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Castro Looks Frail, Alert in New Photos

Jan 15 11:13 PM US/Eastern By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ Associated Press Writer	Write a Comment

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HAVANA (AP) - Fidel Castro looked frail but alert and even playful in a series of official photographs taken during a meeting with Brazil's president on Tuesday, the first images of the ailing Cuban leader released in about three months. Wearing a tracksuit and tennis shoes that have become his trademark since he fell ill, Castro is seen seated and grinning, his beard well- trimmed and his hair combed as he talks with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. In some images, he is seen pretending to snap pictures with a small camera. Taken in an undisclosed location, the photographs were given to reporters as Silva left Cuba, concluding a 24-hour visit. They were the first photos of Castro since October, when he met with his good friend and socialist ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Silva said he and Castro met for two and a half hours and "conversed about all topics." "He has incredible lucidity and impeccable health," the Brazilian president said. "He's as lucid as in his best moments." Lula said politicians were like athletes, possessing a need to stay active. He said he felt Castro "would soon take on a political role in Cuba" and while he provided no specifics, he may have been hinting that the 81-year-old could remain as head of Cuba's supreme governing body, the Council of State, rather than prematurely retiring. Castro has not been seen in public since emergency intestinal surgery forced him to cede power to a provisional government headed by his younger brother Raul in July 2006. But he remains head of the council and is running in parliamentary elections Sunday, a necessary step if he is to hold on to Cuba's top post. His condition and exact ailment are state secrets, though he has met behind closed doors several times with Chavez and released essays on an array of topics that appear in state-run media. Castro has also met with Bolivian President Evo Morales, Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega and officials from China, Vietnam and Angola. Tuesday's meeting was a surprise ending to a visit during which Lula, a leftist and friend of Castro, offered the communist government millions of dollars in credit and signed a deal to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. It had been unclear whether Silva would see Castro in person right up until the meeting actually began. Brazilian officials had said it was up to the Cuban leader's doctors to determine if he was well enough. Earlier, Silva signed accords extending Cuba credits that strengthened ties between Latin America's largest economy and the government of Raul Castro, despite Washington's nearly 50-year-old trade embargo against the island. He also signed a deal for Brazil's state energy company, Petrobras, to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The credits will provide favorable Brazilian financing for construction projects and pharmaceutical and agricultural initiatives and show that Silva's visit wasn't simply a chance for him to check on Castro, said Phil Peters, a Cuba analyst with the Lexington Institute, a think tank near Washington D.C. "Lula decided this is not going to be a farewell visit to Fidel. It's a vote of confidence to Raul," Peters said. "Brazil is going out of its way not just to make a visit that conveys political support, but to put substantial economic resources on the table." Foreign Ministry officials in Brasilia suggested that food credits alone would total $100 million, although the agreements themselves did not specify how much financing Brazil will provide. Silva traveled with four Cabinet ministers and Petrobras chief Jose Sergio Gabrielli, who formalized plans for exploratory deep-water drilling for crude oil off Cuba's coast and for a lubricant factory on the island. Cuban Gulf waters could contain large quantities of crude, and Spanish, Canadian, Indian and Malaysian companies have already signed contracts to explore the area. The U.S. trade embargo prohibits U.S. companies from investing in the area. Tuesday's accords were another blow to U.S. efforts to isolate Cuba with trade sanctions, Peters said. "It's the latest sign that the rest of the world completely disagrees with the U.S approach to Cuba," he said.

Link Tv Mosaic News from Middle East 1/14

Citigroup Posts $9.8 Billion Loss; Will Cut Jobs

By ERIC DASH

Published: January 15, 2008

Citigroup announced a steep cut in its stock dividend and another big investment by foreign investors on Tuesday after taking more write-downs related to subprime securities and posting a $9.83 billion loss for the fourth quarter.

Beginning what is expected to be a grim week for financial company earnings, Citigroup said it was writing down $22.2 billion because of soured mortgage-related investments and bad loans. The bank is also cutting its dividend by 41 percent and obtaining a $12.5 billion cash infusion to strengthen its balance sheet, including big investments by its former chairman, Sanford I. Weill, and the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation.

Facing rising expenses and deepening losses, Citigroup is expected to embark on a major cost-cutting campaign that could result in at least 4,000 layoffs. And thousands more could be in the offing in the coming months.

The write-downs caused Citigroup to swing to a loss for the fourth quarter. The fourth-quarter loss translated into $1.99 a share, compared with a profit of $5.1 billion, or $1.03 a share, in the period a year earlier. Revenue fell 70 percent, to $7.22 billion from $23.83 billion.

The write-downs included $18.1 billion from a sharp drop in the value of mortgage-related securities and heavy trading losses. The company also set aside an additional $4.1 billion to cover expected losses from bad loans.

For the full year, Citigroup reported that net income dropped 83 percent, to $3.62 billion, or 72 cents a share, compared with 2006 profit of $21.53 billion, or $4.31 a share. Revenue fell 9 percent, to $81.7 billion in 2007.

Investors sent Citi’s stock lower in morning trading. After about an hour of trading, the shares were at $27.42, down $1.64, or 5.6 percent.

Once one of the world’s mightiest banks, Citigroup’s capital levels have been severely depleted in the fallout from the continuing credit crisis and worsening downturn in the housing market. Even with the $12.5 billion capital injection, analysts think that the bank may need even more money to shore up its balance sheet if economic conditions worsen.

“In an uncertain environment, these actions put us on our ‘front foot,’ focused on capturing opportunities that earn attractive returns for our shareholders,” Vikram S. Pandit, Citigroup’s new chief executive, said in a statement. He said the bank’s fourth-quarter results were “clearly unacceptable.”

Citigroup lined the $12.5 billion of capital through the sale of convertible preferred securities from several big investors, including two funds sponsored by cash-rich foreign governments. That comes on top of a $7.5 billion stake that the company sold to a Middle Eastern government fund, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, in November.

The Government of Singapore Investment Corporation will make a $6.88 billion investment, giving it one of the biggest ownership stakes in the company. The Kuwait Investment Authority, Capital Research and Management, Citigroup’s biggest shareholder, and the New Jersey Division of Investment also made large investments.

But the most interesting investments came from Mr. Weill and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, who met privately to discuss ousting Charles O. Prince III, Citigroup’s former chairman and chief executive, soon before he resigned in early November. Prince Alwaleed, who until recently had been Citigroup’s biggest shareholder, had bailed out the company from the real estate crisis in the early 1990s.

Mr. Weill, Citigroup’s former chairman who four years ago chose Mr. Prince as his successor, has complained his own personal fortune has been hurt by the bank’s poor performance and may see this as his own personal rescue mission. Both are also large existing shareholders and their actions will prevent their ownership stakes from being more severely diluted.

Citigroup announced other actions to strengthen its finances. It will offer public investors about $2 billion in newly issued debt securities, a portion of which will be convertible. It reduced the assets held on its balance sheet by $176 billion, or 7.4 percent, by shedding mortgage-backed securities and other assets held by both its consumer and investment banking businesses. And it sold ownership stakes it held in Redecard, a Brazilian company in the credit card industry, and an investment advisory arm of Nikko Cordial, a Japanese brokerage it agreed to buy last spring.

Citigroup’s board agreed to cut the stock dividend to 32 cents from 54 cents, reversing a position it staunchly held for the last few months. The reduction could free up $4.4 billion a year but could be a significant blow to big institutional shareholders and many retail investors, who bought Citigroup shares for their retirement accounts.

The latest moves highlight the extent to which Citigroup’s capital position has weakened and raise questions about the company’s diversified business model.

“The board has been behind the ball, no doubt about it,” said Meredith A. Whitney, a banking analyst at CIBC World Markets, who has called on Citigroup to cut its dividend. “This is a company with serious capital shortfalls. The balance sheet should be the first thing that should be looked at for a bank, not the last.”

The actions are perhaps the most crucial steps taken by Mr. Pandit since he was named chief executive last month. Over the last few weeks, he has made several changes to the senior management team, including the appointment on Monday of a chief talent officer — a position that had not previously existed. He has also begun reorganizing the company, combining its investment banking and alternative investments groups and changing some of the consumer bank’s reporting lines.

Citigroup’s fourth-quarter performance was dreadful in its biggest businesses. While revenue in its domestic consumer business rose 6 percent, higher credit losses and credit costs led to a loss of $432 million. Its markets and banking business posted an $11 billion loss, compared with a profit of $1.75 billion in the period a year earlier.

Still, some of its smaller businesses did have some bright spots. Revenue at its international consumer unit grew by 45 percent, though much of it came from acquisitions rather than internal growth. Profit rose to $1.3 billion from $628 million. And at its wealth management division, profit rose to $523 million from $411 million.

But for Citigroup, things may yet get worse. Expenses, which rose 18 percent in the fourth quarter, remain bloated. It still has heavy exposure to complex mortgage investments, like collateralized debt obligations. And as rising unemployment adds to the gloomy talk about a recession, Citigroup executives set aside billions of dollars more to cover additional losses on home equity loans, credit card debt and personal loans.

Penn and Teller chat with Frank Luntz

How the Anglo-American elite shares its 'values' (John Pilger)

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December, 17 2007By John Pilger
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When Prime Minister Gordon Brown spoke recently about his government's devotion to the United States, "founded on the values we share", he was echoing his Foreign Office minister Kim Howells, who was preparing to welcome the Saudi dictator to Britain with effusions of "shared values". The meaning was the same in both cases. The values shared are those of rapacious power and wealth, with democracy and human rights irrelevant, as the bloodbath in Iraq and the suffering of the Palestinians attest, to name only two examples.

The "values we share" are celebrated by a shadowy organisation that has just held its annual conference. This is the British-American Project for the Successor Generation (BAP), set up in 1985 with money from a Philadelphia trust with a long history of supporting right-wing causes. Although the BAP does not publicly acknowledge this origin, the source of its inspiration was a call by President Reagan in 1983 for "successor generations" on both sides of the Atlantic to "work together in the future on defence and security matters". He made numerous references to "shared values". Attending this ceremony in the White House Situation Room were the ideologues Rupert Murdoch and the late James Goldsmith.

As Reagan made clear, the need for the BAP arose from Washington's anxiety about the growing opposition in Britain to nuclear weapons, especially the stationing of cruise missiles in Europe. "A special concern," he said, "will be the successor generations, as these younger people are the ones who will have to work together in the future on defence and security issues." A new, preferably young elite - journalists, academics, economists, "civil society" and liberal community leaders of one sort or another - would offset the growing "anti-Americanism".

The aims of this latter-day network, according to David Willetts, the former director of studies at Britain's right-wing Centre for Policy Studies, now a member of the Tory shadow cabinet, are simply to "help reinforce Anglo-American links, especially if some members already do or will occupy positions of influence". A former British ambassador to Washington, Sir John Kerr, was more direct. In a speech to BAP members, he said the organisation's "powerful combination of eminent Fellows and close Atlantic links threatened to put the embassy out of a job". An American BAP organiser describes the BAP network as committed to "grooming leaders" while promoting "the leading global role that [the US and Britain] continue to play".

The BAP's British "alumni" are drawn largely from new Labour and its court. No fewer than four BAP "fellows" and one advisory board member became ministers in the first Blair government. The new Labour names include Peter Mandelson, George Robertson, Baroness Symons, Jonathan Powell (Blair's chief of staff), Baroness Scotland, Douglas Alexander, Geoff Mulgan, Matthew Taylor and David Miliband. Some are Fabian Society members and describe themselves as being "on the left". Trevor Phillips, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, is another member. They object to whispers of "a conspiracy". The mutuality of class or aspiration is merely assured, unspoken, and the warm embrace of power flattering and often productive.

BAP conferences are held alternately in the US and Britain. This year's was in Newcastle, with the theme "Faith and Justice". On the US board is Diana Negroponte, the wife of John Negroponte, Bush's former national security chief notorious for his associations with death-squad politics in central America. He follows another leading neocon, Paul Wolfowitz, architect of the invasion of Iraq and discredited head of the World Bank. Since 1985, BAP "alumni" and "fellows" have been brought together courtesy of Coca-Cola, Monsanto, Saatchi & Saatchi, Philip Morris and British Airways, among other multinationals. Nick Butler, formerly a top dog at BP, has been a leading light.

For many, the conferences have the revivalist pleasures honed by American PR techniques, with management games, personal presentations, and a closing jolly revue to lighten the serious business. The 2002 conference report noted: "Many BAP alumni are directly involved with US and UK military and defence establishments."

The BAP rarely gets publicity, which may have something to do with the high proportion of journalists who are alumni. Prominent BAP journalists are David Lipsey, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and assorted Murdochites. The BBC is well represented. On the popular Today programme, James Naughtie, whose broadcasting has long reflected his own transatlantic interests, has been an alumnus since 1989. Today's newest voice, Evan Davis, formerly the BBC's zealous economics editor, is a member. And at the top of the BAP website home page is a photograph of the famous BBC broadcaster Jeremy Paxman and his endorsement. "A marvellous way of meeting a varied cross-section of transatlantic friends," says he.

Mike Huckabee, The Nation 1/11/08

Max Blumenthal

Of all the right-wing figures who have promoted Mike Huckabee's extraordinary political rise from a backwater church to the national pulpit of a presidential campaign--and there are many--perhaps none know the former Arkansas governor and current Republican presidential front-runner better than Jay Cole. A Baptist minister based in Fayetteville, Arkansas, with a right-wing radio talk show of his own, Cole has been instrumental in inspiring Huckabee's rise over more than two decades. Indeed, when Huckabee was the governor of Arkansas, it was Cole who persuaded him to arrange the release from prison of a convicted rapist, Wayne Dumond, who had become a born-again evangelical in prison--the most controversial act of Huckabee's career, which still dogs him on the campaign trail. I spoke to Cole by telephone a week before Huckabee's surprise victory in the Iowa caucuses on January 3. He was supremely confident that his saintly friend would prevail over the hosts of darkness. "Mike is one of the finest and most gracious individuals God has ever placed on Earth," Cole told me in his thick Southern drawl. "Not only does he have speaking ability, he has the Lord looking over him." Some mainstream media pundits have attributed Huckabee's rising fortunes to his likable demeanor. New York Times political correspondent Adam Nagourney has praised Huckabee's "easy-going, self-effacing, jaunty style" as his chief political asset. The Times's liberal commentator Frank Rich explained Huckabee's ascent in similar terms, comparing the sudden swell of support for his campaign to the phenomenon surrounding Democratic senator and presidential front-runner Barack Obama. "Both men [Obama and Huckabee] have a history of speaking across party and racial lines," Rich wrote. "Both men possess that rarest of commodities in American public life: wit. Most important, both men aspire (not always successfully) to avoid the hyper-partisanship of the Clinton-Bush era." Rich, who only weeks earlier had predicted the imminent self-destruction of the religious right, now viewed Huckabee as a welcome departure from the divisive Republican candidates of the past. But the Huckabee Cole has known and loved for decades contrasts sharply with the sunny figure the media's leading lights have conjured up. According to Cole, Huckabee has connected with voters--specifically, evangelical voters--not simply because he is a charismatic speaker, but also because he shares their apocalyptic world view. As Cole told me, "To date there's well over 139 prophecies that have come to pass exactly as the Lord says. Mike believes those things. Anyone with any Bible knowledge would have to say that this looks like the time. We're so close to the Lord's return." During the period when Huckabee rose through the ranks of the Arkansas Republican Party to the governor's mansion, Cole became one of the state's most popular right-wing radio personalities. Cole volunteered to me the sectarian views that made his radio show a favorite of Arkansas's far-right fringe. Taking a potshot at Mitt Romney, who is a Mormon, Cole compared the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to the Ku Klux Klan. "As you know from history, their original intent--[Mormon founding fathers Joseph] Smith and Brigham Young--was to take over the United States of America," he said. "They weren't just far behind the KKK in their efforts." Cole was no more kind to Muslims. "If you think communism's bad, just think what the Islamics are doing," Cole warned. "Those people have no--they're just not human. They're just not human." On the campaign trail, Huckabee has ventured some opinions that dovetail at least loosely with Cole's. Discussing Romney's Mormon faith with a reporter while stumping through Iowa, Huckabee asked darkly, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus is Satan's brother?" Huckabee routinely warns of the threat of "Islamofascism" at campaign rallies and is perhaps the first major presidential candidate in American history to essentially call for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Huckabee declared during a New Hampshire fundraiser in October that a Palestinian state should only be established outside of biblical Israel, possibly in Egypt or Saudi Arabia, according to the Jewish Russian Telegraph. He reiterated this position during an appearance on Face the Nation in November. Israel and the Apocalypse Huckabee's advocacy of forcibly transferring the Palestinians to other Arab nations reflects his close association with some of America's most prominent End Times theological proponents. Among Huckabee's leading evangelical backers is Pastor John Hagee, head of a Pentecostal congregation in San Antonio, Texas, with 18,000 members and the executive director of Christians United for Israel, a national lobbying group that organizes against a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis and in favor of a military strike on Iran. Hagee's zealous support for Israel is kindled by his belief that Jesus will one day return to "biblical Israel" to usher in a kingdom of Heaven on Earth. "As soon as Jesus sits on his throne he's gonna rule the world with a rod of iron," Hagee told his congregation in a sermon this December. "That means he's gonna make the ACLU do what he wants them to. That means you're not gonna have to ask if you can pray in public school.... We will live by the law of God and no other law." Huckabee made a pilgrimage to Hagee's Cornerstone Church just one week after the pastor's anti-ACLU jeremiad. During the first of two sermons Huckabee delivered there, he was greeted with a thunderous standing ovation. The candidate returned the sentiment, hailing his gracious host, Hagee, as "one of the great Christian leaders of our nation." Huckabee has also welcomed the endorsement of Tim LaHaye, the co-author of the bestselling Left Behind pulp fiction series, which tells of the coming apocalyptic battle between followers of Jesus and forces of Satan. Paige Patterson, president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where Huckabee earned his degree in divinity, is an outspoken believer in End Times theology as well. Patterson is one of the chief organizers of the right-wing takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. Just as his surge in the polls began, Huckabee addressed the student body of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in November. There, he assured his enraptured audience that his sudden rise had nothing to do with his "easy-going" style. "There's only one explanation for [my surge] and it's not a human one," Huckabee insisted, inspiring gales of applause from the overflow crowd. "It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of five thousand people." Huckabee made his remarkable statement in response to a question from a student--not a reporter. Political reporters with access to the candidate have so far shied away from asking him pointed questions about his theological beliefs. They have been especially reluctant to ask Huckabee how he thinks the world will end or how his Messiah will return. Consequently, the image of Huckabee as a transcendent, post-partisan politician has prevailed. He remains the "affable," bass-playing Republican counterpart to post-partisan Barack Obama, not the sectarian ideologue who sought the counsel of fringe characters like Cole. Huckabee has burnished his likable sheen by replacing the ornery clergymen who propelled his early ascendancy in Arkansas politics with a cast of telegenic evangelical celebrities. His new boosters include Chuck Norris, a B-level action movie star who has converted to evangelical Christianity and become a fixture at Huckabee's side on the campaign trail. Cole, for his part, told me he has not spoken to his old friend "Mike" in six months. "He's so busy it's an impossibility to get to him," Cole said. "I've been meaning to call him." Now 78 years old and afflicted with terminal cancer, Cole has been left behind. Yet back when Huckabee launched his preaching career in 1980, he went straight to Cole for assistance. "He's actually known me longer than I've known him," Cole said of Huckabee. Cole, who had operated a missionary supply organization that established Christian television and radio stations in the Third World, said he helped the young Huckabee when he started his own television show in Arkansas. Huckabee's show, Positive Alternatives, which first aired in the cities Pine Bluff and Texarkana in 1980, became his vehicle for statewide recognition. By 1989, with Cole's support, Huckabee had become the youngest-ever president of the 500,000-member Arkansas Baptist State Convention. A Rapist's Release When Huckabee leveraged his popularity in the Baptist community into a political career, declaring a run for lieutenant governor in 1993, Cole urged his listeners to vote for him, helping deliver him a narrow victory in the heavily Democratic state. Huckabee then replaced Jim Guy Tucker as Arkansas governor in 1996 after the Democrat announced he would resign while appealing his federal conviction in the Whitewater scandal. With Huckabee in the governor's mansion, Cole pressured his pal to act on a cause he had championed for almost a decade--the release of Wayne Dumond, accused of raping a 17-year-old cheerleader who happened to be Bill Clinton's distant cousin. Dumond, a father of six and a Vietnam veteran, had been arrested twice during the 1970s for sexual assault and another time for attacking a man with a claw hammer. While awaiting trial in 1985 for raping Clinton's cousin, Dumond was allegedly attacked by two masked men who forced him to perform oral sex on them before they castrated him. The doctor who examined Dumond after the incident raised the possibility that his castration was self-inflicted. A half-gallon bottle of Jim Beam whiskey was found two-thirds empty at the scene of the crime. Meanwhile, according to investigators, no signs of a struggle were present. Cole, a vitriolic Clinton critic who calls the former president "trash" and says he helped produce the infamous anti-Clinton propaganda video The Clinton Chronicles, immediately embraced Dumond's cause, taking to the airwaves to paint him as the victim of a dark conspiracy. Cole claimed without evidence that a vindictive Clinton and his surrogates had framed Dumond and had possibly orchestrated his castration as well. Besides antipathy toward Clinton, Cole's support for Dumond's freedom was influenced by religious motives. Cole pronounced Dumond a born-again Christian and frequently visited the rapist in prison as his "spiritual adviser." He claimed that Dumond and his wife had had a notable history in the Baptist community, heading the youth department of a church in Forrest City, Arkansas. "I talked to [Dumond's] pastor and the high school principal of the school -- not a single one of them said anything bad about him," Cole said. As Dumond's 1996 date with the state parole board approached, Cole and Dumond's wife lobbied Huckabee on the rapist's behalf. Cole said he organized several "get-together parties," where he impressed on the governor his case for freeing Dumond. According to a state official who advised Huckabee on the Dumond case, Cole quickly convinced the governor to pressure the parole board for Dumond's release. "I don't believe that he had access to, or read, the law enforcement records or parole commission's files--even by then," the official told journalist Murray Waas. "He already seemed to have made up his mind, and his knowledge of the case appeared to be limited to a large degree as to what people had told him, what Jay Cole had told him...." After persuading the parole board to commute Dumond's sentence, Huckabee congratulated the rapist upon receiving his liberty."Dear Wayne," Huckabee wrote in a letter to Dumond. "My desire is that you be released from prison. I feel that parole is the best way for your reintroduction to society to take place." After Dumond relocated to Missouri upon his release in 1999, he was linked through DNA evidence to the rape and strangulation of a new victim, Carol Sue Shields. In 2005, months after being sentenced to life in prison for the killing, Dumond died in his cell. At the time state prosecutors were preparing to charge him with raping and murdering yet another woman. Despite the overwhelming evidence connecting Dumond to a spate of killings, Cole maintained that his friend was once again the target of a frame-up. "What possibly could have happened," Cole mused, "is, as you know, the law enforcement people are under real pressure from the public to solve these crimes. In all probability they needed a victim real quick. They said, well, we got one here in our county, he fits the profile." And though Dumond's death was by all accounts a suicide, Cole insisted that "it's possible" he was killed by unknown parties who wanted revenge. Huckabee's role in engineering Dumond's release became an issue in the weeks leading up to this year's Iowa caucuses. In December, the mother of Dumond's last confirmed victim, Shields, surfaced in a highly circulated YouTube video with a pointed message: "If not for Mike Huckabee, Wayne Dumond would've been in prison, and Carol Sue would've been with us this year for Christmas." Now Huckabee has gone from denying any part in securing Dumond's release to confessing his regret. "There's nothing you can say, but my gosh, it's the thing you pray never happens. And it did," he explained to Byron York, a columnist for the conservative National Review. The mounting evidence that Huckabee orchestrated the release of a serial rapist and killer at the urging of a preacher has proven inconsequential to the evangelical ranks who vaulted him into the front of the Republican presidential pack. To Huckabee's swelling flock, he has emerged as the perfect candidate, blessed by "God's anointing and calling," Pentecostal televangelist Kenneth Copeland declared. Cole sees Huckabee in similarly wondrous terms, but questions whether a spiritually bankrupt nation like the United States deserves such a godly leader. "We're living right on the edge of the Lord's return, I believe, and it may be that the Lord will give this country something that it really deserves," Cole remarked to me. "And that is a Hillary [Clinton] as president." The old minister went on: "We have turned our backs on the Lord. We've thrown the Ten Commandments out of every place that we could. Every effort in the world is being made right now to eliminate any mention of the name Jesus, and the Lord who's made such a sacrifice for his children is not going to tolerate it." Huckabee would undoubtedly disagree with his old preacher friend that America "deserves" a Hillary Clinton presidency. He would not be running for president if he believed that. But when I asked Cole if Huckabee would agree with the rest of his statement--that the world is "on the edge of" suffering God's wrath--he gravely responded, "Our belief in what the word of the Lord says will match very closely."

Thom Hartmann speaking about voting privatization

Citizens booted from National Archives for wearing anti Bush shirts

OpEdNews


Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ralph_lo_080112_admirers_of_constitu.htm


January 13, 2008


Admirers of Constitution Booted for Wearing Impeach T-shirts in DC


By Ralph Lopez


With the original First Amendment "Freedom of Speech" looking on, admirers of the U.S. Constitution in the Washington D.C. National Archives Building today were ordered to leave for wearing tee-shirts reading "Impeach Bush and Cheney." Many of the tourist-activists were in town to hail the arrival of impeachment marcher John Nirenberg, the 61 year-old college professor who has just walked from Boston to D.C. to call attention to the need for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

In a telephone interview, one of the participants, Susan Serpa, age 56, told me she was looking at the displays when a female security guard approached her and said "You need to go speak to that man over there" indicating a burly security guard. When Serpa asked why, the woman said: "Your shirt." Serpa's shirt reads on the front: "Impeach Bush and Cheney, Change History." On the reverse it says: "MaineImpeach.org."

Other security guards then approached Serpa and told her: "You need to leave because of your shirt."

The ranking security officer present at the incident gave his name as Captain Judd.

An impeachment resolution against Dick Cheney was introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, and is now sitting in the House Judiciary Committee, headed by Committee Chairman Rep. John Conyers. Despite pleas from growing numbers of Americans, Conyers has continued to keep the resolution bottled up, and steadfastly refuses to move it forward. The number for Conyers' office is 202-225-3951.

A contact list for Conyers' major campaign contributors has been compiled by YaliesForImpeachment, along with a full contact list of Judiciary Committee members.

In addition, Rep. Robert Wexler, another Judiciary Committee member, has undertaken a campaign to sway his colleagues on the committee to support the initiation of impeachment hearings against Dick Cheney. He has spent significantly from his own funds for an advertising campaign to combat the near total media black-out on the building pressure for impeachment, and is asking for help in financing further advertising.

Audio interviews of some of those whose rights were violated were taken by a DC Indymedia reporter, whose write-up is posted here.

Addendum from the author:

Yes I'm mad as hell to, so let's channel this energy into everyone leaving a voice-mail at the Judiciary Committee, for Conyers, RIGHT NOW, telling him get off his ass and start hearings against Cheney. The thugs will learn that when they don't like something they see, their thuggish actions to stop that thing only backfire and cause it to happen. Political juijitsu. Judiciary: 202-225-3951

It's not the security guards or even Capt. Judd primarily, though they are at fault. This is the country George Bush is handing us, these are the signals he gives in every speech, aimed at the dim-witted, that free speech and bad-mouthin' the prezdent are treason. He knows exactly what he's doing and HE is the problem. You don't need to arrest anyone, just make people fearful of expressing their opinion of him so it never reaches critical mass and takes off. Impeach them both!


Authors Website: http://RalphLopezWorld.com


Authors Bio: Ralph Lopez is writer based in Boston and is the author of three books: "American Dream," "The Elephant in the Room," and "The Golden Donut and Restaurant." All are available at BarnesandNoble.com He can be contacted at ralphlopez2002-at-hotmail-dot-com. He is also a founder of YaliesForImpeachment.org