OBAMA ADMIN LAUGHS OFF BIRTH CERTIFICATE SCANDLE

I FOUND A GOOD SITE FOR LADIES TALKIN MAKEUP WITH CAMILLE - youtube
http://www.youtube.com/user/TalkinMakeUp
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Pentagon to Create New Cyber-Command: Turf War With NSA Looming
May 29, 2009

(ChattahBox) On the heels of President Obama’s announcement on Friday of the creation of a civilian White House Cyber Czar, to protect the nation’s digital infrastructure, the Pentagon is set to announce the formation of a Cyber-Command to both defend against cyber attacks and wage cyber warfare against our enemies.The announcements of both the new military Cyber Command and the White House cyber security office were delayed while various security agencies lobbied for control in a series of bureaucratic turf wars, between the NSA, Homeland Security, The Pentagon and the extensive cyber security department within the Air Force.The NSA for now has emerged from the bloody turf wars as the victor in both the White House office and the Pentagon’s new Cyber Command. The White House Cyber Czar will report to the NSA, as well as the National Economic Council.The billions of dollars allocated for the creation of the new cyber security initiative has raised the stakes for a battle to win bureaucratic control over the cyber security efforts. The Homeland Security agency seems to have lost out for now in taking a lead role on domestic cyber security efforts.There is no question the development of a comprehensive cyber security effort is needed. Sophisticated cyber-criminals have been caught attacking the U.S. electric grid and military defense programs. Just recently, hackers breached the Pentagon’s Joint Strike Fighter program, and stole data.

The Pentagon Cyber Command, according to a memo by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, will reside within the Pentagon’s Strategic Command, which is already tasked with computer-network security efforts. Eventually, the Cyber Command is expected to be allocated a separate command to be added to the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command, Central Command and Strategic Command.And in a move that signals a joint effort by the NSA and the Pentagon to run the new Cyber Command, Secretary Gates planes to appoint National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander to head the new Cyber Command, which will be headquartered in Fort Meade, Maryland adjacent to NSA headquarters.The charge of the new Cyber Command would be to conduct military cyber security operations, both defensive and offensive and provide support to civilian authorities.Critics of the plan are concerned with the NSA’s propensity to conduct domestic spying operations. In a recent speech given by General Alexander, he proposed a team effort with the NSA charged with protecting military and intelligence networks, leaving other government networks to the Department of Homeland Security.In addition to the massive cyber security defensive effort, the Cyber Command would also engage in cyber warfare. Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, likened cyber warfare to any traditional battlefield, which requires protecting our freedom of movement and preserving our capability to perform in that environment.As the new Cyber Command functions shake out, there is still the ongoing battle between what agency would actually conduct the offensive cyber warfare operations.Meanwhile, President Obama is expected to issue a classified set of presidential directives on the relative responsibilities of various military agencies in the Cyber Command.Obama also plans to sign a classified executive order creating the new military Cyber Command, which would be in full operation sometime in October.

STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES

LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

Season's 1st tropical depression forms in Atlantic MAY 28,09

MIAMI – National Hurricane Center forecasters in Miami say a tropical depression has formed off the mid-Atlantic coast, but it's not expected to threaten land.The National Weather Service counts the depression as the first of the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season, which officially begins June 1.The depression's maximum sustained winds are near 35 mph. It is expected to become a tropical storm in the coming days.

Forecasters expect the depression to stay over the Atlantic and move toward the northeast near 17 mph over the next day or two.At 11 a.m. EDT Thursday, the depression was centered about 310 miles south of Providence, R.I., and about 635 southwest of Halifax, Nova Scotia.(This version CORRECTS time reference to EDT from EST.)

Brazil dam break kills 4, leaves 11 people missing By ALAN CLENDENNING, Associated Press Writer MAY 28,09

SAO PAULO – Raging torrents from a ruptured dam swamped a rural Brazilian city Thursday, forcing residents to scramble onto rooftops and climb high trees to escape the deadly floodwaters.Four people were killed and at least 120 homes destroyed in a region already devastated by more than a month of floods.Officials said floodwaters inundated Cocal, a northeastern farming city of about 25,000 in Piaui state, after a dam section gave way under the weight of a reservoir bloated by rains.The waters swept away homes, trees and electrical energy towers and left behind muddy river beds filled with splinters and large dislodged rocks.Images showed Brazilians sobbing outside their wrecked houses. The destruction was among the most dramatic in more than a month of northern Brazilian flooding that has killed nearly 60 and left hundreds of thousands homeless in a wide swath of northern Brazil stretching from the Amazon to normally arid coastal areas.It was like a tsunami with total destruction, especially in the areas close to the dam, Gov. Wellington Dias of northeastern Piaui state told reporters after touring the devastation zone.Globo TV said the rupture sent 50 billion liters (13 billion gallons) of water pouring out of the reservoir in just one hour, causing flooding that stretched 100 kilometers (62 miles) downriver from Cocal.Eleven people were missing, 80 suffered minor injuries and nearly 3,000 were forced from their homes.Authorities began evacuating families about two hours after the dam failed, but civil defense authorities said Thursday night that search and rescue missions for the missing were suspended until Friday. Churches and other buildings were turned into shelters for the 2,953 people who were displaced.The dead included girls ages 10 and 12, a 72-year-old man and a 73-year-old woman, the state government said on its Web site.Downpours have battered northern and northeastern Brazil since April, causing floods and mudslides in a region extending from the Amazon rain forest to the Atlantic Ocean. Authorities say 59 people have been killed and more than 423,000 were displaced.

Another bout of heavy rain in recent days swelled the reservoir behind the dam, increasing pressure that opened a 165-foot (50-meter) tear and led to the rupture, the Piaui state government said in a statement.It was a lot of water, resident Antonio Antonino told SBT.People were desperate, they were crying. I'm 60 years old, and I've never seen anything like this.The floods also swept away crops and livestock, according to the government statement.I heard a very loud thundering noise, and when the dam broke a huge column of water shot up 50 meters (164 feet) into the air, and when it came down it swept away everything in its way,farmer Jose Maria Siqueira told Globo TV.Piaui Civil Defense spokeswoman Vanize Lemos said at least 150 families were initially rescued, but Brazil's federal civil defense department said Thursday night said it was sending helicopters and aid to help at least 300 more families that were still isolated.The dam overflowed two weeks ago, but residents who had been evacuated told Globo TV they had been authorized to return before the rupture occurred.The heavy rains are blamed on an Atlantic Ocean weather system that normally moves away in April but hasn't budged this year. Meanwhile, southern Brazil has been hit by a drought that has severely affected agriculture.

The flooding in northern Brazil comes just four years after a devastating drought hit the Amazon. Experts fear that the world's largest rain forest may be experiencing severe climate swings brought on by global warming, which could threaten the people and wild animals that live in the region.Associated Press Writer Tales Azzoni contributed to this report.

EARTH DESTROYED WITH THE EARTH

GENESIS 6:11-13
11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.(WORLD TERRORISM,MURDERS)
12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence (TERRORISM) through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

EARTHQUAKES

MATTHEW 24:7-8
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.

MARK 13:8
8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:(ETHNIC GROUP AGAINST ETHNIC GROUP) and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.

LUKE 21:11
11 And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.

7.1 earthquake topples homes, kills 6 in Honduras By FREDDY CUEVAS, Associated Press Writer MAY 28,09

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – A powerful earthquake toppled dozens of homes in Honduras and Belize early Thursday, killing at least six people and injuring 40 as terrified residents spilled from their homes across much of Central America.The magnitude-7.1 quake struck at 2:24 a.m. (4:24 a.m. EDT; 0824 GMT) off the Caribbean coast of Honduras, 80 miles (130 kilometers) northeast of the beach town of La Ceiba, according to the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado.People were running for the door,Alfredo Cedeno said from the reception desk at the Gran Hotel Paris in La Ceiba.You could really feel it and you could see it — the water came out of the pool.

Reynaldo Funez, 15, was buried in his house in Pineda de la Lima, 120 miles (200 kilometers) north of the capital, Tegucigalpa, and 6-year-old Deily Yazmin Santos was killed when her house collapsed in the beach town of Morazan, national fire commander Col. Carlos Cordero said.Ana Maria Rivera, spokeswoman for Honduras' Permanent Emergency Commission, said Jose Vicente Maradiaga died of a heart attack during the earthquake in the seaside town of Tela, and a 3-year-old boy was crushed when his roof collapsed in Mapulaca near the Salvadoran border. She didn't have Maradiaga's age or the boy's name.It was an earthquake of great proportions,she said.Two other people were killed in home collapses, according to the commission's chief, Marcos Burgos, who didn't have details. At least 40 people were injured, most along the Caribbean coast.The earthquake destroyed at least 57 homes and damaged another 65, the commission said. It said 14 schools were damaged, as were two Roman Catholic churches and three bridges.Democracy Bridge, which spans the country's largest river, the Ulua, collapsed in the town of El Progreso, Cordero said. The bridge is one of two connecting the northern city of San Pedro Sula, Honduras' second-largest, with the rest of the country. The second bridge was deemed safe.

The central part of the bridge fell into the river,Cordero said.

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who called the quake a tragedy,said damages were estimated at about $37 million.San Pedro Sula is scheduled to host a summit of foreign ministers of the Organization of American States next week. OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza said in Washington the meeting would go on as planned.In Belize, about five homes collapsed and an Associated Press reporter saw at least 25 others with severe damage. Many of the wooden shacks on stilts sunk several feet into ground.In Monkey River, parts of the ground opened up and left gaping holes up to four feet (over a meter) deep. Residents heard dogs howling seconds before the quake hit.I heard this rumbling and I thought the rain is coming, but then I looked up at the sky and I saw all of the stars and I knew something was not right. Then the shaking started. It was pretty scary,said Malfry Garbutt, who grabbed her three small children and ran.Before the quake, her wooden house on stilts was eight feet above the ground. After the quake, it was only three feet.A water tower toppled in the town of Independence and electricity was out all the way to the Mexican border, local officials said.I urge you not to panic, but to remain calm,National Emergency Minister Melvin Hulse said on the radio. Honduran Education Minister Marlon Breve closed schools along the coast and on the Bay Islands, and officials reported electricity, telephones and Internet connections were cut across a large part of the country. A local official with Internet provider Amnet said a fiber optic cable was cut, affecting service throughout Honduras and in other parts of Central America.

Closest to the epicenter were the idyllic islands of Roatan and Utila, where officials and hotel employees said there were no injuries or major damage. A tsunami watch was canceled for Honduras, Belize and Guatemala when no unusual waves appeared. Raul Gonzalez, a receptionist at the Gran Hotel Sula in San Pedro Sula, said guests ran into the streets in their pajamas.I ran out of the building and kept going for about a block before I looked back and everything had calmed,he said.It was really strong. I have never felt anything like that.

The hotel did not suffer major damage.

The quake was felt strongly in El Salvador, Guatemala and northern Nicaragua, but no major damage was reported in those countries. Don Blakeman, a U.S. Geological Survey expert, said people in Mexico and on several Caribbean islands also reported feeling the earthquake.The quake was relatively shallow, with a depth of only 6 miles (10 kilometers), increasing its potential to cause major damage, Blakeman said. It is still possible we may find out there was more damage, but I think the fact that this earthquake was a bit off shore has helped tremendously, he said.Obviously the farther away from the epicenter you get, there is less damage.The USGS said a magnitude-4.8 aftershock struck off Honduras about three hours after the quake. Associated Press writers Juan Carlos Llorca in Guatemala City and Patrick Jones in Belize City contributed to this report.

U.S. IN SOUTH KOREA PUSHING NORTH KOREA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY1vsYWeRt0&feature=player_embedded

U.S., South Korea Raise Military Alert on North By Blaine Harden Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, May 28, 2009; 11:29 AM

TOKYO, May 28 -- The joint command for South Korean and U.S. forces on the Korean peninsula raised its alert level Thursday in response to an extraordinary week of truculence from North Korea. At the United Nations, diplomats are pushing for sanctions with teeth against the government of Kim Jong Il. Proposals include freezing assets, banning travel for elites and cutting access to international banks.

Japan and the United States want a new resolution that makes cargo inspections of North Korean vessels compulsory for U.N. members, according to a report by Japan's Kyodo news agency, which cited diplomats in New York. It also said that a trade embargo on all arms, not just large weapons such as battle tanks, has been proposed.

Japan's Foreign Ministry declined comment, except to note that Prime Minister Taro Aso is committed to strong sanctions. Since Monday, North Korea has defied U.N. resolutions by conducting an underground nuclear test and launching five short-range missiles into the sea. After the South responded with a pledge to join U.S.-led efforts to inspect North Korean ships, the North threatened a merciless attack against the South and nullified the truce that ended the Korean War. South Korean and U.S. forces raised their alert Thursday to the second-highest level, Watch Condition II.The joint command, which oversees 655,000 troops from the South and 28,500 troops from the United States, last raised its alert to this level in 2006, after North Korea's first nuclear test. Surveillance over the North will be stepped up, with more aircraft and personnel mobilized,said South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Won Tae-jae. South Korea is preparing for a possible missile or artillery strikes near a disputed sea border off the west coast of the Korean Peninsula, the Seoul-based daily Chosun Ilbo reported. The North said this week it would no longer respect that border, which has been the site of two naval skirmishes in the past decade. North Korea is unique among the world's nations in that it periodically threatens its neighbors with nuclear weapons and missiles, but also relies on them and the United States for food to help feed its 23 million people. On average, the country needs about 1 million tons of outside food a year to feed its population. The communist economy collapsed in the mid-1990s, and since then North Korea has grown increasingly dependent on generating hard currency though fthe sale of missiles, parts and related technologies to countries in East Asia and the Middle East. The North has sold missiles to Iran, Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, earning hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif.

A threat from South Korea this week to constrict or shut off that revenue stream may be the motivating force behind the North's tirade on Wednesday, when it declared that those who provoke North Korea will not be able to escape its unimaginable and merciless punishment.To that end, Pyongyang vowed to attack South Korea if ships from the North are searched as part of an effort to stop vessels suspected of carrying missiles or weapons of mass destruction. The interdiction effort, called the Proliferation Security Initiative, was created in 2003 by President George W. Bush.

The South's decision was probably made easier by the storm of international condemnation that followed the test, with the North's long-time allies, China and Russia, joining in the outrage. The anti-proliferation program would not block North Korean ships from moving through South Korean waters, officials said in Seoul. Ships would be stopped and searched only if there was intelligence suggesting they might be carrying missiles or nuclear weapons technology, the officials said. Investors in South Korea, who have been spooked all week by North Korea's behavior, seemed to calm down on Thursday -- a day that produced no detonations, missile launches or rhetorical thunder in the North. South Korea's currency, the won, rose to a three-week high, and the stock market bounced back from three days of losses. There have been no polls in South Korea this week to assess attitudes about North Korea's threats. And President Lee Myung-bak is projecting calm, saying Thursday that it is necessary to publicize locally and overseas that we have everything under control.

Still, there was uneasiness.

I can feel that this is a bit different from previous times, when North Korea would just fire missiles, and that was that,said Chun Kyung-ran, 48, a butcher in Seoul. This is making me feel vaguely nervous about the possibility of war breaking out.Special correspondent Stella Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.

North Korea's nuclear spectacular Kim Jong Il's bombshell
May 28th 2009 From The Economist print edition

Isolated it may be, but North Korea’s antics do damage far beyond its own reach

Reuters/AlamyHE HAS been coaxed, cajoled, censured and sanctioned. Yet whenever it suits North Korea’s boss, Kim Jong Il, he spews out new threats. For years he has managed to extort cash, oil and other goodies for then quietening down, only to behave even more threateningly next time. Can nothing be done to make this serial rule-breaker blink? With his second nuclear test and multiple missile launchings (see article), North Korea’s Dear Leader has ignored the hand that President Barack Obama has said he is ready to extend to America’s erstwhile enemies. He has also delivered a nuclear-powered slap in the face to China, his semi-backer and the chief proponent for the past six years of a strategy of come-what-may patience, negotiation and perks in an effort to humour Mr Kim out of the bomb business. But patience is not always a virtue in dealing with a regime as practised at blackmail as Mr Kim’s. For unless he now pays a seriously high price for his defiance, the message heard by others, particularly Iran, still mulling how far they should push their own nuclear plans is that they too can have a bomb—if they are prepared to be belligerent enough, for long enough.

Watch what he does, not what he says
Mr Kim has long played the nuclear game by his own rules. The aim of the other five around the negotiating table—America, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia—has been to get him to shut down his bomb factories and (after steadily increasing dollops of trade and investment, and in return for diplomatic ties with America) eventually to give up the bombs he has long claimed to have stashed away. Indeed, Mr Kim has promised, more than once, to do just that. Yet he has dragged out the process at every turn. It came as little surprise to those who always doubted his disarming intentions that the six-party talks came badly off track last year just at the point where tight verification rules were to be agreed upon so that outsiders could check that his promises were kept.Now Mr Kim says he will never go back to the six-party talks. He wants North Korea to be accepted as a nuclear power, his officials say, just as India in practice has been. But you can be sure of one thing if the capricious Mr Kim is persuaded back to the table. With a second nuclear blast to boast of, the price will have gone up yet again. How does he get away with it? And does it really matter that such an isolated and impoverished contrarian keeps breaking all the anti-nuclear rules? Mr Kim does not need his bombs to wreak havoc in South Korea, whose capital, Seoul, has long been within range of the North’s artillery dug into the hills just over the border. Rather, he needs a deterrent, he says, to fend off a hostile America. And yet this latest nuclear test surely destroys North Korea’s best chance in years to get on friendlier terms with the country it claims to fear most. That in turn leads dogged optimists to argue that this may be nothing more than a temporary diplomatic setback after all: the ailing Mr Kim needs the backing of nuclear hardliners in the armed forces, they explain, to steady the regime while he lines up one of his sons to take over the family dynasty.

The thought should bring little comfort. For whether he is trying to hang on to power at home, or determined to cock an enduring nuclear snook at the world, makes little difference when Mr Kim clearly feels he has licence to bang on regardless and get away with it. He has shrugged off past half-hearted sanctions imposed on him by the United Nations Security Council and others. He knows that, whatever he does, some food aid will keep flowing in, since outsiders care more than he does for the plight of his often malnourished, sometimes starving, people. And he calculates that China, which controls most of the oil taps to North Korea, is fearful of a swelling influx of refugees if the economy collapses further. China says it resolutely opposes Mr Kim’s latest nuclear and missile tests, but continues to oppose the sort of truly punishing sanctions that could make Mr Kim ponder the error of his ways.With China’s misguided protection, the harm the radioactive Mr Kim is doing just goes on spreading. There will be no stability in East Asia until he can be induced to cease his nuclear antics. His tests of increasingly sophisticated rockets were causing alarm in Japan—and talk of rearmament in some quarters there—even before hints that he is perfecting missile-mountable nuclear warheads to put on them.Leaving Mr Kim free to demonstrate his nuclear wares also increases the danger that he will find new customers for them. North Korea had already secretly built a nuclear reactor in Syria before Israel destroyed it in an air raid. Before that some of Mr Kim’s nuclear material had turned up in Libya, via the nuclear black market, before that country handed in all its bomb-making paraphernalia. A well-tested warhead design is both easier to hawk and more lucrative to sell. North Korea is known to work closely with Iran on building nuclear-capable missiles. No one knows where their co-operation stops. Unlike Mr Kim, Iran insists it has no use for the bomb. Yet suspicions have mounted as Iran has invested in expensive technologies for enriching uranium and making plutonium (both possible bomb ingredients) before having a civilian nuclear-power industry that can make peaceful use of them. And though it claims to co-operate with UN inspectors, Iran refuses to answer their questions about studies and past experiments that have little or no plausible civilian purpose.

The fallout to come
But even if North Korean and Iranian scientists have kept their nuclear distance, the example Mr Kim sets and the failure of the UN, America, China and others collectively to do more than inconvenience him with trade restrictions on fast cars and Rolex watches will only cause Iran’s suspicious neighbours, like North Korea’s, to worry that time and the world’s anti-nuclear rules are not on their side. Unless North Korea is checked, the fear and suspicion Mr Kim has created could set off a chain reaction of proliferation. If China is at all serious about joining America as a global leader, this is the time for it to shoulder its responsibility by helping to punish Mr Kim.

Russia says not against North Korea U.N. resolution
Thu May 28, 2009 8:48am EDT

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia does not object to a U.N. Security Council resolution on North Korea's nuclear test this week, but feels it is too early to talk about possible penalties, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Thursday.We do not have any basis to come out against the new resolution on North Korea in the Security Council of the United Nations, Andrei Nesterenko told a news briefing.It is premature to speak about details of the Security Council's decision concerning possible sanctions against North Korea and about their pace,he added.Western diplomats said on Wednesday world powers including Russia had agreed in principle that North Korea must face sanctions for defying a U.N. resolution by exploding a second nuclear device on May 25.A draft resolution would not be ready to circulate to the full 15-nation council for comments and an eventual vote until next week at the earliest, the diplomats said.

Nesterenko warned against an arms race in Asia after North Korea's nuclear test.

We hope that the latest actions by North Korea will not be used by other states as an excuse for the forced build up of their military potential and will not be turned into a new... arms race in the region,he said.(Reporting by Oleg Shchedrov and Guy Faulconbridge, editing by Philippa Fletcher)Thomson Reuters 2009

OBAMA ADMIN LAUGHS OFF BIRTH CERTIFICATE SCANDLE
http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=99342

OBAMA YOUTH CORPS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94iNrSrfGmY&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfgYffpQz5g&feature=player_embedded

LEW ROCKWELL ON JONES
http://rss.nfowars.net/20090528_Thu_Alex.mp3

WND AT THE WHITE HOUSE Obama mouthpiece laughs off birth certificate request
It's on the Internet, Lester,claims Gibbs at White House briefing May 27, 2009
6:35 pm Eastern 2009 WorldNetDaily

Presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs bends over laughing at a question over Obama's eligibility

WASHINGTON – Somebody finally asked Barack Obama's White House press secretary about the president's elusive birth certificate. When asked by WND White House correspondent Les Kinsolving why the president, who has pledged transparency in his administration, would not release his long-form birth certificate to establish his constitutional eligibility for office, spokesman Robert Gibbs guffawed in unison with members of the Washington press corps about the concerns of 400,000 petitioners who have demanded it.Are you looking for the president's birth certificate? he asked incredulously.Lester, this question in many ways continues to astound me. The state of Hawaii provided a copy with the seal of the president's birth. I know there are apparently at least 400,000 people – (laughter) – that continue to doubt the existence of and the certification by the state of Hawaii of the president's birth there, but it's on the Internet because we put it on the Internet for each of those 400,000 to download. I certainly hope by the fourth year of our administration that we'll have dealt with this burgeoning birth controversy.It was the first time any member of the press corps has publicly asked a member of the administration a question directly related to Obama's constitutional eligibility for office as a natural born citizen.

Politico has video of the exchange, which is embedded below: The question comes as the controversy is heating up nationally – sparked in part by a new billboard campaign asking the question: Where's the birth certificate? The campaign has also raised more than $50,000 in contributions from the public. The ongoing petition campaign was launched several months ago by WND Editor and Chief Executive Officer Joseph Farah. Just last week, Farah announced the billboard campaign to raise public awareness of the fact that Obama has never released the standard, long-form birth certificate that would show which hospital he was born in, the attending physician and establish that he truly was born in Hawaii, as his autobiography maintains. The Certification of Live Birth posted online and widely touted as Obama's birth certificate does not in any way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same short-form document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii. The true long-form birth certificate – which includes information like the name of the birth hospital and attending physician – is the only document that can prove Obama was born in Hawaii, but to date he has not permitted its release for public or press scrutiny.

Oddly, though congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a natural born citizen, no controlling legal authority ever sought to verify Obama's claim to a Hawaiian birth.

Both the petition and the billboard campaign are part of what Farah calls an independent the truth and transparency campaign.At today's White House briefing, Gibbs was contentious with Kinsolving before he ever asked his question. Calling on WND's longtime correspondent, he said: Lester, I'm a glutton for punishment.

Kinsolving said: Thank you, thank you, very much. Just one question concerning what the president said in his speech on Thursday, and I quote, I ran for president promising transparency, and I meant what I said. This is why, whenever possible, we will make information available to the American people so they can make informed judgments and hold us accountable.End of quote. Do you remember that statement? Gibbs: I can confirm that he said that. Kinsolving: Good. In consideration of this very good promise of transparency, why can't the president respond to the petition to requests of 400,000 American citizens by releasing a certified copy of his long-form birth certificate listing hospital – (laughter) – 400,000.Gibbs: Are you looking for the President's birth certificate? Kinsolving: Yes.Gibbs: It's on the Internet, Lester.Kinsolving: No, no, no -- the long form listing his hospital and physician. (Laughter.) Gibbs: Lester, this question in many ways continues to astound me. The state of Hawaii provided a copy with the seal of the President's birth. I know there are apparently at least 400,000 people – (laughter) – that continue to doubt the existence of and the certification by the state of Hawaii of the president's birth there, but it's on the Internet because we put it on the Internet for each of those 400,000 to download. I certainly hope by the fourth year of our administration that we'll have dealt with this burgeoning birth controversy. And with that, Gibbs ended the briefing.

This is what the White House thinks of American citizens who take the Constitution seriously,said Farah in response to Gibbs' response.I think I speak for the 400,000 petitioners when I say disregard for the Constitution is no laughing matter.Farah was pleased, however, that the question was finally asked of a member of the administration – in public and on the record. He said it is likely to provide new impetus to the petition and billboard campaigns. The first sign to be posted under the week-old campaign, a digital, electronic one, is up and online on Highway 165 in Ball, La. – the result of a donation by the owner. In addition, based on the heavy volume of financial donations in the first two days of the campaign, WND was able to commit to leasing two more standard billboards – one in Los Angeles and the other in Pennsylvania. It will take several weeks to get those billboards up because of the vinyl printing and shipping involved. Yesterday, WND agreed to lease another electronic billboard in Orange County, Calif. Birth certificate question being raised in Ball, La. While the campaign is off to a robust start, many viewers have asked why Obama's name is not included in the billboard. Farah said the matter was carefully considered. There are several reasons we chose the message: Where's the birth certificate? he explained.There is only one birth certificate controversy in this country today – despite the near-total absence of this issue from coverage in the non-WND media. This is a grass-roots issue that resonates around the country, as our own online petition with nearly 400,000 signers suggests. In addition, I like the simplicity of the message. I like the fact that the message will cause some people to ask themselves or others about the meaning of the message. It will stir curiosity. It will create a buzz. I'm assuming when these billboards are springing up all over the country, it might even make some in the news media curious. And there's one more factor that persuaded me this was the way to go. Come 2012, campaign laws will pose restrictions on political advertising mentioning the names of presidential candidates. This one clearly doesn't. I would like to see the federal government make the case that this is somehow a political ad,he said.

Farah said the campaign was born of frustration with timid elected officials in Washington, corrupt judges around the country and a news media that show a stunning lack of curiosity about the most basic facts of Obama's background – especially how it relates to constitutional eligibility for the highest office in the land. As Obama transforms this country from self-governing constitutional republic to one governed by a central ruling elite, the simple fact remains that no controlling legal authority has established that he is indeed a 'natural born citizen' as the Constitution requires,Farah said.Obama's promises of transparency have become a bad joke as he continues to hide simple, innocuous documents like his birth certificate and his student records.The idea behind the billboard campaign is to make sure Obama cannot avoid this question any longer. He must be asked to produce it at every turn, Farah says. Billboard space is currently being hunted in Houston, Dallas, Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle and other metro areas.Is it unusual for a news agency to launch such a campaign? asks Farah.Yes it is. But we live in very unusual times. The founding fathers built special protections into the First Amendment for the free press. The reason they did that is because they understood a vibrant Fourth Estate was necessary as an independent watchdog on government. It is in that tradition that WND assumes this role – since nobody else in the press will do it.WND previously launched a petition campaign that has collected more than 375,000 names demanding Obama's eligibility be verified and demonstrated publicly. That campaign continues. That list has been shared with members of the Electoral College and the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. I wish such a campaign were not absolutely necessary,said Farah.I wish there were checks and balances in our political and electoral systems to ensure that constitutional eligibility of presidential candidates was established before politicians could assume the highest office in the land. I wish my colleagues in the news media believed the Constitution really means what it says and pressed this issue as hard as we have pressed it at WND. I wish radio talk-show hosts were bold enough to ask this question. But wishing is not enough. It's time to raise the visibility of this issue vital to the rule of law in America. I ask everyone to pitch in and help WND make a simple yet profound statement: The Constitution still matters.

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/sotomayor-and-the-second-amendment
SOTOMAYER THE BENCH RULES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfC99LrrM2Q&feature=player_embedded

Sotomayor fits precisely with Obama's campaign promise that he will push for greater gun control measures. http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/sotomayor-and-the-second-amendment/ And she won't be able to easily dismiss her anti-second amendment position taken in her law school thesis Deadly Obsession: American Gun Culture. In fact, despite having the benefit of last year's Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, upholding an individual's right to bear arms and striking down a decades-old ban on firearms in Washington, D.C., Sotomayor ruled in Maloney v. Cuomo, 554 F.3d 56 (2009) that the Second Amendment only applied to the federal government, in effect giving state governments greater freedom to regulate weapons. That case may be headed for the Court next year.She also served on the board of LatinoJustice PRLDEF, one of the racial grievance groups that helped to sink the judicial nomination of Honduran-born Miguel Estrada in 2003. http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/2258598/posts.Sotomayor also is apparently not the first Hispanic nominee to SCOTUS - Cardozo was, and he was appointed by a Republican.
http://www.openmarket.org/2009/05/26/sotomayor-not-first-hispanic-justice-cardozo-was/
Posted by: zmarshall at May 27, 2009 3:56 PM

SOTOMAYOR AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 5:46 pm | Lyle Denniston |

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, already facing bitter criticism from gun rights advocates for an appeals court decision she joined last January, may have to choose whether to take part when the constitutional issue at stake comes up before the Supreme Court (assuming that she is confirmed). As of now, the first case in line on that issue is the one on which she ruled as a judge of the Second Circuit Court — Maloney v. Cuomo.The Maloney decision (Second Circuit docket 07-581) involves the next major issue on the Constitution’s Second Amendment, which guarantees a right to keep and bear arms.The issue is whether that Amendment applies to state and local government, thus restricting their power to control individuals’ private possession of pistols and other guns. The Supreme Court ruled last year, in District of Columbia v. Heller, that the Amendment protects an individual right to have a gun, for self-defense, in the home.The Court, however, did not settle whether the Amendment operates against any level of government other than the federal government and a federal entity, the District of Columbia. The Second Circuit, in the Maloney case, ruled that prior Supreme Court precedent saying that the Amendment only applied at the federal level is still binding law. Sotomayor was a member of a three-judge panel that issued the unsigned ruling.In reaction to her nomination, supporters of broad rights under the Second Amendment exploded.For example, Curt Levey, executive director of the conservative advocacy group, Committee for Justice, wrote: Now every red and purple state Democratic senator who considers voting for Sotomayor will be forced to explain to his constituents why he’s supporting a nominee who thinks those constituents don’t have Second Amendment rights.Because they can send red state Democrats running for cover, gun owners are the one interest group that could completely change the political equation on judicial nominations if they’re drawn into the debate. Obama’s selection of Sotomayor makes that virtually certain.

The Maloney case is now scheduled to be challenged in the Supreme Court by June 26. Sotomayor, as a Justice, almost certainly would take herself out of consideration of that case, because of her prior participation in it at the Circuit Court.Other cases raising the same question, however, are moving along in lower courts, and it is possible that the Justices may see more of those, perhaps over the summer months. If that happens, the Court may have other vehicles to choose from, thus perhaps giving Sotomayor a chance to get involved.The Ninth Circuit Court in April became the first federal appeals court to rule that the Second Amendment does apply to state and local government — thus assuring the kind of Circuit split that often leads the Supreme Court to step in to resolve the dispute.The Ninth Circuit did so in the case of Nordyke, et al., v. King (Circuit docket 07-15763). Although there was a chance that the Nordyke case could be appealed soon to the Supreme Court, in time to compete with the Maloney case for the Court’s attention on the Second Amendment question, that prospect dimmed last week. A judge of the Ninth Circuit called for a vote on whether the full en banc Court should consider the case. Both sides were ordered to file simultaneous briefs on that question by June 8 — thus slowing down the pace of that case.Another case on the same issue involves the leader of the Nation’s gun rights forces — the National Rifle Association. Its lawsuit seeking to have the Second Amendment apply to state and local government (National Rifle Association v. City of Chicago) was heard Tuesday by a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit Court (docket 08-4241). An early decision is expected in that case; indications at the oral argument were that two of the judges were deeply skeptical of the NRA’s plea (see this analysis by law professor Randy Barnett at the Volokh Conspiracy blog. Thanks to Howard Bashman of How Appealing blog for this link.)Another Second Amendment case moving toward a decision, in the Fifth Circuit Court, does not involve the question of applying the Second Amendment to states, counties and cities. But it does test whether the right recognized by the Supreme Court is a fundamenal one; if it is of that rank, that very likely would lead to its application to state and local government. (The Fifth Circuit case is Bledsoe v. U.S., docket 08-51217. Briefing was completed in March. Both sides have waived oral argument.)

If Sotomayor as a member of the Supreme Court does take part in the next round on the Second Amendment, it is unclear just what difference that would make. She would replace retiring Justice David H. Souter, who dissented in the Court’s 5-4 ruling in Heller establishing a personal right to have a gun in the home.If the same five Justices who made up the Heller majority were to rule that the Amendment reaches below the federal government, Sotomayor’s vote probably would not be decisive. She could bolster a majority, if she were so inclined, in favor of the broader application, of course.

PERSECUSSION,BEHEADINGS

JESUS PERSECUTED BIGTIME

PSALMS 14:1
1 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.

ISAIAH 53:4
4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

MATTHEW 9:34
34 But the Pharisees said, He casteth out devils through the prince of the devils.

JOHN 8:41
41 Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.

JOHN 10:20
20 And many of them said, He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye him?

PHILIPPIANS 2:10-11(JESUS GETS REVENGE)
10 That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;
11 And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.(JUDGEMENT SEAT OF CHRIST AND FOR SINNERS, THE GREAT WHITE THRONE FINAL JUDGEMENT).

WE ARE CHRISTIANS WE WILL BE TREATED THE SAME.

2 TIMOTHY 3:1-5 (WHY WE ARE PERSECUTED BY THE WORLD)
1 This know also, that in the last days perilous (DANGEROUS) times shall come.
2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

MATTHEW 5:10-12
10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

MATTHEW 24:9
9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake.

JOHN 15:18-20
18 If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me (JESUS) before it hated you.
19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.
20 Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.

REVELATION 6:9-11
9 And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain(BEHEADED) for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:
10 And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?
11 And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.

REVELATION 20:4
4 And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

Couple: County Trying To Stop Home Bible Studies UPDATED: 7:43 am PDT May 28, 2009

SAN DIEGO -- A local pastor and his wife claim they were interrogated by a San Diego County official, who then threatened them with escalating fines if they continued to hold bible studies in their home, 10News reported.Attorney Dean Broyles of The Western Center For Law & Policy was shocked with what happened to the pastor and his wife.Broyles said, The county asked, Do you have a regular meeting in your home? She said, Yes.Do you say amen? Yes.Do you pray? Yes.Do you say praise the Lord? Yes.The county employee notified the couple that the small bible study, with an average of 15 people attending, was in violation of county regulations, according to Broyles.

Broyles said a few days later the couple received a written warning that listed unlawful use of land and told them to stop religious assembly or apply for a major use permit -- a process that could cost tens of thousands of dollars.For churches and religious assemblies there's big parking concerns, there's environmental impact concerns when you have hundreds or thousands of people gathering. But this is a different situation, and we believe that the application of the religious assembly principles to this bible study is certainly misplaced,said Broyles.News of the case has rapidly spread across Internet blogs and has spurred various reactions.Broyles said his clients have asked to stay anonymous until they give the county a demand letter that states by enforcing this regulation the county is violating their First Amendment right to freely exercise their religion.

Broyles also said this case has broader implications.

If the county thinks they can shut down groups of 10 or 15 Christians meeting in a home, what about people who meet regularly at home for poker night? What about people who meet for Tupperware parties? What about people who are meeting to watch baseball games on a regular basis and support the Chargers? said Broyles.Broyles and his clients plant to give the county their demand letter this week.If the county refuses to release the pastor and his wife from obtaining the permit, they will consider a lawsuit in federal court.by 10News.com.

FROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU Peace partner set to affirm resistance against Israel Warlike declarations planned at home as Abbas meets Obama today in Washington
May 28, 2009 12:07 pm Eastern By Aaron Klein 2009 WorldNetDaily

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas
JERUSALEM – As Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas prepares to meet President Obama today, back home in the Palestinian territories key members of Abbas' Fatah organization are planning to affirm the armed struggle and resistance against Israel as official Fatah doctrine, WND has learned. The warlike affirmations are slated to be part of Fatah's official objective during a meeting of the party's General Congress slated for as early as next month. But according to Fatah sources speaking to WND, the U.S. has been working feverishly to ensure the Fatah congressional session is postponed. The U.S. considers Fatah to be moderate and has backed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations aimed at creating a Fatah-led Palestinian state.Fatah is making plans to convene the Sixth Fatah General Congress sometime next month. At the meeting, likely to take place in either the West Bank or Jordan, hundreds of voting Fatah members will discuss the future of their party and pass official resolutions outlining Fatah's major objectives.The Congress was last held in 1989 in Tunisia, prior to any Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. At the time, the Congress, led by late Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat, officially resolved continuing to intensify and escalate armed action and all forms of armed struggle to liquidate the Zionist occupation from our occupied Palestinian land and guarantee our people's rights to freedom and independence.Israel had hoped under Abbas and amid intense negotiations that the Sixth Congress would moderate the party's objectives.But senior Farah sources speaking to WND said a list of Fatah resolutions to be voted upon includes text affirming as one of Fatah's main objectives the resistance and armed struggle against the Jewish state. The sources said Abbas and other senior Fatah officials opposed the inclusion of resistance in any resolution to be called for a vote but said that the majority of Fatah members insisted it be incorporated. The sources said it was very likely the resistance clause could be accepted during the congressional meeting by the majority of general Fatah voters, who tend to publicly express more radical views than Abbas. But the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem has been working to postpone the Congress and to back Fatah leaders who would push for the exclusion of the resistance clause.

According to information reaching WND from a top Fatah official, the U.S. has pressured Egypt, Jordan and Algeria against hosting the Fatah congress, making it likely the event will instead be held in the West Bank. Also, U.S. funds recently transferred to Fatah strongman Mahmoud Dahlan were meant to enhance an internal Fatah campaign to ensure against voting for resistance against Israel. On board with that campaign are Fatah's old guard leaders, such as Dahlan, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and former Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qurei. Still, throngs of Fatah voters support the resolution, according to Fatah sources. In Washington, Abbas is set to meet Obama, where the two will reportedly emphasize a repackaged 2002 Saudi plan, also known as the Arab Initiative, that calls for Arab countries to normalize relations with Israel in exchange for extreme territorial concessions. Following scores of denials he would trumpet the plan, Obama in January hailed the Arab initiative. In an interview with an Arab television network – his first formal interview as president – Obama stated: Well, here's what I think is important. Look at the proposal that was put forth by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. ... I might not agree with every aspect of the proposal, but it took great courage to put forward something that is as significant as that. I think that there are ideas across the region of how we might pursue peace. I do think that it is impossible for us to think only in terms of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and not think in terms of what's happening with Syria or Iran or Lebanon or Afghanistan and Pakistan.Since then, Obama and his team have trumpeted the plan several more times, including during a meeting last month with Jordan's Abdullah.The Arab Initiative, originally proposed by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and later adopted by the Arab League, states that Israel would receive normal relations with the Arab world in exchange for a full withdrawal from the entire Gaza Strip, West Bank, Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem, which includes the Temple Mount.

The West Bank contains important Jewish biblical sites and borders central Israeli population centers, while the Golan Heights looks down on Israeli civilian zones and was twice used by Syria to mount ground invasions into the Jewish state. The Arab plan also demands the imposition of a non-binding U.N. resolution that calls for so-called Palestinian refugees who wish to move inside Israel to be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.Palestinians have long demanded the right of return for millions of refugees,a formula Israeli officials across the political spectrum warn is code for Israel's destruction by flooding the Jewish state with millions of Arabs, thereby changing its demographics.When Arab countries attacked the Jewish state after its creation in 1948, some 725,000 Arabs living within Israel's borders fled or were expelled from the area that became Israel. Also at that time, about 820,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries or fled following rampant persecution.

While most Jewish refugees were absorbed by Israel and other countries, the majority of Palestinian Arabs have been maintained in 59 U.N.-run camps that do not seek to settle the Arabs elsewhere. There are currently about 4 million Arabs who claim Palestinian refugee status with the U.N., including children and grandchildren of the original fleeing Arabs, Arabs living full-time in Jordan and Arabs who long ago emigrated throughout the Middle East and to the West. Abbas, meanwhile, has said he would work to change sections of the plan to better fit Israel's security needs. King Abdullah of Jordan made a similar pledge. Abbas' meeting with Obama comes amid disagreement between the U.S. and Israel over Jewish construction in the strategic West Bank.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had made clear he will press ahead with housing construction in the territory despite a blunt demand from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that all such building stop.WND reported earlier this week the Obama administration wants to abrogate a secret deal that President Bush made to allow Israel to construct homes in previously existing West Bank Jewish communities.The matter is ongoing and is subject to current talks with the U.S. administration,said a source in Netanyahu's office.

Obama presses Israel, Palestinians on West Bank By BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer MAY 28,09

WASHINGTON – Gingerly trying to advance Mideast peace, President Barack Obama on Thursday challenged Israel to stop settlement construction in the West Bank on the same day the Israelis rejected that demand. Obama pushed Palestinians for progress, too, deepening his personal involvement.I am confident that we can move this process forward,Obama said after meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House. The president said that means both sides must meet the obligations that they've already committed to — an element of the peace effort that has proved elusive for years.Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told The Associated Press after the session with Obama that no meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are on the horizon. He said there are no preconditions for such a meeting but obligations on Israel through the so-called road map for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Abbas said he is meeting his commitments under the road map and that Israel should do the same. He cited continued settlement construction as a commitment Israel is not meeting.Earlier in the day, Israel rejected blunt U.S. requests to freeze Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank, a territory that would make up the Palestinian state, along with the Gaza Strip, as part of a broader peace deal.In strong language, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had said Wednesday that Obama wants a halt to all settlement construction, including natural growth.Israel uses that term for new housing and other construction that it says will accommodate the growth of families living in existing settlements.Israeli spokesman Mark Regev responded Thursday by saying some construction would go on.Normal life in those communities must be allowed to continue,he said, noting Israel has already agreed not to build new settlements and to remove some tiny, unauthorized settler outposts. Regev said the fate of the settlements would be determined in peace negotiations with the Palestinians.With that as a backdrop, Obama said part of Israel's obligations include stopping settlements.But he also struck a hopeful tone.

He said he had pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the settlement matter just last week at the White House, and that the Israeli leader needs to work through the issue with his own government.I think it's important not to assume the worst, but to assume the best,Obama said.The president also pushed Palestinians to hold up their end, including increased security in the West Bank to give Israelis confidence in their safety.Obama said he told Abbas the Palestinians must find a way to halt the incitement of anti-Israeli sentiments that are sometimes expressed in schools, mosques and public arenas.All those things are impediments to peace,Obama said.The Palestinian leader said we are fully committed to all of our obligations under the road map. Doing so, Abbas said, is the only way to achieve the durable, comprehensive and just peace that we need and desire in the Middle East.Obama, like predecessor George W. Bush, embraces a multifaceted Mideast peace plan that calls for a Palestinian state alongside Israel.The president refused to set a timetable for such a nation but also noted he has not been slow to get involved in meeting with both sides and pushing the international community for help.We can't continue with the drift, with the increased fear and resentment on both sides, the sense of hopelessness around the situation that we've seen for many years now,Obama said.We need to get this thing back on track.Abbas is working to repackage a 2002 Saudi Arabian plan that called for Israel to give up land it has occupied since the 1967 war in exchange for normalized relations with Arab countries. Abbas gave Obama a document that would keep intact that requirement and also offer a way to monitor a required Israeli freeze on all settlement activity, a timetable for Israeli withdrawal and a realization of a two-state solution.The main purpose of presenting this document to President Obama is to help him in finding a mechanism to implement the Arab peace initiative,Abbas told the AP.

Asked about his impression of the meeting with Obama, Abbas said: It was a serious and open meeting and President Obama seems determined on what he has said to us and to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu about the necessity of implementing the road map, and we have agreed to continue our communications.Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Obama affirmed to Abbas that Israel has an obligation to freeze settlement expansions, including natural growth. The U.S. and much of the world consider the settlements an obstacle to peace because they are built on captured land the Palestinians claim for a future state. But successive U.S. administrations have done little to halt settlement activity. Now more than 120 settlements dot the West Bank, and Palestinian officials say their growth makes it increasingly impossible to realize their dream of independence. More than 280,000 Israelis live in the settlements, in addition to more than 2 million Palestinians in the West Bank. An additional 180,000 Israelis live in east Jerusalem, where the Palestinians hope to establish their capital. Israelis will be anxiously watching Obama's June 4 speech in Cairo, where he will deliver a message to the Muslim world to try to repair relations that frayed badly under the Bush administration. Obama will also visit Saudi Arabia before he goes to Egypt. I want to use the occasion to deliver a broader message about how the United States can change for the better its relationship with the Muslim world,Obama said of his Egypt speech.That will require, I think, a recognition on both the part of the United States as well as many majority Muslim countries about each other, a better sense of understanding, and I think possibilities to achieve common ground.Associated Press writers Steven R. Hurst, Mohammed Daraghmeh, traveling with Abbas, and Amy Teibel in Jerusalem contributed to this story.

DOCTOR DOCTORIAN FROM ANGEL OF GOD
then the angel said, Financial crisis will come to Asia. I will shake the world.

JAMES 5:1-3
1 Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.
3 Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

REVELATION 18:10,17,19
10 Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.
17 For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off,
19 And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.

EZEKIEL 7:19
19 They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed: their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the LORD: they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels: because it is the stumblingblock of their iniquity.

REVELATION 13:16-18
16 And he(FALSE POPE) causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:(CHIP IMPLANT)
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.(6-6-6) A NUMBER SYSTEM

WORLD MARKET RESULTS
http://money.cnn.com/data/world_markets/

HALF HOUR DOW RESULTS FRI MAY 29,2009

09:30 AM +2.54
10:00 AM +24.27
10:30 AM +29.15
11:00 AM +19.75
11:30 AM +1.51
12:00 PM -31.98
12:30 PM -3.03
01:00 PM -14.18
01:30 PM +1.51
02:00 PM +11.07
02:30 PM +10.83
03:00 PM -3.02
03:30 PM +13.03
04:00 PM +96.53 8500.33

S&P 500 919.14 +12.31

NASDAQ 1774.33 +22.54

GOLD 980.30 +17.10

OIL 66.31 +1.23

TSE 300 10,415.54 +23.17

CDNX 1124.08 +18.92

S&P/TSX/60 635.47 +1.28

MORNING,NEWS,STATS

YEAR TO DATE PERFORMANCE
Dow -4.25%
S&P +0.40%
Nasdaq +11.08%
TSX Advances 999,declines 576,unchanged 259,Volume 2,763,658,266.
TSX Venture Exchange Advances 470,Declines 345,Unchanged 376,Volume 267,490,199.

Dow +31 points at 4 minutes of trading today.
Dow +2 points at low today.
Dow +32 points at high today so far.
GOLD opens at $975.90.OIL opens at $66.02 today.

AFTERNOON,NEWS,STATS
Dow -36 points at low today so far.
Dow +59 points at high today so far.

DAY TODAY PERFORMANCE - 12:30PM STATS
NYSE Advances 2,144,declines 1,422,unchanged 104,New Highs 22,New Lows 54.
Volume 2,873,203,791.
NASDAQ Advances 1,321,declines 1,269,unchanged 138,New highs 32,New Lows 14.
Volume 1,004,539,285.
TSX Advances 827,declines 586,unchanged 257,Volume 1,560,262,484.
TSX Venture Exchange Advances 392,Declines 299,Unchanged 319,Volume 193,119,120.

WRAPUP,NEWS,STATS
Dow -36 points at low today.
Dow +118 points at high today.
Dow +1.15% today Volume 361,734,018.
Nasdaq +1.29% today Volume -.
S&P 500 +1.36% today Volume N/A

RECORD LOWS DOW
-Sept 30,1996 5,882.17
-Oct 30,1996 5,993.23
-Nov 6,1996 6,177.71
-Dec 16,1996 6,268.35
-Apr 15,1997 6,587.16
-Apr 21,1997 6,660.21
-Apr 28,1997 6,783.02
-May 1,1997 6,976.48
-May 7,1997 7,085.65

RECORD LOWS S&P 500
-Sept 5,1996 649.44
-Sept 6,1996 655.68
-Sept 11,1996 667.28
-Sept 12,1996 671.13
-Oct 1,1996 689.08
-Oct 28,1996 697.26
-Nov 4,1996 706.73
-Nov 5,1996 714.14
-Dec 17,1996 726.04

YEAR TO DATE PERFORMANCE,WEEKENDER
Dow -3.15%
S&P +1.76%
Nasdaq +12.51%
CANADAS WEEK ENDING STATS
TSX Advances 1,025,Declines 578,Unchanged 241 Volume 2,856,374,953.
TSX Venture Advances 528,Declines 358,Unchanged 381 Volume 365,203,772.

VIDEO IMF REGIONAL ECONOMIC OUTLOOK FOR EUROPE
http://www.imf.org/external/mmedia/view.asp?eventID=1493
VIDEO IMF REGIONAL OUTLOOK IN THE MEDITERREAN UNION
http://www.imf.org/external/mmedia/view.asp?eventID=1489
WERE ARE WWE IN THE GLOBAL CRISES
http://www.imf.org/external/mmedia/view.asp?eventID=1474

GIVE THE OIL ANOTHER MONTH OR 2 AT THE MOST I BELIEVE BEFORE THE PRICES SKYROCKET FOR GOOD SINCE THE BILDERBERGS HAVE KEPT IT LOW TO BANKRUPT THE ARAB COUNTRIES,THEN THEY CAN SKYROCKET THE OIL AND GO FOR THEIR MAIN GOAL THE WATER AND THE CARBON TAX TO BE PAID TO THE EU,IMF OFF SHORE BANKERS WHICH WILL LEAD TO THE 10 REGIONS OF THE WORLD AND EU WORLD CONTROL.

Oil dips below $65 after jump on stocks data By Fayen Wong - MAY 28,09

PERTH (Reuters) – Oil fell below $65 a barrel on Friday but was on track for its largest monthly percentage gain in more than a decade after government data showed a surprisingly sharp drop in U.S. crude inventories and OPEC left output steady.Oil prices have jumped nearly 27 percent this month, buoyed by hopes of a global economic recovery later this year and a bullish price outlook from OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia.

U.S. crude oil for July delivery fell 35 cents to $64.73 a barrel by 0255 GMT. The contract, which has risen about 5 percent this week, settled up 2.6 percent at $65.08 on Thursday, a new six-month high.London Brent crude fell 39 cents to $64.00.Oil lost a bit of ground this morning but it's still trading at very high levels,said David Moore, a commodities analyst at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.The market seems to be focusing strong on the bullish sentiment and the brighter macroeconomic outlook, but it's a little doubtful whether the demand fundamentals can continue to support oil prices at such levels.Japanese industrial production rose 5.2 percent in April on a monthly basis, and the government expected continued gains through June.

Better U.S. durable goods orders out on Thursday also reinforced the sense that the global economic slump might be abating, despite a disappointing U.S. home sales report and lingering concerns over mounting Western government debt.Another bright spot was U.S. crude stocks, which fell by 5.4 million barrels in the week to May 22, the U.S. Energy Administration said, way above analysts' expectations in a Reuters poll for a 700,000 barrel decline, as refiners ramped up output ahead of the summer driving season.Gasoline inventories also dropped for the fifth week in a row as demand rose in the week preceding the Memorial Day holiday, which traditionally marks the start of the summer driving season in the U.S.

OPEC's decision to hold production steady helped prop up prices.

The producer group on Thursday kept its output targets unchanged as the market had expected, betting on a strengthening world economy and tentative signs of increased demand.Analysts said Saudi Arabia's rare forecast this week that oil prices could reach $75 a barrel later this year represented a distinct policy shift from the world's largest oil producer, which has until recently been hinting that it would be happy with a lower price to help the world economy back on its feet.Taken in this light, Saudi's statement clearly represents a policy shift from a priority on the economy to a view that higher prices are not something that Saudi Arabia will stand in the way of,JP Morgan's energy analyst, Lawrence Eagles, said in a note.Investors will be keeping a close watch on economic data due later, including U.S. first-quarter preliminary GDP figures and Reuters/University of Michigan May consumer sentiment.(Editing by Ben Tan)

Manipulation: How Financial Markets Really Work
Stephen Lendman Global Research May 29, 2009

Wall Street’s mantra is that markets move randomly and reflect the collective wisdom of investors. The truth is quite opposite. The government’s visible hand and insiders control markets and manipulate them up or down for profit - all of them, including stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies. Catherine Austin Fitts describes a "financial coup d’etat, including fraudulent housing (and other bubbles), pump and dump schemes, naked short selling, precious metals price suppression, and active intervention in the markets by the government and central bank" along with insiders.

It’s financial fraud or what former high-level Wall Street insider and former Assistant HUD Secretary Catherine Austin Fitts calls pump and dump,defined as artificially inflating the price of a stock or other security through promotion, in order to sell at the inflated price,then profit more on the downside by short-selling. This practice is illegal under securities law, yet it is particularly common,and in today’s volatile markets likely ongoing daily. Why? Because the profits are enormous, in good and bad times, and when carried to extremes like now, Fitts calls it pump(ing) and dump(ing) of the entire American economy,duping the public, fleecing trillions from them, and it’s more than just a process designed to wipe out the middle class. This is genocide (by other means) - a much more subtle and lethal version than ever before perpetrated by the scoundrels of our history texts.Fitts explains that much more than market manipulation goes on. She describes a financial coup d’etat, including fraudulent housing (and other bubbles), pump and dump schemes, naked short selling, precious metals price suppression, and active intervention in the markets by the government and central bank along with insiders. It’s a government-business partnership for enormous profits through legislation, contracts, regulation (or lack of it), financing, (and) subsidies.More still overall by rigging the game for the powerful, while at the same time harming the public so cleverly that few understand what’s happening.

Market Rigging Mechanisms - The Plunge Protection Team

On March 18, 1989, Ronald Reagan’s Executive Order 12631 created the Working Group on Financial Markets (WGFM) commonly known as the Plunge Protection Team (PPT). It consisted of the following officials or their designees:
– the President;
– the Treasury Secretary as chairman;
– the Fed chairman;
– the SEC chairman; and
– the Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman.

Under Sec. 2, its Purposes and Functions were stated as follows:

(2)Recognizing the goals of enhancing the integrity, efficiency, orderliness, and competitiveness of our Nation’s financial markets and maintaining investor confidence, the Working Group shall identify and consider:
(1)the major issues raised by the numerous studies on the events (pertaining to the) October 19, 1987 (market crash and consider) recommendations that have the potential to achieve the goals noted above; and
(2)governmental (and other) actions under existing laws and regulations….that are appropriate to carry out these recommendations.

In August 2005, Canada-based Sprott Asset Management (SAM) principals John Embry and Andrew Hepburn headlined their report on the US government’s surreptitious market interventions: Move Over, Adam Smith - The Visible Hand of Uncle Sam to prevent destabilizing stock market declines. Comprising key government agencies, stock exchanges and large Wall Street firms,this group is significant because the government has never admitted to private-sector membership in the Working Group, nor is it hinting that manipulation works both ways - to stop or create panic. Current mythology holds that (equity) prices rise and fall on the basis of market forces alone. Such sentiments appear to be seriously mistaken….And as official rhetoric continues to toe the free market line, manipulation has become increasingly apparent….with the active participation of selected investment banks and brokerage houses - the Wall Street giants. In 2004, Texas Hedge Report principals Steven McIntyre and Todd Stein said Almost every floor trader on the NYSE, NYMEX, CBOT and CME will admit to having seen the PPT in action in one form or another over the years - violating the traditional notion that markets move randomly and reflect popular sentiment. Worse still, according to SAM principals Embry and Hepburn,the government’s unwillingness to disclose its activities has rendered it very difficult to have a debate on the merits of such a policy,if there are any. Further, virtually no one ever mentions government intervention publicly….Our primary concern is that what apparently started as a stopgap measure may have morphed into a serious moral hazard situation.Worst of all, if government and Wall Street collude to pump and dump markets, individuals and small investment firms can get trampled, and that’s exactly what happened in late 2008 and early 2009, with much more to come as the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression plays out over many more months. That said, the PPT might more aptly be called the PPDT - The Plunge Protection/Destruction Team, depending on which way it moves markets at any time. Investors beware.

Manipulating markets is commonplace and as old as investing. Only the tools are more sophisticated and amounts involved greater. In her book, Morgan: American Financier, Jean Strouse explained his role in the Panic of 1907, the result of stock market and real estate speculation that caused a market crash, bank runs, and hysteria. To restore confidence, JP Morgan and the Treasury Secretary organized a group of financiers to transfer funds to troubled banks and buy stocks. At the time, rumors were rampant that they orchestrated the panic for speculative profits and their main goals:

– the 1908 National Monetary Commission to stabilize financial markets as a precursor to the Federal Reserve; and
– the 1910 Jekyll Island meeting where powerful financial figures met in secret for nine days and created the private banking cartel Federal Reserve System, later congressionally established on December 23, 1913 and signed into law by Woodrow Wilson. Morgan died early that year but profited hugely from the 1907 Panic. It let him expand his steel empire by buying the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company for about $45 million, an asset thought to be worth around $700 million. Today, similar schemes are more than ever common in the wake of the global economic crisis creating opportunities to buy assets cheap by bankers flush with bailout cash. Aided by PPT market rigging, it’s simpler than ever. Wharton Professor Itay Goldstein and Said Business School and Lincoln College, Oxford University Professor Alexander Guembel discussed price manipulation in their paper titled Manipulation and the Allocational Role of Prices.They showed how traders effect prices on the downside through bear raids,and concluded:We basically describe a theory of how bear raid manipulation works….What we show here is that by selling (a stock or more effectively short-selling it), you have a real effect on the firm. The connection with real value is the new thing….This is the crucial element,but they claim the process only works on the downside, not driving shares up. In fact, high-volume program trading, analyst recommendations, positive or negative media reports, and other devices do it both ways.Also key is that a company’s stock price and true worth can be highly divergent. In other words, healthy or sick firms may be way-over or under-valued depending on market and economic conditions and how manipulative traders wish to price them, short or longer term.The idea that equity prices reflect true value or that markets move randomly (up or down) is rubbish. They never have and more than ever don’t now.

The Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF)

The 1934 Gold Reserve Act created the US Treasury’s ESF. Section 7 of the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreements made its operations permanent. As originally established, the Treasury ran the Fund outside of congressional oversight to keep sharp swings in the dollar’s exchange rate from (disrupting) financial markets through manipulation. Its operations now include stabilizing foreign currencies, extending credit lines to foreign governments, and last September to guaranteeing money market funds against losses for up to $50 billion. In 1995, the Clinton administration used the fund to provide Mexico a $20 billion credit line to stabilize the peso at a time of economic crisis, and earlier administrations extended loans or credit lines to China, Brazil, Ecuador, Iceland and Liberia. The Treasury’s web site also states that: By law, the Secretary has considerable discretion in the use of ESF resources. The legal basis of the ESF is the Gold Reserve Act of 1934. As amended in the late 1970s….the Secretary (per) approval of the President, may deal in gold, foreign exchange, and other instruments of credit and securities.In other words, ESF is a slush fund for whatever purposes the Treasury wishes, including ones it may not wish to disclose, such as manipulating markets, directing funds to the IMF and providing them with strings to borrowers as the Treasury’s site explains: Treasury has often linked the availability of ESF financing to a borrower’s use of the credit facilities of the IMF, both to support the IMF’s role and to strengthen assurances that there will be timely repayment of ESF financing.

The Counterparty Risk Management Policy Group (CRMPG)

Established in 1999 in the wake of the Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) crisis, it manipulates markets to benefit giant Wall Street firms and high-level insiders. According to one account, it was to curb future crises by:
– letting giant financial institutions collude through large-scale program trading to move markets up or down as they wish;
– bailing out its members in financial trouble; and
– manipulating markets short or longer-term with government approval at the expense of small investors none the wiser and often getting trampled.

In August 2008, CRMPG III issued a report titled Containing Systemic Risk: The Road to Reform.It was deceptive on its face in stating that CRMPG was designed to focus its primary attention on the steps that must be taken by the private sector to reduce the frequency and/or severity of future financial shocks while recognizing that such future shocks are inevitable, in part because it is literally impossible to anticipate the specific timing and triggers of such events.In fact, the private sector creates financial shocks to open markets, remove competition, and consolidate for greater power by buying damaged assets cheap. Financial history has numerous examples of preying on the weak, crushing competition, socializing risks, privatizing profits, redistributing wealth upward to a financial oligarchy, creating tollbooth economies in debt bondage according to Michael Hudson, and overall getting a free lunch at the public’s expense.

CRMPG explains financial excesses and crises this way: At the end of the day, (their) root cause….on both the upside and the downside of the cycle is collective human behavior: unbridled optimism on the upside and fear on the downside, all in a setting in which it is literally impossible to anticipate when optimism gives rise to fear or fear gives rise to optimism….What is needed, therefore, is a form of private initiative that will complement official oversight in encouraging industry-wide practices that will help mitigate systemic risk. The recommendations of the Report have been framed with that objective in mind.In other words, let foxes guard the henhouse to keep inventing new ways to extract gains (a free lunch) in increasingly larger amounts - in the interest of helping to contain systemic risk factors and promote greater stability.Or as Orwell might have said: instability is stability, creating systemic risk is containing it, sloping playing fields are level ones, extracting the greatest profit is sharing it, and what benefits the few helps everyone.Michel Chossudovsky explains that: triggering market collapse(s) can be a very profitable undertaking. (Evidence suggests) that the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulators have created an environment which supports speculative transactions (through) futures, options, index funds, derivative securities (and short-selling), etc. (that) make money when the stock market crumbles….foreknowledge and inside information (create golden profit opportunities for) powerful speculators able to move markets up or down with the public none the wiser. As a result, concentrated wealth and financial power resulting from market manipulation is unprecedented with small investors’ savings, IRAs, pensions, 401ks, and futures being decimated from it.

Deconstructing So-Called Green Shoots

Daily the corporate media trumpet them to lull the unwary into believing the global economic crisis is ebbing and recovery is on the way. Not according to longtime market analyst Bob Chapman who calls green shoots Poison Ivy and economist Nouriel Roubini saying they’re yellow weeds at a time there’s lots more pain ahead. For many months and in a recent commentary he refers to the worst financial crisis, economic crisis and recession since the Great Depression….the consensus is now becoming optimistic again and says that we are going to go from minus 6 percent growth to positive growth in the second half of the year….my views are much more bearish….The problems of the financial system are severe. Many banks are still insolvent.We’re piling public debt on top of private debt to socialize the losses; and at some point the back of (the) government(’s) balance sheet is going to break, and if that happens, it’s going to be a disaster.Short of that, he, Chapman, and others see the risks going forward as daunting. As for the recent stock market rise, they both call it a sucker’s rally that will reverse as the US economy keeps contracting and the financial system suffers unexpected or manipulated shocks. Highly respected market analyst Louise Yamada agrees. As Randall Forsyth reported in the May 25 issue of Barron’s Up and Down Wall Street column: It is almost uncanny the degree to which 2002-08 has tracked 1932-38, Yamada writes in her latest note to clients.Her Alternate Hypothesis compares this structural bear market to 1929-42:
– the dot-com collapse parallels the Great Crash and its aftermath,followed by the 2003-07 recovery, similar to 1933-37;
– then the late 2008 - early March 2009 collapse tracks a similar 1937-38 trajectory, after which a strong rally followed much like today;
– then in November 1938, the market dropped 22% followed by a 26% rise and a series of further ups and downs - down 28%, up 23%, down 16%, up 13%, and a final 29% decline ending in 1942;
– from the 1938 high (analogous to where we are now,she says), stock prices fell 41% to a final bottom.

Are we at one today as market touts claim? No according to Yamada - top-ranked among her peers in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004 when she worked at Citigroup’s Smith Barney division. Since 2005, she’s headed her own independent research company. She says structural bear markets typically last 13 - 16 years so this one has a long way to go before complet(ing) the repair process. She calls the current rebound a bungee jump, very typical of bear markets. Numerous ones occurred during the Great Depression, 8 alone from 1929 - 1932, some deceptively strong. Expect market manipulators today to produce similar price action going forward - to enrich themselves while trampling on the unwary, well-advised to protect their dollars from becoming quarters or dimes.

Germany to hold further talks on Opel takeover MAY 28,09

BERLIN (AFP) – German officials were to hold further talks Friday to try to clinch a rescue deal for General Motors' Opel unit ahead of an expected bankruptcy filing, even after talks with Washington broke down in acrimony.Chancellor Angela Merkel was expected to hold further negotiations in the afternoon with the US government, GM and the two bidders still in the race to snap up a stake in Opel: Italian car giant Fiat and Canadian auto parts maker Magna.German officials remained confident of reaching a deal despite the marathon talks, aimed at finding a suitable buyer for Opel and a financing structure for temporary loans from the German government, stalling when the US side suddenly upped their demand for loans by 300 million euros (416 million dollars).I am very confident that a deal can be reached, said Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Thursday, adding that he would call his US counterpart, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to discuss the issue.Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck also said he was sure that a solution could be found to secure GM's European operations and tens of thousands of jobs across Europe.But the surprise US move prompted furious reactions, with Steinbrueck slamming the US negotiating tactics as scandalous and Economy Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg saying the talks were at times absurd.Opel's powerful works council described the breakdown in talks as a bitter setback and accused GM of treating Opel as a chip in the poker game of their own insolvency.The United States rebuffed the charges. We believe it was a constructive dialogue,a US government official told reporters by telephone in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity.We would strongly resist the notion that the US government was either uninterested... or trying to make any last-minute math. None of that is true.The negotiators are racing against a June 1 deadline set by US President Barack Obama's administration for General Motors to come up with a rescue plan or be forced into bankruptcy like Chrysler before it.In a key development on Wednesday, GM transferred assets and patents to Opel in a bid to keep them safe in the event of a GM bankruptcy.And in a dramatic 11th-hour move on Thursday, a proposed bankruptcy reorganisation plan was unveiled, which would give the US government a 72.5percent stake in GM, a regulatory filing showed.

Fiat and Magna remained in the race after a third bidder, Brussels-based investment firm RHJ International, pulled out during the talks.Magna's offer, backed by Russia's state-owned bank Sberbank, is still seen as the front runner, with unions and centre-left Social Democrat members of the governing coalition backing it.For its part, Fiat wants to combine General Motors' European and Latin American operations with Chrysler, in which it has secured a 20-percent stake, to create the world's second largest automaker after Japan's Toyota.Chancellor Angela Merkel is under pressure from all sides to find a way to break the deadlock, with some 25,000 German jobs at stake just four months before a national election.GM employs 55,000 people Europe-wide, including around 7,000 in Spain, 4,700 in Britain at Vauxhall, 4,000 in Sweden at Saab, 3,600 in Poland, 2,600 in Belgium and 1,800 in Italy.Although the final decision on the fate of GM's European operations lies with Detroit and Washington, Germany has a key role to play as it will provide billions of euros in loan guarantees to a suitable bidder.Analyst Christoph Stuermer from Global Insight said he was confident a deal would be thrashed out on Friday and added Fiat would have to match an offer by Magna to provide the missing 300 million euros.

SELECTIVE QUESTIONS TO Transcript of a Press Briefing by Caroline Atkinson, Director, External Relations, International Monetary Fund Washington, D.C.Thursday, May 21, 2009

QUESTION: Could you update us on the latest state of play with the IMF bond issue? What do we know about the details? And will there be a secondary market?

MS. ATKINSON: As you know, a number of countries indicated, and China I think was one at the time of the Spring Meetings, and maybe even before, that they were interested in investing if you like or providing financing to the Fund in line with G-20 commitments in the form of bonds, using bonds as a vehicle. We do have the legal authority to issue SDR-denominated bonds. The Executive Board has been briefed on that possibility. And at the moment we are discussing and we're in quite intensive discussions with different creditors about the best ways to implement this legal possibility and framework and how much they would be in place. But until we have specific firm commitments, as soon as we have specific firm commitments and details nailed down, we will of course let you know, but until then we won't go into more specifics now.

QUESTION: As everyone knows, there is a crucial debate in Washington, taking place at the U.S. Congress, for the IMF's future. I know the IMF will not comment on domestic policies, but aren't you afraid of any consequences it might have if the Congress were not to pass this legislation?

MS. ATKINSON: As you know, the U.S. authorities have requested Congress to pass the legislation. I believe that they're working hard to win approval of the legislation, and so we look forward to that outcome. I think there has been some significant progress, but of course it's essential that the U.S. should support it, but I think we also note that there have been strong efforts. The President has written a letter to Congress and so on.

QUESTION: As a follow-up to that, the U.S. pledged about $100 billion for the IMF during the G-20 meeting. If this money doesn't come through, is there concern that that would be a hindrance, or it would make it difficult for other countries then to follow through on their pledges if there's already going to be this $100 billion gap?

MS. ATKINSON: That's a hypothetical question. As I say, we are looking forward to there being progress and certainly observe that the U.S. authorities are pressing strongly for there to be such progress. I'm not going to go further than that.

QUESTION: Is there a timeline for this money? Is there a timeline for the IMF to get these commitments and get firm commitments and get the money in this account? The second question is since the IMF meetings, what are the main priorities now for the Fund to get done considering what the G-20 agreed and just generally expanding its role?

MS. ATKINSON: On the first, first of all, we have $100 billion loan from Japan that is already in place and we also have a number of other commitments. We have another $100 billion commitment from the European Union countries, we have commitments from Norway and from Canada. Korea has said that they plan to contribute at least $10 billion to the NAB, Australia also [US$7 billion], and Switzerland. So there are a number of commitments apart from the $100 billion or so from the U.S.As you also know, the NAB, the vehicle that the U.S. would plan to use, would provide for backstop financing. And we are hopeful that this money will be coming in place, I'm not saying anything different now from what the Managing Director has said, in coming months. It's important to get the money in order to provide security and confidence to markets, but also to be sure that we can fund the requests that we've had. But we are in a position now where we're able to fund obviously the commitments that we have, so it's important to keep going. We're not about to run out of money now.On your second question, there is a whole range, and I think the last time I was here I'd spoken about the pretty full agenda that we have following the Spring Meetings. Obviously the NAB financing is one element. The NAB participants met and they are planning to meet again. Once they've agreed to expand the NAB, that is something that the Board would take up. There are all of the matters involving the gold sales and quota reform and everything that is in various stages of approval. In countries there's the bond issue that we're looking at. We're continuing to do a lot of intensive work on low-income countries. And of course we're discussing with many countries in these difficult economic times in our normal Article IV, in financial stability assessment missions and in our program and lending missions. So there's sort of a lot going on.

QUESTION: Just one more, a follow-up from the bond question. You said that not much more progress can be made until there are firm commitments. Were you referring to countries needing to make firm commitments to want to participate in the purchase of these bonds or is it creditors committing to this process?

MS. ATKINSON: I'm sorry. That sounds as if I gave a misleading answer. There's lots of work and lots of progress going on. The kind of work that's going on is discussions at the moment that we are having with different creditors and different creditor countries about the nature of the bonds that they would find appropriate to provide their financing. And we will make an announcement once we have specific information on that, but there is progress going on all the time.

QUESTION: I just want to double-check. How many countries have expressed interest in the bond? We've seen Brazil, Russia, China, India. Are there half a dozen or a dozen? Is there any way you can just give us an idea?

MS. ATKINSON: I don't know. You mentioned countries. There have been a number of countries that have expressed interest and of course others that may be watching and haven't yet expressed interest but we think will. And we expect there to be a significant amount of take-up in interest and that may be in particular a way that -- some of the G-20 countries that aren't part of the NAB, for example, have indicated that they might be interested in joining the NAB. Maybe they'd be wanting to do that through bonds rather than loans. We'd be very flexible on that within, obviously, our rules, but we are able to issue these bonds. So I think there will be fairly widespread interest in doing that.

QUESTION: The IMF staff said recently that it's possible for Ukraine to ask for additional money from the IMF. Is this a new program or an extension of the current one?

MS. ATKINSON: I believe the Mission Chief has announced that the mission will look at financing needs during the second review. We have just completed the first review. That was in early May. And then there will be a second review coming up after that where we will look at everything as usual.Thank you all very much.

Britons increasingly Eurosceptic: poll Thu May 28, 5:41 pm ET

LONDON (AFP) – British voters are increasingly opposed to the European Union, a poll for the Economist weekly revealed Thursday, just days before elections for the European Parliament.The poll commissioned by YouGov shows that over the past 25 years, the proportion of people who think that Britain's membership of the EU is a good thing has fallen from 43 percent to 31 percent.The share of respondents who think the EU is a bad thing has risen from 30 percent to 37 percent.And while the bloc has expanded eastwards to boost its membership to 27 states, British voters have become more and more reluctant to support greater integration. Just one in five backs the idea now compared to one in three in 1995.The poll shows 33 percent want a less integrated Europe with the EU amounting to little more than a free trade area.And the number of people who want Britain to pull out of the EU has almost doubled, from 12 percent to 21 percent.A total of 2,322 adults in Britain were questioned between May 22 and May 26.Many observers believe Britons will opt for fringe parties in the elections to lodge a protest vote against the main parties, whose lawmakers have been embarrassed by damaging revelations about their expenses.

In the June 4-7 elections, an estimated 375 million voters across the EU will elect 736 deputies for a five-year term at the parliament, which is the only directly-elected EU institution.The parliament, which has an important role passing pan-European legislation drafted by the EU Commission and passes the commission's annual budget, is expected to remain under centre-right control after the elections.

Irish EU vote seen as litmus test by Loic Vennin – MAY 28,09

DUBLIN (AFP) – Recession-racked Ireland faces a test of its support for the European Union (EU) in next week's Euro elections, ahead of a crunch referendum on the EU's beleaguered reform treaty.The former Celtic Tiger's EU partners will be watching closely as embattled Prime Minister Brian Cowen seeks to convince his countrymen that they need the EU more than ever as the downturn hits hard.Ireland's voters plunged the 27-nation bloc into limbo when 53.4 percent of them rejected the Lisbon treaty in a referendum here in June 2008.After obtaining a series of guarantees, including on retaining a European commissioner for Ireland, Dublin has agreed to organise a new vote, likely in October -- and it is a vote Cowen's government cannot afford to lose.

Irish voters will join an estimated 375 million voters across the 27-nation EU when on June 5 they elect 736 members of the European Parliament, the only directly-elected EU institution which as one of its functions passes the EU Commission's budget.The campaigns for and against the Lisbon treaty will not start until after that poll -- but the referendum is already on everybody's lips.A second no result would be damaging to our international reputation and our economic prospects, warned foreign minister Micheal Martin last week, welcoming signs of growing support for the treaty.A poll published in mid-May found 52 percent of voters back Lisbon compared to 29 percent against it.Analysts have attributed this change to the deep recession, predicted by the country's leading think tank to be the worst in any industrialised country since the 1930s.Looking to the referendum, Martin said: If ever there was a time for Ireland to unequivocally confirm our commitment to the European Union, this is that time.Our future wellbeing requires that we copper-fasten our position at the heart of the European Union,he added, noting the European Central Bank has made remarkable amounts of liquidity available to Ireland's financial system.

But although the economic crisis may have strengthened support for Europe and the treaty, it has severely dented the government's popularity.While Ireland's neighbours have tried to boost growth through fiscal stimulus, Dublin has imposed austerity budgets including higher taxes and a cut in social spending -- sparking a equally tough response from voters.A poll for the Irish Times two weeks showed support for Cowen's ruling coalition had plunged to 10 percent, the lowest since the survey began in 1982.A political earthquake is offing,the Times said, predicting a triple defeat next month in the European elections, and the local elections and two Dublin by-elections that take place on the same day.In the by-elections, Cowen's centrist Fianna Fail party is expected to come in a humiliating third place, a result that would not threaten the government's comfortable majority but would seriously damage its credibility.It would be the party's worst result since 1922, said the Irish Examiner, and would lead to suggestions that the government doesn't have the people's mandate, according to the Sunday Business Post.The opposition Fine Gael party has already said it will table a motion of no confidence against Cowen's government if the defeat is as bloody as predicted. The government will continue,Cowen has insisted, rejecting calls to bring forward general elections which are not due until 2012.Analysts say Cowen's government is likely to survive, at least in the short-term -- but they are unsure if it could take another hit in the event of voters rejecting the Lisbon treaty for a second time.

Socialists list terrible potential MEPs
HONOR MAHONY 28.05.2009 @ 17:28 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - In a provocative move ahead of next week's EU vote, the Party of European Socialists have listed a selection of terrible European election candidates from other political parties.The list, published on Thursday (28 May), contains eight nominees from the centre-right European people's party, one from the liberal group, a Dutch politician and the head of the far-right British National Party, Nick Griffin.A twelfth space has been left for the Dear Reader to fill in.

There seems to be no fixed criteria for appearing on the list, and the reasons given differ in length, content and seriousness.Mr Griffin, on the list due to his having been convicted for incitement to racial hatred and Holocaust denial, appears alongside Romania's Monica Macovei, a former minister of justice, who is down for being a perpetual critic of the justice reform pace in Romania and being a controversial person.Centre-right Czech MEP Hynek Fajmon is listed for having voted against the European Parliament's report on future EU policy on climate change. He is quoted as saying The earth's climate has changed, is changing and will change regardless of whether or not we want it to.Meanwhile, Peter Stastny, a Slovak centre-right MEP and former ice hockey player, makes an appearance for initiating a monitoring group for Slovakia in the European People's Party which gave the impression that Slovakia lacks a democratic system of government and does not respect human and citizen rights.Three quotes form the backbone of Polish centre-right politician Marian Krzalewski's inclusion, including: The [Polish] constitution is worse than the Soviet invasion.French social affairs minister Brice Hortefeux, running for the centre-right European People's Party, is listed for calling immigrants neither honest or clean, while Estonia's Igor Gräzin's sin was signing up to establish anti-treaty movement Libertas as a group as well as apparently making comments against the Finnish.I know many nice Finns and some of them are even politicians. I truly love to be with them in a sauna or a forest ranger's home. But when it comes to policies, I have always a feeling that it is better to look over your shoulder, all the time,he is quoted as saying by the document.Meanwhile, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who heads the list for his centre-right party in all five electoral regions but has no intention of actually becoming an MEP is criticised for having been put on trial at least six times over financial matters and for his control over the media.

Nothing positive

The blurb at the beginning of the small pamphlet says the PES is not criticising the candidates but their views.It says the people listed will contribute nothing positive to the European Parliament.PES spokesperson Julian Scola told EUobserver there was no specific criteria for inclusion. This is just a selection of candidates. Some of the views are offensive and some may be considered absurd.We're hoping to spark an interest in the European allies of some of the parties that people may or may not vote for.He said the party was not comparing the politicians to one another and there's no attempt to link them whatsoever.However, the move may prove controversial and raise questions about who was included on the list and why. Putting Ms Macovei on the list, for example, could give a boost to the head of Romania's Socialist delegation, Adrian Severin, who has for a long time tried to discredit her in Europe.

For its part, the EPP dismissed the move as an attention-grabbing stunt.Instead of debating the serious issues that European citizens are concerned with, the PES has resorted to cheap populism,said the head of the EPP, Wilfried Martens.The centre-right has been predicted to hold on to majority in the parliament after the 4-7 June elections, while the Socialists are expected to maintain their place as second biggest faction in the EU assembly.