Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien: Obama's New Advisor Stands By His War Crimes
Chris Floyd
... Barack Obama's brand-new foreign policy advisor, Colin Powell, wants you to know that he continues to support the decision to launch a war of aggression against Iraq in March 2003 -- an act that, according to principles established by the United States and its allies at Nuremberg in 1945, is a war crime punishable by death. In fact, the only thing that Powell -- the wise and steady statesman, the "grown-up," the "moderate" -- can find to criticize in the conduct of the war he helped launch is the fact that it wasn't savage enough to begin with (...) The fact that a gang of militarist extremists -- including good old moderate Colin Powell -- murdered a million innocent people in a blatant war crime committed in America's name is not... "fruitful to pursue," to quote Obama's own ringing phrase about his adamant opposition to any impeachment proceedings against the Bush Faction. But beyond Powell's understandable anxiety to shift attention away from the period of his criminal complicity, look again at this passage from his statement. Meditate on it, let it sink in deeply: ...my concern was not my past or what happened in Iraq, but where we're going in the future. His concern is not "what happened in Iraq." This encapsulates perfectly the view of the entire bipartisan foreign policy establishment. http://www.uruknet.de/?p=48109

First Colin Powell, Now…
George Packer, New Yorker Magazine
Ken Adelman, a lifelong conservative Republican...campaigned for Goldwater, was hired by Rumsfeld at the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, was assistant to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld under Ford, served as Reagan’s director of arms control, and joined the Defense Policy Board for Rumsfeld’s second go-round at the Pentagon, in 2001... a bona-fide hawk ... intends to vote for Barack Obama.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2008/10/not-quite-col...

Alan Dershowitz : Why I Support Israel and Obama
Alan Dershowitz
I think it is better for Israel to have a liberal supporter in the White House than to have a conservative supporter in the oval office. Obama's views on Israel will have greater impact on young people, on Europe, on the media and on others who tend to identify with the liberal perspective. Although I believe that centrists liberals in general tend to support Israel, I acknowledge that support from the left seems to be weakening as support from the right strengthens. The election of Barack Obama -- a liberal supporter of Israel -- will enhance Israel's position among wavering liberals.... Nothing could help more in this important effort to shore up liberal support for Israel than the election of a liberal president who strongly supports Israel and who is admired by liberals throughout the world....http://www.uruknet.de/?p=4811

"what will progressives for obama say" ?
Right Wing Obama Love
Margaret Kimberley, BlackAgendaReport
...Everyone loves a winner. Perhaps that is why so many conservatives are jumping on the Obama bandwagon. McCain is a goner and they know it. Yet there is something else at work here. Barack Obama has exceeded expectations in soothing the concerns of the racist, imperialist mindset. Right wingers who openly follow the doctrine of America’s right to empire and conquest are now endorsing Obama.

Christopher Buckley, son of the late William Buckley, broke ranks with his fellow conservatives and endorsed Barack Obama, declaring that he will vote for a Democrat for the first time in his life. Unlike others in the openly racist right wing, Buckley can see the forest for the trees. He doesn’t care if the president has the middle name Hussein. Obama has made it clear that he will maintain white America’s right to moral exception by continuing its war machine and allowing the criminals who destroyed the financial system to keep their set at the table.

Buckley has no doubts about Obama. "But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves." So certain is Buckley that Obama will not make waves, that he bid good-bye to his friends and resigned from the National Review, the conservative publication founded by his father.

Another Christopher, Christopher Hitchens, has likewise seen the path to victory pointing in Obama’s direction. Hitchens used to call himself a leftist, a Trotskyite in fact. Hitchens realized that he would be a much hotter commodity if he eschewed his political positions and became a professional white man. He now spends his time writing endlessly hateful screeds defending America’s war of terror and looking for new reasons to kill brown skinned people who pray towards Mecca. Hitchens spent the early part of the campaign year showing open disdain for Obama, his former pastor and for Michelle Obama’s senior thesis. He foamed at the mouth at every utterance of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, calling his words "wicked and stupid and false."
The McCain campaign death march and Obama’s consistent promise to change very little have swayed Hitchens to switch sides again. He opines that "the Obama-Biden ticket is not a capitulationist one." In other words, they will keeping killing Iraqis and Afghans, giving Hitchens confidence that his endorsement will not be in vain.

These endorsements are partly a result of the critically ill Republican brand, but Obama must get much of the credit for the eleventh hour conversions. He has said that he will have a foreign policy like Ronald Reagan’s. He makes it clear he will address black people directly only when chastisement is on the agenda. If anyone has doubts, the sight of Obama campaign commercials featuring one or two black faces, Obama’s included, seal the deal for the two Christophers and their friends.

What will Progressives for Obama have to say about the conservative pitching and wooing for their candidate? If past history is any indication, they and other progressives will say nothing at all. They made a decision to collude with the Obama agenda that progressives ought to oppose. The praises of Buckley and Hitchens will have no effect on them any more than the pledges to keep troops in Iraq or to escalate the war in Afghanistan.

Obama will make history in more ways than one. He won’t just be the first black president. He will be the first president in modern history that convinced millions of people not to believe the words that came out of his own mouth. "Change" is the campaign slogan, but his policy agenda tells us we will see anything but that. Hitchens and Buckley are certainly convinced that there won’t be any changes that aren’t to their liking.
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached at: Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgendaReport.Com. Read other articles by Margaret, or visit Margaret's website.

STRATEGICALLY UNITED FOR GLOBAL U.S. SUPREMACY: OBAMA THE WINNER, DELIVERED THE PATRIOTIC SUPPORT OF MILLIONS OF THE OPPRESSED DEEMED MOST DANGEROUS TO AMERIKA
....Questions to both campaigns in the past few weeks have yielded another example of role reversal. While Mr. McCain seems willing to consider that Iran might someday be trusted to produce its own nuclear fuel, Mr. Obama does not. The director of foreign policy for the McCain campaign, Randy Scheunemann, said that if Iran was in compliance with United Nations resolutions, “it would be appropriate to consider” letting it produce uranium under inspection, which Iran has said is its right.

Mr. Obama’s position is closer to the zero-tolerance approach adopted by the Bush administration. “I do not believe Iran should be enriching uranium or keeping centrifuges,” he said in an e-mail message passed on by aides. Mr. Obama does seem more willing to dangle in front of the Iranians a “grand bargain” that would spell out benefits — diplomatic recognition, an end to sanctions — as a reward for halting its enrichment of uranium and allowing full inspections of the country. Richard J. Danzig, considered a candidate to be secretary of defense in an Obama administration, said Mr. Obama was willing to “put out a more positive side to the agenda to lead the Iranians toward making the right choices here.”

But Mr. Obama has also been more specific in describing the kind of sanctions he might reach for if the Iranians continue on the current path. “If we can prevent them from importing the gasoline that they need, and the refined petroleum products, that starts changing their cost-benefit analysis,” he said.
Some experts have counseled caution about such an approach, one that the Bush administration has stopped short of taking. A blockade, however, could constitute an act of war, and most experts believe Iran could respond in kind by cutting off oil exports, increasing prices and leading to shortages.

When to Intervene
While Mr. McCain reminds audiences that he vowed to do whatever it took to win in Iraq, he has been extraordinarily reluctant when it comes to the war in Afghanistan to advocate cross-border attacks into Pakistan, even though top military commanders have publicly said that is a prerequisite to victory. Mr. McCain has dismissed Mr. Obama’s advocacy of military action inside Pakistan as unwise, saying his rival does not appreciate how Pakistanis would react to an incursion by an ally, even into ungovernable territory Pakistan itself has never really controlled.

That was Mr. Bush’s view as well until July, when he issued secret orders allowing American Special Operations forces to conduct ground incursions into Pakistan, to keep insurgents from forming a safe haven. Mr. McCain has not condemned Mr. Bush’s action, but he has suggested that such operations should never be discussed in public and that Mr. Obama had made a rookie’s mistake by raising the possibility.“The last thing we should be doing is telegraphing to Pakistan that we are going to violate their sovereignty,” Mr. Scheunemann said last week, when asked if Mr. McCain was opposed to military action over the border, or just opposed to talking about it. “Senator Obama’s stubborn insistence on publicly threatening to attack targets in Pakistan and limit military assistance is swagger, not statesmanship.” Mr. Obama has frequently said he would send American personnel over the border to kill leaders of Al Qaeda. In his speech at the Democratic convention, Mr. Obama accused Mr. McCain of focusing on the wrong war — Iraq — and he vowed to hunt down Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants..... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/us/politics/23policy.html?th&emc=th

Hitler Endorses Obama
by Joe Mowrey
Okay, that title is a cheap sensationalist tactic to get you to read this article. But before all you extreme left-wing progressives rush to your keyboards to condemn me for using a Nazi reference in the same sentence with the patron saint of changeyness, let me clarify for you that I am engaging in hyperbole and that I will employ that technique along with the use of irony and dark humor in this article. You can Google these terms if they are unfamiliar to you. I feel the need to make this clarification because it is apparent of late that no amount of irony is able to penetrate the fog of Obama mania which has settled over the consciousness of the so-called progressive liberal community.

I awoke this morning to exciting news. Colin Powell has endorsed Barack Obama for President. Yippie! The blogosphere is all atwitter. Our guy has worked hard, taken solid positions on all the most important progressive issues and managed to convince the exalted Mr. Powell to throw his support our way. Celebrations are in order. We’re one step closer to the Oval Office thanks to this latest breaking development. Oh, and for those of you who may have forgotten who Colin Powell is... let’s take a moment to highlight some of his stellar qualifications as a supporter of the Left.

Powell is the guy who, as a bright young 31 year old Army Major, did his level best to keep information about the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam from becoming public. Specifically, he was charged with investigating a letter from a whistle-blowing soldier giving detailed accounts of many of the atrocities committed by U.S. military personnel in Vietnam under the auspices of the Phoenix Program. That program was a lovely little package of war crimes intended to “identify and neutralize (via infiltration, capture, or murder) the civilian infrastructure supporting the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (the Viet Cong).” In other words, it was a U.S. and South Vietnamese death squad operation which rampaged through the country side slaughtering civilians and burning down entire villages. You know, capturing the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people. Powell summed up his investigation of the whistle-blower’s accusations by saying, “In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent.”

Well that’s enough for me. If Powell endorsed the rousing success of the Phoenix Program, what more do we need to know? Queried about his participation in the attempted white wash of My Lai, some 40 years later Powell said, “I mean, I was in a unit that was responsible for My Lai. I got there after My Lai happened. So, in war, these sorts of horrible things happen every now and again…” Personally, I think he sounds really sorry. And he’s seems to be bashing Republicans these days, so I like him a lot.

Fast forward to 2003. Then Secretary of State, Powell, made a triumphant speech to the United Nations outlining the urgent need for us to invade Iraq in a war of aggression in order to eliminate the massive amounts of weapons of mass destruction which Saddam Hussein was going to use to invade and destroy the United States. Thank Buddha that Powell was able to use his dignity and gravitas to convince the world of the imminent danger. Imagine where we might be today without his steadfast endorsement of that magnificent war crime. I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t into wearing a turban and having Saddam Hussein’s picture on the one dollar bill. I shudder to think of Brittany Spears in a burka. Of course, it’s a bit unfortunate that Powell’s speech to the U.N. was a pack of outright fabrications and lies. But I’ve forgiven him by now, especially since he’s decided to come out in favor our Our Guy Obama.

And while we’re at it, let’s catalog of few of Barack Obama’s progressive qualifications to be next President of the United States of Imperialism. Well first, there’s his adamant condemnation of the war in Iraq. Why, he was against it from the very start. Of course, that hasn’t prevented him from voting continually to fund the Occupation. But hey, he has to get elected before he can implement all his wonderful changey policies, right? You know, like maintaining a presence of 50,000 to 80,000 troops in Iraq, along with a dozen or so permanent military bases and the world’s largest foreign embassy. Then there is his pledge to escalate the “good war” in Afghanistan. We’ve only killed about 10,000 or so innocent civilians there in the last few years. I won’t feel safe until we can push those numbers much higher. And Pakistan? Sending robot drones out to drop bombs on people is my kind of progressive war. Obama has assured us he’ll continue that policy and actually increase the number of illegal violations of that country’s sovereignty. Right on.

But let’s not stop there. The list of Oboma’s support for progressive issues is a long one. For instance, he endorsed immunity for the Telecoms. It’s a good thing, too. We can’t have corporations facing legal action or law suits for spying on us. After all, they are only trying to protect us from terrorists. And Barack is a true friend to the Zionist regime in Israel. He’ll do everything in his power to prevent those nasty Iranians from destroying Israel and driving them into the sea. Israel’s apartheid colonization of the West Bank, in direct violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions is inconvenient for the Palestinians. But what the heck. They don’t have much of a Lobby in Washington. And you hardly ever have to read about their suffering, not even in the so-called Progressive media. Why, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything at all about the suffering of the Palestinian people on Air America. So who needs to worry about them? We can still hear and read non-stop Obamadulation, no matter how bad things may be in Gaza. What’s wrong with that?

The prospects for the progressive agenda in an Obama administration are bursting out all over. Obama will make sure we don’t have National Health Care. We have to keep our insurance companies in the loop so they can stay strong. And clean coal! Finally an intelligent advocate for that fantasy technology. I was worried that one of the most toxic forms of energy production in operation today might be hindered. Not under an Obama reign. Along with more Nuclear Power plants, which Obama favors, we should be able to stave off the threat of clean energy technologies for years to come. Well, okay, we can throw the environmentalists a few bones, but let’s not get carried away. We need to hold a few promises of a greener world in reserve to toss around during the midterm elections. And we’ve got 2012 to think about.

Besides, it’s about the economy, stupid. Speaking of which, now that Obama has helped usher in the nearly one trillion dollar handout to the banking industry, we should see prosperity on the horizon any day now. Obama has told us he has great faith in Secretary of the Treasury Paulson and his plan to save the American consumer. Just look at what a fine job Paulson did as Chairman of Goldman Saks? They gave him over half a billion dollars in bonuses and compensation when he left to become our Treasury Secretary, just two years before Goldman Saks went belly up. He must have done some great work for them. Why else would he get paid so much?

Well, I could go on and on. There are so many reasons for progressives to rally round Obama. Like his support for the death penalty and the Cuban embargo, just to mention two more. But I need to get busy planning tonight’s party in celebration of Colin Powell’s endorsement of our fine, pro-war, pro-corporate, pro-imperialist, pro-Zionist, pro-military-industrial-complex left wing hero. The future has never looked so bright for progressives. Being for Change has really lifted our spirits and bolstered attendance at our campaign rallies. I’m hoping that sometime in the next few days we’ll get Henry Kissinger to sign on with us. What a boon that would be. Like I always say, if your going to support a candidate who doesn’t represent any of the values you believe in, then you can’t have too many bloodthirsty war criminals endorsing him.
Joe Mowrey is a Palestinian rights and antiwar activist. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his equally traitorous spouse and their four canine co-conspirators. He can be contacted at: jmowrey@ix.netcom.com. Read other articles by Joe http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/10/hitler-endorses-obama/

liberal imperialist-zionist...
Left Gatekeeper Noam Chomsky endorses Obama
Chomsky says pick the lesser of two evils
Real News Video
...Chomsky says while it's true the two parties are essentially factions of one party - the party of business [SIC] - the differences do matter to ordinary people. If you are living in a swing state, there is nothing wrong with picking the lesser of two evils....

Iraq Elections And The Liberal Elites:
A Response To Noam Chomsky
By Ghali Hassan
http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-hassan100305.htm
In a recent opinion piece, Naom Chomsky writes, "In Iraq, the January elections were successful and praiseworthy. However, the main success is being reported only marginally: The United States was compelled to allow them to take place. That is a real triumph, not of the bomb-throwers, but of non-violent resistance by the people, secular as well as Islamist, for whom Grand Ayatollah Al Sistani is a symbol" (Khaleej Times Online, 4 March 2005).

The treachery of Noam Chomsky
http://www.treacheryof.blogspot.com/

U.S. READY TO ROLL ... OVER REBELLION & RESISTANCE
Police prepare for unrest in the 'hoods
Police departments in cities across the country are beefing up their ranks for Election Day, preparing for possible civil unrest and riots after the historic presidential contest....some worry that if Barack Obama loses and there is suspicion of foul play in the election, violence could ensue in cities with large black populations. Others based the need for enhanced patrols on past riots in urban areas... police officials are wary of implying that black voters are more likely than other voting groups to cause trouble. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/police-prepare-for-unrest-2008-10-21...

ACLU Demands Information On Military Deployment Within U.S. Borders
http://www.aclu.com/safefree/general/37274prs20081021.html
The American Civil Liberties Union today demanded information from the government about reports that an active military unit has been deployed inside the U.S. to help with "civil unrest" and "crowd control" – matters traditionally handled by civilian authorities. This deployment jeopardizes the longstanding separation between civilian and military government, and the public has a right to know where and why the unit has been deployed, according to an ACLU Freedom of Information request filed today.

MAYBE OBAMA WON'T JUMP ON THIS ONE SO FAST...
Rand Study Suggests U.S. Loses War With China
20 Oct 2008
Defense News
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=3774348&c=AME&s=TOP
A new RAND study suggests U.S. air power in the Pacific would be inadequate to thwart a Chinese attack on Taiwan in 2020. The study, entitled "Air Combat Past, Present and Future," by John Stillion and Scott Perdue, says China's anti-access arms and strategy could deny the U.S. the "ability to operate efficiently from nearby bases or seas." [Read more]

JUST GO SHOPPING!
green with envy and ill intent towards U.S. major capitalist rival, analysts insist China adopt the very model producing global crisis
China, an Engine of Growth, Faces a Global Slump
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/world/asia/23china.html?_r=1&th=&emc=t...
BEIJING — For three decades, China has fueled its remarkable economic rise by becoming the world’s workshop and unleashing a flood of low-priced exports. But faced with a possible global recession and weakening demand for Chinese exports, the question now is whether the ruling Communist Party can prevent the financial crisis from derailing the country’s economic miracle. This question is pressing not just for China but also for the rest of the world. American officials and many economists say continued Chinese growth is vital to the global economy as the United States and Europe face severe downturns.

Yet to navigate the crisis, many analysts say, China will need to recalibrate its economic model, stoke domestic investment with heavy government spending and promote policies to increase consumer demand in a nation known for high savings rates....

At the geopolitical level, China would seem well positioned to expand its influence. It sits on $1.9 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, accumulated from giant trade surpluses and heavy foreign investment in China, and it could acquire discounted stakes in Western banks and industrial companies....but for now, most analysts say China’s top priority is protecting its own economy. Chinese leaders say the domestic financial system is largely insulated from the global crisis — China’s banks remain domestically focused and have relatively small exposure to toxic securities sold by American and European banks. But economic growth has fallen to the lowest level in five years, unemployment is a growing concern, and scores of factories are closing in the country’s export region. If the growth rate “goes below 8 percent in 2009, I think they will be quite concerned,” said Kenneth Lieberthal, a China specialist currently at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “They are always concerned about job creation.” ...

PROVOCATION: AWARD TO US/ SOROS OSI COLOR REVOLUTIONS' AGENTS
Chinese Activist Wins Rights Prize
In a rebuke of China's Communist Party, the European Parliament gave a prestigious human rights prize to Hu Jia, an advocate for democracy in China.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/world/24prize.html?8au&emc=au

Iran rejects U.S. NGO
Reuters
TEHRAN, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Iran will refuse any request by U.S.-based non-governmental organisation American-Iranian Council (AIC) to open an office in the Islamic Republic, the interior minister said in comments published on Wednesday.
In a rare move, the United States this month said the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control had granted permission to New Jersey-based AIC to operate in Iran. A U.S. official said the decision to allow the NGO to go to Iran was "carefully reviewed" within the U.S. government, which cut ties with Iran after its 1979 Islamic revolution and is now embroiled in a standoff with Tehran over its nuclear programme. A U.S. official has said Washington wanted to encourage "cultural exchange and mutual understanding" between the U.S. and Iranian people "while trying to isolate the regime."
Iran has often accused the United States of using intellectuals and others inside the country to undermine the Islamic state through a "velvet revolution,"[...]
wiredispatch.com/news/?id=427400

Russia Is Striving to Modernize Its Military
Pentagon officials portray a Russian military buildup as an overdue modernization, not a threat....
Analysts of Kremlin affairs note that a central risk to Russian military reform might not be foreign armies, but the current economic collapse, which has sent oil prices plummeting, robbing Russia of profits earmarked for upgrading the armed forces.
An irony is emerging. One central cause of the Soviet Union’s collapse was that its centrally planned, calcified economy simply could not support the Kremlin’s superpower military ambitions. If oil prices continue to drop, Mr. Medvedev and Mr. Putin may be faced with the same economic limits on their military plans.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/20/world/europe/20military.html?th&emc=th

U.S. / SOROS AGENTS MET TRAITORS' FATES
Editorial Observer
The Case Against and for Mikhail Khodorkovsky
This month marks five years since Mikhail Khodorkovsky — once one of Russia’s richest men — was seized in his private plane at the Novosibirsk airport. He was subsequently convicted of fraud and tax evasion and sentenced to eight years in a labor camp. His huge oil company, Yukos, was dismantled and sold off piecemeal ... it remains unclear why then-President Vladimir Putin turned so viciously on this one oligarch, while doing business with so many others. One theory is that Mr. Putin saw Mr. Khodorkovsky — who was putting a lot of money into political parties — as a serious rival, and that his arrest was a signal to all oligarchs to stay out of politics. Another theory is that Mr. Khodorkovsky had personally defied the Russian president on some unknown issue; yet another is that the Kremlin wanted to stop him from bringing Western companies in as Yukos partners.... Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky and other members of the Helsinki Group were fighting for a noble cause: freedom.... comply with the human rights clauses of the Helsinki Final Act.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/20/opinion/20mon4.html?th=&emc=th&pagewan...

CUI BONO?
3 Oil-Rich Countries Face a Reckoning
CARACAS, Venezuela — As the price of oil roared to ever higher levels in recent years, the leaders of Venezuela, Iran and Russia muscled their way onto the world stage, using checkbook diplomacy and, on occasion, intimidation.Now, plummeting oil prices are raising questions about whether the countries can sustain their spending — and their bids to challenge United States hegemony. For all three nations, oil money was a means to an ideological end [as if imperialist political-economic dominance is fundamentally an 'ideological' issue] .... That is not to say that any of the countries is facing immediate economic disaster or will abandon long-held political goals. And the price of oil, still double what was considered high just a few years ago, could always shoot back up. Still, Russia, Iran and Venezuela have all based their spending on oil prices they thought were conservative but are now close to the market level. Significant further drops could tip the three countries into deficit spending or at least force them to choose among priorities. A worldwide recession, which many economists say is likely, would worsen matters, dampening energy demand and holding down prices. It is not clear whether the new pressures could create opportunities for the United States to ease tensions [e.g., crush rivals] or whether the three countries’ leaders will rely more on angry words even if they cannot afford provocative actions. Mr. Chávez has continued his overtures to Russia. He, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran may now see the United States, hobbled by financial crisis, as even more vulnerable. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/world/21petro.html?th&emc=th

U.S. 'WORKING' THE CRISIS: STRENGTHENING FRIENDS, DESTROYING RIVALS / ENEMIES:
PLANS, WITH ALLIES' AID, TO EXTEND U.S. GLOBAL POLITICAL-ECONOMIC CONTROL VIA U.S. DOMINATED ORGANS, IMF & WB....
Bush Calls 20 Nations to Summit on Markets
President Bush has invited the leaders of 20 nations to Washington on Nov. 15 for a summit meeting on the economy...With Europe and the United States both paying for costly bank bailouts, however, they have limited resources to help countries directly. That suggests a growing role for the fund, as well as for the World Bank. The White House has invited the heads of both institutions to the meeting.... The president also insisted that the sessions include developing nations — a decision that experts said acknowledges the risk that such countries face, especially now that larger, more prosperous nations have poured billions into stabilizing their banks. The rescue measures adopted by Western countries, including the United States, actually [SIC] heighten the risk for emerging markets, because banks in those countries are now less safe than those in the Western economies.

The talks come as nations like Hungary, Ukraine and Belarus are showing the same symptoms — flight of foreign capital, plummeting currencies and soaring inflation — that hit Iceland recently, capsizing its banking system and hobbling its economy.
All these countries are in talks with the International Monetary Fund for loans to stabilize their banks. With Western banks pulling back credit, the list of countries at risk of a financial crisis could grow to include several more in Central Europe and Latin America, economists say....
The countries invited are drawn from the so-called G-20, a forum of rich and emerging nations that was convened in 1999 after the Asian economic crisis. Its members are: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, Britain, the United States and the European Union....
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/business/economy/23bush.html?th=&emc=t...

SCIENCE IN THE HANDS OF FASCIST RULERS
Objective: Develop a software and sensor package to enable a team of robots to search for and detect human presence in an indoor environment.
Packs of robots will hunt down uncooperative humans By Paul Marks 22 Oct 2008 The latest request from the Pentagon jars the senses. At least, it did mine. They are looking for contractors to provide a "Multi-Robot Pursuit System" that will let packs of robots "search for and detect a non-cooperative human"... Given that iRobot last year struck a deal with Taser International to mount stun weapons on its military robots, how long before we see packs of droids hunting down pesky demonstrators with paralysing weapons? Or could the packs be lethally armed?... Steve Wright of Leeds Metropolitan University is an expert on police and military technologies, and last year correctly predicted this pack-hunting mode of operation would happen.

THE DNA AGE
Taking a Peek at the Experts' Genetic Secrets
Ten volunteers are putting their entire genomes online, hoping to improve research. Personal Genome Project, www.personalgenomes.org., a study at Harvard University Medical School aimed at challenging the conventional wisdom that the secrets of our genes are best kept to ourselves.The goal of the project, which hopes to expand to 100,000 participants, is to speed medical research by dispensing with the elaborate precautions traditionally taken to protect the privacy of human subjects. participants agree to make it available to all — along with photographs, their disease histories, allergies, medications, ethnic backgrounds and a trove of other traits, called phenotypes, from food preferences to television viewing habits.
Including phenotypes, which most other public genetic databases have avoided in deference to privacy concerns, should allow researchers to more easily discover how genes and traits are linked. Because the “PGP 10,” as they call themselves, agreed to forfeit their privacy, any researcher will have a chance to mine the data, rather than just a small group with clearance.
The project is as much a social experiment as a scientific one. “We don’t yet know the consequences of having one’s genome out in the open,” said George M. Church, a human geneticist at Harvard who is the project’s leader and one of its subjects. “But it’s worth exploring.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/20/us/20gene.html?th&emc=th