesday's civilian forum, said the weapons have recently been used in
Iraq,
Kosovo,
Afghanistan and Lebanon.

The U.N. has estimated that Israel dropped as many as 4 million of the bomblets in southern Lebanon during last year's war with Hezbollah, with as many 40 percent failing to explode on impact.

Activists say children can be attracted to the unexploded weapons by their small size, shape and bright colors or shiny metal surfaces. As many as 60 percent of cluster bomb victims in Southeast Asia are children, the Cluster Munition Coalition said.

The U.S., Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Japan say the weapons can be dealt with under the 1980 U.N. Convention on Conventional Weapons.

However, treaty advocates say those talks are stalled, and a new avenue is needed.

Gahr Stoere said advocates should push for a treaty even without the support of big countries like the U.S. and China.

"I think we learned from the experience from the anti-personnel mine campaign in the '90s that if we were to wait for those countries to take the lead it will be a long wait," he said at a news conference.

"What we do here hopefully will engage those countries and that they will see merit to create rules and regulations to handle this issue. I'm not pessimistic in that regard."

On Wednesday, Simon Conway, of the Britain's Landmine Action group, said some countries attending the conference may seek to weaken the one-page draft declaration by demanding postponement of its treaty target date of 2008.

___

On the Net: http://www2.norway.or.jp/policy/news

One of yours, Squidward?
New Zealand fishermen catch rare squid

By RAY LILLEY, Associated Press Writer Thu Feb 22, 7:41 AM ET

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - A fishing crew has caught a colossal squid that could weigh a half-ton and prove to be the biggest specimen ever landed, a fisheries official said Thursday.

The squid, weighing an estimated 990 lbs and about 39 feet long, took two hours to land in Antarctic waters, New Zealand Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton said.

The fishermen were catching Patagonian toothfish, sold under the name Chilean sea bass, south of New Zealand "and the squid was eating a hooked toothfish when it was hauled from the deep," Anderton said.

The fishing crew and a fisheries official on board their ship estimated the length and weight of the squid: Detailed, official measurements have not been made. The date when the colossus was caught also was not disclosed.

Colossal squid, known by the scientific name Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, are estimated to grow up to 46 feet long and have long been one of the most mysterious creatures of the deep ocean.

If original estimates are correct, the squid would be 330 pounds heavier than the next biggest specimen ever found.

"I can assure you that this is going to draw phenomenal interest. It is truly amazing," said Dr. Steve O'Shea, a squid expert at the Auckland University of Technology. If calamari rings were made from the squid they would be the size of tractor tires, he added.

Colossal squid can descend to 6,500 feet and are extremely active, aggressive hunters, he said.

The frozen squid will be transported to New Zealand's national museum, Te Papa, in the capital, Wellington, to be preserved for scientific study.

Marine scientists "will be very interested in this amazing creature as it adds immeasurably to our understanding of the marine environment," Anderton said.

Colossal squid are found in Antarctic waters and are not related to giant squid found round the coast of New Zealand. Giant squid grow up to 39 feet long, but are not as heavy as colossal squid.

Those who stubbornly suport the war still disavow accountability for the horror, because they are crud.
Iraqis eke out living in Baghdad rubbish dump

By Ross Colvin - Feature Thu Feb 22, 8:01 AM ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Sitting amid mounds of rotting garbage in a rubbish dump in Baghdad, 13-year-old Huda Hamdan is the human face of a new U.N. report that says a third of war- torn
Iraq's 26 million people live in poverty.

The teenager, wearing a black veil, is taking a break from scavenging for aluminum cans and glass bottles that she sells for a few Iraqi dinars. She tries not to gag from the stench of the decomposing household refuse surrounding her.

She and her six brothers and sisters compete with scores of other diggers, many children and women, made homeless by sectarian violence that has forced them to flee their homes and seek refuge in the sprawling Shi'ite slum of Sadr City.

Scores of displaced Shi'ite families have made the rubbish dump their home -- living in unsanitary conditions in tents, crude shacks made from oil cans or squatting in an empty building -- and trying to eke out the barest of livings.

A report by the
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and an Iraqi government agency released on Sunday found that 5 percent of Iraqis live in extreme poverty, with Baghdad the least deprived area, and the southern provinces the worst.

The report said a third of Iraqis overall were living in poverty. It gave no comparison with previous years.

But the UNDP said the study "showed a deterioration in the living standards of Iraqis" since Iraq was a thriving middle- income country in the 1970s and 80s. Four years of war, following a decade of U.N. sanctions in the 1990s, has paralyzed the economy and fueled soaring unemployment.

"It shows the failure of the state authorities to provide adequate services to the population," UNDP said in a statement that also blamed Western-backed efforts to transform the economy into a free market for "exacerbating deprivation levels."

Hamdan said she and her siblings fled Falluja, a Sunni insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, after a U.S. sniper shot dead her mother, leaving them orphaned. Now they live with her grandparents and uncles in Sadr City.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimates there are 1.6 million Iraqis displaced inside the country, including 425,000 who fled their homes after the bombing of the Samarra shrine in February 2006 unleashed a wave of sectarian violence.

"We are poor people. We have nothing," Hamdan says softly.

Holding up her right hand, she takes off a blue and white woolen glove that helps protect her injured hand against the filth and carefully unwraps a surprisingly clean bandage.

Her little finger was severed by the tailgate of a rubbish truck as scavengers crushed around it, desperate to search it before it dumped its load on to the rubbish heap.

Illness and infections among the diggers are common. Looking around the dump it's not hard to see why. Men, women and children, their clothes caked in thick grime, wade through fetid pools of water or climb mountains of garbage, poking through the rubbish with long, curved metal rods to hook the cans.

Fifteen-year-old Saif has struck lucky. "I found these," he said, holding up four flat breads. "We'll clean them and then eat them for breakfast. We have no money to buy food."

DANGER LURKS

Nearby, Ali al-Yateem, who looks older than his 10 years, heaves a large white canvas sack of cooldrink cans on to the scale of a local scrap merchant, who pays him 2,000 dinars ($1.50) after checking he has not weighted the bag with bricks.

Jawad Habib, 21, was forced from his home in
Abu Ghraib, a Sunni stronghold on the western outskirts of Baghdad. He took a job as day laborer in construction, but when a suicide bomber blew up among a group of laborers he came to the dump.

Even there he has found danger lurking in the rotting debris. "I found a grenade and called the police." He was lucky. Other diggers say a young girl was killed in an explosion.

The plight of Ali, Huda, Saif and Jawad is the result of a "deeply complex political and security crisis with no quick apparent solution," the UNDP said in its report.

"I've been in conflict zones for 22 years. Iraq is unlike anything else on earth," UNDP country director Paolo Lembo told Reuters in an interview from Amman.

He said the
Iran-Iraq war, the 1991
Gulf War, international sanctions and the chaos that followed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion had delivered a series of hammer blows to Iraq's economy that had created "a kind of deprivation that is unique."

"Will the situation improve in the immediate future? No, I don't think so, but that does not mean I am not optimistic. This country has an enormous wealth of resources."

(Additional reporting by Ross Colvin)

An era ending, imagine if Malcom had lived to lead it...!
Farrakhan to make his last major address

By JEFF KAROUB, Associated Press Writer Wed Feb 21, 10:39 PM ET

DETROIT - Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan is heading into what's billed as his final major address Sunday, and some Muslims are wondering if the fiery orator — now slowed by poor health — will try to repair old divisions between his movement and mainstream Islam.

Farrakhan's scheduled appearance at Ford Field, home of the NFL's Detroit Lions, will be his first since ceding leadership last year to an executive board because of illness.

The 73-year-old Farrakhan was released last month from the hospital after undergoing a 12-hour abdominal operation to correct damage caused by treatment for prostate cancer. A statement from the Nation at the time said Farrakhan "doesn't see himself coming before the public on such a major stage as we are preparing in Detroit." He might, however, honor lesser engagements.

The event will be a homecoming of sorts for the Nation of Islam movement, which promotes black empowerment and nationalism. It was founded in Detroit by Wallace D. Fard in 1930.

Fard attracted black Detroiters on the margins of society with a message of self-improvement and separation from whites, who he said were inherently evil because of their enslavement of blacks.

Farrakhan rebuilt the movement in the late 1970s after W.D. Mohammed, the son of longtime nation leader Elijah Muhammad, moved his followers toward mainstream Islam.

Farrakhan angered many Americans in the process.

He became notorious for his provocative comments, calling Judaism a "gutter religion" and suggesting crack cocaine might have been a
CIA plot to enslave blacks. He met with foreign leaders at odds with the United States — Moammar Gadhafi,
Fidel Castro and
Saddam Hussein — prompting the State Department in 1996 to accuse him of "cavorting with dictators."

His closest brush with the political mainstream probably came in 1995, when he attracted hundreds of thousands of black men to Washington for the Million Man March.

Now, back in the Nation's birthplace, there's speculation about what Farrakhan's last major address could tackle. The topic of Sunday's speech, capping a series of meeting that start Friday, is "One Nation Under God."

"We have been told that Minister Farrakhan is going to be making a big announcement at this meeting," though it's not known what he will say, said Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The Nation and orthodox Islam diverge on several key beliefs. While mainstream Islam holds that Muhammad was God's last prophet, Nation of Islam had taught that God came in the form of Fard decades ago in Detroit.

Farrakhan has downplayed many of those teachings in recent years, adopting some mainstream Muslim traditions and embracing W. D. Mohammed on stage in 2000 after years of discord. Mohammed also visited Farrakhan recently during his recovery, a Nation of Islam official said.

Farrakhan has credited his mollified outlook to what he called a "near death" experience related to his prostate cancer, which he began battling in 1991. A sign of his softer approach came in 2005, at a Washington rally for the Millions More Movement. Unlike the Million Man March a decade earlier, which was for black men only, the rally was open to men and women of all races.

"In the course of his career, I have to say, the external gaze of others generally has not been at the top of the list of what he's worried about," said Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton University. But, "it's late in his life, he's ill. There are questions of legacy. All of that tends to soften a leader, encourages them to think beyond self-aggrandizing choices."

In Detroit, some blacks who practice mainstream Islam say a shared history and personal ties with the Nation have united the groups in worship and work. Mitchell Shamsud-Din, a founding member of the orthodox Muslim Center in Detroit who runs its community service programs, is like thousands of Detroit-area Muslims who came to orthodox Islam through the Nation.

"There's a friendship and brotherhood between our two groups," said Shamsud-Din, whose projects include Nation of Islam volunteers.

"We work with Christians, and they believe Jesus is God," he said. "Why wouldn't we work with a Muslim brother who has another difference?"

Nation leaders won't say how many members the movement, now based in Chicago, has locally or nationally — though the Council on American-Islamic Relations and others have estimated it has between 10,000 and 50,000 followers in the U.S. and no more than 1,000 in southeastern Michigan, according to Sally Howell, a University of Michigan researcher who specializes in the local Islamic and Arab-American communities.

Jimmy Jones, a religion professor at Manhattanville College, who is Muslim and studies Islam, was skeptical about Farrakhan's willingness to change. While the Nation of Islam has adopted some mainstream Muslim practices, it remains essentially a race-based movement, he said.

"I think this is an organization that consistently, in my observation, has tried to have it both ways — that is, gain legitimacy with the broader Muslim world and spread a message that is essentially about race," Jones said. "It is not a program that represents what most of the more than 1 billion Muslims in the world would recognize."

___

On the Net:

http://www.sd2007.com

Carry Harry above the frey!
Decision near for Harry's regiment

By TARIQ PANJA, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 15 minutes ago

LONDON - Britain's defense secretary will announce Thursday whether Prince Harry's regiment will be sent to
Iraq, amid speculation that the third-in-line to the throne might be deployed.


The Defense Ministry has previously confirmed Harry could go to Iraq if his unit was deployed there, but said he might be kept out of situations where his presence would jeopardize his comrades.

Defense Secretary Des Browne is expected to tell Parliament whether Harry's regiment — the Blues and Royals — will be sent to Iraq near the southern city of Basra.

Defense officials refused to disclose Wednesday whether Harry would be among those going to Iraq.

"We are not going to reveal (which regiments)," said a Ministry of Defense spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with department policy. "You will have to wait for the announcement in Parliament."

The 22-year-old prince, known as Troop Commander Wales by his regiment, has trained to command 11 soldiers and four Scimitar tanks.

Harry, who graduated last year from Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, said in a 2005 interview that he wanted to fight for his country.

In joining the military, Harry followed a royal tradition: Charles was a pilot with the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy, and a ship commander, and Harry's grandfather, Prince Philip, had a distinguished career in the Royal Navy during World War II.

Harry's uncle, Prince Andrew, was a Royal Navy pilot and served in the Falklands war against Argentina in 1982.

Microcosmically speaking, how is Zimbabwe different from the US?
Zimbabwe: Teachers, Students, Doctors, Nurses All on Strike

, OneWorld US Wed Feb 21, 1:58 PM ET

Zimbabwe's education and healthcare sectors are lying almost completely dormant this week, and government repression of political opponents continues.


A strike looms as the nation's teachers and government officials remain far apart on salary negotiations. The government's latest offer is still less than half the so-called Poverty Datum Line, and a 1600-percent inflation rate has turned most of the country's 180,000 civil servants into paupers, according to the Zimbabwe Standard newspaper.

University lecturers are already on strike, as are the country's higher education students.

Last week, some 74 students and their leaders were rounded up, assaulted, and detained, according to the International Union of Students, which released a statement supporting its Zimbabwean peers.

More than 40 were arrested following a meeting to discuss "issues of the ever deteriorating standards of education, the astronomical hikes in tuition fees, and broader socio-economic and political pandemonium in Zimbabwe." The Zimbabwe National Students Union says that "more than 600 innocent, unarmed, and hungry students who had gathered on campus for the Extraordinary General Meeting were violently and brutally dispersed by the ruthless riot police and the non-uniformed state security agents."

But students are not the only Zimbabweans to have faced the truncheons in recent days.

A Valentine's Day march sponsored by the group Women of Zimbabwe Arise was met by police with tear gas outside the Parliament building in Harare.

And as one of the country's main opposition parties attempted to launch its presidential campaign with a public rally in the capital Monday, police fired tear gas and water cannons containing irritating chemicals and beat opposition supporters with batons.

A spokesperson for the opposition party claimed that more than 500 of its supporters had been beaten and severe injuries were sustained. There were unconfirmed reports of three deaths.

But perhaps the most difficult problem facing both the Zimbabwean government and its estranged citizens is the near-total collapse of the national health system.

Many of the country's doctors and nurses have quit working in recent weeks to demand higher wages and better conditions.

"Hundreds of people are dying every week due to lack of healthcare since the doctors' industrial action began on December 21 last year, bringing the health delivery system, already battered by a collapsing economy, to a near-total halt," reports Florence Cheda for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.

One province recently reported that it had only one doctor to service 4 million people--and that was before the strike.

While government officials fly to South Africa and other countries for their own medical treatment, says Cheda, "Zimbabweans are left wondering how much longer the nation and international community [will] continue to watch so many of their relatives, friends, and others die unnecessarily."

A pitiful drop in a bucket, if you ask me!
SENATE PASSES 2007 BUDGET BILL, VA GETS INCREASE --

VA will get $3.6 billion more than last year.

President Bush signs.

VA NEWS FLASH from Larry Scott at VA Watchdog dot Org -- 02-15-2007 #8


Story here... http://www.bloomberg.com/
apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=
aVHyC6BYMbR8&refer=us

Story below:

UPDATE: President Bush signed the budget bill on February 15, 2007.

---------------

Congress Passes $463.5 Billion Spending Measure for Fiscal 2007

By Brian Faler



(Bloomberg) -- Congress approved increased funding for education grants, veterans' health care, law enforcement and international AIDS relief as part of a $463.5 billion spending measure, completing work on the 2007 budget more than four months late.

The Senate's 81-15 vote to pass the spending measure leaves most government programs funded at last year's levels, drops more than 9,300 pet projects proposed by lawmakers and increases funding for a handful of programs favored by the chamber's Democratic majority.

``This is not a perfect resolution, but it is a thoughtful resolution,'' said Senator Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat who heads the Appropriations Committee. The measure ``will ensure that we answer some of our nation's most pressing needs.''

Republicans, who weren't given an opportunity to amend the legislation, complained they were forced to choose between approving the plan or shutting down the government.

``We are all rubberstamps: Take it or leave it,'' said Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican. ``We have the option of closing down the government if we don't approve this rubberstamp procedure, and we are not going to do that. We had experience with the closing down of the government back in December of 1995 and it was a very bitter experience.''

A stopgap spending measure now funding 13 of the 15 federal departments expires tomorrow night.

Been Approved

The legislation, which has already been approved by the House, now heads to President George W. Bush, who has signaled that he will sign it into law. His approval will end months of uncertainty for agency officials who have been waiting to find out their budgets for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.

Bush's signature also will end a process that began more than a year ago, when he called for holding domestic spending below the rate of inflation for the third consecutive year while providing much larger increases -- at least 7 percent -- for both defense and homeland security programs.

Last year's Republican majority approved increases for the security programs, yet couldn't pass the nine appropriation measures funding the government's domestic programs. Republicans said in December that they were giving up, leaving the remaining budget work to the Democrats. Since then, Democrats wrote the measures according to their own priorities while remaining within the overall budget limit set by the Republicans last year.

Byrd said Democrats cut more than $11 billion from 125 government programs, eliminated funds for more than 9,300 lawmaker's pet projects and left 450 programs frozen at last year's levels to free up money for the party's priorities.

Law Enforcement

The plan adds $3.6 billion for veterans' health-care programs, $1.6 billion for federal, state and local law enforcement and $1.4 billion more for international AIDS relief.

The legislation will expand the budget for Pell Grants, which go to college students from low-income families, by $616 million. That increase will boost the maximum grant by $260 to $4,310, the first such increase in four years.

It would provide an additional $200 million for special education programs along with $104 million for Head Start, a pre-school education program.

The measure provides an additional $620 million for the National Institutes of Health, along with $207 million more for community health centers. It increases funding for basic scientific research, providing $200 million more for the Department of Energy's Office of Science, $335 million more for the National Science Foundation and $50 million more for the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

No Veto Threat

While the Bush administration didn't threaten to veto the measure, it criticized the legislation for shortchanging initiatives such as its Global Nuclear Energy Partnership -- an anti-nuclear-proliferation program -- while ignoring the president's call to reduce or cut 141 other programs.

Congressional Republicans said it failed to adequately fund priorities such as military construction projects. Some Democrats said the measure leaves programs stuck at last year's funding levels, amounting to cuts once inflation, required pay increases for government employees and other costs were counted.

Praise

The legislation drew praise from some lawmakers, such as Senator Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican, for halting the rapid increase in pet projects, called earmarks, seen over the past decade.

``I applaud the Democrats,'' said DeMint. ``There are no new earmarks in this spending resolution.''

DeMint and other lawmakers expressed concern that their colleagues may still fund their pet projects by phoning the federal agencies with individual wish lists.

The Energy Department has said that it has begun fielding such requests. A half-dozen lawmakers have asked Bush, who denounced the earmarking practice in his State of the Union speech, to ``clarify that agencies of your administration will not be bound or give any preference to earmarks contained in committee reports or in direct communications from members of Congress or their staff.''

A senior administration official, who declined to be identified, told reporters this week at a briefing that he hasn't heard of any such requests elsewhere in the government, while saying it is a potential problem. He said the administration will explain how it intends to implement the measure after it is signed into law.



To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Faler in Washington at bfaler@bloomberg.net

---------------

Larry Scott --

So, Cheney, how many lives will this "Honor" cost! Seems we can't be sunk any lower, then you come along with a plan...!
U.S. wants to leave Iraq "with honor," Cheney says

By Caren Bohan Wed Feb 21, 7:16 AM ET

TOKYO (Reuters) - Vice President
Dick Cheney said on Wednesday the United States wants to finish its mission in
Iraq and "return with honor," despite the war's growing unpopularity at home and doubts among U.S. allies.

Cheney, whose visit to Tokyo comes just weeks after Japan's defense minister said starting the Iraq war was a mistake, also insisted Americans would not back a "policy of retreat."

The defense minister's remarks forced Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to scurry to reassure Washington that Tokyo's backing for U.S. policy in Iraq was unchanged, although most Japanese think that
President Bush was wrong to start the war.

"We know that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength, they are invited by the perception of weakness," Cheney said in a speech aboard the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier at Yokosuka Navy Base near Tokyo.

"We know that if we leave Iraq before the mission is completed, the enemy is going to come after us," Cheney said.

"And I want you to know that the American people will not support a policy of retreat," he added. "We want to complete the mission, we want to get it done right, and we want to return with honor," said Cheney, who heads on Thursday for Australia to meet Prime Minister John Howard, another backer of Bush's Iraq policy.

ASIA-PACIFIC COMMITMENT

Bush is sending 21,500 more troops to Iraq, but surveys show that most Americans are unhappy with the war and Democrats in charge of the U.S. Congress are pressing for a new strategy.

British Prime Minister
Tony Blair was to announce on Wednesday a timetable for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq, a government source said in London, adding that Britain's 7,100-strong Iraq force would fall to 5,500 by year's end.

In talks earlier with Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki, Cheney thanked Japan for the roughly 550 non-combat troops it sent to southern Iraq in 2004 as part of Tokyo's largest and riskiest overseas mission since World War Two.

The soldiers came home last July, but about 200 Japanese air force personnel based in Kuwait are still transporting supplies to the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq.

A Japanese Foreign Ministry official told reporters that Cheney and Abe had agreed on the need to "closely monitor" China's military capacity in space after its satellite-killing test last month, the first known such test in space in 20 years.

The two leaders also shared concerns about Beijing's rapid military buildup and its lack of transparency, the official said.

Cheney sought to allay any fears that Washington's commitment to Japan and the Asia-Pacific region would falter.

"The president asked me to make this journey, first to Japan, then to Guam, and then to Australia ... to reaffirm America's deep commitment to a forward presence in the Asia-Pacific region," he said in his speech on the Kitty Hawk.

The United States has some 50,000 troops based in Japan, about half its total military presence in the region.

The two allies agreed last year to reorganize those forces, including shifting 8,000 Marines from Japan's southern island of Okinawa to the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam by 2014.

NORTH KOREA

On attempts to curb
North Korea's nuclear ambitions, Cheney and Shiozaki agreed in their talks that a six-party energy-for-arms agreement forged in Beijing last week was a step in the right direction, a Japanese statement said.

Cheney expressed understanding for Tokyo's refusal to provide economic aid to Pyongyang until progress was made on resolving a feud over Japanese citizens kidnapped by the North's agents decades ago, the statement added.

"We want to see resolution to the tragic case of Japanese abductees," Cheney said at the start of his talks with Abe.

Abe's critics have said Tokyo risked international isolation with its tough stance if denuclearisation talks made progress.

Under the deal between the United States, China, Japan, the two Koreas and Russia, Pyongyang is to receive fuel aid in return for shutting down and disabling its nuclear facilities.

Cheney, who last visited Japan in 2004, is not scheduled to meet outspoken Defense Minister Kyuma.

He will, however, find time in his tight schedule to meet the parents of one Japanese abductee early on Thursday, before leaving for Guam and then Australia.

(Additional reporting by Linda Sieg and George Nishiyama)

Now it's the old sympathy ploy. Get off the stage!
Laughs end with bizarre Britney in rehab

By ERIN CARLSON, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 37 minutes ago

NEW YORK -
Britney Spears has been ridiculed for everything from her 55-hour first marriage to backup-dancer second husband and her recent pantyless partying escapades. Now that she's entered rehab, though, the joke is over.


This is a new frontier — even for Spears, whose well-documented gaffes and personal traumas have played out in excruciatingly public fashion, including photos published of Spears driving with her son Sean Preston on her lap and another time almost dropping him.

Spears' manager, Larry Rudolph, told People magazine's Web site on Tuesday that Spears had voluntarily checked herself into an undisclosed treatment facility.

"We ask that the media respect her privacy as well as those of her family and friends at this time," Rudolph was quoted as saying. He didn't disclose why she entered rehab.

The 25-year-old pop star has been seen wearing skimpy outfits and partying heavily since filing for divorce from Kevin Federline in November, after two years of marriage.

On Friday night, Spears, the mother of two young sons, shaved her head bald. But that didn't send her into hiding as she was later seen wearing an inexpensive blond wig.

"You know, for these celebrities, it's really tough," New York-based psychiatrist Gail Saltz told The Associated Press. "They have no idea if anybody likes them for them. ... Everybody wants a piece. Everybody wants to make something off of her, get somewhere by her."

Spears' very public divorce isn't helping matters, said Saltz, who also suggested that Spears could be suffering from postpartum depression.

Federline's attorney had earlier confirmed that Spears and Federline would continue to share custody of 5-month-old Jayden James and 17-month-old Sean Preston this month, following terms of a January custody agreement.

"I'm a good father," Federline has said. "I love my kids and I'll always be here for (them)."

The Web site TMZ.com said Spears had entered an inpatient facility in Los Angeles after family members pressed her to check in.

Spears representatives didn't return calls from The Associated Press.

Entertainment TV shows and Web sites reported Friday that Spears had gone in and out of rehab that week.

"I think that she's finally listening to the people that are closest to her, and I think that she's probably going to stay in rehab for as long as it takes," Ruben Garay, who runs ThatOtherBlog, told the AP.

"You understand that this whole thing with shaving her head was kind of like the last straw, and that was really what led everyone (who) was already concerned about her (to) become, like, really concerned about her," said Garay, who recently closed his Spears' fan Web site, worldofbritney.com.

"She is a child star unraveling and is the perfect example of when a child star evolves into an adult and doesn't have someone telling them what to do, or giving them the right affirmative advice, and the right support," said Ian Drew, editor at large at Us Weekly magazine. "She basically started out very young in a competitive business."

Spears grabbed an electric shaver at a San Fernando Valley salon and shaved her head bald Friday night. Video on KABC-TV showed a newly shorn Spears with tiny tattoos on the back of her neck as she sat for a new tattoo — a pair of red-and-pink lips on her wrist.

Esther's Haircutting Studio, where Spears shaved her head, set up a Web site to auction off her hair and other items for a minimum price of $1 million, said J.T. Tognozzi, who owns the salon with his wife.

"This is it, the opportunity of a lifetime," according to BuyBritneysHair.com. The winning bidder gets Spears' dark, knotty hair extensions, the clipper she used to cut them off, the Red Bull she drank at the salon and her cigarette lighter.

"This girl is out of control," Joy Behar, a co-host on ABC's "The View," said Monday. "And, she's in a lot of trouble. A lot of people feel this is self-mutilation."

Craig Ferguson, host of CBS' "The Late Late Show," said that after seeing photos of Spears' shaved head, he reconsidered making jokes at the expense of the "vulnerable."

"For me, comedy should have a certain amount of joy in it," he told viewers Monday. "It should be about attacking the powerful — the politicians, the Trumps, the blowhards — going after them. We shouldn't be attacking the vulnerable."

Good call, Senator, but you missed on where funds are going...!
Space station needs help, Glenn says

By MATT LEINGANG, Associated Press Writer Tue Feb 20, 10:44 PM ET

COLUMBUS, Ohio - The country is not getting its money's worth out of the international space station, John Glenn said Tuesday, the 45th anniversary of the day he became the first American to orbit the Earth.


Diverting money from the orbiting research outpost to
President Bush's goal of sending astronauts back to the moon and eventually on to Mars is preventing some scientific experiments on the space station, Glenn told an audience of about 300 high school students and space enthusiasts at the COSI Columbus science center.

"To not utilize that station the way I think it ought to be utilized is just wrong," said Glenn, 85, also a former U.S. senator.

Glenn made three trips around the planet inside his Friendship 7 capsule on Feb. 20, 1962, making him a national hero and proving that the nascent
NASA space program was competitive with the Soviet Union, which had accomplished a manned orbital flight a year earlier.

In 1998, Glenn, then 77, flew on the shuttle Discovery and became the oldest person ever in space.

He said he supports the president's moon and Mars goals but not at the expense of the space station, which is only two-thirds complete.

NASA and its international partners, including Canada, Japan and Russia, hope to finish the space station in 2010, but no decision has been made to extend its operation past 2016.

Glenn, a Democrat who represented Ohio from 1975 to 1999, said the station shouldn't be abandoned, especially after costing taxpayers billions of dollars.

"We will not even begin to realize its potential," he said.

A White House spokesman said Tuesday night that officials were not prepared to comment. Messages were left after business hours at NASA headquarters.

Been there, done that, no surprise!
U.S. orders review into treatment of wounded troops

By Matt Spetalnick Tue Feb 20, 6:47 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration ordered a review on Tuesday of the care of wounded U.S. troops returning from
Iraq and
Afghanistan after reports that many face neglect in the Army's medical system.


Democrats controlling Congress demanded a thorough investigation and promised legislation after a Washington Post series exposed deteriorating conditions for hundreds of outpatients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, the premier U.S. military hospital.

The controversy poses a public relations problem for
President George W. Bush, who has spoken often of America's debt to military personnel wounded in the wars, visited the hospital's wards and honored military amputees at White House functions.

The White House expressed concern at conditions for veterans after reports that many suffering physical and psychological problems lived in shoddy housing on or near the sprawling complex and faced long battles with Army bureaucracy.

"I can tell you that we believe that they deserve better," White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters. "Of course, there's outrage that men and women who have been fighting have not received the outpatient care."

"We need to make sure that whatever problems there are get fixed," he added.

The
Pentagon said an independent panel would look into outpatient care and administrative processes at Walter Reed and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

"We are committed to improving the clinical and administrative processes, including improving temporary living conditions for our service members and their families," said Assistant Secretary of Defense William Winkenwerder, the Pentagon's top doctor.

The Army and Navy had also begun their own reviews into the two medical centers, the Pentagon said in a statement.

The White House has irked the new Democratic majority in Congress by suggesting that they would be hurting American troops if they made any effort to cut off funds for the Iraq war, which faces growing public opposition.

Two Democratic senators, Barbara Mikulski (news, bio, voting record) of Maryland and Patty Murray (news, bio, voting record) of Washington, wrote Defense Secretary Robert Gates urging a high-level investigation of "deplorable living conditions" at Walter Reed, where presidents, lawmakers and soldiers have been treated since 1909.

Two other Democrats, Sen. Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) of Illinois and Sen. Claire McCaskill (news, bio, voting record) of Missouri, said they would introduce legislation to improve the quality of care and require more frequent inspections of active-duty military hospitals.

"Caring for our returning heroes is one of the things we can still get right about this war, and that's why the deterioration of the conditions at Walter Reed is both appalling and unacceptable," said Obama, a candidate for his party's 2008 presidential nomination.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Gray)

Blasphemous! The US would never be capable of evil! We're genetically predisposed toward goodness!
U.S. Slammed for Backing off 'Genocide' Charge

Aaron Glantz, OneWorld US Thu Feb 15, 9:20 AM ET

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 15 (OneWorld) - Human rights groups spoke out this week, condemning the United States Special Envoy to Sudan, Andrew Natsios, for claiming the crisis in Darfur no longer constitutes genocide.


"The term genocide is counter to the facts of what is really occurring in Darfur," Natsios told a gathering at Georgetown University February 7th.

The statement shocked many observers since both
President Bush and the State Department have used the term "genocide" to describe the situation in western Sudan.

Since 2003, the Sudanese military and its allied militias have killed at least 400,000 people, while more than 2 million innocent civilians have been forced to flee their homes and now live in camps in Sudan and neighboring Chad. More than 3.5 million men, women, and children are now completely reliant on international aid for survival.

Not since the Rwandan genocide of 1994, campaigners argue, has the world seen such a calculated campaign of displacement, starvation, rape, and mass slaughter.

"Activists across the country are outraged by Natsios' denial of genocide in Darfur," Marie Clarke Brill of the group Africa Action said in a statement. "The death toll is mounting, and the U.S. must act now to stop the escalating violence by the Sudanese government and to provide protection to civilians and humanitarian operations in Darfur."

Brill's group is concerned that Natsios' statement marks a shift in U.S. policy and is an attempt to provide cover for his government's failure to convince Sudan to allow a stronger international peacekeeping force into the country. Africa Action has said the U.S. government holds the most sway with Sudanese officials and therefore is uniquely obligated to pressure Khartoum on peacekeeping.

Activists point out the killing continues unabated despite ongoing negotiations with the Sudanese government in Khartoum. On Wednesday, the
United Nations Mission in Sudan reported that fresh violence has displaced at least 110,000 people in southern Darfur since December.

"Up to this week there is [still] bombing of civilians, so the lack of security still prevails," Dr. Ali Ali-Dinar told OneWorld. The native of Darfur is Outreach Director for the University of Pennsylvania's Africa Studies Center and runs the Web site darfurinfo.org.

"Civilians still face continuous harassment," he said. "They're still in their camps. It's still not safe to go back. So the ingredients are still there. Just because [U.S. envoy Natsios] mutters that there is not a genocide doesn't mean that one isn't going on."

Recently, an African Union military mission in Darfur was bolstered by United Nations blue berets, but Ali-Dinar said that hasn't done anything to improve the situation.

"They are there but with a very flimsy mandate and under its presence nothing is changing," he said. "The government is still bombing civilians. All this is going on even with the UN Mission. Nothing is new."

On Monday, the
European Union Council released a statement from Brussels protesting what they called "an unsustainable level of insecurity" for humanitarian workers attempting to help refugees seeking relief from the killing.

Attacks on relief workers and their property have become common, the aid groups said. There have been at least five car-jackings this month.

Those actions prompted a fresh reaction from the U.S. Envoy, Andrew Natsios, on Wednesday. The same man who said "genocide is counter to what's occurring" told Reuters "the government has lost control. There is anarchy in large parts of Darfur. The risk is that if the NGOs (non-governmental organizations) leave, the UN humanitarian agencies leave...there will be no one to care for these people in the camps who can be trusted."

But those statements drew criticisms from campaigners as well. Far from losing control, they argued, the Sudanese government is itself behind much of the violence and displacement.

Increasingly, activists are trying to use their power as private citizens to press the government of Sudan to change its ways. Modeling their work on successful solidarity work that brought down the apartheid regime in South Africa, they're urging states, pension funds, and college campuses to restrict or eliminate their Sudan-related investments.

In 2005, the state of Oregon sold $35 million in holdings it had invested in four oil companies that work in Sudan. In January 2006, Maine followed suit, selling its holdings in Schlumberger Ltd., an oil company stock held by Maine's $24 million State Held Trusts.

Last September, California Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill directing the massive California Public Employees Retirement System and California State Teachers Retirement System, which together hold more than $350 billion in assets, to divest from companies doing business in Sudan.

According to the non-profit Genocide Intervention Network, there are active campaigns in an additional two-dozen colleges, 15 states, and numerous other countries.

"This is only the beginning," said Sam Bell, the group's advocacy director. Divestment campaigns are currently underway in Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and Virginia, Bell said.