KATHMANDU, NEPAL remains tense as the 7-Party agitation against the Monarchy gains strength and the Maoist continue to have success on the battle-field.Sources within the Palace report the King and his family are preparing for exile.

The recent Municipal elections proved to be a rebuff to the Nepalese King and have been denounced by the 7-Party Alliance, the Maoist, the UN and the International Community as un-democratic.

US Ambassador James Moriarty in a “Town Hall Meeting” for the American Community stressed, “the need for maps to everyone’s homes”, and promised GPS readings for all homes of US Citizens by February 20th.
“Things are going to get worse in the coming months so please have your “go-bag” ready so that you can evacuate in a minutes notice”, the Ambassador warned and described the situation in Nepal as , “a mess and getting worse”.

“The Maoist may take advantage of there being no government, and come in and take it over”, cautioned the US Ambassador.

The Ambassador said the Maoist are threatening Nepalese employees of the US Gov., as well as Nepalese in US funded projects.

On February-1, 2005, King Gyanendra suspended all civil and democratic rights in Nepal and has ruled with an Iron-Fist from the throne.

Journalist, peace and trade union activist, representatives of civil-society, and members and supporters of the 7-Party Alliance have been beaten, arrested, brutalized on a daily basis.
informationclearinghouse.info

The real story is already emerging, if you’re willing to do a little digging. Cheney and Whittington went hunting with two women (not their wives), there was some drinking, and Whittington wound up shot. Armstrong didn’t see the incident but claimed she had, Cheney refused to be questioned by the Sheriff until the next morning, and a born-again evangelical physician has been downplaying Whittington’s injuries since they occurrred. Neither the press nor law enforcement seems inclined to investigate.

Before the right-wing commenters howl – there’s documentation for all of these statements. Let’s take them one by one: In addition to Cheney and Whittington, the hunting party included Katherine Armstrong (who was in the car at the time of the shooting: more on that later). After lots of evasive comments that only referred to a “third hunter,” we now know her identity: Pamela Willeford, the US Ambassador to Switzerland.
yahoo.com/huffpost

Creating a new offence of ‘glorifying terrorism’ is hypocritical and a threat to legitimate debate.

In the original draft of the terrorism bill, glorification of terrorism was a new stand-alone criminal offence. After widespread condemnation and ridicule that it would be unworkable the government did not abandon it, but tacked it on as part of another new offence of indirect encouragement of terrorism. It is part and parcel of the over-the-top government approach to legislation in this area that vague new transgressions which are not viable on their own are being stuck on to other offences to shore them up.
guardian.co.uk

Dramatic figures have been released revealing that at least 1,333 servicemen and women – almost 1.5 per cent of those who served in the Iraq war – have returned from the Middle East with serious psychiatric problems.

The official statistics, which have been passed to The Independent, identify those who were diagnosed with mental health problems while on duty. Many Iraq veterans are now receiving little or no treatment for a variety of mental health problems.

Questions have also been raised about the level of care being given to regular soldiers, reservists and members of the TA, some of whose symptoms emerged after ending active service. Many are not included in the figure of 1,333. Many claim they have been abandoned by the military establishment.
independent.co.uk

WINNIPEG – An extensive international study on the effects of climate change in the Arctic has reached some startling conclusions on issues ranging from how fast polar ice is melting to the impact on Inuit communities.

About 120 scientists from 11 countries involved in the Canadian-led research project, which started in 2002, are meeting in Winnipeg this week to present and discuss their findings.

One of the most surprising for David Barber, a sea ice specialist at the University of Manitoba, was the fact polar ice is melting at a rate of about 74,000 square kilometres each year – an area about the size of Lake Superior – and has been for the last 30 years.

“This is a very significant result, and it’s not some sort of trend that’s going to shift back the other way,” Barber said Tuesday.

Barber added there is increasing concern in the scientific community that there are factors actually speeding up the melt, but he cautions it’s too late to reverse the trend.

“The time to act actually was a few decades ago,” he said.

“We’re not going to be able to shift the economies of the planet to get off this fossil fuel addiction in a week, a year or a decade. But we have to start the process now to have some stability for future generations.”
commondreams.org

…For those who’ve forgotten, hydrogen fuel cells were, three State of the Unions ago, the thing that was going to save Americans from their oil addiction and stop the auto emissions that help cause global warming. Nowadays switch grass and biomass are the hot alternative fuels, but back in 2003, the president won applause for proposing “$1.2 billion in research funding so that America can lead the world in developing clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles.” On Capitol Hill, there were demonstrations of one such “Freedom Car,” and the president called on scientists to be “bold and innovative” in their hydrogen research.

Unfortunately for the authors of “Potential Environmental Impact of a Hydrogen Economy on the Stratosphere,” their research, while bold and innovative, didn’t exactly mesh with the hype. According to their model, tiny leaks from hydrogen cells, if such cells are ever mass-produced, could cause serious environmental damage. But they made no suggestion of inevitability: One of the study’s authors, John Eiler of Caltech, pointed out that foreknowledge of potential environmental problems could “help guide investments in technologies to favor designs that minimize leakage.” Presumably thinking along the same lines, NASA, which had helped pay for the research, prepared a news release and news conference on the paper.

Abruptly, both were canceled. Although “we often hear that releases are held up for political reasons,” one NASA employee told me, “that one was a surprise: It went all the way to the top and then got killed.” In fact, the release and the conference were “killed” by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. An official there told me this was because the office wanted to give Energy Department scientists a chance to respond to the study before it was publicized: “Our role is to facilitate interagency cooperation.” Coincidentally or not, it also happens that Spencer Abraham, then the energy secretary, was that same week preparing to depart for Brussels, where he was to tell Europeans that U.S. hydrogen research proved the Bush administration cared about the environment.
washingtonpost.com

by John Ross
If international diplomacy were a wrestling match, Fox Vs Latin America would be an apt sub–title for Mexico’s foreign relations imbroglios in 2006. During the five years plus he has been in office, the Mexican president has taken on the leaders of the Latin American Left one by one, starting with Fidel Castro, with whom he once broke off diplomatic relations.

Diplomatic relations with Cuba were once again endangered last week (Feb 5th) when the Mexican president failed to act after the U.S.–owned Sheraton Hotel chain canceled the reservations of a high–powered Cuban delegation in Mexico City to negotiate with Texas oil companies. The Cubans were kicked out of the swank Sheraton Isabel under the provisions of the Helms–Burton “trading with the enemy” act. Although U.S. laws are not applicable in Mexico, Fox failed to lodge a diplomatic protest with Washington,

Fox’s aggressive defense of free trade and the neo–liberal model now rejected by Latin America often makes it appear that he is carrying Washington’s water. This was most recently displayed at the Mar de Plata Summit of the Americas in November when the Mexican president tried to force endorsement of George Bush’s beloved Free Trade Area of the Americas (ALCA in its Spanish acronym), which would extend the dubious benefits of the North American Free Trade Agreement all the way to Tierra del Fuego. With Fox on the floor, “we don’t have to do much work ourselves” U.S. undersecretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Tom Scanlon told the Argentinean daily Clarin.
counterpunch.org

Venezuelan ambassador in Madrid Arevalo Mendez said yesterday that former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar “has no voice, nor thought, nor discourse of his own.” When analyzing the Latin American political system, “Aznar is carrying Bush on his shoulders, which limits the vision the US has of the region.”

Aznar had committed himself to working to stop “the return to populism” in the area. He said, “Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, maybe Argentina. All those places run the risk.”

Méndez said, “I’m surprised that a person with enough intellectual capacity to have his own voice” is agreeing with Bush on Latin American issues. He added, “In analyzing current politics in the region, you can “use the context of internal leadership in Latin America, or the Americanized viewpoint of the US, which Aznar supports.”

Mendez added that Aznar was wrong when he called on Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez not to use “petrodollars” in foreign policy, because that would be like “asking Spain not to use the money it receives from tourism to make international policy, or Argentina not to use what it receives from meat to make international policy. This sort of right-wing statements have no validity nor stand up to minimal discourse.”
spainherald.com

FEMA has let nearly 11,000 unused manufactured homes deteriorate on old runways and open fields in Arkansas, and the agency spent $416,000 per person to house a few hundred Hurricane Katrina evacuees for a short time in Alabama last fall, government investigators told the Senate on Monday.
news.yahoo.com

Hotel Aid Ends; Katrina Evacuees Seek Housing Again
NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 13 — Thousands of evacuees from Hurricane Katrina became transients again on Monday, wheeling their entire lives onto the street on luggage carts or dragging bulging garbage bags through hotel lobbies, when the federal government stopped paying their hotel bills.

In the largest single step in its phaseout of emergency housing assistance for victims of the hurricane, the Federal Emergency Management Agency ended the hotel payments for 12,000 families across the country, including 4,400 now living in New Orleans.

Most will get apartment rental assistance or trailers. Federal officials acknowledged Monday that hundreds of millions of dollars worth of mobile homes might never be used to house hurricane victims.

Most?

02/14/06 (UPI) — A USA Today-CNN-Gallup Poll says Americans not only think Iran will develop nuclear weapons but also use them against the United States.

The poll done over the last weekend also says Americans fear the Bush administration will be “too quick” to order military action against Iran, USA Today reported Tuesday.

The poll said eight out of 10 respondents predicted Iran would provide a nuclear weapon to terrorists to attack the United States or Israel. Six out of 10 respondents said Iran itself would deploy nuclear weapons against the United States.
informationclearinghouse.info