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“The Clinton Syndrome”
By Kenneth R. Timmerman
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 13, 2007
North Korea has already missed today’s deadline.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWU4MzVjMjlmY2QyNzg2N2I3NWY5ZmU2MzhjMmZlNWQ=

April 13, 2007 2:20 AM

“Paying Nuclear Tribute to North Korea
Plutonium in our time.”

By Claudia Rosett

When does President Bush wake up and smell the debacle cooking at his own State Department under the name of a “denuclearization” deal with North Korea? Thanks to U.S. backflips linked to this February 13 agreement, North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Il, while still clinging to his nukes, has now regained access to some $25 million in funds frozen until this week at Banco Delta Asia in Macau. There is plenty of reason to worry that along with the money, Kim has effectively secured from the U.S. a free pass for some of North Korea’s global crime and weapons rackets.

Cut through the diplo-speak, and the stark message to rogue regimes everywhere — notably Iran — is not only that nuclear blackmail pays, but America will help deliver the cash. In one of the most astounding, foolhardy, and humiliating episodes of U.S. foreign policy in recent years, the entire world has just witnessed Washington — at the urging of State Department envoy Christopher Hill — dispatching some of its ace terrorist-money trackers to Beijing, not to shut down the bad guys, but to hustle frozen funds as fast as possible back into the hands of Kim Jong Il.”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=oil

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=venezuela
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=hugochavez
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=chavez

Note: The following post is a quote:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1816644/posts

Receipts & Pledges to-date: $21,324
30%
Woo hoo!! Over 30 percent!! Thank you FReepers and Lurkers!!
Chavez: Troops to Escort Oil Takeovers
AP News ^ | Thursday April 12, 11:19 PM EDT | Unknown

Posted on 04/13/2007 2:14:01 AM PDT by Navydog

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — President Hugo Chavez said Thursday that soldiers will accompany government officials when they take over oil projects in the Orinoco River basin next month.

Chavez has decreed that Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, will take a minimum 60 percent stake in four heavy-oil projects in the Orinoco River region and invited the six private companies operating there to stay on as minority partners.

“On May 1 we are going to take control of the oil fields,” Chavez said. “I’m sure no transnational company is going to draw a shotgun, but we will go with the armed forces and the people.”

The projects — run by BP PLC, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips, France’s Total SA and Norway’s Statoil ASA — upgrade heavy, tar-like crude into more marketable oils and are considered Venezuela’s most promising. As older fields elsewhere go into decline, development of the Orinoco is seen as key to Venezuela’s future production.

Negotiations over the takeover have yet to yield an agreement and are expected to be difficult as the companies seek a deal that takes into account more than $17 billion in investments and loans related to the projects.

Chavez has been given special powers by congress for 18 months to issue laws by decree in energy and other areas, which he has also used to nationalize the country’s biggest telecommunications company and electricity company.

Chavez has justified the nationalizations as necessary to give the government control of sectors strategic to Venezuela’s interests.

UPDATE...

http://www.wtop.com/?nid=104&sid=1114041

“N.J. Governor Breaks Leg, Ribs in Crash”
April 13, 2007 - 5:26am

By GEOFF MULVIHILL
Associated Press Writer

ARTICLE SNIPPET: “CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) - Gov. Jon S. Corzine will be unable to resume his duties as governor for several days, in the least, and it will be months before he can walk normally after a car accident left him hospitalized with serious injuries, a doctor said.

Corzine was in critical condition after undergoing two hours of surgery Thursday night to repair his broken leg and other injuries sustained in the crash on the Garden State Parkway in Galloway Township.”