[good luck everyone]

HEROES: Apache Pilot Receives Distinguished Flying Cross

There was a fierce ground battle under way, and the Iraqi and U.S. soldiers on the ground needed air support. Johnson and his crew were that support. In eight minutes, Johnson led his team from Forward Operating Base Kalsu to the battlefield.

"Those were the longest eight minutes of my life," he said. "There was sadness because I just lost some of my friends. I was worried about my friends who were still there. I was scared. But like the movie ‘Black Hawk Down,’ when the bullets are flying, you just do your job. I tried to stay level headed and cool under the pressure."

Johnson, originally from Nampa, Idaho, orchestrated more than an hour of organized attacks before running completely out of ammunition. His team flew back to FOB Kalsu, re-armed and went back out into the fight.

"The governor met me, and was sobbing. Not out of sadness, not out of anger, but out of thankfulness," he said. "He was so grateful that we took away that burden."

That wouldn't have been possible without the skills and professionalism of Johnson and his team, Fil said. "I have never been associated with anyone more deserving of the Distinguished Flying Cross than Chief Warrant Officer 3 Johnson," he said.

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Berkeley Marine Protest: Cops Remain 'Neutral'

Video Shows Confrontation as Cops Remain ‘Neutral’

"We're trying to remain neutral as possible."

[not an exaggeration - citizens where physically restrained from entering a place of business and when asked if he was going to do anything about it the Berkeley Police officer said the above, and did nothing. Watch it.]

Thanks for your help, Germany

Germany has refused to deploy additional troops to Afghanistan to assist beleaguered Canadian and Dutch forces in the south. The flat refusal to help is a big blow to those desperately trying to get NATO countries who do not have troops in active combat zones to commit to the fight:

Germany currently has some 3,200 soldiers stationed in comparatively tranquil northern Afghanistan and the capital Kabul as part of the current Nato peacekeeping mission. It has been urged to deploy troops in the south before but has consistently refused.

Yesterday however, it became clear that Washington had stepped up pressure on Berlin to commit troops to the south. The move followed increased Taliban attacks and threats from Canada that it would withdraw its Afghanistan contingent completely unless more Nato troops were sent south.

Canada has lost 77 combat troops in the region. Two US non-governmental studies released this week warned that Afghanistan could once again become a failed state and terrorist haven.

Make no mistake. This is the diplomatic crisis of the war in Afghanistan. NATO countries are terrified of the political firestorm that would erupt if they put their troops in harms way and they suffered casualties. The European left is looking for any excuse to get troops out of Afghanistan and nations like Germany, France, Belgium, refuse to change their rules of engagement and prohibit their troops from engaging the Taliban.

Meanwhile, the Canucks and their 2500 troops along with a small contingent of Dutch soldiers try and hold off the Taliban at the point where inflitration over the Pakistani border is most common - in Kandahar province. This is while German troops sit at the Kabul airport in perfect safety.

If NATO won't fight in Afghanistan where so much is at stake, where will they fight?

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IAEA chief brushes off concern over Arab nuclear development

The head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency said Sunday that he was not concerned about Arab countries using nuclear energy for power development, despite international controversy over Iran's atomic program.

Many countries in the Mideast have expressed interest in developing peaceful atomic energy programs in response to rising domestic energy consumption and possibly to counter Iran's nuclear activities.

"All the Arab countries' nuclear activities will be under agency safeguard systems, so I don't see a reason why anybody should be concerned about ... Arab countries using nuclear energy for power development,"

Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told reporters after meeting with Arab League chief Amr Moussa in Cairo.

["and possibly to counter Iran's nuclear activities. " - nobody's talking about peaceful uses - we're being insulted by the suggestion]

FLASHBACKS :

[June 6, '07 >]
IAEA head: Attack on Iran over would be "madness"
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency cautioned on Thursday that an attack on Iran over its refusal to freeze programs that could make nuclear weapons would be "an act of madness," in indirect warnings to the United States and Israel. IAEA chief Mohamed El-Baradei also said Iran would likely be running close to 3,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges by the end of next month - a number agency officials have described as the point of no return ...
[context: nowhere in the article does the AP remind readers that this is the person who seriously called for the West to destroy all in nukes as an example to others - and we're supposed to listen to his definitions of 'madness'?]
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181813032839&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

[May 24, '07 >]
IAEA head calls for total atomic ban as Iran still defiant
Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), called Thursday for a worldwide ban on nuclear weapons as Iran continued defiance over its nuclear programme. /snip/ ElBaradei said governments should forge a new collective security order which bans [?!?] all nuclear weapons.
[certifiable but laughable coming from a nobody - but from the head of a world body, criminally insane - and yet another example of the UN's slide from worse-than-worthless to increasingly-dangerous]
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/news/article_1308927.php/IAEA_head_calls_for_total_atomic_ban_as_Iran_still_defiant

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Ten Reasons to Get Rid of the European Union

The proponents of the European Union claim that it is a “peace project.” But the EU is not about peace, it is about war: A demographic and cultural war waged against an entire continent, from the Black Sea to the North Sea, in order to destroy European nation states and build an empire run by self-appointed and unaccountable bureaucrats. Anthony Coughlan, a senior lecturer at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, notes:

"At a national level when a minister wants to get something done, he or she must have the backing of the prime minister, must have the agreement of the minister for finance if it means spending money, and above all must have majority support in the national parliament, and implicitly amongst voters in the country. Shift the policy area in question to the supranational level of Brussels however, where laws are made primarily by the 27-member Council of Ministers, and the minister in question becomes a member of an oligarchy, a committee of lawmakers, the most powerful in history, making laws for 500 million Europeans, and irremovable as a group regardless of what it does. National parliaments and citizens lose power with every EU treaty, for they no longer have the final say in the policy areas concerned."

The European Union is basically an attempt by the elites in European nation states to cooperate on usurping power, bypassing and abolishing the democratic system, a slow-motion coup d’état. Ideas such as “promoting peace” or “promoting free trade” are used as a pretext for this, a bone thrown to fool the gullible masses and veil what is essentially a naked power grab...

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French deputies approve amendment permitting adoption of EU treaty

[meanwhile...]

French MPs have voted in favour of amending their country's constitution to allow adoption of the EU Lisbon Treaty. Prime Minister Francois Fillon called the decision: "a vote that distinguishes the actors of history from the spectators."

The Versailles assembly, bringing together both the French Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, voted 560 to 181. Of the 893 voters present, 741 votes were cast

The opposition Socialists abstained in protest at the decision to "take the parliamentary road" to pass the treaty rather than hold a referendum.

[i.e., the French people voted against it last year - so the government took away their ability to have a say in it and passed it 'for' them... evidently EU citizens are expected to just be 'spectators']

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Chavez hardens tone in dispute with Colombia

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez hardened his tone on Saturday in a diplomatic dispute with Colombia, which he accuses of plotting an invasion, and warned any attack would be met with force. Chavez, a former soldier, repeated a claim that Colombia was planning to invade neighbouring Venezuela and said he would soon test the firepower of Russian-built fighter jets.

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[meanwhile...]

RAF forced to borrow planes
The RAF is being forced to borrow American spy planes and paint roundels on them to replace its fleet of Nimrod R1 signals intelligence aircraft. The crews of the US Rivet Joint spy planes masquerading as RAF aircraft will not even be totally British with US personnel expected to take control on some missions. The move was forced by a Ministry of Defense (MoD) cash crisis that rules out the money for a replacement aircraft for the Nimrod R1.

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Female Muslim medics 'disobey hygiene rules'

Muslim medical students are refusing to obey hygiene rules brought in to stop the spread of deadly superbugs, because they say it is against their religion. Women training in several hospitals in England have raised objections to removing their arm coverings in theatre and to rolling up their sleeves when washing their hands, because it is regarded as immodest in Islam.

[government run health'care']

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Saying No to CoerciveCare

Whether it's Mitt, Hillary, or Arnold doing the sales job

...Yet many California unions argued that a mandate would force uninsured, middle-income working families to divert money from more pressing needs toward coverage whose price and quality they cannot control.

The unions are correct: This is exactly what is happening in Massachusetts, where Mitt Romney enacted a similar plan two years ago as governor. (And Mr. Romney's plan is the inspiration for both the Schwarzenegger and Clinton plans.) The experience in the Bay State deserves a lot more scrutiny than it has been getting.

...All this has inflated demand, which, combined with onerous regulations on insurance suppliers, has triggered premium increases of 12 percent for this year—double last year's national average. No one is escaping the financial sting. The state health-care bill for fiscal 2008-2009 [alone] is expected to be $400 million more than originally projected—an 85 percent increase.

...The government response to rising premiums is, unsurprisingly, price controls...

...Forcing people to buy substandard care they cannot afford is not universal care, she says. "It is a hoax." And so Massachusetts is marching toward a system of two-tiered medicine—the alleged market inequity that universal care is supposed to cure.

[and on and on. fool us 100 times, shame on you - 101...?]

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Study: UN Global Warming Forecast Violates Accepted Principles

"These dire predictions are not the result of scientific forecasting," said J. Scott Armstrong, an internationally known expert in forecasting methods from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania who co-authored the NCPA study. "Rather, they are opinions derived from a political process."

The most accepted forecasting methods were determined by internationally-known experts and expert reviewers and are available in the Principles of Forecasting handbook. These principles were designed to be applicable to making forecasts about diverse physical, social and economic phenomena. The NCPA study applied these forecasting principles to audit 2007's Fourth Assessment Report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which predicted big increases in average world temperature by 2100. The audit found that:

> Out of 140 forecasting principles, 127 are relevant to the procedures used to arrive at the climate projections in the IPCC report;
> Of these, the IPCC report clearly violated almost half (60);
> An additional 12 forecasting principles appear to be violated, and there is insufficient information in the report to assess the use of 38 others; therefore
> Only 17 out of 127 applicable forecasting principles can be shown to have been followed by the IPCC.

The authors also note that the IPCC forecasters themselves are part of the unreliability problem, as political considerations influenced all stages of the IPCC process, including writing the final version expressly to reflect the language negotiated by the political appointees to the IPCC.

"As a result of these violations of forecasting principles, the forecasts in the IPCC report are invalid," says Armstrong. "There is no scientific forecast supporting the widespread belief in dangerous human-caused ‘global warming.' In fact, it has yet to be demonstrated that long-term forecasting of climate is possible at all."

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Mexican City Provides Illegals Sanctuary

A Mexican mayor has declared his city a “sanctuary” for the many illegal immigrants from Central American who pass through each day.

Jose Luis Gutierrez, mayor of Ecatepec — a suburb of Mexico City with as many as 3 million people — has not only ordered his police officers and city officials not to arrest or harass the migrants, he’s also told them not to cooperate with Mexican immigration agents...

Each year thousands of migrants from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and other countries south of the border arrive in Ecatepec to catch a train that will take them across Mexico to the U.S. border.

“For us, the bravest people of Ecatepec are the ones who take the risk of going to the north, with all the abuse and the hatred that goes on there,” Mayor Gutierrez said. “Those people are heroes for us.”

[our neighbors. what's that saying about fences and neighbors again?]

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Media Fail to Report Cost of Campaign Promises

How much does universal health care cost? What about bailing out troubled homeowners? There are hundreds of programs presidential candidates are promising that you haven’t even heard about, thanks to the media. Working with the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, we reveal what your favorite candidate could cost you.

[Recommended > ] http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20080130134343.aspx

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CONGRESS' PORK OVERLOAD

Last month, Congress passed a 3,500-page omnibus spending bill after less than 24 hours for review. The bill, which mostly renewed funding for existing programs, contained more than 9000 "earmarks" -- worth at least $7.4 billion -- for legislators' pet projects, including:

[many]

The real problem with earmarks, says Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), is that "they circumvent the normal process," since they typically are placed in bills without discussion. Thus, lawmakers never get to debate them and find out if they're genuinely necessary -- or just more pork.

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California Voters Asked to Curb Eminent Domain

California

Dozens of states have reformed their eminent domain laws since a 2005 Supreme Court decision made land grabs easier, but California is not among them -- not yet. That may change, however, now that California secretary of state has certified the "California Property Owners and Farmland Protection Act" for the June 2008 ballot.

"Government should not be able to profit by seizing private property from unwilling sellers for retail or commercial projects,"

said former State Rep. Doug Ose, a supporter of the proposed constitutional amendment.

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