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Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas did not announce his walkout from the negotiations with Israel or directly turn down the package of far-reaching Israeli concessions which US Secretary of State John Kerry assembled with Binyamin Netanyahu early Wednesday, April 1. He simply turned his back on the commitment he made ahead of the talks to refrain from unilateral applications to UN bodies while they were in progress. As soon as the US Secretary flew off to Brussels, he sent out applications for “the independent Palestinian state” to join 12 UN agencies as members. This was after the Palestinian leader upped his...

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DUBLIN (AFP) — A US presidential poll victory for Barack Obama would be "phenomenal," former UN chief Kofi Annan said Thursday, adding that whoever wins needs to learn the lessons of the last eight years. Speaking at a conference on hunger in Ireland, he underlined the need for the United States to work in "partnership" with the rest of the world. When asked if the United States and the world was ready for a black US president, he said: "I think it would be a phenomenal change for the US and for the world. "It would introduce a new dynamics...

It is hard to believe that within the civilized world in the 21st century we would still need to talk about actions used by the Nazi party in Germany to enforce civic conformity to the Nazi ideal. Unfortunately, this is exactly what is taking place in Germany today, and home-schoolers are the targets. On Feb. 1 Melissa Busekros, a home-schooled 15-year-old from Bavaria, was forcibly removed from her home by a team of 15 SWAT officers. She was placed in the psychiatric wing of a Nuremberg clinic and her parents were not allowed to see her. She was deemed to...

American journalism is under assault. The Telecommunications Act of 1996, with its encouragement of media consolidation and homogenization, has provoked a marked decline in the diversity and quality of broadcast news. The latest round of print media mergers and acquisitions is putting newspaper writers out of work at an unprecedented rate. The people who own the nation's communications combines are, for the most part, so risk-averse and so obsessed with their bottom lines that they are making it impossible for serious reporters to do their jobs. These are fundamental, structural and rapidly expanding threats. Equally serious is the threat posed...

Actor George Clooney has spoken of the horrors he witnessed when he visited the Sudanese region of Darfur, saying the area urgently needs peacekeepers. The Hollywood star told the BBC that the levels of murder and rape convinced him ethnic cleansing was occurring. At least 200,000 people have died in the region and some 2.5 million are homeless after three years of fighting. The sharply deteriorating security has led to the withdrawal of 250 relief workers, leaving many vulnerable. Pressure Mr Clooney told the BBC's Laura Trevelyan, in New York, that everyone he met in Darfur told of several family...

Real Security for All Americans As prepared for delivery. September 9, 2006 Faneuil Hall, Boston The war on terror that was brought home to the Casey family on a sunny autumn morning that suddenly turned into midnight five years ago, also brought home for all of humanity the stark reality that we are in a fateful contest between forces of evil and hate and the defenders of progress and hope. The outcome will determine whether our children live in freedom or fear. This is a clash between humanity's best ideals and the darkness of superstition and oppression. And this is...

A federal judge yesterday struck down a new D.C. law that tied the cost of patented prescription drugs sold in the District to wholesale prices in foreign countries. The Prescription Drug Excessive Pricing Act of 2005 sought to permit civil sanctions against drug companies if patented drugs were sold for more than 30 percent above prices in Australia, Canada, Germany or the United Kingdom. U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon yesterday ruled in favor of two trade groups that sued the District in October to block the law. "Punishing the holders of pharmaceutical patents in this manner flies directly in...

<p>Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., played a three-minute videotape of Bolton speaking angrily in 1994 about the United Nations. . . . "There is no such thing as the United Nations," Bolton said on the tape. "There is an international community that can occasionally be led by the only real power left in the world--and that is the United States, when it suits our interests and when we can get others to go along."</p>

What's fat and white and still doesn't know it's all over? Michael Moore. Yes, the hairy, four-eyed, film-hustling freak has yet to accept the will of the American people and President Bush's re-election. That's right; "Shamoo with a camera" is still out there bashing America and the War on Terrorism. His latest attempt: promoting a global day of protest on the two-year anniversary of the Iraq invasion. This time Michael Moore is eating (I mean, teaming) with an organization called United for Peace and Justice. The global day of protest is set for Saturday, March 19th and calls for vigils,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic Sen. John Kerry, whose baffling explanation of votes on Iraq war funding hurt his 2004 White House bid, said on Tuesday he would back President Bush's new $81.9 billion request for Iraq and Afghanistan. "I think we're in a very different situation," Kerry told reporters. "I'm going to vote for this ... I think this money is important to our being successful and to the completion of the process." The Massachusetts senator, who failed in his bid to unseat Bush last November in an election focused on national security, defended his decision to not back the...

href="http://www.archives.gov/research_room/obtain_copies/standard_form_180.pdf Click on link above to pring the form then FAX Senator Kerry a copy of SF180 ! Washington D.C. 304 Russell Bldg. Third Floor Washington D.C. 20510 (202) 224-2742 - Phone (202) 224-8525 - Fax Boston One Bowdoin Square Tenth Floor Boston, MA 02114 (617) 565-8519 - Phone (617) 248-3870 - Fax Springfield One Financial Plaza Springfield, MA 01103 (413) 785-4610 - Phone (413) 736-1049 - Fax Fall River 222 Milliken Place Suite 311 Fall River, Ma 02722 (508) 677-0522 - Phone (508) 677-0275 - Fax Worcester 90 Madison Place Suite 205 Worcester, MA 01608 (508) 831-7380 - Phone

<p>Administration officials are preparing long-range plans for indefinitely imprisoning suspected terrorists whom they do not want to set free or turn over to courts in the United States or other countries, according to intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials.</p> <p>The Pentagon and the CIA have asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for potentially lifetime detentions, including for hundreds of people now in military and CIA custody whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts. The outcome of the review, which also involves the State Department, would also affect those expected to be captured in the course of future counterterrorism operations.</p>

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's re-election was viewed negatively by a majority of people in several European countries -- including those in Britain, America's strongest ally in the war in Iraq, Associated Press polling found. The president was not the only one viewed unfavorably. Americans generally were seen in an unfavorable light by many in France, Germany and Spain, countries not supportive of U.S. Iraq policies. [snip] As reflected by his re-election, a majority in the United States viewed Bush favorably. Just over half in this country said they were hopeful and were not disappointed after Bush's re-election. At least seven...

(From the November 2004 American Spectator)IF THE U.N. WORKED AS HARD to impose its will on Iraq in 2002 as it is trying today, America might not have had to go to war. In one of those inversions of reason that only the U.N. can manage, it is now at war with free Iraq in a way it never was with Saddam's bloody despotism. Having chosen to leave Saddam undisturbed despite more than a dozen "compulsory" resolutions, the U.N. cannot forgive George W. Bush and the Iraqi people for trading its Oil-for-Food-for-Bribes program for the destruction of a terrorist regime...

UNITED NATIONS -- Secretary-General Kofi Annan won a standing ovation from the U.N. General Assembly, a rare public display of support in response to recent calls for his resignation from several U.S. lawmakers. U.S. deputy ambassador Patrick Kennedy joined fellow diplomats as they rose to their feet Wednesday, despite President Bush's refusal to support the U.N. chief pending the results of an investigation into alleged corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq.[snip]"In 15 years I've spent at the United Nations, this is the second time that the General Assembly had a standing ovation for a leader," he said. The...

In the eyes of its secretary general and Old Europe, the U.N.'s main purpose is to enhance its own power and influence at the expense of the United States. Having failed to do more than delay U.S. action to remove Saddam Hussein, the U.N. found itself in a dilemma. As the Wall Street Journal put it on October 13, 2003, "U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has made it clear that he's now more interested in defeating President Bush than he ever was in toppling Saddam Hussein. Mr. Annan knows that Mr. Bush's policy...poses a serious challenge to what he...

WASHINGTON — The son of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan used his father's worldwide connections to wheel and deal with heads of state — at U.N. gatherings — on behalf of a controversial Swiss company that won a lucrative oil-for-food program contract, The Post has learned. The intense lobbying by Annan's 29-year old son, Kojo, was disclosed in a raft of internal company documents — including Kojo Annan's expense reports — that the company recently turned over to congressional committees under a subpoena. The memos provide the most revealing look to date at the business conflicts that are now at...

If we are having problems with sexual education here in America, shouldn't we try to implement a system that the Dutch have in place? I don't know the positives/negatives of the system because I can't get any details on the web, can some of you help me out? I hear they have an average of 8 pregnancies per 1,000. Plus their abortion rate is the lowest in the world.

WASHINGTON — Some of my colleagues in the pundit business have become unhinged by the election results. The always diverting Maureen Dowd of The New York Times wrote the other day that "the forces of darkness" are taking over the country. The voters' confirmation of Republican-led government brings with it "a scary, paranoid, regressive reality," Dowd said, with "strains of isolationism, nativism, chauvinism, puritanism and religious fanaticism." After a campaign of "blatant distortions and character assassination," Republicans have returned to Washington bent on "messing with our psyches" and punishing "society's most vulnerable: the poor, the sick, the sexually different."