Wire Queen Helen Thomas today ripped into White House spokesman Scott McClellan over his claims the United States is in Afghanistan and Iraq — by invitation.

Joined in progess…

Q The other day — in fact, this week, you said that we, the United States, is in Afghanistan and Iraq by invitation. Would you like to correct that incredible distortion of American history —

MR. McCLELLAN: No, we are — that’s where we currently —

Q — in view of your credibility is already mired? How can you say that?

MR. McCLELLAN: Helen, I think everyone in this room knows that you’re taking that comment out of context. There are two democratically-elected governments in Iraq and —

Q Were we invited into Iraq?

MR. McCLELLAN: There are two democratically-elected governments now in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we are there at their invitation. They are sovereign governments, and we are there today —

Q You mean if they had asked us out, that we would have left?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, Helen, I’m talking about today. We are there at their invitation. They are sovereign governments —

Q I’m talking about today, too.

MR. McCLELLAN: — and we are doing all we can to train and equip their security forces so that they can provide for their own security as they move forward on a free and democratic future.

Q Did we invade those countries?

MR. McCLELLAN: Go ahead, Steve.
Full: drudgereport.com

LONDON – Amnesty International castigated the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay as a failure Wednesday, calling it “the gulag of our time” in the human rights group’s harshest rebuke yet of American detention policies. Amnesty urged Washington to shut down the prison at the U.S. Navy’s base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where some 540 men are held on suspicion of links to Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terror network. Some have been jailed for more than three years without charge.
Full: news.yahoo.com

Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah Wednesday acknowledged for first time that his Lebanese guerrilla group has more than 12,000 rockets and that all of northern Israel is within reach.

“All of the north of occupied Palestine, its settlements, airports, seaports, fields, factories and farms is under the feet and hands of the Islamic resistance,” Nasrallah said.

Nasrallah also said that Hezbollah, under mounting international pressure to disarm, would fight anyone who tried to take away its weapons.

“Any hand that reaches out to our weapons is an Israeli hand that will be cut off,” Nasrallah told supporters on the fifth anniversary of Israel’s witdhrawal from southern Lebanon.

“If anyone, anyone, thinks of disarming the resistance we will fight them like the martyrs of Kerbala,” he said, referring to a battle in Islamic history central to Shi’ites.
Full: haaretzdaily.com

You sure that wasn’t just last week?

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Moscow was plunged into chaos on Wednesday after a big power outage that President Vladimir Putin blamed on the state-owned electricity monopoly headed by a liberal politician viewed with suspicion by the Kremlin.

The outage, caused by a fire in a substation, shut the stock exchange, crippled transport and threatened mobile phone links in the sweltering Russian capital.

Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko said the breakdown was caused by a fire and explosion overnight at an electricity substation. There was no evidence of a terrorist attack, he said.

But Putin, who delayed a provincial trip because of the crisis, pointed the finger at the management of Unified Energy System whose chief executive is Anatoly Chubais, one of the architects of the post-Soviet market revolution whose liberal views sit uneasily with Kremlin hard-liners.

Maybe it’s just a little surprise to celebrate the new pipeline–a foretaste of things to come form the ‘architects of the post-Soviet market revolution’ who shrunk the Russian economy by over 40%.

Full: reuters.myway.com

BRUSSELS, Belgium — Indigenous leaders from Arctic regions around the world called on the European Union on Tuesday to do more to fight global warming and to consider giving aid to their peoples.

In their first visit to EU headquarters, three leaders representing the eight-nation Arctic Council met with officials at the European Commission and several EU lawmakers to push their campaign, warning their way of life was at risk.

Chief Gary Harrison, who represents the Athabaskan peoples in Alaska and Canada said urgent action was needed from the 25-nation EU, the United States and Russia.

“Maybe we can put pressure on and maybe they can turn the corner” and help, Harrison said.

The Arctic region is home to about 4 million people, including more than 30 different indigenous groups.

Larisa Abrutina, vice president of the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, which represents 40 different indigenous peoples, said her people should be able to share from the wealth in oil drilling and similar projects in the north.

“We don’t get a share in the wealth in the exploitation of resources,” she said.

Olav Mathis Eura, who represents Saami people in Norway, Sweden and Finland argued that development of the north should be sustainable.

“We need a kind of protection against this encroachment, we need protection of our traditional lands,” he said.

A recent study undertaken by the Arctic Council said the effects of global warming on the world’s polar region were getting worse and could open up the risk of flooding and erosion as the polar ice contracts.

Created in 1996, the Arctic Council comprises Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States.
Full: washingtonpost.com

people really do have to decide whether they are interested in halting further environmental degradation, or if they just want a piece of the profits

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Violence and systematic discrimination against women was rampant in Asia last year, ranging from acid attacks for unpaid dowries in Bangladesh to forced abortion in China, rape by soldiers in Nepal and domestic beatings in Australia, Amnesty International said.

The London-based group’s annual assessment of the state of human rights in the world reported abuses against women from almost every country in Asia in its report released Wednesday.

The largest section on women’s rights was devoted to their plight in Afghanistan, where the group said the ouster of the conservative, Islamic Taliban regime in 2001 by U.S.-led forces did little to bring relief to women.

While women were a major focus of the Asian report, the group highlighted abuses ranging from summary executions in Nepal to restrictions on criminal defendants’ choices of attorneys in Australia under new anti-terrorism laws.
Full: washingtonpost.com

The first drops of crude will snake their way along a pipeline that traverses some of the most unstable and war-ravaged countries on earth. This is the oil flow that was meant to save the West, and this morning the taps were turned on.

Only 42 inches wide, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan was supposed to alter global oil markets forever. The 1,000-mile project has transformed the geopolitics of the Caucasus and its impact is now being felt in the vastness of central Asia.

Output is supposed to reach one million barrels a day – more than 1 per cent of world production – from an underground reserve that could hold as many as 220 billion barrels.

Its architects and investors claimed the pipeline would shore up energy supplies in the US and Europe for 50 years, protecting our gas-guzzling way of life and easing our reliance on the House of Saud.

The goal of the ambitious project, which makes its tortuous way from the Caspian in Azerbaijan, through Georgia to the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, is to ease the reliance of the West on the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and bring cheaper fuel to our filling stations. The pipe threads its way through the region in a seemingly modest private corridor only 50 yards wide but nothing has been allowed to stand in its way. From forests to labour laws and endangered species to democracy protesters: all have given way to the costliest and most significant pipeline ever built.

The project, known as BTC, has driven a wedge between the US and Russia, triggered political unrest in the countries it passes through and their neighbours and sparked concern at extensive damage to the environment.
Full: independent.co.uk

ROME, May 21 – The founder of an influential Roman Catholic order in Mexico will not face a church trial on longstanding allegations that he molested teenagers, a Vatican spokesman said on Saturday.

In December, the Vatican opened a full-scale investigation into the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the 85-year-old founder of the Legionaries of Christ and a prominent religious figure in Mexico. At least eight people came forward in the late 1990’s to accuse him of abusing them between 1943 and the early 1960’s.

But on Saturday, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, the spokesman, said that no charges would be brought against Father Maciel. He did not say why the investigation was ended.

“There is no investigation now, and it is not foreseeable that there will be another investigation in the future,” Father Ciro said by telephone.
Full:nytimes.com

Two Star Wars fans are in a critical condition in hospital after apparently trying to make light sabres by filling fluorescent light tubes with petrol.

A man, aged 20, and a girl of 17 are believed to have been filming a mock duel when they poured fuel into two glass tubes and lit it.

The pair were rushed to hospital after one of the devices exploded in woodland at Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire.
Full:bbc.co.uk

CAIRO, Egypt — Al Qaeda’s branch in Iraq, blamed for numerous terror attacks on U.S. and Iraqi targets, said Tuesday in an Internet posting that its leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi, had been wounded and called on supporters to pray for his recovery.

The posting’s authenticity could not be verified, but it was posted on a Web site known for carrying prior statements by al Qaeda in Iraq and other militant groups.

Asked about the reports Zarqawi had been wounded, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, “I don’t know.”

The statement, which purportedly was from the group’s media coordinator, Abu Maysarah al-Iraqi, did not say how or when Zarqawi was injured. Al-Iraqi is known to be the group’s media coordinator, but there was no way to confirm if the statement was true or that it was posted by al Qaeda in Iraq.

Zarqawi, a Jordanian, has claimed responsibility for attacks on Iraqi civilians and security forces, kidnappings and beheadings of foreigners, and has a $25 million bounty on his head _ the same as for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

“Let the near and far know that the injury of our leader is an honor, and a cause to close in on the enemies of God, and a reason to increase the attacks against them,” the statement said.

It ended with prayers for Zarqawi, calling on the nation of Islam to “pray for our Sheik Abu Musab Zarqawi to recover from an injury he suffered for God’s sake.”

Media reports earlier this month said the U.S. military was investigating whether Zarqawi was being treated at a Ramadi, Iraq, hospital. These reports were never confirmed.
Full: washingtonpost.com

He can’t afford to lose any more limbs…