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Audit finds U.N. violates own rules in North Korea By Evelyn Leopold Fri Jun 1, 8:29 PM ET U.N. agencies violated their own rules in North Korea by employing national staff handpicked by the government and paying them in hard currency, according to a report by a U.N. board of auditors. But the report, an interim survey, did not find that large-scale U.N. funding had been diverted systematically. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who ordered the audit, said preliminary findings needed to be followed up with a visit to North Korea by the auditors, drawn from France, South Africa and the...

Lang Xianping, professor of economics at Chinese University of Hong Kong, had his finance and economics talk show, "Larry Lang Live" on Shanghai Cable TV 1, suspended this past February. He now reveals that his show was suspended on account of his mentioning several times that the social security fund should not be diverted; this drew the attention of the corrupt forces in Shanghai. Chinese officials claim the reason for the show's suspension is that Lang's Mandarin is not standard. Before it was suspended, it had been on the air for one and a half years. Lang's sharp comments, along...

Nigeria: Presidency - Obasanjo Did Not Authorise Diversion of FundsThis Day (Lagos) Posted to the web September 15, 2006 Kola Ologbondiyan Lagos The Presidency yesterday reacted to Vice President Atiku Abubakar's claim that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as well as organisations where President Olusegun Obasanjo has interests benefited from the controversial MOFAS Account at the Abuja branch of defunct Trans International Bank (TIB). Besides, it said, the President did not authorise diversion of public funds to any individual or organisation. "Obasanjo has never directed or forced any individual or organization to make donations to any of the many associations...

If anyone needs further proof - not that anyone does these days - that the Republican leadership in Congress is both desperate and clueless, it's the election-year revival of that mother of all non-issues: flag desecration. The U.S. House passed this tread-worn measure last year, and the Senate Judiciary Committee approved it last week. Even though Congress has no shortage of real issues, ranging from the war in Iraq to global warming, clamoring for its attention, the full Senate will begin debate next week on a proposed constitutional amendment to solve a problem that doesn't exist. As if that weren't...

Flag Day 2006 was also the fifty-second anniversary of President Eisenhower signing “Joint Resolution 243,” which added the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. At the Upper Senate Park, organizations like Concerned Women For America (CWA), The Religious Freedom Coalition, Eagle Forum, Ask For America, and The Traditional Values Coalition held a press conference alongside Representative Trent Franks (R-AZ), Representative Todd Akin (R-MO), Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Senator John Kyl (R-AZ) to urge Congress to pass the Pledge Protection Act. Representative Akin and Senator Kyl are sponsoring the bills in their respective houses that would protect the...

It comes at little surprise that the House, again, passed the amendment to outlaw the burning of the American flag. But yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, among other Senate colleagues, announced their support for the June 26th Senate vote on the Flag Desecration Amendment. The announcement came on non-other than Flag Day. How quaint. But don't be too alarmed, it seems a 2/3 majority is still lacking in the Senate. The House has passed a similar amendment half a dozen times in the past few years. While it has never gained enough votes in the Senate, it gets closer...

WASHINGTON -- Sometime between now and the Fourth of July, the Senate plans to revisit what over the course of 17 years has become a seasonal rite of patriotism on Capitol Hill: a vote on whether to amend the Constitution to ban protesters from burning the American flag. Each time, the arguments on both sides are passionate. Each time, the support needed to move ahead with an amendment falls short. But this year could be different, as two important trends cross paths. For one, proponents of the amendment appear to have more support than ever in the Senate. They say...

Harris Campaign Calls on Nelson to Defend Sanctity of Marriage For Immediate Release June 6, 2006 Contact:  Chris Ingram   (813) 288-8400 (Tampa, Fla.) - The Katherine Harris for U.S. Senate campaign called on Senator Bill Nelson to support the Marriage Protection Amendment today. "I believe the majority of Americans strongly support the preservation of traditional marriage. We must never undermine the uniqueness of an institution that continues to serve as an essential thread in the fabric of our society. I support the passage of the Marriage Protection amendment being debated in the Senate," Congresswoman Harris said. Campaign spokesman Chris Ingram...

An ABC News poll finds that most Americans oppose gay marriage but markedly fewer — especially those outside George W. Bush's core supporters — would amend the U.S. Constitution to ban it. Opponents, however, are far more likely to call it a make-or-break issue in their vote for Congress — a finding that explains Bush's renewed push for a gay marriage ban. Among all Americans, 58 percent say gay marriage should be illegal, but fewer, 42 percent, say it rises to the level of amending the U.S. Constitution. Among conservative Republicans and evangelical white Protestants, though, opposition to gay marriage...

Governor Mitt Romney has sent this letter to every member of the Senate encouraging them to Vote "Yes" on this landmark peice of legislation--the Marriage Protection Amendment (MPA). A few excerpts are below: "Americans are tolerant, generous, and kind people. We all oppose bigotry and disparagement, and we all wish to avoid hurtful disregard of the feelings of others. But the debate over same-sex marriage is not a debate over tolerance. It is a debate about the purpose of the institution of marriage. Attaching the word marriage to the association of same-sex individuals mistakenly presumes that marriage is principally a...

by Mark Finkelstein June 6, 2006 While considerable attention focuses on Ann Coulter's more superficial charms, from a conservative perspective Ann's real beauty is her absolute refusal to buy into liberal logic, no matter how pervasive. That independence of mind was on display this morning during her interview with Matt Lauer. Ann was on to tout her new book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, released today on . . . 6/6/6 - sign of the devil and all that. The first example came in the the context of President Bush's current push for a constitutional amendment that would prohibit gay...

In a year it is wrestling with an out-of-control budget, a war going badly, and one impasse on immigration and another on its own ethics, the Senate is taking time out to debate altering the U.S. Constitution by adding the Marriage Protection Amendment. The amendment is widely predicted to fall short of the needed votes to amend the Constitution for only the 23rd time in its 217-year history _ 13th if you omit the original 10, the Bill of Rights _ and well it should. At its gravest level, the amendment would make a significant incursion into federalism and state's...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush and congressional Republicans are aiming the political spotlight this week on efforts to ban gay marriage, with events at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue - all for a constitutional amendment with scant chance of passage but wide appeal among social conservatives. "Ages of experience have taught us that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "Government, by recognizing and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all." The president was to make...

NEW YORK — As the fight over immigration reform drags on, an ominous undercurrent to the debate — racism — is becoming more pronounced. From muttered ethnic slurs to violent attacks, activists say an anti-immigrant backlash seems to be growing in America's neighborhoods and workplaces. A few political leaders have called proposed immigration measures before Congress "racist." "The climate has gotten demonstrably worse and it is racially charged," said Devin Burghart of the Center for New Community, which tracks anti-immigrant activity. "It's not simply a debate about immigration policy. ... It's about race and national identity and who and what...

Today Mark Earley and I will be at the White House, meeting with President Bush and leaders of the pro-family movement. The president will then speak to the nation in support of the federal marriage amendment [Marriage Protection Amendment]. Thank God we have a president who supports this. I have discussed it with him several times, and I can tell you that he understands fully the social, cultural, and legal reasons why amending the Constitution is the only way to protect marriage. Unfortunately, a lot of politicians don’t get it. They argue that we do not need a marriage amendment....

In 1964, just one congressman from the Deep South, Atlanta's Charles Weltner, voted for the Civil Rights Act. For all practical purposes, his righteous leadership on civil rights — he also supported the Voting Rights Act — cost him his congressional career. In 1966, he resigned his seat rather than sign an act of loyalty to the segregationist Lester Maddox, as Georgia Democrats insisted. But some analysts believe he would have lost the race for re-election. Doing the right thing is difficult because it often means losing. And the typical politician is willing to lose anything — honor, integrity, dignity...

President Bush will promote a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, a cause dear to his conservative backers, at a Rose Garden event Monday, the eve of a scheduled Senate vote on the issue. The amendment would prohibit states from recognizing same-sex marriages. To become law, the proposal would need two-thirds support in the Senate and House, and then be ratified by at least 38 state legislatures. It stands little chance of passing the 100-member Senate, where proponents are struggling to get even 50 votes. Several Republicans oppose the measure, and so far only one Democrat — Sen. Ben Nelson (news,...

NORTH Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il may launch a sneak attack on the world's pop charts - with the love-song I am a front-line soldier's wife. A moribund economy and several recent severe famines have had a terrible effect on the North Korean people, destroying morale and causing unrest. Kim Jong-Il's latest attempt to deal with this problem has been to authorise a swathe of new love songs to re-invigorate the population and ensure his control of North Korea. Many people in the communist state are singing songs glorifying the women revolutionaries helping to build the nation, official media has reported....

There's no helping you. This site is now just a diversion -- like a train wreck. This site is inherently for and about raving egomaniacs, and Jim's site policies -- which amount to excluding reality and actual dialogue in favor of political/militaristic pornography -- is conducive to cognitive dissonance, which at the times your worldview is threatened leads you into psychotic breaks (on the political cognitive plane, that is, and just maybe in other realms too). Not to mention that your baseline politics is based in mythology about American demographics, science, economics, ethics etc. You spoonfeed each other in the...

LONDON — The French government tried to blame the 1985 sinking of Greenpeace ship the Rainbow Warrior on British spy agency MI6, according to official documents released under freedom of information. The campaign of misinformation and smears - suggesting MI6 bombed the ship in New Zealand and framed French secret agents, or that MI6 knew in advance of the French mission — infuriated Margaret Thatcher's government. The documents, released under Britain's Freedom of Information Act to The Guardian newspaper, show how Malcolm Rifkind, then a Foreign Office minister, told British diplomats in Paris to demand an end to the "campaign of misinformation"....