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PARIS (AFP) - Some 40 organizations launched an international campaign aimed at pressuring the French oil giant Total to pull out of Myanmar, where they said the company's activities support a military dictatorship, a French activist collective announced. The campaign is led by the International Federation for Human Rights, Actions Birmanie of Belgium and the French collective, which is called "Total pollutes democracy." "Total must pull out of Burma (Myanmar) not only for having taken advantage of army-imposed forced labor, between 1995 and 1998, for the construction of the Yadana gas pipeline but also because it fills the coffers of...

President Bush is thought to have ordered the invasion and occupation of Iraq in order to secure control of that country's vast oil fields for his friends and contributors in the oil industry, especially Vice President Cheney's former company Halliburton. This is taken as an article of faith among many, especially for many in our universities, our cultural industries, and in our press. Hundreds, if not thousands, of essays, articles and reports have been circulated in the past 3 years about the motivations of President Bush when it comes to Iraq. Typical examples of the genre can be found daily...

'They are total scum' By Tony Freinberg and Andrew Warshaw (Filed: 13/02/2005) Sir Alan Sugar, the former chairman of Tottenham Hotspur, has described the nation's football players as "total scum" and claimed that "most of them would be in prison" if they had not become professional sportsmen. In an interview in The Telegraph, Sir Alan also claims that footballers have no concept of loyalty or honesty and are interested only in themselves. Alan Sugar: ‘football players don't know what honesty is’ Although his comments might strike a chord with some members of the public, former Spurs players responded angrily, describing...

Paul Volcker was picked by U.N. Sec retary-General Kofi Annan to head an "independent" panel to investi gate the Oil-for-Food scandal ostensibly because of the former Federal Reserve chairman's international credibility. But credibility, like fame, can be fleeting — and Volcker's is fading fast. [snip] As Fox News Channel's Jonathan Hunt reported yesterday, Volcker is smack in the middle of the interlocking global corporations that appear to lie at the very heart of the scandal. Proceed slowly; it's complicated: [snip] * Volcker, along with a close friend named Paul Desmarais, Sr., sits on the advisory council of a Canadian...

I'm trapped on the coast of Kah-lee-for-nee-ah and am looking for a site that will show the accumulating raw vote totals nationally and state by state so I don't have to wait for all the gun shy anchormen to regurgitate results at their leisure. Fellow freepers know of some good ones?

...Iraq's top customer was Russia, whose firms bought $19.2 billion worth of Iraq oil and exported $3.3 billion in humanitarian goods. Fellow Security Council member France was a distant but significant second, at $4.4 billion and $2.9 billion respectively. China is also high on the list. Oil voucher recipients are alleged to include the Russian presidential office, former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, and even former Oil for Food program director Benon Sevan of the U.N.... Against this backdrop, it is impossible to take Secretary-General Annan seriously when he calls it "inconceivable" that this could have affected the Security Council's...

Kerry's Latest Attacks on Bush Borrow a Page From Scripture By DAVID M. HALBFINGER and DAVID E. SANGER Published: October 25, 2004 FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Oct. 24 - Appealing to late-deciding voters in explicitly religious terms, Senator John Kerry used the Bible on Sunday to accuse President Bush of trying to scare America, and said his own Catholicism moved him to help those in need but not to "write every doctrine into law." "The Scripture teaches us - John says, 'Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid,' " Mr. Kerry said, alluding to Mr. Bush's strategy...

U.S. Pressing for High-Tech Spy Tools (AP) Retired Adm. John Poindexter, senior vice-president of Syntek Technologies Inc., WASHINGTON (AP) - Despite an outcry over privacy implications, the government is pressing ahead with research to create powerful tools to mine millions of public and private records for information about terrorists. Congress eliminated a Pentagon office that had been developing this terrorist-tracking technology because of fears it might ensnare innocent Americans. Still, some projects from retired Adm. John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness effort were transferred to U.S. intelligence offices, congressional, federal and research officials told The Associated Press. In addition, Congress left...

<p>In the brief but wild recall campaign that rewrote California history, major candidates spent close to $88 million -- nearly a third of it by Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was elected the state's 38th governor.</p> <p>Schwarzenegger, whose personal wealth is estimated at more than $100 million, spent more than $10 million of his own money on his campaign but also relied heavily on support from business executives, real estate developers and financial institutions, according to final spending reports covering 2003.</p>

Paris – A French prosecutor is examining whether to prosecute US Vice President Dick Cheney over alleged complicity in the abuse of corporate assets dating from the time he was head of the services company Halliburton, the French newspaper Le Figaro said on Saturday. The case stems from a contract by a consortium including the American company Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a Halliburton subsidiary, and a French company, Technip, to supply a gas complex to Nigeria, the newspaper reported. A Paris investigating magistrate has been conducting investigations since October into allegations that $180m were paid in secret commissions during...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 December 8 An Antarctic Total Solar Eclipse Credit & Copyright: Fred Bruenjes (moonglow.net) Explanation: The Sun, the Moon, and two photographers all lined up last month in Antarctica during an unusual total eclipse of the Sun. Even given the extreme location, a group of enthusiastic eclipse chasers ventured near the bottom of the world to experience the surreal momentary disappearance of the Sun behind the Moon. One...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 November 22 Moon AND Sun Credit & Copyright: Fred Espenak (courtesy of www.MrEclipse.com) Explanation: This composite image was made from 22 separate pictures of the Moon and Sun all taken from Chisamba, Zambia during the total phase of the 2001 June 21 solar eclipse. The multiple exposures were digitally processed and combined to simultaneously show a wealth of detail which no single camera exposure or naked-eye observation...

Oil giant Total has long played a dangerous game in Iran, Sudan and Burma. Now it's trying to get back into Iraq.Total S.A., The French oil major that has been in Iraq since 1927, isn't saying much these days about how it's going to maneuver its way back in. But that doesn't mean it can't dream. Word is that it has already had informal discussions with ExxonMobil about forming a joint venture to exploit Iraq's Majnoon and Nahr bin Umar oilfields as soon as a new Iraqi government is formed. Together those two fields have the potential to pump out...

<p>So, Californians are going to decide whether to remove their hapless governor, Gray Davis, in a recall vote and elect a new one. The big date is Oct. 7, and the liberal elitists are shaking in their Ferragamo shoes.</p> <p>Art Torres, California's Democrat Party chairman, complains that the recall ``just exacerbates the impression that we're a bunch of wackos out here.''</p>

Purge of Ba'athists may total 30,000 Rory McCarthy in Baghdad Saturday May 17, 2003 The Guardian The US-led authority running Iraq said yesterday that up to 30,000 Ba'ath party members would be banned from taking part in a new government. The purge, to begin within a week, is likely to make it even more difficult to find qualified staff to run the ministries and other authorities. "Deba'athification will entail some inefficiencies in the running of the government," an official of the office of reconstruction and humanitarian assistance said. "That's the price we're willing to pay in order to extirpate Ba'athism."...

PARIS - French oil giant TotalFinaElf reported Tuesday a 48 percent jump in profit in the first quarter, boosted by high oil prices, and said it was changing its name to Total in an effort to revamp its image. Chairman Thierry Desmarest also said the group stands "a good chance" of taking part in the future development of Iraqi oil fields despite Paris' opposition to the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime. Speaking at the annual shareholders' meeting in Paris, Desmarest conceded that TotalFinaElf will find it harder to secure contracts than its American and British rivals. But, he...

NEW YORK -- Privacy advocates: Quit picking on the U.S. government. If you don't want the government to do what it must to protect you from terrorists, you should butt out, said Heather MacDonald, a lawyer at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. She made her remarks Wednesday at the 13th annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference. And, she urged, stop all the panic-stricken screaming, because it's endangering human lives.

A PARIS court has begun to hear the case against 37 defendants at the heart of the Elf-Aquitaine corruption saga, a scandal that has tainted leaders in France and beyond. The trial of Loik Le Floch-Prigent, a former Elf boss, and his associates, which began yesterday after an eight-year investigation, marks the final act of an affair that laid bare a system of state-sanctioned bribery and personal enrichment at the formerly state-owned oil concern. The Elf executives and other defendants are alleged to have embezzled and otherwise abused £140 million in the late 1980s and early 1990s in schemes that...

WASHINGTON--The U.S. Defense Department has awarded millions of dollars to more than two-dozen research projects that involve a controversial data-mining project aimed at compiling electronic dossiers on Americans. Nearly 200 corporations and universities submitted proposals to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, according to government documents brought to light by a privacy group Thursday. John Poindexter, who oversees the agency's Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, approved 26 of them last fall, including grants to the University of Southern California, the Palo Alto Research Center, and defense contractor Science Applications International. Over the last few months, TIA has become a lightning...

ReutersUPDATE - Total throws gauntlet to U.S. rivals on Iraq dealsThursday February 20, 1:34 pm ETBy Emelia Sithole (Adds new analysts quote, background, closing shares) PARIS, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Oil giant TotalFinaElf (Paris:TOTF.PA - News) threw down the gauntlet on Thursday to U.S. rivals eyeing Iraq's vast reserves, saying it was confident of winning its share of deals there despite French opposition to a U.S.-led war in Iraq. The world's fifth largest oil group encouraged investors further by reaffirming its target to boost output five percent per year to 2007, in sharp contrast to bigger rivals BP (London:BP.L -...