Wow a new thread and no one seems to be posting on the old one.

DEANS R FIRST!!!

I second that.

Great job in California as usual.

Something carrying on from the last thread...this is a great mix by a Missourian of FCC Commissioner Adelstein http://richardshow.org/show/2007/01/14/commisioner-adelstein-rocks/

pass it along...it and he...is great.

Bill 

last part of that URL is

-rocks/

Bill 

Hi Bill.

Here's your link.  :-)  Åre you using plain or rich text?  If you tell me which, I can tell you how to make links. 

http://richardshow.org/show/ 

guess what? i went to the east bay 4 democracy meet-up tonight. i haven't been to one in a while now, but decided to start (re)networking due to the election on sunday.

seems, there's lots of planning afoot in regard to the coming peace march on jan 27. there will, of course, be a sister march in SF. the plan is to get all of the DFA, dem, and union groups in our area to meet on the corner of market and powell at 11:30 am and then march as a group. build ties and all that.

then it dawned on me, why not advocate the same here on the blog? where ever you are, you could reach out to the groups in your area, not just DFA, and have your own peace march-get the h*ll out of iraq event. the activity is simply to call the leadership in the various groups; contact your own group; make banners/signs as is necessary; and go do it. not that much of a commitment if you ask me.

so, think about it. it would be fun, beneficial, and strengthen local ties!!!

http://ofmontreal.net/

ok, that was a test.

cool new music from "of montreal." when you get there, click news, then click listen and their entire new record will play for you. enjoy.

i'll be seeing them at the great american music hall on 2-2-07.

Really cute picture of Howard Dean and Deval Patrick et al at the MLK remembrance in Boston.   It is funny....leaning left.   There is a serious picture as well.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/946

Good Morning all.

I don't know if anyone has heard but Jane Hamshire over at FiredogLake is about to undergo major surgery. There is a great outpouring of affection going on over there and I though perhaps you all would stop over there and share your compassion . I know it helped when I was down last year.

 Digital LSD

Great threads since yesterday am ... the only problem is that I've used up nearly all my blog time this am in catching up.

puddle!!!  &hearts !!! (too bad that doesn't seem to work here anymore) how nice for you!

& mprov ... if you're still around, congrats in real time!

Hey Subway, sorry to hear the news about Jane.  Thanks for the tip.

One good thing while I was in the States was that I got to see the documentary "Blog Wars" ... great fun by the way ... and Jane was prominently featured there. 

The trial of Scooter Libby may bring Cheney out from his perennial undisclosed location.

This article sums up what I think of The Prick. 

=============

Dick Cheney worked in the White House of Richard Nixon, who had to resign as Congress began impeachment proceedings that grew out of his dishonest and disreputable stewardship of the presidency.

Dick Cheney worked with the White House of Ronald Reagan, which was investigated by Congress and the courts for establishing - and then lying about - a secret plan to violate the law by directing resources to its Iran-Contra co-conspirators in the Middle East and Latin America.

Dick Cheney worked in the White House of George Herbert Walker Bush, who pardoned former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, Robert C. McFarlane, Elliott Abrams and others who had been indicted - and in some cases convicted - by Iran-Contra prosecutors.

Dick Cheney left the public sector to work in the corporate sector, where he established close alliances with the executives of Enron and hired the Arthur Andersen accounting firm to manage Halliburton's books.

[...]

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0116-27.htm

Well, if I had to choose which figures to believe, they would not be those of the so-called Iraqi government.

===========

The UN said yesterday that the civilian death toll in Iraq last year was 34,452 - much higher than previous estimates - as an explosion outside a Baghdad university killed a further 65 people. The bomb at al-Mustansiriya university went off as students were queuing for minivans to take them home at the end of their day's study. About 138 were wounded.

Within an hour, gunmen opened fire in a mainly Shia neighbourhood, killing 11 people and wounding five. The attacks came after 109 bodies were found overnight in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq. Four US soldiers were also killed yesterday by a roadside bomb in the northwest of the country.

The UN report put the death toll for last year much higher than the 12,357 figure released earlier this month by Iraq's interior ministry and the 22,950 reported by the Washington Post last week apparently based on Iraqi health ministry statistics.

The Iraqi government is reluctant to release figures partly from embarrassment and partly because it claims they feed the sectarian violence. It has accused the UN of exaggeration in the past.

[...]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329687673-103550,00.html

I doubt that I would have made it into the jury selection ... .

==============

· Vice-president's aide in dock over CIA leak inquiry
· Judge seeks jurors' views on Bush administration

The biggest US political court case for decades opened in Washington yesterday when Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former chief of staff to vice-president Dick Cheney, went on trial for perjury.

The trial in the district court, expected to last about six weeks, will focus on whether he lied over a CIA leak scandal. But it will examine more broadly the events that led the Bush administration to invade Iraq in 2003.

In a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans nine to one, the opening day was dominated by jury selection, with Mr Libby's lawyers trying to find jurors sympathetic to the Bush administration and the decision to go to war.

Witnesses will include Mr Cheney, making it the first time a vice-president has testified in a criminal court.

Judge Reggie Walton asked a panel of about 60 potential jurors: "Do any of you have feelings or opinions about the Bush administration or any of its policies or actions, whether positive or negative, that might affect your ability to give a former member of the Bush administration a fair trial?

"Do any of you have any feelings or opinions about vice-president Cheney, whether positive or negative, that might affect your ability to be fair in this case or that might affect your ability to fairly judge vice-president Cheney's believability?"

The trial relates to events starting in 2003 when President George Bush, in his state of the union address two months before the invasion of Iraq, said: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

[...]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329687631-110878,00.html

mprov, I just got Gilles Vigneault in the mail today, haven't even listened yet.  Waiting for my company. . . .

I'm just watching these early antics in a bemused fashion from here ... I voted for Gore in the Kos poll (although I had a strong personal inclination to go for Howard, I didn't want to dissipate the Gore support and Howard is doing an excellent job for us all with the DNC right now).

I like the vision and optimism Obama expresses.  But I haven't seen the kinds of firm stands I would have liked and if he really believes that he can offer an escape from the "dirty world of politics" with rhetoric only, then he has his eyes wide shut. 

============

· Frontrunner Clinton faces strong challenge
· Candidate says he is surprised by rapid rise

Senator Barack Obama, the rising young star of the Democratic party, took his first step into the 2008 presidential contest yesterday, raising the temperature in an already heated race.

Mr Obama's video address on his campaign website was merely a dress rehearsal: the announcement of an exploratory committee to raise funds and build a campaign team. He is to make an official announcement of his candidacy in his home town of Chicago on February 10.

But the sheer possibility of an African-American president, and Mr Obama's electrifying effect on Democratic voters, assured yesterday's announcement widespread attention.

Mr Obama, 45, and a senator for only two years, was candid about his rapid rise. Vaulted to the national stage by his keynote address to the Democratic party convention in 2004, in recent weeks Mr Obama has been elevated to the ranks of superstardom, thrilling audiences in New Hampshire and on a visit to Kenya in a celebrity that seems to have taken even him by surprise. "I certainly didn't expect to find myself in this position a year ago," he admitted yesterday.

In his video address, Mr Obama casts himself as someone untainted by the rough and tumble of politics in Washington, or by the culture wars that have obsessed the baby boomer generation. "It's not the magnitude of our problems that concerns me the most. It's the smallness of our politics."

Instead, he says he offers an escape from the dirty world of politics, and the prospect of reform.

[...]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329687674-110878,00.html

It's interesting what can happen in the ME when the US is not even involved.  Of course, Condi will not be happy about this and she and putz will probably manage to screw it up entirely because it clearly does not fit in with their plans.

============

Secret negotiations over two years between Israelis and Syrians produced an outline of a possible peace agreement, an Israeli newspaper reported yesterday.

The talks, helped by an unnamed European mediator, ended in July last year after the war in Lebanon erupted. Yesterday both the Israeli and Syrian governments denied any knowledge of the discussions. The Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, who was in Seoul yesterday, described it only as "an unofficial thing".

The left-leaning Ha'aretz newspaper said the negotiations had produced an unsigned, informal "non-paper" under which Israel would withdraw from the Golan Heights and return to the June 1967 border. A large "peace park" would be established on part of the Golan to which both Israelis and Syrians would have access. Once all commitments had been met a full peace agreement would follow.

Israel captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 six day war with Syria and effectively annexed the territory in 1981. Around 16,000 Israelis have settled there.

Ha'aretz said the meetings, held in Europe, began in September 2004 initiated by the Syrians. They involved Alon Liel, a former director general of Israel's foreign ministry, Geoffrey Aronson of the Foundation for Middle East Peace in Washington, and Ibrahim Suleiman, a Syrian businessman living in Washington who is from the same Alawite sect as the Syrian president, Bashar Assad. The group met at least seven times in a European capital, together with a European mediator and sometimes two other Israelis.

[...]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329687629-103552,00.html

When winter finally decides to come, it comes with a vengeance that will have consequences for many.  Hope that mainefem stays warm!

============

Three nights of freezing temperatures have destroyed up to three-quarters of California's $1bn citrus crop, as a storm continued to batter the US, bringing down power lines, making roads treacherous and leaving 41 dead.

"This is one of those freezes that, unfortunately, we'll all remember," said AG Kawamura, the California state food and agriculture secretary, adding that damage had been spread across the state in places usually immune to freezes.

The latest freeze is likely to surpass the damage done by a three-day cold snap in December 1998 that destroyed 85% of California's citrus crop, a loss valued then at $700m (£360m), he said.

Growers are also reporting damage to avocados, strawberries and blueberries.

Citrus growers have already lost up to 75% of their crops, said Philip LoBue, a farmer and chairman of California Citrus Mutual, a 2,000-member trade group. "When you're already cutting ice within the oranges, you know those are gone."

About 145,000 people in New York state and New Hampshire were left without power on Monday after an icy storm but the heaviest snowfalls were predicted for Maine.

[...]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329687654-110878,00.html

Instead, he says he offers an escape from the dirty world of politics, and the prospect of reform.

Yeah.  Right.

No, putz and his policies have not made the US or anywhere else in the world safer ... to the contrary.

==============

Five years of international headlines tell of growing turmoil in the Middle East, international terrorism in Western capitals and more countries seeking the ultimate national security insurance policy.

Now climate change and oil insecurity is driving countries to seek nuclear power, bringing with it new dangers of proliferation in volatile parts of the globe.

Today the Doomsday Clock, devised by the Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947 at the dawn of the nuclear age, will make official what most thinking citizens feel in their bones - that the world has edged closer to nuclear Armageddon than at any time since the most precarious moments of the Cold War in the early 1980s.

At 2.30pm, simultaneous events will take place in London and Washington at which the symbolic clock will be moved forward from its present seven minutes to midnight, where it has stood since 2002. The reasons for the time being advanced five years ago were crumbling arms control treaties and a terrorist threat brought into shattering relief by 9/11.

At the start of 2007, not only is the picture darker on both those scores. The nuclear threat has also acquired an added and unquantifiable dimension, thanks to global warming - prompting the Bulletin to warn of a "Second Nuclear Age". The existing dangers could not be more obvious: the problem is where to start. What about Iran's quest for nuclear weapons, and the thinly veiled warnings from the undeclared but assumed nuclear power Israel that it will strike first to remove what it sees as an existentialist threat comparable to the Holocaust?

[...]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article2160081.ece

Sorry for the steady stream of posts ... didn't mean to scare people off, but my time is limited, unfortunately.

And it's "that" time, now.

Take care, all!  I look forward to catching up again.

Judy, your posts are always great and appreciated.  Thank you!

ok. i had to go empty my downloads account at emusic.com

thanks, judy.

puddles, i hadn't heard of him, but just googled, and he looks like an interesting character. i'll look for records.

Hi, Barb!  Thanks for your comment on baby. . . .  ♥

He came highly recommended

Vigneault, Gilles. Singer-songwriter, poet, publisher, b Natashquan, North Shore of the St Lawrence River, Que, 27 Oct 1928; BA (Laval) 1950, L LITT (Laval) 1953, honorary D LITT (Trent) 1975, honorary doctorate (University of Quebec at Rimouski) 1979, honorary doctorate (Montreal) 1981, honorary D LITT (York) 1985, honorary D LITT (UQAM) 2004. While completing his general education in Rimouski and Quebec City Vigneault held various jobs such as library assistant, publicist, and archivist. He taught at the Valcartier military base 1954-6, taught algebra and French 1957-61 at the Institut de technologie in Quebec City, and gave summer classes in 1960 and 1961 at Laval University. He was a writer and host 1960-2 for CBC radio and TV in Quebec City.

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/i...

I am most happy for you puddle.  you deserve love in your life.

One of nine 'Millennium plot' convictions overturned

(01-16) 13:18 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal appeals court overturned one of the nine criminal convictions today of an Algerian who tried to smuggle explosives from Canada into the United States and admitted plotting with al Qaeda to bomb Los Angeles International Airport during the New Year's celebration in 1999.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco also set aside Ahmed Ressam's 22-year prison sentence and ordered a federal judge to reconsider it. Although the sentence included a mandatory 10-year term for carrying explosives while lying to customs officials -- the conviction the court overturned -- the ruling does not require the judge to reduce Ressam's sentence.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=...

Military group to present anti-war appeal to Congress


The Associated Press


NORFOLK, Va. - Military members opposed to the United States' involvement in Iraq gathered Monday to protest what they called an unjust war and to demand the withdrawal of American troops.

http://www.jacksonville.com/apnews/stori...

where they gonna git 'um...

Jan. 17, 2007, 1:01AM
U.S. ponders Afghanistan troop increase
Taliban's violent resistance has officials studying military options

By ROBERT BURNS
Associated Press

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Tuesday he wants to extend the combat tours of 1,200 soldiers amid rising violence, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he was "strongly inclined" to recommend a troop increase to President Bush if commanders believe it is needed.

Gates also said Pakistan must act to stem an increasing flow of Taliban fighters into Afghani-stan as U.S. military officials cited new evidence that the Pakistani military, which has long-standing ties to the Taliban movement, has turned a blind eye to the incursions.

Meanwhile, NATO-led troops and Afghan forces detained a prominent Taliban commander during a raid at a compound in southern Afghanistan, the alliance said in a statement early today.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/worl...

Dang, mprov.  I went over and read that and that's just CRAZY. 

I'm going to bed now.  sees ya all later.

Night dear bloggie. 

30 die in Pakistan army raid

By Shahid Hussain, Correspondent


Islamabad: About 30 suspected Al Qaida-linked foreign and local militants were killed on Tuesday in a dawn assault in South Waziristan tribal district by the Pakistani army near the Afghan border, military sources said.

Intelligence sources said a senior Al Qaida operative named Abu Nasir, an Arab, was injured in the attack but he could not be captured.

Gunship helicopters also took part in the operation in Zamzola area, the first in South Waziristan since the April 2004 peace agreement there between the authorities and tribal elders.

http://www.gulfnews.com/world/Pakistan/1...

later barb.

Spanish court seeks arrest and extradition of three US soldiers

Jan 16, 2007, 14:00 GMT

Madrid - Spain's National Court on Tuesday issued an international arrest warrant for three US soldiers on charges of causing the death of Spanish cameraman Jose Couso during the Iraq conflict in April 2003, judicial sources said.

Judge Santiago Pedraz is seeking the extradition of Sergeant Thomas Gibson, Captain Philip Wolford and Lieutenant Colonel Philip de Camp of the third armoured infantry division.

The soldiers fired or ordered others to fire at the Baghdad hotel where Couso was staying, fatally wounding Couso, who worked for the Spanish television station Telecinco.

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/europ...

has the world really gone to poop???

some leadership, that!

Bill O'Leilly will be on Colbert Thurs. night!

Oh, and by the way....

Bush Leaving Out Important Details on Iraq
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011507B.shtml
President Bush and his aides, explaining their reasons for sending more American troops to Iraq, are offering an incomplete, oversimplified and possibly untrue version of events there that raises new questions about the accuracy of the administration's statements about Iraq.

I'm hoping Biden's remark about not having the power to stop putz will eliminate him as a candidate.

Gareth Porter is a historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam was published in June 2005. During the Vietnam War, Porter was a Ph.D. candidate specializing in Vietnamese history and politics who debunked the Nixon administration's "bloodbath" argument in a series of articles and monographs.

Democratic congressional leaders  have thus far been unable to decide what to do about a president and vice-president who have openly announced their intention to defy the electorate. While the last election rejected our current foreign military adventure, Congress has stopped far short of acting on that sentiment, allowing the Bush administration to continue indefinitely and to even escalate the war. Comments from some Democratic leaders reveal a misunderstanding of the power Congress has in the present situation.

The Democrats have gravitated toward a nonbinding resolution that would do nothing to force George W. Bush to bring the troops home. The Democratic haziness about the options available to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq is exemplified by presidential candidate Joe Biden’s comment last week that Congress can do nothing to stop the war, because, “It's unconstitutional to say, you can go, but we're going to micromanage.”

The Democrats’ real problem appears to be political rather than constitutional: They have convinced themselves that they cannot cut off funds without being accused of failing to keep faith with U.S. troops in Iraq.

But this is a false dilemma. Congress can force Bush’s hand without being vulnerable to the charge of stranding U.S. troops simplyby setting a date beyond which no funds can be used for U.S. military presence in Iraq. As long as the date provides a reasonable time for those troops to be “redeployed” from Iraq, the burden falls on the executive branch to adjust its policy to the congressional requirement by taking them out of the war zone.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/01/16/how_to_defund_the_escalation.php 

Misogyny  - a US *family value.*

Martha Burk is a political psychologist and director of the Corporate Accountability Project for the National Council of Women's Organizations.

The saber-rattling against Iran by President Bush and Secretary of State Rice last week—as part of the hype for sending 21,500 more Americans to Iraq to become more roadside-bomb fodder, and the push-back from Democrats and Republicans alike—overshadowed another official warning, this one against Sudan. U.S. special envoy Andrew Natsios, as he appealed to the Chinese for help with the genocide in Darfur that has killed 450,000 people to date, said on Friday, "If we find that the Sudanese government is stonewalling ... then we will go to a more coercive strategy."

But wait. The Bush administration actually agrees with both Iran and Sudan on one thing: Women’s rights aren’t important. The U.S. stands virtually alone with these countries against the rest of the civilized world in failing to ratify the international women’s human rights treaty known as CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women).

CEDAW was adopted in 1979 by the United Nations, and President Carter signed it in 1980, sending it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for ratification. There it remains. The United States is the only holdout in the industrialized world in this massive failure to ratify and recognize the fundamental principles of equality for women worldwide.

Even though W has given lip service to women’s human rights in the past , he’s not about to go there now. His conservative base considers CEDAW an international abortion rights treaty, even though it does not even mention abortion and, in fact, guarantees rights for married women and mothers. But never mind—it’s a good fund-raising tool and red meat for the right wing. The Friday Fax, a weekly screed from the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, was cranking up the rhetoric even before the election, warning in the direst of terms of the catastrophe that awaits if the United States signs on to this simple declaration that women and girls are equal human beings with men and boys."

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/01/16/with_iran_against_women.php 

Is Bushco trying to incite a civil war in Palestine?

The one thing George Bush apparently agreed with the Baker-Hamilton commission about is the need to jump-start the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in order to bring resolution to the rest of the Middle East (it took him long enough to figure out). But even as Condoleezza Rice prepares for yet another of her pointless and ineffectual jaunts to the Middle East, as usual our actions belie our words. Evidence suggests that the American government is actually trying to spark a civil war in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Gaith al-Omari, a former advisor to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, self-described “secular moderate” and Fatah “partisan,” certainly thinks so, as he mentioned in a talk he gave Wednesday at the Palestine Center in Washington, D.C. Or rather, he believes “certain elements in the Bush administration and certain elements in the Olmert administration” are pushing for a “decisive confrontation” between Fatah and Hamas. That’s one way to put an end to the year-long stalemate that has existed since Hamas, as part of a wave of Islamist political victories, swept the Palestinian parliamentary elections of January 26, 2006, in arguably the cleanest and most transparent democratic shift of power the Arab world has ever seen. It left the presidency in the hands of Fatah leader Abbas and set up a power struggle between the newly-ascendent Islamists and the rank-and-file bureaucracy of the Palestinian Authority, which has been controlled by Fatah since it was created after the Oslo agreements of the early '90s.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/01/11/pushing_palestine_over_the_brink.php 

Good morning, everybody  

link 

Re Obama--it is easy to be for something that you are almost certain isn't going to happen; and you're certain because in the end you're going to make sure it doesn't.

There were people like that in the Dean camp.

Anyway, I'm off to write a letter on the Doomsday clock.   

My LTE---

busy day here

two thoughts

I love the smiles coming from the rescue of those boys in Missouri. the ice storm is hammering that state, a little sunshine

my little guy didn't need red blood cells yesterday for the first time, and I'm hopeful for the day when the tubes are removed, a little personal sunshine, kids are precious, hug one near you 

and one more positive thought

the fire danger on the plains is over

1/16/07 - the day it all started (Obama's announcement).

I intend to give my full weight to an Obama for 2008 U.S. President candidacy because it is easy for me to be for something that I am almost certain IS going to happen -- Obama as our next president.

IMO it's a good investment of my and my wife's time and energy. 

A new day is dawning - Crystal Blue Persuasion:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070117/pl_nm/kenya_obama_dc_1

Kenyans celebrate as Obama eyes White House

By Jeremy Clarke 7 minutes ago

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenyans rejoiced on Wednesday after Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) plunged into the U.S. presidential race, saying if the youthful senator from Illinois wins the White House he will not forget his African roots.

...

His vow on Tuesday to "change our politics" with a campaign that could make him the first black president in U.S. history was greeted with cheers of joy and pride on the streets of the capital Nairobi.

"Obama can win," Giddings Ochanda, a trainee medical technician, told Reuters.

"He has experienced a hard life as an African growing up in the United States, and that experience will make him a good leader for everyone. It will be good for Kenya-U.S. relations."

Others were overjoyed that someone they saw as a "fellow African" could aspire to the world's top job.

"If an African can make it into the White House, it will show Africans anywhere can make it," said office worker Moreen Chirchir. "It will show we can make it."

...

Despite his efforts to play down local expectations during that trip that his role as a U.S. senator would have an immediate impact in Kenya, many still revered him as one of their own who had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Obama's father grew up herding goats before studying in America then returning to Kenya to become a noted economist.

"He has the people at heart," said Nairobi teacher Leah Alisa.

"He will have American interests as his priority, and he should, but he will change their foreign policy," she said.

"He won't forget Africa."

Hopefully the World Bank will shortly grant my wife's home country (Sierra Leone) debt relief like it has to some other African and non-African countries:

http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200701170076.html

U.S.$ 37 Billion Debt Relief for Poor Nations

Concord Times (Freetown)
NEWS
January 15, 2007
Posted to the web January 17, 2007

By Tanu Jalloh
Freetown

World Bank is preparing to cancel billions of dollars of debt owed to it by many of the world's poorest nations. But the world's financial institution says it is yet to decide on the fate of Sierra Leone and two others.

Sierra Leone, Guinea and Guinea Bissau have been rated as the poorest West African countries which debt relief is currently being negotiated for full cancellation by the World Bank.

After years of wrangling, agreement, sometime last year, was reached at Gleneagles, Scotland to write off most of the debts of some 38 "highly indebted poor countries", including those owed to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

The summit established that in order to qualify, countries must pass a series of economic hurdles including meeting strict criteria under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. So far only around 19 countries have qualified for full debt relief.

Meanwhile, these countries which will receive full cancellation of their eligible debt are Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Honduras, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

Some $37bn in debt relief will be provided to these countries starting July 1, 2007 sequel to agreements reached at last year's historic G8 summit in Scotland.

...

fyi - new thread

47.

* rdorgan
Wed, 01/17/07
8:27 am

...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070117/pl_n...
...


"If an African can make it into the White House, it will show...
*********
...one more show....


"He has the people at heart,"...
"He will have American interests as his priority, and he should, but he will change their foreign policy,"...
"He won't forget A