canadapest.com

The Bush administration will oppose a U.N.-backed resolution calling for the creation of a council to expose the world's worst human rights abusers, John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Monday.

The Earth's temperature could rise under the impact of global warming to levels far higher than previously predicted, according to the United Nations' team of climate experts.

Find Suggests Disease May Play Role

A Baptist preacher who calls New Orleans "sin city" and believes gay rights are the biggest threat to America, is questioning his faith in President George W. Bush.

Washington's recent decison to start pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan this year has only reinforced al Qaeda's belief that it is winning. After nearly five years of avoiding capture or death, every single day that bin Laden stays alive is a day that inspires the extremists who protect him and join his ranks.

David Model BlogSpot

A Bill introduced in California would require manufacturers to phase out lead, cadmium, chromium and mercury in making cell phones, iPods and other electronic devices.

Reality - Bush asks Congress for $75M to politically destabilize Iran!

Canada's new government hopes to repair relations with the United States

The recent meeting between the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah confirmed the solid relations between Riyadh and Washington. Most Saudis, however, care more about the situation at home, under a new ruler who claims to want to change society and the role of women, to combat poverty and to promote greater freedom. Read the full article from Le Monde diplomatique!

After the most homophobic presidential elections in US history, it looks like Holywood is poised to strike back at the Oscars . Read the full story!

Hours after a commercial plane struck the Pentagon on September 11 2001 the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was issuing rapid orders to his aides to look for evidence of Iraqi involvement, according to notes taken by one of them. Read the full article in the Guardian Unlimited!

Foreign operation of US ports is just a taste of what’s to come unless America changes its fiscal policies. See the full article by David Ignatius in the Washington Post!

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a final rejection of one of five patents at issue in the infringement case against the maker of the BlackBerry portable e-mail device.

Over 20 candidates and members of Parliament for the Conservative Party of Canada, including leader Stephen Harper, Justice Critic Vic Toews, Foreign Affairs Critic Stockwell Day and Firearms Critic Garry Breitkreuz, have links to organizations established under the umbrella of the Council for National Policy (CNP), an American group that the New York Times calls a “club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country,” and which Rolling Stone reports has “funnelled billions of dollars to right-wing Christian activists.” Visit http://harperstiestousa.org/ for more on this one!

 vital 
By Gore Vidal

Patriots do not like this government. This is an unpatriotic government. This is a government that deals openly in illegalities, whether it is attacking a country which has done us no harm, two countries—Iraq and Afghanistan—because we now believe, not in declaring war through Congress as the Constitution requires, but through the President. “Well, I think there are some terrorists over there, and I think we got to bomb them, huh? We’ll bomb them.” Now, we’ve had idiots as presidents before. He’s not unique. But he’s certainly the most active idiot that we have ever had.
And now here we are planning new wars, ongoing wars in the Middle East. And so as he comes with his State of the Union, which he is going to justify eavesdropping without judicial warrants on anybody in the United States that he wants to listen in on. This is what we call dictatorship. Dictatorship. Dictatorship. And it is time that we objected. Don’t say wait ‘til the next election and do it through that. We can’t trust the elections, thanks to Diebold and S&S and all the electronic devices which are being flogged across the country to make sure that elections can be so rigged that the villains will stay in power.
I think demonstrations across the country could be very useful on this famous Tuesday. Just say no. We’ve had enough of you. Go home to Crawford. We’ll help you raise the money for a library, and you won’t even ever have to read a book. We’re not cruel. We just want to get rid of you and let you be an ex-president with his own library, which you can fill up with friends of yours who can neither read nor write, but they’ll be well served and well paid, we hope, by corporate America, which will love you forever.
So I think it is really up to us to give some resonance to the State of the Union, which will be largely babble. He’s really not going to try to do anything about Social Security, we read in the papers. He has no major moves, other than going on and on about the legality of his illegal warrantless eavesdroppings and other breakings of the law.
I had a piece on the internet some of you may have seen a few days ago, and there’s a story about Tiberius, who’s one of my favorite Roman emperors. He’s had a very bad press, because the wrong people perhaps have written history. But when he became emperor, the Senate of Rome sent him congratulations with the comment, “Any law that you want us to pass, we shall do so automatically.” And he sent a message back. He said, “This is outrageous! Suppose I go mad. Suppose I don’t know what I’m doing. Suppose I’m dead and somebody is pretending to be me. Never do that! Never accept something like preemptive war,” which luckily the Senate did not propose preemptive wars against places they didn’t like. But Mr. Bush has done that.
So this is a sort of Tiberius time without, basically, a good emperor, and he was a good emperor in the sense that he sent back this legislation, which was to confirm anything he wanted to have done automatically. And they sent it back to him again. And then he said, “How eager you are to be slaves,” and washed his hands of the Senate and went to live in Capri, a much wiser choice, just as we can send this kid back to Crawford, Texas, where he’ll be very, very happy cutting bushes of the leafy variety.
You know, it’s at a time when people say, ‘Well, it makes no difference what we do, you know, if we march and we make speeches, and this and that.’ It makes a lot of difference if millions of Americans just say, “We are fed up! We don’t like you. We don’t like what you’re doing to the country and what you have done to the country. We don’t like to live in a lawless land, where the rule of law has just been bypassed and hacks are appointed to the federal bench, who will carry on and carry on and carry on all of the illegalities which are so desperately needed by our military-industrial corporate masters.”
I think a day dedicated to that and to just showing up here and there around the country will be a good thing to do. And so, let the powers that be know that back of them, there’s something called “We the people of the United States,” and all sovereignty rests in us, not in the board rooms of the Republicans.

Gore Vidal is the author of more than twenty novels and five plays. His recent national bestsellers are Dreaming War and Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. His latest book is called Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia.
Democracy Now’s transcript of Gore Vidal speaking

The ubiquitous chemical PFOA, “used to make waterproof clothing, phone cables, building materials and more,” has been detected in 95% of Americans and even in arctic polar bears. The Los Angeles Times reports “In animal tests, it has been found to cause birth defects and has been linked to cancer and immune suppression, among other health problems. It stays in the human body for years and is passed on to a fetus during pregnancy.” Last year DuPont dished out the largest EPA fine in history for its PFOA cover-up ($16.5 million), and the company will pay a $342 million settlement for contaminating residential water supplies in Ohio and West Virginia. Now that DuPont is already scaling back emissions to avoid further settlements, instead of issuing a ban, the EPA has asked the chemicals industry to prevent the release of PFOA into the environment. Will this be the end of Teflon manufacturing?

In Hawaii, a new technique is being used to farm fish and the results are promising for both a healthy product and low environmental impact. The fish - the locals call it "kahala".

I am confused by the Bush Administration. It seems really strange to come out with such strong support for the takeover of the major ports in the USA by a company based in the United Arab Emirates (Bush Defends Port Deal With Middle East Firm) on the basis that it poses no risk. Sounds like the special flights arranged to evacuate Saudi friends of the Bush family on September 12. No risk also doesn't seem to be a valid criteria coming from Bush - Saddam was no risk but it didn't stop the Bush Administration from claiming he was. Seems that "risk" is based on personal friendship with Bush - or not. Talk about High School Confidential - and this guy is the Leader of the Free World! - see "Terror fears, stoked by Bush, now bite him" and "President George W. Bush did not know about a deal to hand over operations at six major U.S. ports to an Arab company until after his administration approved it."
For another viewpoint see "Arabs see phobia behind uproar over ports deal".