31 May 2008
News and Comments - 05/31/08
Posted by Joy Bischoff under: What's News .
Stumpy, put away your gun!
6 Comments so far...
Cameron Says:
31 May 2008 at 8:26 am.
Iran says its right to enrichment is non-negotiable
Sat May 31, 6:24 AM ET
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran will not give up its right to enrich uranium, a senior Iranian official said on Saturday, days before major powers submit an upgraded package of incentives to try to coax Tehran into halting the work.
“Suspending enrichment is not negotiable … Depriving Iran of its right cannot be on offer,” Gholamhossein Elham, the government spokesman, told a weekly news conference.
Iran has agreed to a visit by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana to submit the package of incentives, in exchange for a full suspension of uranium enrichment.
The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — the United States, France, Britain, China and Russia — and Germany, known as the P5+1, offered a package to Iran in 2006 that also required Iran to halt enrichment.
Tehran rejected those proposals and the latest package is an enhanced version.
Elham said no date had been set for Solana’s trip. “We have agreed on the trip, but no specific date has been set yet.”
A Western diplomat told Reuters Solana was expected to visit Iran on June 14.
Iran has handed over what it calls a “proposed package for constructive negotiations.” But it ignores the West’s main demand, which is suspending enrichment.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080531/ts_nm/iran_nuclear_dc
Cameron Says:
31 May 2008 at 10:31 am.
As time has gone on I have definitely been convinced that we should not establish long-term occupation in Iraq. It would cause way too many problems. We can see from this article that they definitely do not want us to.
Iraqi-U.S. security talks worry Shiites and Sunnis
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Some Shiite and Sunni Muslim leaders in Iraq — able to agree on little else — are united in their opposition to a prospective long-term security agreement between their country’s government and the United States.
Many Iraqis suspect it could lead to the establishment of bases, a long-term presence of American troops, and a weakening of Iraqi government control of foreign troops.
Powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has said any such agreement should be put to a popular referendum.
Street demonstrations Friday in several Shiite Baghdad neighborhoods reflected his position. Video Watch protesters take to the streets »
Al-Sadr’s chief Shiite political rival, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, said only Iraqis should control Iraq.
“From the beginning, we were and we still insist on the importance of not having any resolution that can challenge our national sovereignty,” al-Hakim said.
Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a leader in Iraq’s largest Sunni Arab bloc, worries a security agreement could compromise Iraqi sovereignty, which he calls a “red line that should not be bypassed.”
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/05/31/iraq.main/index.html
Jesse Says:
31 May 2008 at 11:50 am.
I don’t know how anyone could hear what McClellen wrote and not question why we went into Iraq. Nobody that I have heard has a good reason for us staying there long term.
E.E. Says:
31 May 2008 at 1:21 pm.
Food and Politics
There’s nothing new in the confluence of politics and food. Chinese emperors punished fractious provinces by surrounding them with troops and confiscating all food supplies. Six months later the imperial troops would move in and execute the survivors for cannibalism. This has also been the pattern for much in the way of government action in the modern era. Some of the worst atrocities of the past century involved ideological famines. Hunger was a commonplace of left-wing states, either through use of food as a weapon or through sheer incompetence. The Ukrainian Holodomor (”Hunger-Death”) of 1932-33 may have killed as many as 14 million. Mao outdid his imperial forbears with the Great Leap Forward of 1958-62, which killed up to 45 million (probably the greatest single atrocity of the modern era). The Ethiopian famine of 1984-85 easily killed over a million. Nor can we forget North Korea, with its grotesque “rolling” famine, which seems to recur almost annually. Democracies, on the other hand, can be defined as “political systems in which famines do not take place”. No famine has occurred in a democratic Western state since the 1790s.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/04/the_food_crisis_1.html
Benjamin Says:
31 May 2008 at 4:47 pm.
Children of polygamous sect to be reunited with parents
Phoenix - Some 450 children who were removed from the Yearning for Zion ranch, run by a polygamous sect in east Texas, will be returning home soon – some possibly as early as Monday. In a tentative agreement released in court Friday, parents who pledge to take parenting classes and remain in Texas can get their children back. The agreement followed a ruling by the Supreme Court of Texas on Thursday that the children should be reunited with their parents. The ruling doesn’t stop the state’s ongoing investigations into alleged abuse charges perpetrated by members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), but it will make continuing them more difficult,experts say.
The courts’ actions also will force the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) to change the family-service plans – the details of what parents must do to reunite with their children – that some parents had already agreed to.
“One of the reasons [DFPS] tried to remove all the children from the ranch is because it’s very difficult to investigate [abuse charges] when the child’s in the home, and they’re not going to want to go through this again – remove the children from the homes to have them sent back,” says Ellen Marrus, co-director of the Center for Children, Law & Policy at the University of Houston. “So the investigation will probably end.”
Jesse Says:
1 June 2008 at 12:24 am.
Obama quits Chicago church steeped in controversy
ABERDEEN, S.D. - Barack Obama said Saturday he has resigned his 20-year membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago “with some sadness” in the aftermath of inflammatory remarks by his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and more recent fiery remarks at the church by a visiting priest.
“This is not a decision I come to lightly … and it is one I make with some sadness,” Obama said at a news conference after campaign officials released a letter of resignation he sent to the church on Friday.
“I’m not denouncing the church and I’m not interested in people who want me to denounce the church,” he said, adding that the new pastor at Trinity and “the church have been suffering from the attention my campaign has focused on them.”
Obama said he and his wife have been discussing the issue since Wright’s appearance at the National Press Club in Washington last month, which reignited the furor over remarks Wright had made in various sermons at the church.
“I suspect we’ll find another church home for our family,” Obama said.
“It’s clear that now that I’m a candidate for president, every time something is said in the church by anyone associated with Trinity, including guest pastors, the remarks will imputed to me even if they totally conflict with my long-held views, statements and principles,” he said.
“I have no idea how it will impact my presidential campaign but I know it was the right thing to do for me and my family,” he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080601/ap_on_el_pr/obama_26;_ylt=AuPFGAawHJn.SOuZiG_cO9wE1vAI
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