Six hundred riot police will shield this year's Cannes film festival from protests by part-time French actors angered by planned cuts to their welfare benefits, officials said on Friday.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 8:12 PM -

Got that? When Kerry talks about ''any Benedict Arnold CEO or corporation that takes American jobs overseas,'' he's not referring to someone who ''takes jobs overseas.'' Perish the thought! He's all in favor of taking jobs overseas. It wasn't him who attacked all those ''Benedict Arnold CEOs,'' just his ''overzealous speechwriters.'' And the minute he discovered it was going on, he called them to say, ''Look, that's not what I'm saying.''

I mean, OK, it was what he was saying in the narrow technical sense of words emerging from between his lips, day after day, night after night, all through primary season. I had a quick rummage through the Nexis database, and found a mere 746 citations for Kerry and the expression ''Benedict Arnold.'' I myself have personally been present on three occasions when he attacked ''Benedict Arnold CEOs'' who ''take jobs overseas,'' and on two of them he didn't have a TelePrompTer or even a script. He just stood in front of us and the words came out of his mouth, almost as if they were what he himself believed.
...
Boy, those Benedict Arnold speechwriters who take the hard-earned money of decent, honest American politicians and salt it away in their Cayman Islands bank accounts, there oughta be a law against it. Given their uncanny ability to make Kerry say what he doesn't mean at six campaign stops a day, is it possible these overzealous speechwriters are part of the ''Republican attack machine''?

Or is this a typically shrewd move by the Kerry campaign? Democratic operatives have long dismissed the moron Bush as incapable of stringing two words together without puppetmaster Dick Cheney shoving his arm up the back of the coat. By announcing that he too is merely a brainless stooge reading out whatever's put in front of him, the senator could seriously cut into Bush's base in key swing states. It takes a smart guy like Kerry to position himself as such a dummy. Unless, of course, it's the new speechwriters who did it for him.

Maybe that's why he (and they) did it again. Lawrence Kaplan reports in the New Republic about a meeting the senator had with Jewish leaders to assuage their concerns about his offer to dispatch Jimmy Carter or James Baker (both regarded as pro-Arab) to the Middle East. ''One of the first things Kerry did at the meeting was to blame his aides for the mention of Carter and Baker as possible envoys in his December speech,'' writes Kaplan. ''The names, Kerry said, had been inserted by mistake, and he had even asked that they be removed.''

But apparently his request to the overzealous speechwriters to remove the names was turned down.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:54 PM -

The Bush campaign yesterday fired back at John Kerry wife's Teresa for questioning President Bush's and Vice President Dick Cheney's patriotism.

The candidate's outspoken wife had called both men "unpatriotic" because their campaign has questioned whether Kerry was truthful when he claimed he never tossed away his Navy medals at a Vietnam War protest.

The president and vice president also have criticized Kerry's national-security record.

But yesterday, Kerry's wife said they'd gone too far.

"To have a couple of people, who escaped [Vietnam service] four, five, six times and deferred and deferred and deferred calling him anything . . . is in and of itself unpatriotic. Unpatriotic," Teresa Heinz Kerry said in an interview with Telemundo, NBC's Spanish-language network.

Mention the name John Kerry to Roy Hoffmann and the fuming begins.

Kerry was an opportunist, an exaggerator, even a liar, said Hoffmann, a crusty retired U.S. Navy rear admiral who oversaw Kerry's Navy swift boat unit in the late '60s when Kerry did his service in Vietnam.

"He had absolutely no respect for the military," Hoffmann, 78, said in an interview Thursday. "His idea was to get some medals and gild his future ambitions."

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:34 AM -

Last week, the European Trade Commissioner had a grim warning for Britain: if we vote against the EU constitution in the forthcoming referendum, we could end up like... Switzerland.
...
All of this, not surprisingly, provoked a certain amount of discreet mirth in both Switzerland and Norway, which happen to be the richest countries in Europe. Both have only an arm's-length relationship with the EU.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:03 AM -

A senior aide of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr told worshippers Friday that anyone who captures a female British soldier can keep her as a slave.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:53 AM -

You might think the Abu Ghraib prison scandal would be helpful for John Kerry's presidential hopes. But the early indications - from the Gallup polling organization - suggest yet again that President Bush's problems are not doing much to boost Kerry's standing.

Indeed, it's possible that the images of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib might push more than a few hundred thousand potential Kerry voters in a direction that would be disastrous for the Democratic nominee - toward Ralph Nader.

I'm not talking here about mainstream Democrats or holders of conventional liberal opinion. I'm talking about genuine, unapologetic leftists - the sort that see the United States as the key source of the world's woes and view capitalism as a dangerous and noxious force.

The Abu Ghraib photos offer these American leftists the perfect psychological opportunity they need to fly off the political rails. They've been hungering for it ever since the run-up to the war in Iraq.

To the extent that these people vote Democratic, they do so grudgingly and with some measure of unhappiness, because they do not think that the Democratic Party is a true party of the Left. They think both parties are in the pocket of corporate interests.

Who are these people? They are the folks who demonstrated across the country before the Iraq war. They show up to riot whenever the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund hold meetings. Their idea of an American Idol is Michael Moore.

Yes, they hate Bush with a consuming passion. But the truth is that they hate the United States of America more. They find the war in Iraq loathsome not because they are pacifists, but because the idea that America is a liberator nation sickens and enrages them.

And that's why Abu Ghraib might be John Kerry's worst nightmare: The anti-American Left is already seizing on these photos and the behavior of .001 percent of the Americans present in Iraq as evidence that the entire U.S. effort in Iraq is a moral catastrophe from stem to stern.

The issue will no longer be the supposed "lies" of George W. Bush, but the supposedly "criminal" conduct of the American occupiers. In other words, they will openly turn from blaming Bush to blaming American troops, American soldiers, American contractors - and America herself.

Such people will not be mollified by the stance of the Kerry campaign, which is that the stated goal of the United States in Iraq will remain in force in a Kerry administration. Kerry also says he wants to stay until the job is done - to achieve a stable, functioning representative government. He wants to use other means and other strategies, but he still wants the same outcome.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:41 AM -

In yet another sign of trouble for Air America Radio, the liberal talk network entering its fifth chaotic week on the air, co-founder and chairman Evan Cohen resigned Thursday, as did vice-chairman and investor Rex Sorensen.

The company also failed to make its scheduled payroll Wednesday, leaving its staff roughly 100 radio personalities, writers, and producers unpaid until Thursday.

"We're on a wild ride," said Jon Sinton, the network's president, acknowledging that Air America has suffered "the typical bumps and bruises faced by any start-up."

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 12:54 AM -

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 11:46 PM -

Less than 24 hours after accusing the Walt Disney Company of pulling the plug on his latest documentary in a blatant attempt at political censorship, the rabble-rousing film-maker Michael Moore has admitted he knew a year ago that Disney had no intention of distributing it.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 11:13 PM -

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Prenatal exams have become the newest addition to the abortion debate, now that Arkansas is making fetuses eligible for federally-funded health care benefits.

Under recently adopted guidelines in the state, the unborn child of a pregnant illegal immigrant can be considered an American citizen even before birth, and thus qualifies the mother for government-paid prenatal care.
...
Pro-choice advocates worry this could be a step toward outlawing abortion.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:49 AM -

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:32 AM -

I have a very clear memory of an incident which occurred while I was the Medical Officer at Naval Support Facility, Cam Ranh Bay.

John Kerry was a (jg), the OinC or skipper of a Swift boat, newly arrived in Vietnam. On the night of December 2, he was on patrol north of Cam Ranh, up near Nha Trang area. The next day he came to sick bay, the medical facility, for treatment of a wound that had occurred that night.

The story he told was different from what his crewmen had to say about that night. According to Kerry, they had been engaged in a fire fight, receiving small arms fire from on shore. He said that his injury resulted from this enemy action.

Some of his crew confided that they did not receive any fire from shore, but that Kerry had fired a mortar round at close range to some rocks on shore. The crewman thought that the injury was caused by a fragment ricocheting from that mortar round when it struck the rocks.

That seemed to fit the injury which I treated.

What I saw was a small piece of metal sticking very superficially in the skin of Kerry's arm. The metal fragment measured about 1 cm. in length and was about 2 or 3 mm in diameter. It certainly did not look like a round from a rifle.

I simply removed the piece of metal by lifting it out of the skin with forceps. I doubt that it penetrated more than 3 or 4 mm. It did not require probing to find it, did not require any anesthesia to remove it, and did not require any sutures to close the wound.

The wound was covered with a bandaid.

Not [sic] other injuries were reported and I do not recall that there was any reported damage to the boat.

In addition, one of Kerry's commanding officers, retired Lieutenant Commander Grant Hibbard, said he strongly questioned whether Kerry the senator deserved his first purple heart Purple Heart. Elaborating on an account reported in The Boston Globe last month, Hibbard said he was briefed after the Dec. 2, 1968, event for which Kerry received a Purple Heart.

''The briefing from some members of that crew the morning after revealed that they had not received enemy fire," Hibbard said. ''And yet Lieutenant [junior grade] Kerry informed me of a wound, he showed me a scratch on his arm and a piece of shrapnel in his hand that appeared to be from one of our own M-79s. It was later reported to me that Lieutenant Kerry had fired an M-79 and it had exploded off the adjacent shoreline. I do not recall being advised of any medical treatment and probably said something like, `Forget it.'

''He later received a Purple Heart for that scratch, and I don't know how," Hibbard said.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 9:18 AM -

Instead, Gore said, the network will be "an independent voice in this industry," with programming targeted at 18- to 34-year-olds "who want to learn about the world in a voice they recognize and a view they recognize as their own."

Meanwhile, Bush used Day Two of his Midwest bus tour to joke that Kerry's claim that unnamed foreign leaders are supporting him could be a "case of mistaken identity."

Kerry once claimed that he could have met the unnamed leaders in a city eatery.

"Just because somebody has an accent and a nice suit and a good table at a fancy restaurant in New York, doesn't make them a foreign leader," Bush joked.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 8:10 AM -

As former White House Chief of Staff Erskine B. Bowles makes his second run for a North Carolina Senate seat, he faces a $120 million lawsuit from the state of Connecticut for bad investments made while a top official at the Forstmann Little investment firm.

Mr. Bowles, who had been general partner at the New York firm making $4 million per year, is among nine top officials at Forstmann Little who are named in the Connecticut court case, which begins with jury selection this week.

Ever since the suit was filed in March 2002, politics has dominated the case.

When it was first filed by Connecticut's Democratic state treasurer and attorney general, one name from Forstmann Little's masthead was conspicuously absent: Mr. Bowles, who was busy down in North Carolina running for the Senate seat being vacated by former Sen. Jesse Helms. It was a crucial race in which the control of the Senate was at stake.

Only after complaints were raised in the media was Mr. Bowles' name added to the suit. Connecticut state officials said "other evidence" arose, requiring the inclusion of Mr. Bowles and another company official in the lawsuit.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:32 AM -

Yeah, but there's an outstanding line in Pepin's comments:

Ted Rall is a true American hero. Despite losing both his arms and legs in a tragic accident in Afghanastan (sic), he still manages to draw a cartoon every week using nothing but his ass.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 1:14 AM -

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 12:03 AM -

Today, a group of Swift Boat veterans from the unit in which Senator John Kerry served announced the formation of an organization, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The organization has been formed in order to bring the truth about Kerry to the American people. The organization intends to discuss Kerry’s war crimes charges, Kerry’s record and to request that Kerry authorize the Department of Defense to release the originals and the complete files relating to his military service and medical military records.

The group released a historic letter expressing the overwhelming opposition of those who served with Kerry or in his unit to his misrepresentation of his record and the unit’s record. The letter is signed by Swift Boat veterans at all levels and from the entire political spectrum; the entire chain of command during the period Kerry served in Vietnam; veterans who participated in the engagements resulting in his medals; and the majority of officers who served with him in Coastal Division 11, the unit in which he spent most of his four month tour of duty. Public circulation of the letter began one week ago and collected hundreds of signatures. The signers already make up a majority of the Swift Vets whose addresses can be found. The complete record of signers and comments will be posted on Swiftvets.com.

Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann, USN (retired), Commander of Coastal Surveillance Force Vietnam (Commander Task Force 115) and chair of the group said, “I signed this letter because I do not believe John Kerry is fit to be the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. This is not a political issue. It is a matter of his judgment, truthfulness, reliability, loyalty and trust - all absolute tenets of command.”

“We don’t understand why Kerry would make the centerpiece of his campaign an exaggerated account of his four month service in Vietnam 33 years ago, but since he is, we believe the American public is entitled to the truth about his service and about his charges about war crimes and atrocities,” explained John O’Neill, a Swift Boat veteran who took charge of Kerry’s boat a few months after Kerry’s departure and who debated Kerry in 1971.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 11:02 PM -

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 10:30 PM -

In other words, it means a lot less than Democratic primary voters were led to believe it meant. Boy, were they easy to con!

Things really did get weird for the press when Kerry and his staff refused to discuss why the candidate was flying up to Boston on Sunday, particularly after it later turned out that the only reason was the ill-fated bike ride. "And the only reason we learned about that was because Kerry fell and someone on staff felt like they had to tell us," says a TV news producer based in Washington.

Prior to the fall, on the way up to Boston, Kerry told some of the reporters that it wasn't really their business what he was going to do in Boston. "I've just got a bunch of stuff I've got to do -- just never get home. There are some decisions that are more important than being on the road."

And it's best to make them while on a ten-speed (no word yet whether the bike is American-made or perhaps French or Italian). [A custom made Serotta - cbp] Prior to "Bikegate," the Kerry campaign was happy to create the illusion with some reporters that the supersecret Boston trip was convention and vice-presidential-candidate-selection related. The spill, in which Kerry was unhurt, was an embarrassing moment for all involved, including the reporters who felt they had been suckered.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 10:14 PM -

Like John Kerry, I served in Vietnam as a Swift Boat commander. Ironically, John Kerry and I served much of our time, a full 12 months in my case and a controversial four months in his, commanding the exact same six-man boat, PCF-94, which I took over after he requested early departure. Despite our shared experience, I still believe what I believed 33 years ago--that John Kerry slandered America's military by inventing or repeating grossly exaggerated claims of atrocities and war crimes in order to advance his own political career as an antiwar activist. His misrepresentations played a significant role in creating the negative and false image of Vietnam vets that has persisted for over three decades.
...
John Kerry's recent admissions caused me to realize that I was most likely in Vietnam dodging enemy rockets on the very day he met in Paris with Madame Binh, the representative of the Viet Cong to the Paris Peace Conference. John Kerry returned to the U.S. to become a national spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a radical fringe of the antiwar movement, an organization set upon propagating the myth of war crimes through demonstrably false assertions. Who was the last American POW to die languishing in a North Vietnamese prison forced to listen to the recorded voice of John Kerry disgracing their service by his dishonest testimony before the Senate?

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 3:34 PM -

The United Nations yesterday threw up a stone wall in the oil-for-food scandal, insisting that contracts between the world body and private companies should not be turned over to investigators.

In a defiant move that has infuriated probers, Secretary-General Kofi Annan threw his support behind a letter from former oil-for-food head Benon Sevan to officials of a Dutch company that inspected Iraqi oil shipments. The letter directed the company not to hand over documents to congressional committees and other "governmental authorities."

Sevan's shocking April 14 letter sternly reminded the company, Saybolt International, that details of its contract with the United Nations are confidential "and we would not agree to their release."

The letter was especially eye-opening because it came from Sevan, who is under investigation for accepting sweetheart oil contracts from Saddam Hussein and who supposedly was on vacation, pending retirement, when it was written.

But yesterday, Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for Annan, told The Post that the letter was written by another official on Sevan's stationery and that the official was following advice of U.N. lawyers.

"The letter follows standard U.N. legal procedure," which mandates that companies cannot give documents about contracts with the United Nations to outside governmental agencies without the approval of the United Nations, Dujarric added.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 8:08 AM -

I) What is the biggest problem facing the country today?

1. SUV's
2. The high price of Prozac
3. Talk radio
4. Terrorism

II) How would you repair our relationship with France?

1. Appoint Dominique de Villepin to investigate the Oil-for-Food program
2. Give a $92,000. tax credit to every American over 21 who buys a case of Lafite Rothschild 1986
3. Require French sub-titles on all films shown in the US
4. Why bother?

III) How would you safeguard the country from terrorist attacks?

1. Apologize to al-Qaeda for 9-11 and mean it
2. Ask the UN to provide peacekeeping forces in New York, LA and Chicago
3. Stop humiliating Muslims with exaggerated security precautions
4. Make an example of Fallujah

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:52 AM -

The United Nations' human rights chief demanded Friday that Thailand investigate clashes in the south of the country that killed at least 113 people.
The investigation should be "swift and transparent," said Bertrand Ramcharan, the acting U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Security forces in southern Thailand killed 108 people, mostly young men wielding machetes, who attacked police and army posts on Wednesday. Three policemen and two soldiers were also killed in the bloodshed, the worst in years in Thailand.

Under U.N. treaties, security forces are "required to refrain from using force exceeding that strictly required by the exigencies of the situation," Ramcharan said. He said immediate action should be taken to ensure that everyone involved, including prisoners, are guaranteed their human rights.

If you're bored this spring or summer, not sure how to spend a free evening or Sunday afternoon, why not celebrate humanity?

Okay, I'll admit, it probably won't be as fun as weeding the garden or picking the dirt out of your fingernails, but it's bound to be interesting. And since UNESCO--the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization--is backing the humanity-celebrating enterprise of which I speak, you know it's going to be so tolerant, sustainable, and culturally diverse that you won't be able to turn away from it any more than a horrified bystander can wrest his attention from a bad car wreck.

If you don't know what event I'm talking about, give yourself a pat on the back. You've clearly been neglecting your Guardian and have, therefore, managed to avoid the ridiculous news of the leftist activist crowd's latest efforts, a Universal Forum of Cultures set to open in Barcelona on May 9.

The Forum, according to a press release issued by its organizers, is "an unprecedented gathering of people from all societies to spontaneously and freely participate in creating a better planet based on the principles of cultural diversity, economic sustainability, and world peace."

For one, there will be "special foods for sufferers of gluten intolerance," which is always a crowd pleaser. Maybe if attendees are lucky, the crowd will even convene a free and spontaneous dialogue session about why people aren't more tolerant of gluten in the first place. Other highlights include a UN Environment Project/UNESCO exhibition that promises to "show that it is 'in' to 'be sustainable'" and a U.N.-sponsored "Peace Camp" that is "conceived for the children of today, who will have to manage the effects of globalization in 2015" (emphasis most certainly not mine).

Whether the Forum has anything worthwhile to say, however, is a different matter. There are dozens and dozens of "dialogues" planned for the event on a wide variety of topics, but it's almost laughably clear that the organizers have already come to their own conclusions before the discussions have begun. The globalization forum advises: "we all have a stake in ensuring responsible corporate stewardship in reducing the harmful side-affects [sic] of global economic development." The cities forum urges: "Do your part to ensure that civically conscious design shapes a meaningful urban environment before sprawl continues unabated."

Clearly, no one on the left need worry that these inclusive dialogues said to represent every member of society might result in a free-market, or even a creative, solution to any problem. However, they'll provide great future opportunities for leftist activists to claim that their views are representative of those of the people of the world community. Plus, the dialogues will be a really good time to hawk the gluten-free snacks.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:43 PM -

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 8:17 AM -

In a new shocker in the United Nations' oil-for-food scandal, a letter written just two weeks ago suggests the U.N. official who led the program may be engaged in an ongoing cover-up, it was reported yesterday.

On April 14, U.N. oil-for-food chief Benon Sevan sent a letter to a company under investigation in the scandal asking it to stay mum, NBC reported.

Iraqi records allegedly show that Sevan got a voucher for 11.5 million barrels of oil through the program he ran - enough to make a profit of as much as $3.5 million. He denies the charges.

Dozens of internal United Nations audits of the troubled oil-for-food program in Iraq were routinely shown only to the U.N. official (Benon Sevan) now at the center of an international scandal over kickbacks from the regime of Saddam Hussein, a congressional investigator said yesterday.

Joseph A. Christoff, director of international affairs and trade at the General Accounting Office, told a House hearing that U.N. auditors had refused to release the internal audits to GAO investigators probing the scandal that poured an estimated $10.1 billion from secret oil sales and inflated contracts into Saddam's coffers under the U.N. program.

What are the Congressional hearings to discover the truth about the United Nations' oil-for-food scandal? According to some of the committee's Democratic representatives, the hearings are a "misguided effort to discredit the United Nations."

In other words - according to House Reps. Tom Lantos, Howard Berman and Gary Ackerman - it apparently doesn't matter what happened to the $2 billion worth of bribe money paid to 270 diplomats and politicians, or the $10 billion allegedly stolen by Saddam Hussein.

Why? Because the truth about France, Germany and Russia's opposition to the war in Iraq might not be helpful for Democrats in the 2004 elections. The party and their presidential candidate, who worship at the altar of "U.N. solutions" for world problems (including terror) might be forced to admit that the object of their continuing affection is a cesspool of anti-American, bribe-taking liars. Liars who are perfectly willing to stonewall any investigation - apparently with the blessings of certain Democratic committee members.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:56 AM -

The founder of suspected terror group Ansar al-Islam, normally cool under pressure, lost his temper when a female Muslim comedian jokingly lifted him off the ground before an audience.

Mullah Krekar, the former leader of a fundamentalist Islamic group of Kurds in northern Iraq, was participating in a debate over his new biography Tuesday evening. Krekar, a refugee in Norway since 1991, has become the country's highest profile Muslim after his repeated arrests, court cases, television appearances and now his book "My Own Words."

Comedian and women's rights activist Shabana Rehman - a well-known Muslim here as well - was in the audience for the debate and talked Krekar into allowing her to perform what she called a little test to see if he was a fundamentalist.

Pakistan-born Rehman walked onto the stage, grabbed the Mullah around the hips, and lifted him up.

"A man who can be carried by a woman can't be a fundamentalist," Rehman said to howls of laughter.

Krekar, who comes across as calm and tolerant in public appearances, exploded with rage and grabbed the microphone.

"She does not have the right to touch me. She is showing contempt for me. I can't accept this," the Oslo newspaper Aftenposten quoted Krekar as saying.

The mullah threatened a lawsuit, and demanded that all the photographers in the hall erase any pictures of him being lifted. But the images were broadcast on television and published in newspapers.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:12 AM -

The legislation drafted by the Social Democrats and their Greens coalition partners will fine companies that do not have one apprentice for every 15 workers.

Several members of the Greens party tried to allow an exemption for prostitutes but the Education Ministry responsible for the legislation blocked that, arguing it "would cause considerable difficulties", Der Spiegel said.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 9:58 PM -

Kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein's regime on contracts signed under the United Nations' oil-for-food programme were far higher than the 10 per cent rake-off previously assumed to be the norm.

U.N. officials, including General Secretary Kofi Annan, are so afraid of a new book detailing stories of U.N. sex scandals and drug parties, they have threatened the authors with termination if the book ever gets published.

Already, the book, "Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Matters" (Miramax Books) by Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait and Andrew Thomson -- two current and one former employee of the U.N.'s peacekeeping operations -- has provoked a storm of controversy inside the world body.

Now two of the authors could be out of job if U.N. censors have their way.
...
The book is the personal memoirs of the trio chronicling their ten years together working in several U.N. peacekeeping operations, including operations in Cambodia, Somalia, Rwanda, Liberia, Haiti and the former Yugoslavia.

“Emergency Sex” is the first time such a book has been written from inside the U.N.'s peacekeeping operations and by two employees who are currently serving in the world body.

The book also may rank as one of the most sensational exposes of U.N. business -- including numerous, and supposedly true, stories of wild sex and drug parties involving U.N. officials.

Meanwhile, the controversy over the book is reaching the highest levels at the U.N., and several ambassadors in the Security Council have requested copies of the "Emergency Sex” galleys to see what exactly the staffers are claiming.

The only way I want to hear the words "Kofi Annan" is in a diner and followed by the phrase "English muffin please."

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 1:34 PM -

A few months ago, back when he was an active candidate for his party's nomination, Al Sharpton told Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe that he intended to speak at the Democratic National Convention in Boston one way or another. "In the hall or in the parking lot," the Rev. Al said.

After Sharpton's weak showing in the primaries, it looked as if he would be setting up his soapbox among the sport-utility vehicles. But that changed on Thursday when John Kerry brought Sharpton in from the cold.

The more John Kerry is asked about his Vietnam War medals, the more he resembles Bill Clinton answering questions about Monica Lewinsky.

Speaking Vietnamese and French, he was relaxed and animated during a two-hour session, pumping his fist, wagging his finger, cracking jokes, thanking Americans who opposed the Vietnam War, and reminiscing about his days as a fighting revolutionary.

With critics of the Iraq war likening it to America's Vietnam experience, Giap's opinion was eagerly sought, but the man considered one of history's foremost military strategists prefaced his reply with caution, saying he didn't know the specifics of the Iraqi situation.

He offered this: "All nations fighting for their legitimate interests and sovereignty will surely win."

When Ralph Nader announced his independent candidacy for president in February, he claimed his chief target would be "the giant corporation in the White House . . . George W. Bush." Two months later, a more plausible agenda is beginning to emerge. The adversary is not Bush but John F. Kerry; the main subject is not corporate greed but Iraq. And, contrary to the conventional wisdom of win- ter, Nader may be poised for a hot summer.
...
Why should voters choose Nader? Because Kerry, Nader told the reporters, "is stuck in the Iraq quagmire the same way Bush is." That leaves the independent as the sole choice for "the peace movement in this country."

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 9:26 AM -

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 8:26 AM -