2 June 2008
News and Comments - 06/02/08
Posted by Joy Bischoff under: What's News .
10 Comments so far...
Cameron Says:
2 June 2008 at 5:43 am.
Our media tries to get us riled up about the Iraq war death count. Mexico surpassed that total during the term of the current president in their drug war and their president still has a 63% approval rating.
Mexicans believe drug gangs winning war with gov’t
Sun Jun 1, 2:40 PM ET
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A majority of Mexicans believe violent drug gangs are winning a war with President Felipe Calderon’s government after one of the worst months on record for killings, Reforma newspaper reported on Sunday.
According to a poll by the newspaper, 53 percent of Mexicans think that drug traffickers hold the upper hand against government forces which are trying to clamp down on cartels that ship drugs to the United States.
Only 24 percent said they believed the government was winning the battle. The remaining 23 percent gave no opinion.
May was one of the most violent months on record for drug killings, both between gangs and targeting federal forces. Calderon has sent thousands of troops onto the streets in a bid to stop cartels from operating.
Close to 500 people were slain in May — including a wave against police chiefs — the highest number of killings since Calderon took office in December 2006, according to a tally kept by Milenio newspaper.
Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said last month that 4,152 drug-related killings have been registered in Calderon’s administration, 450 of them police, military or government officials.
Mac Says:
2 June 2008 at 7:36 am.
Thank you…Exactly! One battle in the Civil War took more lives than this whole war.
Joy Bischoff Says:
2 June 2008 at 8:34 am.
Hillary Clinton: “It is not over ’til it’s over”
By Ellen Wulfhorst
RAPID CITY, South Dakota (Reuters) - It’s almost over, isn’t it?
That seems to be all anyone wants to know from the Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, but the only person who truly knows isn’t telling.
“I’m sort of a day-at-a-time person, and we’ll see when Tuesday and the day after Tuesday comes,” Clinton said on board a late-night flight to South Dakota, where she planned to spend the last full day of the primary season campaigning.
The last two Democratic primaries are on Tuesday in South Dakota and Montana.
“My political obituary has yet to be written, and we’re going forward,” Clinton said. “It is not over ’til it’s over.”
By most accounts, it is over.
Barack Obama, who holds what experts are calling an insurmountable lead in delegates for the Democratic presidential nomination, plans a rally on Tuesday to launch his campaign for the November election against Republican John McCain.
“One thing about superdelegates is that they can change their minds,” Clinton reminded reporters after the Puerto Rico primary, which she won by a wide margin.
The Clinton campaign, which wants to convince superdelegates that she is the stronger candidate against McCain, hoped to use the Puerto Rico result to support its argument but lower-than-expected turnout weakened the case.
Matt Says:
2 June 2008 at 8:47 am.
U.N. Chief to Prod Nations On Food Crisis
UNITED NATIONS — U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will issue an urgent plea to world leaders at a food summit in Rome on Tuesday to immediately suspend trade restrictions, agricultural taxes and other price controls that have helped fuel the highest food prices in 30 years, according to U.N. officials.
Ban is seeking to prod more than two dozen nations that have imposed such measures in the current crisis to reverse course, saying their actions have driven prices higher. The United Nations will also urge the United States and other nations to consider phasing out subsidies for food-based biofuels — such as ethanol — and to hammer out a pact with poor countries that would reduce agricultural tariffs and subsidies that have harmed poor farmers.
The immediate goal of the June 3-5 summit will be to secure a massive flow of assistance to the world’s hungriest people and to ensure that subsistence farmers across the globe will have the seeds and fertilizers they need to plant their crops this season. World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick on Thursday announced the lending agency would issue $1.2 billion in financing for agricultural support, including $200 million in grants to help the world’s poorest countries, starting with Djibouti, Haiti and Liberia.
The meeting — which is expected to draw more than 40 heads of state — is aimed at forging a common international response to the food crisis. While there is agreement on the need to increase food production, negotiations over a summit statement explaining how to do so have triggered debate over the role of genetically modified crops, biofuels, subsidies, trade policy and financing.
Matt Says:
2 June 2008 at 10:33 am.
Stocks down after tepid economic data, bank shakeups
NEW YORK - Wall Street retreated sharply Monday on more signs of economic weakness and on executive shake-ups at two major banks — reminders of the ongoing fallout from the credit crisis. The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 140 points.
Two key economic reports indicated that the economy is still struggling. As expected, the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index for May showed its fourth straight monthly decline, while the Commerce Department said construction spending dipped in April for the sixth time in seven months due to a drop in home building.
Meanwhile, the market drew no comfort from news out of the ailing financial sector. Wachovia Corp. chief executive Ken Thompson has been forced out, Washington Mutual Inc. said it is replacing chief executive Kerry Killinger as chairman and British lender Bradford & Bingley issued a poor financial outlook and said it is selling a 23 percent stake to a private equity firm.
Thompson became the third CEO of a major U.S. financial institution to lose the top job as a result of the credit crisis. His departure from the nation’s fourth-largest bank was not entirely unexpected, after being stripped of his chairman title just about a month ago. Still, his stepping down was a reminder that the financial system is still contending with the aftermath of the nation’s prolonged credit problems.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080602/ap_on_bi_st_ma_re/wall_street
Angela Rogin Says:
2 June 2008 at 10:43 am.
I think the financial markets have become bi-polar. Wide mood swings, one day saying everything is great and the next that the sky is falling. I wish they would make up their minds.
Hawk Says:
2 June 2008 at 12:30 pm.
Cameron, from what I have been reading you have been getting kind of soft on the war so I am glad to see you showing the other side a little.
Mac, you are right on. Al-Qaeda is definitely weakening over there. We are winning and we have to keep it up.
Joy Bischoff Says:
2 June 2008 at 2:23 pm.
I’ve blogged so much today already that I didn’t want to put up another so this will go here but I am excited about it. I have never had an agenda regarding the Iraq War. Once we were committed I felt it would unquestionably be best to pull out a win. Any criticism has been to be part of the public debate that helps create dialogue for change and progress. I still am against long term occupation, but if this report is accurate and we are winning the war then I am thrilled.
The Iraqi Upturn
Don’t look now, but the U.S.-backed government and army may be winning the war.
THERE’S BEEN a relative lull in news coverage and debate about Iraq in recent weeks — which is odd, because May could turn out to have been one of the most important months of the war. While Washington’s attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have “never been closer to defeat than they are now.”
Concerned American Says:
2 June 2008 at 4:44 pm.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080602124328.f6eyi8y1&show_article=1
Ahmadinejad says Israel will soon disappear
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted on Monday that Muslims would uproot “satanic powers” and repeated his controversial belief that Israel will soon disappear, the Mehr news agency reported.
“I must announce that the Zionist regime (Israel), with a 60-year record of genocide, plunder, invasion and betrayal is about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene,” he said.
“Today, the time for the fall of the satanic power of the United States has come and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has started.”
Since taking the presidency in August 2005, Ahmadinejad has repeatedly provoked international outrage by predicting Israel is doomed to disappear.
“I tell you that with the unity and awareness of all the Islamic countries all the satanic powers will soon be destroyed,” he said to a group of foreign visitors ahead of the 19th anniversary of the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Ahmadinejad also again expressed his apocalyptic vision that tyranny in the world be abolished by the return to earth of the Mahdi, the 12th imam of Shiite Islam, alongside great religious figures including Jesus Christ.
“With the appearance of the promised saviour… and his companions such as Jesus Christ, tyranny will be soon be eradicated in the world.”
Ahmadinejad has always been a devotee of the Mahdi, who Shiites believe disappeared more than a thousand years ago and who will return one day to usher in a new era of peace and harmony.
Hank Says:
2 June 2008 at 7:42 pm.
This boys been crying wolf for a long time so it doesn’t get as much press any more. Hope there isn’t a wolf that comes along. I guess he is the wolf. He is fanatical enough to do it I guess.
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