From the AP:

TEHRAN, Iran — Authorities have shut down a Tehran newspaper ,the official IRNA news agency reported Sunday, after the paper published a story critical of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s stance on Israel.

The Press Supervisory Board, which is controlled by hard-liners, banned Tehran Today on Saturday after the paper’s editor was summoned to court for publishing material deemed as insulting Ahmadinejad, IRNA said.

The news agency did not provide more details. But the announcement comes after the paper published a story Saturday that said Ahmadinejad’s comments on Israel “seems to have led to a different result — more pressure on Iran and more support to Israel.”

In 2005, Ahmadinejad said Israel should be wiped off the map. He also has called the Holocaust “a myth.”

Media closures are not unusual in Iran. In March, nine cinema and lifestyle magazines were banned for publishing material about foreign celebrities.

The military says crackdowns by the Iraqi government are working, and that the number of attacks has dropped to about 300 a week from 1,600 in June.
By Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 26, 2008
BAGHDAD — The U.S. military said Sunday that the number of attacks by militants in the last week dropped to a level not seen in Iraq since March 2004.

About 300 violent incidents were recorded in the seven-day period that ended Friday, down from a weekly high of nearly 1,600 in mid-June last year, according to a chart provided by the military.

The announcement appeared aimed at allaying fears that an uprising by militiamen loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr could unravel security gains since 28,500 additional American troops were deployed in Iraq in a buildup that reached its height in June.

Navy Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll, a military spokesman, credited the decrease to a series of operations launched by the Iraqi government in the last two months to extend control over parts of the country that have been under the sway of armed Sunni Arab and Shiite militants. They include crackdowns in the southern oil hub of Basra, the northern city of Mosul and Baghdad’s Sadr City district.

The late March operation in Basra triggered a fierce backlash by Sadr’s militiamen in Sadr City and across the overwhelmingly Shiite south, drawing in British and American forces.

The number of attacks nationwide rose to about 850 in the week that the Basra crackdown began, according to the military’s chart. The figure has ebbed and flowed since then.

The fighting in southern Iraq subsided a week after it started when a truce was reached between Sadr’s movement and the main Shiite factions in Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s government. Violence also has dropped in Sadr City since another deal was signed May 12, clearing the way for Iraqi troops to deploy throughout the heavily populated district, which is a bastion of Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia. But clashes have persisted in other sections of the capital, where U.S. and Iraqi forces are confronting Sadr’s militia.

The offensive against Sunni insurgents in Mosul has met with little resistance. Maliki’s government had been promising a crackdown there since January, and many fighters are believed to have fled the city before it began. But Iraqi military officials say more than 1,000 suspects have been detained in Mosul. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker was quoted in wire service reports as saying Saturday that Al Qaeda in Iraq, a mostly homegrown militant group that American officials say is foreign-led, has “never been closer to defeat than they are now.”

Driscoll agreed at a news conference that “they certainly are off-balance and on the run.” But he cautioned that the group remained a “very lethal threat.”

He said the number of attacks nationwide had declined 70% since the peak of the troop buildup. Most of the additional forces are expected to leave Iraq by the end of July.

alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

THURSDAY

MAY 1^ST 2008

OUR DEMANDS

LEGALIZATION FOR ALL NOW!

KEEP ALL FAMILIES TOGETHER!

PEACE BY JUSTICE, SECURITY BY RESPECT

FAIR TRADE MAKES FAIR BORDERS

Equal Respect/Equal Pay for Every Worker

STOP HR4088 “Baby Sensennbrenner”

Click Here for List of Demands
(Demands, don’t criminals make demands?)

1. Defend the Country
2. Protect and Regulate the Borders
3. Regulate and mediate interstate commerce.

The jettisoning of massive amounts of welfare and special interest spending would be used to:

1. Eliminate deficit spending
2. Pay off the national debt
3. Restore the Social Security Funds spent by congress
4. Rebuild Nationally owned infrastructure
5. Reduce and simplify taxes
6. Encourage extremely rich Americans to contribute as much additional tax as they choose
7. Secure the borders

As a part of the National Defense I would

1. Reduce and eventually eliminate stationing of US Troops in Japan, Europe and Korea.
2. Correspondingly Increase troop strengths in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait (other Middle East Countries as needed).
3. Make a major push in Iraq to seize upon the strengths of the surge with the goal of leaving by fall of 2012.
4. In January 2013 begin the phased removal American Troops from the Middle East
5. Pass the “Assured Destruction” initiative. This would let belligerent States like Iran know that if the US is attacked and it is tracked back to them, we will level their 3 largest cities and destroy their infrastructure from the air.

To make keeping troops in the middle east past 2012 unnecessary I would engage in a National Energy independence initiative with he goal of being energy independent by 2050.

1. Immediately Fund a new “Manhattan Project” to discover/invent a new fuel for cars, trucks and power plants
A. Offer the technology to the car companies for free to incorporate it into their products
B. Seed the buildout of privately owned National distribution so consumers can get fuel for the new vehicles
2. Incentivize consumers and industry to continue to upgrade to green technologies and make energy conservation a National Priority.
3. Continue to use foreign oil and keep our own as a reserve until a suitable replacement is found.

Just a start.

Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.
The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.

My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.
The sound wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn’t quite know,
Then the sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.

My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.
Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.
A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.

“What are you doing?” I asked without fear,
“Come in this moment, it’s freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!”
For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts..
To the window that danced with a warm fire’s light
Then he sighed and he said “Its really all right,
I’m out here by choice. I’m here every night.”
“It’s my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.

No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I’m proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at ‘ Pearl on a day in December,”
Then he sighed, “That’s a Christmas ‘Gram always remembers.”
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ‘ Nam ‘,
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.
I’ve not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he’s sure got her smile.

Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue… an American flag.
I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.

I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..

Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall.”
“So go back inside,” he said, “harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I’ll be all right.”

“But isn’t there something I can do, at the least,
“Give you money,” I asked, “or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you’ve done,
For being away from your wife and your son.”

Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
“Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we’re gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.

For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us.”

PLEASE, Would you do me the kind favor of sending this to as many people as you can? Christmas will be coming soon and some credit is due to our U.S. service men and women for our being able to celebrate these festivities. Let’s try in this small way to pay a tiny bit of what we owe. Make people stop and think of our heroes, living and dead, who sacrificed themselves for us.
LCDR Jeff Giles, SC, USN
30th Naval Construction Regiment
OIC, Logistics Cell One
Al Taqqadum, Iraq

After you finish reading this, please forward this story on to others so that our nation and people around the world will know about those who laughed when they found out about the tragic events in New York, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon.

On September 11th, a Budweiser employee was making a delivery to a convenience store in a California town named McFarland.

He knew of the tragedy that had occurred in New York when he entered the business to find the two Arabs, who owned the business, whooping and hollering to show their approval and support of this treacherous attack.

The Budweiser employee went to his truck, called his boss and told him of the very upsetting event!

He didn’t feel he could be in that store with those horrible people. His boss asked him, “Do you think you could go in there long enough to pull every Budweiser product and item our beverage company sells there?

We’ll never deliver to them again.”

The employee walked in, proceeded to pull every single product his beverage company provided
and left with an incredible grin on his face.

He told them never to bother to call for a delivery again.

Budweiser happens to be the beer of choice for that community. Just letting you know how Kern
County handled this situation.

And Now The Rest Of The Story:

It seems that the Bud driver and the Pepsi man are neighbors. Bud called Pepsi and told him. Pepsi called his boss who told him to pull all Pepsi products as well!!! That would include Frito Lay, etc.

Furthermore, word spread and all vendors followed suit! At last report, the store was closed indefinitely.

Good old American Passive-Aggressive A$$ Whoopin!

Pass this along, America needs to know that we’re all working together!

If you can read this, thank a teacher…

If you are reading it in English…. THANK A SOLDIER!!!

That action in unstable Iraq seriously jeapordized America’s ability to contain violence, which has only now shown a measurable drop since the Surge has shown success.

A new threat has emerged that has the potential to set the clock back once again. This time it is being perpetrated by non other than the Speaker Of the House of Representatives of the United States Government, Nancy Pelosi, Democrat.

Speaker Pelosi is planning to bring a resolution branding the killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks as “genocide” to a vote in the House. Turkey reportedly killed up to 1.5 million Armenians in the period around World War One.

At issue is not the validity of the resolution, but the timing. Turkey currently facilitates transit of much of the US military’s logistic support of the war effort in Iraq, and that hospitality could be in jeopardy in the wake of an affirmitive vote on the resolution. Also at issue is Turkey’s desire to invade northern Iraq to counter Kurdish rebels.

Like the bombing of the al-Askari Mosque touched of a cycle of violence, the consideration of this ill-timed resolution may cause the same. The US House of Representatives and Nancy Pelosi do not exist in a vacuum and if they vote and pass this resolution, they will be responsible for the results.

Couric referenced comments made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday’s “The Charlie Rose Show,” and said she actually agreed with Ahmadinejad on one point. “Oftentimes Westerners don’t really understand fully the values of this particular culture,” said Couric. “And I think the jury is still out as to whether democracy can really thrive in Iraq.”

Here is an excerpt from Time.com on a celebrity dinner put on by President Ahmadinejad of Iran:

This is now an annual ritual for the President of Iran. Every year, during the U.N. General Assembly in New York, he plots out a media campaign that — in its shrewdness, relentlessness, and quest for attention — would rival Angelina Jolie on a movie junket. And like any international figure, Mr. Ahmadinejad hones his performance for multiple audiences: in this case, the journalists and academics who can filter his speech and ideas for a wider American audience.

This illustrates the understanding of playing the media in the US where first ammendment guarantees give even despots a platform. There are no such visits by American Presidents to Iran, followed by speeches at prominent universities, followed by dinners with celebrities.

We are being played.

Columbia will provide a forum for the President of a country that has publicly supported the destruction of Israel, denies the holocaust took place, supports terrorists, and is trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Yet Columbia says it is a free speech issue. Students regularly shut out or shout down those they disagree with from the right of the American political spectrum. Why is the President of a nation that is the opposite of all the students claim to hold dear given so much lattiude? Will they shout down Ahmadinejad, or show him the respect they reserve for those they agree with?

The university claims military recruiters should not be allowed on campus because of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policies regarding gays in the military. Ahmadinejad is the President of a country that is said to execute homosexuals, and where women are stoned to death for doing what Monica Lewinsky did to President BIll Clinton in the White House.

Claiming it’s a freedom of speech issue seems a thin veil, but for what?