[Note: This article is from the "pro Muslim" IslamOnLine]

MINNESOTA — In an era enveloped in large-scale violence and militarism, one of the fastest growing American companies is marketing a controversial product line designed for young children that combines military paraphernalia with the Christian faith.

According to several call center representatives who relied on dates in the Oriental Trading Company system, the product line entitled "Soldier of God" made its debut in the "Fun and Faith" catalogue, published and distributed in 2006.

In its new catalogue, released to customers during the first quarter of 2007, the Oriental Trading Company has expanded that line.

The majority of the 31 items in the "Soldier of God" product line are decorated with military camouflage colors.

The products are stamped with crosses or crusader crests, as well as the slogan "Soldier of God" amidst stars and stripes.

Items include a crusader shield, military-style dog tag necklaces, combat stretch bands for the wrists, canteens, baseball hats and temporary face tattoos.

The company has painted the "Soldier of God" product line with a brush of militarism regardless of the fact that this line has little physical weaponry or ammunition.

The exception is a sword brandished by a crusader-knight in the "Foam Soldier of God Photo Frame Magnet Craft Kit". The kit also comes with a red crucifix.

As the nation’s largest direct marketer of party supplies, novelties, toys, children’s arts and crafts, school supplies, home décor and giftware, the Oriental Trading Company is no small contender.

It has 18 million customers on file and mails 300 million catalogs annually.

The Oriental Trading Company, named one of the fastest growing companies three consecutive years in a row by The Omaha Chamber of Commerce, was also ranked one of the top 50 internet sites by Internet Retailer.

It was ranked one of the top 50 largest direct marketers by Catalog Age.

This means that exposure to its products, including the new "Soldier of God" line, is very widespread.

Militarizing Faith

While the Oriental Trading Company would not comment on the motivation for offering the "Soldier of God" product line, some suggest the line breaks a taboo by militarizing faith.

"I am quite bothered by how this line of products diminishes the beauty and purity of faith in God," says Valerie Shriley, communications director for a civil liberties organization in Minnesota.

She would like to see the company remove any links between God and the military in their products.  

"Being a soldier of God is being one who struggles toward righteousness, stands for justice and strives to be a better contributor to what is good in this world," she explained.

"The job of a soldier in the military is a sometimes filthy, immoral, murderous and unjust position. Many soldiers commit crimes and do not follow God’s laws. Linking God to the military is morally degrading."

The concept that many Christians have of being a soldier of God is not usually a violent one.

There is a strong metaphorical connection between being a Christian and being a spiritual warrior in the same way that jihad (literally meaning "struggle") for Muslims is more often a non-violent spiritual fight within oneself to be a better person and to affect the world positively.

In the Chabad-Lubavitch sect of orthodox Judaism, a program for kids exists called Tzivos Hashem, or "God’s Army", and is used to encourage children to develop the discipline of doing good deeds.

These terms are concepts that should not, under most circumstances, inspire fear.

Yet there are some Christians who feel that the Oriental Trading company has implied otherwise by directly linking the religious slogan to the innately violent military culture.

According to some consumers, the fact that weaponry and ammunition are largely absent from the product line does little to diminish the underlying message.

Legalizing War   

Timothy Harris, executive director for the homeless advocacy newspaper Real Change, was one of the first on the Internet to comment on the disturbing nature of the "Soldier of God" product line.

"Has the recruit shortage come to this?" he asks in his blog.

"There’s something about stamping God and crucifixes all over little kiddy war toys that just doesn’t sit right. God’s Army is getting younger all the time."

Several Christians who were interviewed for this article suggest that the "Soldier of God" product line lacks context and that without an appropriate setting in which to envision product use, the Oriental Trading Company is indirectly supporting extremist Christian ideology, which is a segment of the population usually not acknowledged by mainstream media.

"These products try to make war seem acceptable, and that God agrees with it," said Janet, a child development specialist in the San Francisco Bay area who asked to be identified by first name only.

"Christian children who are religious will be more likely to believe it."

A previous customer of the Oriental Trading Company, Janet thinks these products are ill-conceived.

"It never benefits children to indoctrinate them for war.

"It encourages them to form adversarial relationships with people who are perceived as being different."

Cheryl, a 38-year-old Christian in California who also requested to be identified by her first name only, was also offended by the product line.

She wouldn’t buy any of the items for the children in her family.

"To me it looks like the company is using Christianity to aid the war movement. I don’t like it."

Extremist Christian Ideology

Some interviewees believe that the Oriental Trading Company had succeeded in bringing extremist paraphernalia to the Christian mainstream.

One call center representative at the company said the "Soldier of God" product line is very popular in the Southern States.

"I have in the past and continue to have great difficulty with such products that image God and followers of God with such militaristic understandings," said Pastor Gene Ostendorf, who leads one United Church of Christ congregation in the southern state of Missouri.  

He points out that, even with regard to The New Century Hymnal used by his church great care was taken to remove all militaristic, triumphal language from the hymns.

The pastor continues that even the long-time favorite "Onward Christian Soldiers" was eliminated from the hymnal altogether.

"In our expression of the Christian faith, we do not seek to promote a sense of soldiers being triumphant against the enemy but rather as ambassadors, representatives of a God who seeks justice, peace and genuine respect among all of God’s people."

Crusade

Bart Charlow, Executive Director of Silicon Valley Conference for Community and Justice (SVCCJ), an organization working to eliminate racism and discrimination by promoting interfaith education, conflict prevention, crime-victim advocacy and youth leadership, says that although he thinks that American Muslims are in danger of being victimized by a national environment that lends itself to an escalation towards genocide, the “Soldier of God” product line is not likely to be a causing factor.

"These products by themselves, don’t fuel a genocidal end. What I would be concerned with is how these products will be used," he said.

Charlow believes that offering the product line is an unintelligent business move.

"Products like these are very polarizing. Some people may like them and buy them and others may stop buying from the company altogether," he noted.

"These kinds of products are certainly not going to be comforting to Jews, Muslims or any group that was forcibly colonized within the last couple of hundred years."

The military and crusade themes in the "Soldier of God" product line carry historical baggage that is very offensive to many non-Christians, especially Jews and Muslims.

Some see the Iraq war as the new Crusade.

These products may also ignite sensitivities in Jews who were heavily persecuted during the crusades and who have endured a history of anti-Semitism and genocide.

The Oriental Trading Company offers holiday items for Christmas and Hanukkah, but nothing specifically for `Eid and Ramadan, even though there are an estimated 5 to 7 million Muslims in the US.

According to the US State Department, Islam is the fastest growing religion in the country and may surpass the Jewish population by 2010.

Militarized Society  

Rabbi Jack Moline of the Agudas Achim congregation in Virginia frequently does business with the Oriental Trading Company.

He notes that it is a fine company with an excellent reputation for producing low-cost bulk items for pre-existing markets.

In regard to the demand that exists for the "Soldier of God|" product line, Rabbi Moline said the company did not create this market but is rather responding to it.

"Therefore, I am less concerned about Oriental Trading than I am about the market they seek to tap."

Nonetheless, Rabbi Moline is very concerned with the product line.

"I think that if I were a Christian, I would be horrified," he said.

"The symbol of the cross has sacred meaning and generally represents the antithesis of war. Marketing it as a child’s plaything is troubling."

Although Rabbi Moline does not believe that companies should be expected to be more righteous than the traditions that they seek to exploit, he wishes the "Soldier of God" products were not part of their catalog and would encourage them to discontinue it.

"At this time of conflict, the encouragement of kids to wage God’s battle against the unconverted plays not so much into militarization as it does into intolerance and bigotry. If Christians are God’s soldiers, then who are non-Christians?"

Rabbi Moline feels that a child taught that camouflage means "God’s soldiers" may come to associate military service personnel with a particular religion.

"That image would be hard to scour from the learning slate."

Promote Peace

There are no Jewish or Muslim retailers in the nation who combine militarism with faith and then target those products to children.

"I find it incongruous that any religious retailer promotes war-like objects or anything that does not promote peace and mercy among all people," said Noor Saadeh, who co-owns NoorArt, one of the largest and most well-know Muslim retailers of toys, educational products and books.

Saadeh hopes that Muslims, Jews and Christians reach out to one another and work together on shared issues to bring peace to the world, while respecting each other’s differences.

"Leave the war-based toys to Matteland others," she said.

"We have special duties toward our children," says Gulten Ilhan, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louise Community College.

"If we teach our children war, they will grow up to fight, but if we give them peace they will learn to share it."

Ilhan believes that with freedom comes responsibility.

The Oriental Trading Company is free to produce and sell these products, she contends, but the product line is irresponsible.

The overwhelming response from Muslims who were surveyed is that they would consider making purchases from this company as long as the company would demilitarize the "Soldier of God" product line, and offer items specifically for the Muslim holidays along with Christian and Jewish holidays.

Ramadan and `Eid products, crafts and decorations would be especially welcome, Muslim respondents said.

Although the company has been selling the "Soldier of God" items for close to a year, it has met with no official complaint, according to several call-center representatives in the company’s Omaha, Nebraska office.

"Can you imagine what the response would have been if a Muslim toy company in America offered a Jihad military product line?" asked one Muslim interviewee.

"The whole nation would be up in arms about it."

Source IslamOnLine

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney outline their respective foreign policy visions in lengthy articles in the next issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, offering sharp contrasts on issues including the war in Iraq and climate change.

Obama calls the Bush administration’s Iraq policies "tragically misguided" and advocates a phased withdrawal of U.S. combat forces, to be completed by next March. Romney notes that there is "no guarantee" that the administration’s current strategy will succeed but says that "the stakes are too high and the potential fallout too great to deny our military leaders and troops on the ground the resources and the time needed to give it an opportunity."

But both candidates are at pains to move beyond Iraq toward an overarching vision that will convince an unsettled and war-focused public that this, too, shall pass.

Iraq has so dominated the foreign policy debate that candidates across the board are struggling to offer more comprehensive proposals. Although most have given at least one major foreign policy address, the extent to which they disagree with one another and with the Bush administration on the war has garnered the most attention.

In his article, Obama cites Democratic icons Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy as leaders who managed in "moments of great peril . . . both to protect the American people and to expand opportunity for the next generation."

Expanding on issues he first raised last month before the Chicago World Affairs Council, the senator from Illinois adds "a warming planet" to an otherwise conventional list of security threats that include global terrorists, proliferating nuclear weapons and "weak states that cannot control their territory."

After a U.S. withdrawal pushes Iraqi leaders toward political accommodation, he says, the new president should make a commitment to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, "a task that the Bush administration neglected for years." Obama calls for a dialogue with Iran and Syria, noting that "our policy of issuing threats and relying on intermediaries . . . is failing. Although we must not rule out using military force, we should not hesitate to talk directly."

The Army, Obama says, should grow by 65,000 soldiers and the Marine Corps by 27,000 members. He says he would focus increased attention on Afghanistan and Pakistan, which he calls "the central front in our war against al-Qaeda." While calling on NATO to contribute more troops to "collective security operations," Obama cites the importance of rebuilding international alliances, pledging to listen more and "bully" less.

"People around the world have heard a great deal of late about freedom on the march," Obama writes. "Tragically, many have come to associate this with war, torture, and forcibly imposed regime change." He says he will end the CIA "renditions" policy of "shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, of detaining thousands without charge or trial, of maintaining a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law."

To combat climate change, Obama pledges a "cap and trade" policy on carbon emissions. Although Bush promised a carbon emissions cap during the 2000 campaign, he subsequently rejected it.

Romney presents a somewhat narrower vision, echoing Bush in describing "the jihadist threat" as "the defining challenge of our generation." Repeating a speech he gave last month at the George H.W. Bush presidential library, Romney outlines four "pillars" of action, beginning with enhancement of the military. In addition to 100,000 more troops, the former governor of Massachusetts calls for an annual increase of $30 billion to $40 billion in the defense budget and pledges to spend at least 4 percent of the gross domestic product on defense.

Romney’s second pillar is energy independence, a process that he says could take at least 20 years and should include increased domestic production with more offshore drilling, more nuclear power and a "fuller exploitation of coal," along with increased energy efficiency. "At the same time," he says without mentioning global climate change, "we may well be able to rein in our greenhouse gas emissions." He calls for a "far-reaching research initiative" to create cleaner energy.

Pillar three is the creation of joint commands, along the lines of the military’s, to coordinate the use abroad of nonmilitary resources in health, education, law enforcement and diplomacy. Interagency regional commands, headed by "heavy hitters" with independent budgets, would supervise activities the way the military’s regional commands do.

The fourth is a reexamination of U.S. alliances, leading to a greater focus on defeating radical Islam and establishing intelligence and law enforcement networks. Romney says that as one of his first presidential acts, he would call for a "summit of nations" to support moderate Muslims around the world.

"In the end, only Muslims themselves can defeat the violent radicals," Romney says. "But we must work with them."

Source

White House hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday defended her vote against an Iraq war funding bill, saying she believes President Bush will begin withdrawing troops from Iraq soon.

The New York senator said she came to the conclusion while watching the president’s news conference last week in which he referred to the bipartisan Iraq Study Group report and its recommendations for the administration.

"He talked about it favorably for the first time I’ve ever heard him talk about it," Clinton told The Associated Press in an interview during a campaign stop in Las Vegas. "That was to me a big signal that starting in the fall and toward the end of the year we’re going to start seeing troops withdrawn from Iraq.

"My argument is, why wait?"

Clinton and her chief rival for the Democratic nomination, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, voted against the funding bill last week in the face of strong pressure from liberal groups who wanted Democrats to use the bill to force a change of course. Clinton earlier supported a bill calling for a withdrawal timeline, which was vetoed by the president.

Clinton initially opposed cutting off funds for the troops, but said Wednesday that she believed last week’s vote was cast in support of soldiers abroad.

"The best thing I can do to continue my very vigorous support of the troops is to begin to bring them home," she told the AP.

Clinton was on her fourth campaign trip to Nevada, the site of the nation’s second caucus, Jan. 19. She met with hotel and casino workers at a union hall in Las Vegas, and addressed several hundred people at a town hall speech at a North Las Vegas high school.

In both venues, Clinton struck populist notes, criticizing disparities between the rich and poor, bemoaning the diminishing middle class and complaining about soaring pay and benefits for chief executives in corporate America.

In an interview with the AP, Clinton defended her own acceptance of discounted rides on private jets. The travel, and payments to Clinton’s husband, have become the focus of a lawsuit against Vinod Gupta, a Clinton benefactor and chief executive of the data company, infoUSA. The lawsuit by company shareholders accuses Gupta of excessive spending and says he spent $900,000 worth of travel on the Clintons.

Clinton said she followed all Senate rules in accepting the trips. Senate rule require members to reimburse donors at the cost of a first-class flight.

"Those weren’t gifts. Whatever I’ve done, I complied with Senate rules at the time. That’s the way every senator operates," Clinton said. The senator deflected a question about whether she believed the rule, which has since been changed, was good policy.

"Those were the rules. You’ll have to ask somebody else whether that’s good policy," she said.

Source

SEOUL, South Korea: South Korea’s defense minister reacted positively to a suggestion from a state-run think tank that the country keep its troops in Iraq for another year, a news report said Thursday.

Defense Minister Kim Jang-soo gave a "positive assessment" of last week’s report by the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, which argued the government should prolong its troops’ presence in Iraq, the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported, without saying how it got the information.

The ministry dismissed the report as "speculative."

South Korea has about 1,200 troops in the northern Iraqi province of Irbil on a reconstruction mission set to expire at the end of the year, with the government now drawing up a pullout plan under instruction from parliament. Drawing up the plan does not necessarily mean that a pullout will take place this year.

"The Defense Ministry’s policy remains unchanged that it will submit a mission termination plan by the end of June," a ministry official said on customary condition of anonymity citing ministry protocols. "The contents of the plan have not been fixed yet."

The state-run think tank said it did report to the defense chief last week, but only presented the pros and cons related to keeping troops in Iraq for longer.

On Wednesday, MBC television network carried a similar report saying that the government has decided to extend the dispatch after cutting the troop levels to 800 or 900.

The ministry denied that report.

South Korea, a key U.S. ally in Asia, dispatched its first troops to Iraq in 2003 with a 600-strong contingent.

It sent 3,000 more troops the following year at Washington’s request, making it the United States’ biggest coalition partner after Britain.

However, troop levels have since gradually declined amid rising public opposition to the mission. Calls for withdrawing the troops reached their peak when Islamic insurgents beheaded a South Korean civilian working in Iraq in June 2004, after Seoul rejected the kidnappers’ demands to withdraw its forces.

Source

It was just a few days ago that Cindy Sheehan announced she was packing up her anti-US military baggage and heading home to be a mother to her children and live a quiet life away from the public eye. We said, “wanna make a bet!”  We also said it was a publicity stunt and while she may lay low for a short while (in this case 72 hours), she wasn’t going anywhere. We were right! Narcissist Cindy will be in Philly July 4^th spewing her anti-US military rhetoric for the world’s cameras.

Via Sheehan in a letter to the Democratic party:

The Camp Casey Peace Institute is calling all citizens who are as disgusted as we are with you all to join us in Philadelphia on July 4th to try and figure a way out of this "two" party system that is bought and paid for by the war machine which has a stranglehold on every aspect of our lives. As for myself, I am leaving the Democratic Party. You have completely failed those who put you in power to change the direction our country is heading. We did not elect you to help sink our ship of state but to guide it to safe harbor.

We do not condone our government’s violent meddling in sovereign countries and we condemn the continued murderous occupation of Iraq .

We gave you a chance, you betrayed us.

Sincerely,
Cindy Sheehan
Founder and President of
Gold Star Families for Peace.

Founder and Director of
The Camp Casey Peace Institute

A handful of workers caught in an immigration sweep across California and 16 other states and forced from the country earlier this year are now stepping forward to claim back wages they say their former employer owes them. The raids netted 23 workers from Orange County who were asked to leave the country. At least four of them have reentered the United States illegally and have since written to the federal Department of Labor to claim back wages. "We didn’t come back for a gift," said one of the Orange County workers, who like the others asked not to be identified because he feared deportation. "We came back for what we worked for. Independent of how we came into this country, we were working hard, and we just want to be paid for what we did."

Source

Illegal aliens sneak back into America to demand illegal back pay because they got deported before they were paid for their illegal work? Only in America.

Sgt. Tawan Williamson, gets fitted for a prosthetic leg at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — In the blur of smoke and blood after a bomb blew up under his Humvee in Iraq, Sgt. Tawan Williamson looked down at his shredded leg and knew it couldn’t be saved. His military career, though, pulled through.

Less than a year after the attack, Williamson is running again with a high-tech prosthetic leg and plans to take up a new assignment, probably by the fall, as an Army job counselor and affirmative action officer in Okinawa, Japan.

In an about-face by the Pentagon, the military is putting many more amputees back on active duty - even back into combat, in some cases.

Williamson, a 30-year-old Chicago native who is missing his left leg below the knee and three toes on the other foot, acknowledged that some will be skeptical of a maimed soldier back in uniform.

"But I let my job show for itself," he said. "At this point, I’m done proving. I just get out there and do it."

Previously, a soldier who lost a limb almost automatically received a quick discharge, a disability check and an appointment with the Veterans Administration.

But since the start of the Iraq war, the military has begun holding on to amputees, treating them in rehab programs like the one here at Fort Sam Houston and promising to help them return to active duty if that is what they want.

"The mindset of our Army has changed, to the extent that we realize the importance of all our soldiers and what they can contribute to our Army. Someone who loses a limb is still a very valuable asset," said Lt. Col. Kevin Arata, a spokesman for the Army’s Human Resources Command at the Pentagon.

Also, just as advances in battlefield medicine have boosted survival rates among the wounded, better prosthetics and treatment regimens have improved amputees’ ability to regain mobility.

So far, the Army has treated nearly 600 service members who have come back from Iraq or Afghanistan without an arm, leg, hand or foot. Thirty-one have gone back to active duty, and no one who asked to remain in the service has been discharged, Arata said.

Most of those who return to active duty are assigned to instructor or desk jobs away from combat. Only a few - the Army doesn’t keep track of exactly how many - have returned to the war zone, and only at their insistence, Arata said.

To go back into the war zone, they have to prove they can do the job without putting themselves or others at risk.

One amputee who returned to combat in Iraq, Maj. David Rozelle, is now helping design the amputee program at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington. He has counted seven other amputees who have lost at least part of a hand or foot and have gone back to combat in Iraq.

The 34-year-old from Austin, Texas, said he felt duty-bound to return after losing his right foot to a land mine in Iraq.

"It sounds ridiculous, but you feel guilty that you’re back home safe," he said. "Our country is engaged in a war. I felt it was my responsibility as a leader in the Army to continue."

Rozelle commanded a cavalry troop and conducted reconnaissance operations when he returned to Iraq, just as he had before the mine blast. Other amputees who have returned to combat, ranging from infantry grunts to special forces soldiers, have conducted door-to-door searches, convoy operations and other missions in the field.

"Guys won’t go back if it means riding a desk," Rozelle said.

He said his emotions at the start of his second tour in Iraq, which lasted four months, were a lot like those during his first stint: "I was going back to war, so it was as heart-pounding as the first time."

Mark Heniser, who worked as a Navy therapist for 23 years before joining the amputee program at Fort Sam Houston in 2005, said both the military and the wounded benefit when amputees can be kept on active duty: The military retains the skills of experienced personnel, while the soldiers can continue with their careers.

Staff Sgt. Nathan Reed, who lost his right leg a year ago in a car bombing, is 2 1/2 years from retirement and has orders to head in July to Fort Knox, where he expects to be an instructor.

"My whole plan was to do 20 years," said the 37-year-old soldier from Shreveport, La. "I had no doubt that I would be able to go back on active duty."

Not everyone comes through treatment as rapidly or as well as Williamson, Reed and Rozelle. Some have more severe injuries or struggle harder with the losses, physically or emotionally. Soldiers who lose a limb early in their careers are more likely to want out. Those with long service are more motivated to stay, Heniser said.

Williamson did not want to return to combat, and it is not clear he could have met the physical qualifications anyway.

The military planned to discharge him on disability, but he appealed, hoping to become a drill instructor. The Army ruled that would be too physically demanding for Williamson, a human resources officer before being sent to lead convoys in Iraq, but it agreed to let him return to active duty in some other capacity.

He is regaining his strength and balance at the new $50 million Center for the Intrepid, built to rehabilitate military amputees. A hurdler in high school, he ran the Army minimum of two miles for the first time in mid-May, managing a 10-minute-per-mile pace on his C-shaped prosthetic running leg decorated with blue flames.

He is working out five days a week - running, lifting weights and doing pool exercises - and just got his first ride on a wave machine used to improve balance.

"I could leave here today if they told me I had to," Williamson said.

Source

(This version CORRECTS to `Williamson’ sted `Williams’ in 2nd graf.)

Treasonous Goat Boy

No doubt you’ve heard that treasonous goat boy (he was raised on a goat farm…really) Adam Gadahn the California-born convert to Islam is threatening to threaten more threats against the US if the US doesn’t “allow” Al Qaeda to take  over “Muslim” lands. Interesting choice in using the word “allow”. In other words, Adam is begging on behalf of Al Qaeda to let them win some land. That alone should tell you that the US/Coalition Forces are kicking their asses; could be really kicking their asses if the rules of engagement for our troops were loosened a tad. Like fighting with at least one hand untied. Nevertheless, we are kicking their asses and this is why goat boy is begging the US in this latest propaganda video. Forgeddaboutit!  

What I found more interesting than Adam’s begging on behalf of Al Qaeda is his mention of the Virginia Tech massacre. What ever happened to student Jamal Albarghouti (originally from the West Bank) who likened the massacre as that "suffered" by the Palestinians under the Israelis. Call me crazy (been done before) but this guy from a wealthy Hamas? family just happened to be at that building and seemingly not afraid to stand around and take the cell phone video while people are being massacred. After which, he immediately runs to hand the video over to CNN. That cell phone video sure came in handy for CNN to air for our enemies. Just sayin’ is all.

Think about it, who better to carry out your homicidal plans without raising suspicion to yourself/organization than finding an already screwed up homicidal/suicidal young man that you’ve managed to convince to carry out "his" massacre. No one’s the wiser as it stays under the guise of screwed up kid kills many. End of story… or… is it?

Heads Up: June 10th-11th in DC, anti-Israeli pro-Palestinian rally "The United States Says No to Israeli Occupation!". Take a look at the line up of  terrorist speakers for the rally. 

 Israel cannot afford to lose even a single war without exposing its
population to genocide and its nationhood to politicide. Wars waged
against Israel are wars of extermination that target its cities and
population centers. Its enemies are seeking its total destruction.             
                                                                                                                                       
                                                                                           Alan Dershowitz
  
 

Robert Zoellick

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush on Wednesday tapped his former trade chief and No. 2 diplomat, Robert Zoellick, to run the World Bank, embarking on a healing process to mend wounds inflicted by outgoing president Paul Wolfowitz.

Zoellick, 53, would succeed Wolfowitz, who is stepping down June 30 after findings by a special bank panel that he broke bank rules when he arranged a hefty compensation package in 2005 for his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, a bank employee.

Bush’s selection of Zoellick must be approved by the World Bank’s 24-member board.

The controversy over Wolfowitz caused a staff revolt and strained U.S. relations with Europeans and other countries and led to calls for him to resign from the poverty-fighting institution.

"The World Bank has passed through a difficult time for all involved. There are frustrations, anxieties and tensions about the past that could inhibit the future," said Zoellick, standing beside Bush at the White House. "This is understandable, but not without remedy. We need to put yesterday’s discord behind us and to focus on the future together.

"I believe that the World Bank’s best days are still to come," he added.

In tapping Zoellick, Bush picked a seasoned veteran of politics both inside the Beltway and on the international stage. He is known for pulling facts and figures off the top of his head. He also has a reputation for being a demanding boss.

"Bob Zoellick has had a long and distinguished career in diplomacy and development economics. It has prepared him well for this new assignment," Bush said. "This man is eminently qualified."

Internationally, the reaction to Bush’s choice was generally positive, although some public health groups and others expressed concern about his ability to carry out the institution’s mission.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner welcomed Zoellick’s appointment. Asked whether Zoellick was the right man for the job, Kouchner said "certainly."

"In between the partners and the World Bank, it is mainly a question of confidence, and I hope that Mr. Zoellick will re-establish - or establish - confidence in between all of them," Kouchner told reporters Wednesday on his arrival at a meeting of Group of Eight foreign ministers in Potsdam, Germany. "This is absolutely crucial."

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said, "I certainly respect very much Mr. Zoellick," but declined further comment.

Zoellick announced last June that he was leaving his post as deputy secretary of state to join the Wall Street firm of Goldman Sachs and work to develop investment markets around the world.

If ultimately approved as World Bank chief, Zoellick will need to regain trust, rebuild credibility and mend frayed relations inside the institution as well as with its member countries around the world.

The bank’s new leader will try to persuade countries to contribute nearly $30 billion over the next few years to fund a centerpiece bank program that provides interest-free loans to the world’s poorest countries.

"We need to approach this task with humility and creative minds," Zoellick said. He said he planned to meet soon with the bank’s contributors and borrowers and others, to listen to their perspectives on how the institution can best fulfill its purpose.

Zoellick could build upon strong relations he has developed worldwide as deputy secretary of state and U.S. Trade Representative. He was involved in peace talks in Sudan and he played a key role in negotiations to bring China into the World Trade Organization. He forged free trade deals between the United States and other countries, including Singapore, Chile, Australia and Morocco. And, he helped launch global trade talks in Doha, Qatar.

Under Bush’s father’s administration, Zoellick worked closely with then-Secretary of State James Baker on policies pertaining to the end of the Cold War. He also had worked on negotiations on German unification.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., also praised Zoellick.

"My experience working with him on the subject of Darfur tells me that I know that he cares about that issue, which is very important to the American people," she said. "He’s sensitive to the need to alleviate poverty there, to resolve conflict in a peaceful way. … I have been impressed by what he has done so far."

But Charad D. Wadhva, professor emeritus at the Center for Policy Research, a New Delhi think tank, questions whether Zoellick is right for the World Bank job.

"Professionally, he’s competent but I’m not so sure about his background in developing economies or in helping developing countries," Wadhva said. "He may have to learn a lot to understand the needs of the developing countries."

Before taking the helm in 2005, Wolfowitz was the No. 2 official at the Pentagon and played a key role in mapping out the war in Iraq. From the beginning, Europeans and others were upset that Bush would pick someone to run the bank who was so closely associated with the war.

Bush called Wolfowitz an "able public servant" and praised his leadership at the bank.

Source

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Gov. Jon S. Corzine returned to the Statehouse on Wednesday for the first time since an April car crash nearly killed him.

Corzine broke his leg, 11 ribs, collarbone and sternum when his speeding sport utility vehicle, driven by a state trooper, slammed into a guard rail. The governor was hospitalized for 18 days, much of it in intensive care. Corzine was not wearing a seat belt.

"It’s great to be back," Corzine said after pulling up in front of the Capitol in a special van he purchased to help him travel while he recovers.

Corzine planned to meet with legislative leaders to discuss his proposed $33 billion budget. He also may weigh nominations for two new state Supreme Court justices, including the chief.

The governor, who resumed his duties May 7, has been working and rehabilitating from the governor’s mansion in Princeton.

 Corzine paid a $46 fine for breaking the law which caused his accident. Last week, he released a public service announcement urging people to do as he says and not as he does. In other words, wear your seat belt and don’t speed.

Known for their ludicrous anti-US military street antics, Code Pinko’s pals, the Iraq Veterans Against The War have taken a page from the Pinko Book of Bullshit and decided a great way to support the troops still in harms way would be to stage mock raids on mock Iraqi civilians and call it street theater. The point of the street theater is to educate the public on how the evil US Imperial Storm Troops treat poor innocent humane freedom fighters (insurgents). The IVAW thought this past Memorial Day would be a good day to educate the public on the evils of the US Imperial Storm Troops. This is how they show their support for troops still in harms way…by emboldening our enemies. Nice! It’s not the first time they’ve pulled this crap and no doubt won’t be the last. The point is; they claim support for the troops and yet portray the troops as torturous/murderous war criminals.   Of course the few vets that are accusing the troops in the sandbox of these criminal acts are claiming they only witnessed others engaging in criminal behavior and they themselves never participated in said criminal acts…nor did they ever bother to report these criminal acts. They apparently thought it better to wait till they returned stateside and act them out on US streets for the world and our enemies to see.  

Via Discover the Networks:

IVAW spreads its anti-war, anti-military message via the following organizational projects:

(a) Project for New American Values: In conjunction with the UPRISE Counter-Recruitment tour, IVAW members traveled throughout the Northeast and Midwest in the Fall of 2006, sponsoring concerts with anti-war themes.

(b) Truth in Recruiting: "Veteran’s [sic] stories of conflict are a powerful tool that can be used to prevent others from entering into the military without a full understanding of their actions." Activities in this program include: “Opt-out campaigns, organizing against JROTC programs, protesting at recruiting stations, and providing information about alternatives to the military."

(c) Veteran Gulf Reconstruction Project: "As veterans, we saw first-hand how diverting billions [of dollars] for an endless occupation in Iraq is responsible for the shameful lack of aid for reconstruction in the communities that survived Hurricanes Katrina and Rita here at home. If we can build bases in the desert for war, we can rebuild cities in the U.S. for justice."

(d) Coalitions and Movement Building: IVAW identifies its "most important partner" as Veterans for Peace. It also claims to have "very close relationships" with Military Families Speak Out, Gold Star Families for Peace, and Vietnam Veterans Against the War. "With these partners," says IVAW, "we support the Bring Them Home Now! Campaign." Moreover, IVAW is a steering committee member of the United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalition led by Leslie Cagan, a longtime committed socialist who aligns her politics with those of Fidel Castro’s Communist Cuba.

 A reminder of how those poor innocent humane freedom fighters treat US POW’s;

 US soldiers Pfc. Kristian Menchaca and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker before the poor innocent freedom fighters got their humane hands on them and…

after their capture…

Captured May 12^th 2007, Pfc. Joseph Anzack Jr. was found a few weeks later floating in the Euphrates River. The freedom fighters humanely put a few rounds in Anzacks head and dumped his body.

Iraqis help a police officer pull the body of Pfc. Joseph Anzack Jr. from the Euphrates River at Musayyib

 Spc. Alex R. Jimenez, 25, of Lawrence, Massachusetts, and Pvt. Byron W. Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Michigan are still MIA/POW from the May 12th 2007 ambush

Staff Sgt. Keith "Matt" Maupin
POW/MIA

Via the leftist AlterNet:

Christopher Hitchens debated Chris Hedges in a battle of wits and faith over the meaning of religion in our lives and politics today.

Visualize this spectacle: a debate between a neocon and a progressive [Marxist]. The subject is religion. One of them is there to defend religion, to praise God, to cheerlead for even the most devout. The other — his opponent — is an atheist. He skewers deities and those who follow deities. He calls them evil. Toxic. Childish. He mocks doctrine. Railing that the devout want to kill us and control the world, he is on a mission, as it were, to vanquish missions. You’d expect the liberal to be the atheist and the neocon to vouch for the devout. No-brainer, right? Well, no.

As Christopher Hitchens debated Chris Hedges in a Berkeley auditorium last Thursday night, it was Hedges who praised the pious. And it was 9/11-neocon Hitchens who railed against "Abrahamic man-made filthy propaganda," proclaiming that "human emancipation begins when this nonsense ends."

Both men are the authors of brand-new books, both of which share a basic premise. Truthdig columnist Hedges, who won an Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights in Journalism five years ago for his New York Times reportage on terrorism, has just published American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (Free Press, 2007, $25). Hitchens’ latest is God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Twelve, $24.95), its title saucily skewering the English translation of Allahu Akbar.

While in American Fascists, Hedges lambastes fundamentalist Christianity and what he calls its divisive good-vs.-evil, us-vs.-them "binary worldview," he is also a Presbyterian minister’s son and has a Harvard divinity degree. Which qualifies him for the ostensibly odd role — a game of Twister unto itself — of supporting religious ritual and belief in the supernatural while being denounced as a callow hypocrite by a world-famous colleague who might once have agreed with him on everything.

That colleague now disagrees with him on nearly everything, though before the night was over both expressed a loathing for the KKK. That was a hard bill to fill: chewing the fat about faith with a celebrity atheist — an "ex-socialist," as the evening’s emcee would call Hitchens, succinctly — in a stalwartly secular college town, during an arguably religious war, at an event bristling with contradictions.

Its cosponsors were Cody’s independent bookstore, Berkeley free-speech-radio station KPFA and the Zaytuna Institute — a traditionalist Islamic education center and seminary in nearby Hayward that maintains a strict dress code including long-sleeved shirts and scarves for female students and whose Web site outlines its mission to use "the most effective tools of our time as a means of serving our Lord and honoring our Prophet, sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam."

Sharing the middle-school auditorium lobby with a Zaytuna table and a book-selling table were representatives of the Revolutionary Communist Party. A Christian booth of some kind would have made for an even more provocative mix, but that contingent — along with Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Baha’i and, for that matter, Berkeley’s thriving neopagans — was either not invited to set up a table or declined. Hitchens spoke first, smirking that "since I’m in Berkeley, California, the mush-headed view" pervading the audience was surely that faith inspires ethics. Yet "our morality, our human solidarity," he avowed, "are innate."

Rather than springing from some religious code whose every behavioral prompt is "either a bribe or a threat," drawn from doctrine that "either demands total abjection or proposes that you are the egomaniacal center of the universe," acts of kindness and activism and the saving and taking of lives spring, he believes, from some universal interior monitor that gauges right and wrong.

"It also makes me rejoice in the deaths of my enemies," he said and stood back, as if the hostility in the hall was palpable. "I can’t change that. And neither can you, pray as you might." Scorning a classic Christian tenet, Hitchens snarled, "Go ahead and love your enemies. Don’t go loving mine."

His enemies are "the enemies of civilization" and they "should be beaten." He spoke of hordes aching to kill us and our children and burn our libraries. He cited "the Iranians, [who] have a tooth-fairy god called the Twelfth Imam," and who "managed by piracy to have acquired an apocalyptic weapon to drive the lesson home. These people are coming after you, too, and it’s time you woke up to it." Hedges bristled. "The problem," he countered, "is not religion. The problem is religious orthodoxy." Religion isn’t as toxic as "that disease of nationalism" from which "comes a blind racism." What spurs evil acts, he told the crowd, was "the clamor of the tribe or the nation" — though anyone might argue that the lines between faith, tribalism and nationalism are fuzzy these days at best.

"God is better understood as a verb than as a noun," he ventured. "God is a process." Invoking Tillich, Flaubert and Freud, Hedges finished his introductory remarks by proposing that "the danger is not Islam. … The danger is the human heart." Thus began a discussion around a low coffee table with KPFA’s Interim Program Director Sasha Lilley moderating.

Hitchens mocked the leisurely arrangement. Leaning far back in his flexible chair and describing his posture as "semi-reclining," he offered to "do it lying down if you want me to," before calling Hedges simplistic and self-serving and asking him to reconsider — "if you can think at all." "I hate institutionalized religion as much as Christopher does," Hedges put in. Cheers erupted when he called the Christian Right "the most frightening mass political movement in American history."

Hitchens broke in, repeatedly overrunning Lilley, disdaining as "callow leftism" the "evil nonsense taught by Hedges … that Palestinian suicide bombers are driven by despair…. These are people in a state of exaltation [for] their mullahs and their filthy religion," Hitchens raged, dismissing at once "any other explanation of Islamic jihad" besides a religious one, then likewise dismissing "anyone who eulogizes this evil wicked thing." Boos shook the hall. But so did cheers. As Hitchens rocked back in his chair, it was clear from the clamor that a fair portion of the crowd supported him: maybe thirty percent, maybe forty. What trumps what, these days, in Berkeley?

Hedges likened Hitchens to The End of Faith (Norton, 2004, $24.95) author Sam Harris, condemning the "binary worldview" both men share. Taking up the jihad gauntlet, Hedges riposted that "the only route we have given these young kids is [that of] affirming themselves through death," with its attendant promise of paradise and huge funeral processions. "Self-immolation is the only route they have," he insisted, to wild and lasting applause. Hitchens eyed him, incredulous, across the coffee table strewn with water glasses and stacks of notes. "Who makes excuses for suicide-murderers?" Hitchens marveled. "Shame on you." From the crowd came a shout: "Shut up!"

Hitchens shook his head: "You rationalized murder." As Lilley and Hedges struggled to restart the dialogue, Hitchens kept repeating that phrase with mingled accusation and wonder: You rationalized murder. "I haven’t finished," Hedges protested.

"You have finished," Hitches snorted. "You are finished." Debates are fights, but bloodless ones. They are our teensiest, cleanest, most demure wars. And their frontline artillery comprises words: not just their meanings, not just Hitchens drawling "Comrade Hedges" but their sound, the whole Toastmasters rimshot rise-and-fall, that performative badda-bing that makes us flinch in principle but which works behind a mic. In those stage-lit, miniature wars our secret weapons are whatever we know of our adversaries’ pasts. Missteps. Alliances. In that vein, Hedges could have asked Hitchens why in November 2005, under the auspices of an overtly Christ-centered far-right think tank known as the Family Research Council, he addressed fundamentalist Christian college students who received course credit for attending that event.

Yet Hedges did not broach that subject. And luminous as his writing can be, onstage he was rather trounced, at least in a Toastmasters sense. "What’s dangerous," he declared as the evening drew to a close, "is when one person thinks he has an absolute truth…. To believe that we have an understanding of the truth … is to carry out an evil."

Funny how truth keeps popping up everywhere these days. Well, not truth itself so much as its spectre: now you see it, now you don’t, either dazzling or puzzling, changing in the shifting light from a right to an ideal to a bludgeon. How to get this straight? We seek truth. Well enough. But how much? Because its opposite is ignorance, or lies. On the evil-absolutism connection, Hitchens seconded Hedges — but again, and ironically, only up to a point.

"We can’t use the word ‘totalitarian,’" he boomed sarcastically, "about the one religion that actually practices totalitarianism." He meant Islam. He waxed nostalgic for bygone days when his debates about religion were predictable: when the devout would just come right out and announce that unbelievers were doomed. "At least we knew where we were," he mused. "Now it’s all relative. It’s made up a la carte and cherry-picked." Applause shook the hall. Sometimes, even in Berkeley, you don’t know where you are.

Britain "fully supports" U.S. efforts to toughen U.N. Security Council sanctions against Sudan because of the situation in Darfur, a British official travelling with Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Wednesday.

"We hope that all members of the Security Council will work with the United States to create a resolution which effectively addresses the challenges in Darfur," the Downing Street official said before Blair was due to start a visit to Sierra Leone.

"The UK fully supports U.S. efforts to address the desperate situation in Darfur in the Security Council," the British official, who asked not to be named, said.

On Tuesday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair welcomed the new sanctions, saying years of inaction over events in Africa were over.

Britain "would obviously support" the additional measures, Blair said shortly before US President George W. Bush announced the toughened measures against the Khartoum regime.

"Darfur has shown what has been done and what still needs to be done," he told reporters on board his plane shortly before taking off for Libya, his first stop on a three-nation trip to Africa.

President George W. Bush imposed new U.S. sanctions on Sudan out of frustration at Sudan’s refusal to end what he called a "genocide" in Darfur.

Bush directed U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to consult with Britain and other allies on pursuing new U.N. Security Council sanctions against Sudan that would impose an expanded arms embargo on Sudan’s government.

The ratcheting up of U.S. pressure on Sudan coincides with a broader effort by U.N. officials to get Khartoum to end the Darfur conflict in which more than 200,000 people have died and 2 million have been driven from their homes since 2003.

Sudan says 9,000 have died and rejects accusations of genocide.
Source

British oil giant BP is set to return to Libya in a move which British officials say recognises a warming of relations between London and Tripoli, a spokesman for Tony Blair said.

"We are now beginning to develop an economic relationship with Libya which is hugely important," he added.

"That’s why companies such as BP can begin to go back into the country today."

He declined to give further details of BP’s plans.

A BP spokeswoman said: "We have been in talks with the Libyan government for a couple of years and we’re hopeful of reaching an agreement."

She also declined to give details of BP’s plans. However, the company said in January it was in talks with Libya on exploration and development opportunities that could lead to multi-billion dollar investment in the former pariah state.

Much of foreign oil companies’ interests in Libya were nationalised in the 1970s. Others pulled out when the U.S. imposed sanctions in 1986.

Libya has attracted considerable interest from international oil companies since 2004, when the United States and European Union eased sanctions following Libya’s agreement not to pursue nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Source

Lebanese soldiers rush to take positions as new firefight erupts

The Lebanese army raided on Wednesday Fatah Al-Islam’s stronghold in Nahr Al-Bared camp, northern Lebanon, and injuries were reported after the confrontation.

A Lebanese Security source said the raid conducted earlier today comes in response to the recent attacks on the Lebanese army posts.

The source added the strategy adopted by the Lebanese army aims at protecting civilians in Nahr Al-Bared camp.

"After every attack against the army by Fatah Al-Islam, the army retaliates by targeting the source," the source said.

For the past 11 days, Nahr Al-Bared camp and surrounding areas have witnessed more tension, as schools and markets are closed amid constant battles.

Talks and negotiations so far failed to bring a political solution for Nahr Al-Bared amid Palestinian-Palestinian conflict and Fatah Al-Islam’s refusal to surrender to the Lebanese Army.

Also on Wednesday, Lebanon charged 20 members of Fatah al-Islam with "terrorism"

Judiciary sources said the charges against the 19 Lebanese and one Syrian, all in custody, carried the death penalty and were linked to fighting around the Nahr al-Bared camp that has killed 79 people — 34 soldiers, 27 militants and 18 civilians.

The Lebanese authorities blame the group for starting the confrontations by attacking army positions at the camp and near the northern city of Tripoli on May 20.

The fighting, the worst in Lebanon since the 1975-1990 civil war, has continued sporadically.

The combatants exchanged artillery shells and mortar bombs for hours overnight in the heaviest fighting in a week, witnesses said.

But the clashes tapered off in the early hours of Wednesday.

The Lebanese government has demanded the militants surrender.

Fatah al-Islam say they have been acting in self defence and reject the demand to hand over any of their fighters.

A 1969 Arab agreement stops the army from entering Lebanon’s 12 Palestinian refugee camps, home to 400,000.

The government has given Palestinian leaders in Lebanon a chance to find a way out of the stand-off, as it is concerned that the refugees will see more army action at the camp as an attack on their community.

More than 25,000 of the camp’s 40,000 Palestinians have fled from the fighting.

Most of the displaced refugees have flooded the nearby Beddawi camp, where humanitarian organisations have been carrying out relief work.

More food supplies, medicine and water were sent to Nahr al-Bared, whose remaining inhabitants have no electricity or running water, witnesses said.

The prospect of a decisive military solution to the stand-off has been played down by the government in recent days because it could trigger violence at other refugee camps.
Source

By Thomas Sowell

It has long been recognized that those on the political left are more articulate than their opponents. The words they choose for the things they are for or against make it easy to decide whether to be for or against those things.

Are you for or against "social justice"? A no-brainer. Who is going to be for injustice?

What about "a living wage"? Who wants people not to have enough money to live on?

Then there is "affordable housing" and "affordable health care." Who would want people to be unable to afford to put a roof over their heads or unable to go to a doctor when they are sick?

In real life, the devil is in the details. But the whole point of political rhetoric is to make it unnecessary for you to have to go into the specifics before taking sides.

You don’t need to know any economics to be in favor of "a living wage" or "affordable housing." In fact, the less economics you know, the more you can believe in such things.

Conservatives, on the other hand, have a gift for phrasing things in terms that are unlikely to arouse most people’s interest, much less their support.

Do words like "property rights," "the market" or "judicial restraint" make your emotions surge and your heart beat faster?

There are serious reasons to be greatly concerned about all these things. But you have to have a lot more facts and more understanding of history, economics, and law before you see why.

An issue can be enormously important and well within most people’s understanding. Yet the way words are used can determine whether people are aroused or bored.

One of those issues is what legal scholars call "takings." There is a masterful book with that title by Professor Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago Law School.

But if you are in a bookstore and see a book with the title "Takings" on its cover, are you more likely to stop in your tracks and eagerly snatch it off the shelf or to yawn and keep walking?

Takings are not a complex idea. But it needs explaining.

Let’s suppose you live in a $400,000 house.

If, on a Wednesday afternoon, the government announces that it is planning to "redevelop" the area where your home is located — that is, demolish the area so that something else can be built there — by Thursday morning, your $400,000 house could become a $200,000 house.

The market reacts very quickly in anticipation of future events.

Several years later, when the government actually gets around to demolishing the area, they may offer you $200,000 for your property — or perhaps $150,000, if they use an appraiser who knows that he is more likely to get more business from the government if his estimates are on the low side rather than the high side.

In either case, you are out at least a couple of hundred grand. Has the government "taken" that much from you, without paying you the full compensation for your property, as required by the Constitution of the United States?

Such theoretical questions were made vividly real, and people were vividly outraged, when the Supreme Court in 2005 declared that governments at all levels had the power to seize private property, not only for such government activities as building reservoirs or highways, but also for turning the property over to private developers to build shopping malls, casinos, or whatever.

The Constitution says that government can take private property for "public use" if it compensates the owner. The Supreme Court changed that to mean that the government could take private property just to turn over to others, so long as they called it a "public purpose" like "redevelopment."

Politicians are experts at rhetoric, especially if that is all that is needed to justify seizing your home and turning it over to someone else who will build something that pays more taxes.

All hell broke out, once people now understood that the issue called "takings" was about politicians being able to seize their property, virtually at will, for someone else’s benefit. But it was a liberal court decision, not the words of conservatives, which created that understanding.

Part II

With gasoline prices rising, political rhetoric is rising even faster. Liberals in Congress and in the media have launched a war of words, whose net result may well be a demand for some form of price control.

Price controls are not a new idea. There have been price controls in countries around the world. There were price controls during ancient times in Babylon and in the Roman Empire.
Whatever the hopes that may have inspired price controls, economists have studied their actual consequences, which have been remarkably similar from one place to another and from one time to another — and almost invariably bad.
That history has even included higher prices in places with price controls. For example, New York and San Francisco have severe rent control laws — and some of the highest average rents in the country.

But those pushing for price controls on gasoline are not likely to go into facts about the consequences of price controls, much less go into the economics that explains why such bad consequences have repeatedly followed price controls.
This issue, like so many others, is likely to be settled on the basis of rhetoric. And, on that basis, the left has always had the advantage.

As former House Majority Leader Dick Armey — an economist by trade — has put it: "Demagoguery beats data" in political battles.

The demagoguery in this case is that "price gouging" and "greed" explain rising gasoline prices — and that price controls will put a stop to it.
It is an exercise in futility to try to refute words that are meaningless. If a word has no concrete meaning, then there is nothing that can be refuted. "Price gouging" is a classic example.

The phrase is used when prices are higher than most people are used to. But there is nothing special or magic about what we happen to be used to.

When the conditions that determined the old prices change, the new prices are likely to be very different. That is not rocket science.
How have conditions changed in recent years? The biggest change is that China and India — with more than a billion people each — have had rapidly growing economies ever since they began relaxing government controls and allowing markets to operate more freely.
When there are rising incomes in countries of this size, the demand for more petroleum for both industry and consumers is huge. Increasing the supply of oil to meet these escalating demands is not nearly as easy.

In the United States, liberals have made it virtually impossible, by banning drilling in all sorts of places and preventing any new refinery from being built anywhere in the country in the last 30 years.
Prices are like messengers carrying the news of supply and demand. Like other messengers carrying bad news, they face the danger that some people think the answer is to kill the messenger, rather than taking steps to change the news.

The strongest proponents of price controls are the strongest opponents of producing more oil. They say the magic words "alternative energy sources" and we are supposed to swoon — and certainly not ask any rude questions like "At what cost?"
Then there are the famous "obscene" profits of oil companies. Again, there is no definition and no criterion by which you could tell obscene profits from PG-13 profits or profits rated G.

There is not the slightest interest in how large the investments are that produced those profits. Relative to the vast investments involved, oil company profits do not begin to approach the rate of return received by someone who bought a house in California ten years ago and sells it today.
Oil company executives make big bucks incomes, almost as much as liberal movie stars who are never criticized for "greed." And if Big Oil CEOs worked for nothing, it is unlikely to be enough to bring the price of a gallon of gas down by a nickel.
But facts are not nearly as exciting as rhetoric — and the role of most political rhetoric is to be a substitute for facts.

Source

GEORGETOWN, Del. (AP) — A man accused in a deadly two-state shooting rampage believed his victims were space aliens trying to abduct his daughter, his attorney said Tuesday at the start of his murder trial.

Allison Lamont Norman, 27, was in the middle of a psychotic episode and believed he was protecting his 5-year-old daughter during the time he is accused of killing two people and wounding four others in Maryland and Delaware in April 2005, defense attorney Brendan O’Neill told jurors.

"He thought there were aliens everywhere," O’Neill said.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Norman in the slaying of Jamell Weston, 24, in Laurel, Del.

Norman also is accused in the shooting death of DaVondale M. "Pete" Peters, 28, in Salisbury, Md., but that charge and others were dropped so the Delaware case could go forward. A Maryland prosecutor cited differences in the way the two states handle insanity pleas.

Both O’Neill and prosecutor Peggy Marshall told jurors that neither will dispute that Norman pulled the trigger.

"This case is not a whodunit. … The issue in this case is what was Mr. Norman’s mental condition, what was his state of mind, when he did these things," O’Neill said.

O’Neill told jurors they would hear seemingly far-fetched testimony that Norman stuck his head in a toilet, drank his own urine and ate his own feces after being arrested.

He was trying to "prove his worthiness" to get his family back, O’Neill said.

Marshall said Norman’s state of mind would be the key issue and urged jurors to keep their own minds open.

The attacks began in Laurel, where Weston and another man were shot at an apartment complex, and a third man was shot at a nearby shopping center.

Investigators say Norman, wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a handgun, then stole a car and drove about 13 miles to Salisbury, where he shot Peters, two other people and two dogs. One of the Salisbury victims was left paralyzed and Peters was killed.

The girl Norman believed was his daughter, Donesha Sturgis, took the stand to testify Tuesday. O’Neill said after court that Norman’s girlfriend told him he was the girl’s father, though there has never been scientific confirmation.

Sturgis, 7, told the court that the night before the shootings, Norman corralled her and her sisters in a corner of their apartment while her little brother was left alone in a hallway, screaming. According to O’Neill, Norman believed that the screams of the children helped keep the aliens at bay, and would pinch them to keep them yelling.

"He tore down the curtains in the kids’ bedrooms so he could see the aliens at night," O’Neill said.

Also testifying Tuesday was Weston’s cousin, Marcus Cannon, 20, who was wounded in the arm during the Carvel Gardens shooting. Cannon said that after seeing Norman shoot Weston, he ran for safety as Norman turned the gun on him.

Marshall asked Cannon what he was thinking as he sought safety.

"That I was going to die that day," Cannon replied.

Source

Caracas: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday called opposition news channel Globovision an enemy of the state and said he would do what was needed to stop it from inciting violence, only days after he shut another opposition broadcaster.

Tens of thousands of Venezuelans marched in Caracas in a fourth consecutive day of protests over Chavez’s closure of the RCTV network - a move which has sparked international criticism that the leftist leader’s reforms are undermining democracy.

After RCTV’s closure, Globovision is the last main opposition media in the OPEC nation, but it does not have nationwide coverage.

State television showed hundreds of government supporters marching in downtown Caracas celebrating Chavez’s decision.

"Enemies of the homeland, particularly those behind the scenes, I will give you a name: Globovision. Greetings gentlemen of Globovision, you should watch where you are going," Chavez said in a broadcast all channels had to show.

"I recommend you take a tranquilizer and get into gear, because if not, I am going to do what is necessary."

He accused Globovision of trying to incite his assassination and of misreporting protests over the closure of RCTV in a manner that could whip up a situation similar to the coup attempt against him in 2002.

Source

Gorumlu, Turkey: Turkey sent more tanks to its border with Iraq on Wednesday in a military build-up that is fuelling US concern about a possible incursion into northern Iraq against Kurdish rebels.

A group of 20 tanks loaded on trucks emerged from army barracks in Mardin near Syria and headed towards the Iraqi border in southeast Turkey, already the scene of a major army offensive against rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Speculation about an imminent incursion into Iraq has grown since Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said last week he saw eye to eye