Breaking News - Buyers Unable To Discern Which Conflicts Affect Their Diamonds!

Writers and newscasters necessitate to mind of trying too difficult to be politically correct. The first and last Michigan on the politically-correct diamonds' railroad train line are stations called "Censorship" and "Manipulation."

Have you ever wondered if the monies from non-conflict diamonds ever purchase arms to kill guiltless people? Are the people who buy, sell, traffic, and wear blood-less diamonds immune to force or the funding of violent upheavals?

We are treated to well-financed and hopefully well-intentioned campaigns, cautioning us to guarantee that lone diamonds with a specific sealing wax are guilt-free. I am not trying to minimize the well-intentioned process, but something is missing here. Let us look at the regulators and how they issue their certification.

The Kimberly Procedure Certification Scheme, or KPCS for short, originated from a meeting of Southern African diamond producing states in Kimberley, Northern Cape in May 2000. Three old age later an functionary enfranchisement procedure took place. From its functionary beginning day of the month in 2003, in order for a state to be a participant, it must guarantee that any diamond originating from the state makes not finance an physical thing seeking to subvert a UN-recognized government, or a Rebel group. KPCS also mandates that every diamond exportation be accompanied by a Kimberley Procedure certification proving that no diamond is imported from, or exported to, a non-member of the scheme. In the corporate world, that is called "restraint of trade." When Uncle Bill Gates tried something similar, other computing machine programme Sellers filed lawsuit and won.

So if a mediocre husbandman happens a diamond and seeks to exert his legal rights under just trade laws, in the diamond industry, unless he sells it to the government organisation or member, the human race is warned that he will perpetrate diamond treason.

When Iodine checked the information at the U.N, I saw booklets with the continent of Africa with messages and drawings implying that people other than their authorised Sellers who tried to sell unsmooth diamonds, could and most likely would utilize the monies to finance revolutions.

As a newsman news-hound, when I computed the cost of printing the booklets and the cost of the advertizement campaign, I decided to make some fact-finding digging. It is my duty to dig. First of all, mediocre husbandmen work an norm of 16 hours per day, risking their lives in some cases, trying to happen one piece of stone large adequate to feed their families. They make so in an environment where such as entrepreneurial Acts are prohibited or controlled mostly. Secondly, the likelihood are not in their favour; thirdly, the last clip I checked the terms of an automatic onslaught rifle, it would take a small town of approximately10,000 people working approximately 20 hours per twenty-four hours for at least 10 old age to happen adequate diamonds to buy 100 semi-automatic rifles.

A very distressing and recurring unreciprocated inquiry caused me to prosecute the truth. I establish fantastic research by chap journalists, documenting their consequences that germs, as opposing to people, were responsible for, and will go on to do the colza of Africa. Others postulate that the find of steel caused the state to slit downwards, and others still, believe and learn that guns (by themselves)did the damage.

I have got got no manner of ambitious their hypotheses, nor would I. However, I have establish over 50 prognostications in the Hebrew Pentateuch about a subdivision of Abraham's seed predestined to be shipped by sea and enslaved for 400 year-periods. The people and resources would be plundered repeatedly. However the textual matters did not state how that would happen. The Pentateuch only gave the continuance of the colza and plunder. It would go on to go on "Unless they returned to the commissariat of The Covenant of Abraham."

Finding the scriptural prognostications were not sufficient for me, I needed to understand the type of human spirit that would enslave a people and brazenly take their resources, devalue their currencies, and then warn people not to purchase their commodity unless the seed of the people who did the aforesaid sanctioned the sale. What is more than alarming is that the human race organic structure politic accepts that without challenge. Something very deep and baleful have to be operation beneath the surface of such as warnings. Had I not done my ain research and establish the fulfilment of prognostications concerning such, I would have got got believed any author who posited that foreigners kidnapped some people and took over their minds.

According to published and accepted theories, guns, sources and steel decided on their ain agreement to aim Africans; since then, the violent death and milking of their resources have go habitual. As a chap writer, even though I had a difficult clip swallowing that, I esteem my colleagues' theses. However, none of those plant answered my basic question: What could possess specific states and their seed to prosecute Africans, their lands, peoples, and their resources relentlessly for 400-year periods?

Sequential cryptography of letters of male inheritors of Abraham revealed interesting prophetic pronouncements. Those from a specific point A to a mention point Gram matched known and documented history. Those from specific mention points Meter to point Omega matched recorded history. However, whereas many historical records were lost from library burnings, larceny and devastation of parchments, sequential decoding of male seed inheritors allowed missing pieces to be replaced. Those codifications are deciphered and revealed in "The Golden Fleece Found!."

Without the Pentateuch explanations, the one-sidedness practiced by states trading or working with Africa cannot or makes not do sense. Where is the clause from the authorities that are signers to the same procedure promising not to perpetrate genocide? Where are the clauses from the participating members pledging that if they utilize finances received from the honourable diamond trade to strip medical stores to their mediocre folks, or medicinal stores to those in need, that Interpol have the right to impound the place and the funds?

I searched and searched in vain. One day, I accidentally stumbled upon Psalm 44:12, and wondered what and who Supreme Being was speaking about: which people would be sold and not have a dime for the transaction.

I sat in a public lecture once where a pupil asked the invitee lecturer, "What were God-fearing people during the Holocaust?" When the professor responded with similar inquiries "Where were God-fearing people when we invaded Republic Of Iraq without evidence?" and "Where were God-fearing people when Indians were slaughtered for their lands; Incas slaughtered for their gold? While each inquiry produced louder silence, the last 1 emptied the room: "Why is it that you pupils only have got that passionateness when you are in college, but as soon as you fall in the corporate human race your ardor disappears?" The professor continued: "I can play back tapes of talks going back 10 old age and in every case there is person just like you asking the same questions. I will make with you the same thing I have got done to social classes before. I will inquire you to name me in two old age time, if we are both around to see what you have got done about the things you raise here. None have ever called."

I knew celebrity early. I make not have got to swap my psyche or my unity to accomplish anything. Thank Heaven my repute is more than of import than having a in demand perception. By creating a trans-continental radio audience, by adding my name to issues people are afraid to touch, all Iodine desire to make is to remind people that crime--gift wrapped or laid bare is the same. Stop believing that some are more than endurable than others. Corporations wages Rebel executive directors with immense bonuses while the staff that dwell the "pleb" bleachers acquire laid off. If, the purpose is to monopolise the diamond industry, to command the prices, and if that agency destroying the repute of some states in the process, how would anyone know? Isn't it better to believe the packaged and well merchandised theory that the monies from either the purchase or sale of certified diamonds will never cast blood or finance conflict? After all, we believed that guns--by themselves, germs--by themselves, and steel--by themselves might have got got killed millions.

I would have been so happy if the people who bring forth those movies pressing to convert us that hungry husbandmen are wicked people trying to finance revolutions, if they would include just a small footage screening us the statuses that diamond mineworkers work under and also to let on what the workers have for a day's wage in local currency. When that is finished, convert the local currency to U.S Oregon Euro. Sad to say, many mineworkers would be happy to have as much as U.S$1.00 per day. Microphone Bruno's articles suggest that greed and use sing in the diamond trade choir: www.blacktable.com/bruno031030.htm.

On July 28th 2007, a newspaper headline article trumpeted news mass media worldwide that 11000 mineworkers in South Africa voted to establish an limitless work stoppage the twenty-four hours before a powerful diamond company scheduled its bi-annual sales report. Members of the National Union of Mineworkers scheduled work stoppage action after they refused their wage demands. I retrieve the narrative well, because I produced the news that twenty-four hours and carried the narrative as newspaper headline news for Perceiver Radio. Fifteen proceedings ago, I tried to mention the article; only the newspaper headline section stays on the web.

Where is the conflict: with the diamonds, with the scruples of the diamond sellers, or with the buyers?

Janine Richard J. Roberts have followed the seedy side of the diamond concern and have exposed the oftentimes disgustful lengths it travels to keep control over the Diamond's trade. Many of her determinations are in her most recent book, Glitter & Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel.

Here is something for preacher men to ponder: the most ignored discourse is Saint Matthew 25:40 "Whatever you make to the least of these you make unto me." That Bible underpins Malachi 3:10. However Malachi 3:10 is the most quoted in Christian churches today. Here is some irony: if many Africans according to prognostications are Abraham's seed, and if Supreme Being have an ageless compact with them, then guiltless babes who decease because of famishment and greed must harvest certain post-earth rewards. Just wondering: what haps to people who go on to do their hunger, suffering, unfairness and premature death?

A hearty bah, humbug! to Christianized Republicans

As Christians across the human race set up to observe the birth of Jesus, it's a adjustment minute to contemplate the mountain of moral, and mortal, lip service that is our Christianized Republican Party.

There's nothing new, of course, about the Christianization of the GOP. Seven old age ago, when debating Aluminum Gore, then-candidate Saint George W. Shrub was asked to place his favourite philosopher and answered "Jesus." This year, however, the Christianization of the political party reached new high with Hand Romney's declaration that he believed in Jesus Of Nazareth Of Nazareth as his savior, in an attempt to stem the flowing of "values voters" to Microphone Huckabee.

My concern isn't the rift that have opened between Republican political pattern and the vision of the nation's Founders, who made very clear in the Fundamental Law that there would be no spiritual diagnostic test for officers in their enlightened new republic. Rather, it's the spread between the instructions of the Evangel and the sermons of the Gospel's Own Party that have widened past the point of absurdity, even as the apparent Christianization of the political party return apace.

The policies of the president, for instance, can be defended in greater or (more frequently) lesser grade within a model of worldly standards. But if Shrub can conform his advocacy of pre-emptive war with Jesus' Sermon on the Saddle Horse warning to turn the other cheek, he's a more than originative theologist than we have got given him recognition for. Likewise his support of torture, which he highlighted again this calendar month when he threatened to blackball House-passed legislation that would explicitly ban waterboarding.

It's not just Shrub whose catechism is a merry premix of torment and piety. Virtually the full Republican House deputation opposed the prohibition on waterboarding. Among the Republican presidential candidates, lone Huckabee and the not-very-religious John McCain have got come up out against torture, while only libertarian Bokkos Alice Paul have questioned the philosophy of pre-emptive war.

But it's on their policies concerning immigrants where Republicans — campaigners and electors alike — really run afoul of biblical writ. Not on in-migration as such as but on the treatment of immigrants who are already here. Consider: Christmas, after all, observes not just Jesus' birth but his family's flight from Herod's wrath into Egypt, a journeying obviously undertaken without benefit of legal documentation. The Book isn't large on immigrant documentation. "Thou shalt neither vex a alien nor oppress him," Exodus states the Godhead told Moses on Saddle Horse Sinai, "for ye were aliens in the land of Egypt."

Yet the typical outcry coming from the Republican alkali this twelvemonth isn't simply to command the flowing of immigrants across our boundary lines but to penalize the undocumented immigrants already here, children and parents alike.

So Romney onslaughts Huckabee for holding immigrant children blameless when their parents brought them here without papers, and Huckabee supports himself by parading the blurb of the Minuteman Project's Jim Gilchrist, whose grouping harasses twenty-four hours manual laborers far from the border. The demand for a more than regulated in-migration policy come ups from virtually all points on our political spectrum, but the pushing to persecute the immigrants already among us come ups distinctly, though by no agency entirely, from the same Republican right that protestations its Christian religion at every turn.

We've seen this sort of Christian Religion before in America. It's more than tribal than religious, and it billows at those modern times when our state is growing more diverse and economical chance is not abounding. At its tallness in the 1920s, the Rutherfordium Klux Ku Klux Klan was chiefly the political look of nativist Protestants disturbance by the growth ranks of Catholics in their midst.

It's difficult today to conceive of KKKers thought of their missionary post as Christian, but billions of them did.

Today's Republican values electors don't really conflate their fury with their faith. Lou Dobbs is a purely laic figure. But nativist dogmatism is strongest in the Old Time Religion precincts of the Republican Party, and suffering betide the Republican campaigner who doesn't encompass it, as Toilet McCain, to his recognition and his political misfortune, can attest.

The most blue thing about the Republican presidential race is that the party's rank and register necessitate their campaigners to turn meaner with each passing play week.

And now, inconveniently, inconsiderately, come ups Christmas, a vacation that couldn't be better calibrated to expose the Republicans' rank, fetid hypocrisy.

Meyerson is editor-at-large of American Prospect and the L.A. Weekly. This article originally appeared in The American Capital Post.

All I know

All Iodine cognize is All Iodine Know

from what Iodine see what Iodine hear

he have got never loved you at all

then why are you cachexia your tears

It's good to see you how many old age have it been

Well I'm endorse in town and Heaven cognizes for how long

The Sun have aged you more than beautifully from what I've seen

Fancy dusting off memories over tea if that topographic point hasn't gone?

I calm sometimes experience the beat of you dance away with him

well it's about clip your eyes were haunted by his given ring

All Iodine cognize is All Iodine Know

from what Iodine see what Iodine hear

You have never loved him at all

then why are you cachexia your tears

Sure i'm doing well and nearly got hitched just like you

but lies alibis crying for fearfulnesses and I'll share the blame

Anyway you've still got the smiling but I ain't a fool

Time's painted your human confront in sorrow when you took his name

Don't travel now I've only said what you've really wanted to face

Don't shout for fate outcry for the three missive word cachexia away

All I cognize is All I Know

from what I see what I hear

You've never loved each other at all

then why are you cachexia your tears

Off you run don't incrimination him

my clip now don't fault me

delight halt bend around now

only you can put yourself free

All I cognize is All I Know

from what I see what I hear

You've never loved each other at all

then why are you cachexia your tears

Bush is making Hill Dems look disorganized, foolish

Congressional Democrats demand a Plan B.

Republicans chuckle as they barricade Democratic enterprises — and impeach the bulk of being not able to govern. Rank-and-filers are ferocious their leadership can't stop the Republic Of Iraq War. President Shrub sit downs back and vetoes at will.

Worse, Democrats are starting to fault each other, with those in the House wondering why their Senate co-workers don't coerce Republicans to prosecute in grueling, old-fashioned filibusters. Instead, the Republican Party kills measures by coming up with just 41 votes. Senators support themselves by saying that their House co-workers don't understand how the grand "upper" chamber plant these days.

If Bush's scheme is to drag United States Congress down to his low degree of public esteem, he is succeeding brilliantly. A American Capital Post/ABC News opinion poll released last hebdomad establish that lone 33 percentage of Americans approved of Bush's handling of his occupation — and just 32 percentage felt positively about Congress' performance. The lone comfortableness for Democrats: The public disfavors Republicans in United States Congress (32 percentage approval) even more than than it dislikes congressional Democrats (40 percentage approval).

The Democrats' core job is that they have got been not able to put incrimination for gridlock where it largely belongs, on the Republican minority and the president.

In an ideal world, Democrats would go through a batch of statute law that Shrub would either have got to subscribe or veto. The president would have got to take duty for his choices. The House have passed many bills, but the Republican minority have tremendous powerfulness in the Senate to maintain the statute law from ever getting to the president's desk. This makes the feeling that action is being stalled through some indeterminate and nefarious congressional "process."

Not only can a minority block action in the Senate, but the Democrats' nominal one-vote bulk is frequently not a bulk at all. A few rebel Democrats often defect, and the political party runs short-handed when Sens. Joe Biden, Edmund Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd and Barack Obama are off running for president.

And Shrub is learning that even when measures attain his desk, he can blackball them with close impunity. Last Wednesday, Shrub issued his 2nd veto of a measure to widen insurance under the State Children's Health Insurance Program to 10 million kids. Democrats have got the high land on the issue and more than than two-thirds support in the Senate, but the measure misses a veto-proof House majority.

After Shrub vetoed the first version of the SCHIP bill, Democrats changed it slightly to do it more than attractive to Republicans. And the new version passed both houses too. When Shrub vetoed the SCHIP measurement again, almost cipher paid attention. The American Capital Post ran a three-paragraph narrative on the corner of page A18; The New House Of York Times ran a longer narrative — on page A29.

Democrats can't even acquire recognition for doing the right thing. If United States Congress and Shrub don't act, the option lower limit taxation — originally designed to impact only Americans with very high incomes — volition rise taxations on about 20 million middle- and upper-middle-class people for whom it was never intended.

Democrats desire to protect those taxpayers, but also maintain their pay-as-you-go promise to countervail new disbursement or taxation cuts with taxation additions or programme cuts elsewhere. They would finance AMT alleviation with $50 billion in new taxations on the very wealthiest Americans or corporations. The Republicans state no, just go through the AMT fix.

Here's a guarantee: If the Democrats neglect to go through AMT relief, they will be blamed for raising taxations on the center class. If they go through it without the taxation increase, shortage hawks will impeach them of merchandising out.

What's the option to the internecine Democratic finger-pointing? The party's congressional leadership necessitate to make whatever they must to set this twelvemonth behind them. Then they necessitate to halt whining. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Thomas Reid should set aside any sick feelings and usage the Christmastide interruption to come up up with a joint programme for 2008.

They could begin with the best thoughts from their presidential campaigners in countries such as as wellness care, education, remedies for the indisposed economic system and poverty-reduction. Agree to convey the same measures to a ballot in both houses. Try one more than clip to change the way of Republic Of Iraq policy. If Shrub and the Republicans block their efforts, convey all these issues into the campaign. Let the electors interrupt the gridlock.

If Democrats don't do the 2008 election about the Do-Nothing Republicans, the Republican Party have its ain thoughts about whom to throw responsible for Washington's paralysis. And if House and Senate Democrats waste material their clip attacking each other, they will rate any incrimination they acquire adjacent fall.

Dionne is a editorialist for the American Capital Post ( ).

Sorting out Bush, Iraq, Iran

In the last few months, it have been possible for me to compose respective columns about hopeful marks in Iraq. Our ain casualty Numbers are down, and so are those of the Iraqis.

Many grounds are advanced for this good news, and studies from the scene have got explored them all. First is the "surge" inch American troops, giving a higher American profile in Bagdad vicinities than we have got ever had, vindicating President Bush's insisting on this tactic.

Another ground cited is the over-reaching by al-Qaida in Republic Of Iraq and their cruel homicides of civilians. Eventually, even the Sunnite leadership had had enough and began supporting the "occupiers" who, a few hebdomads earlier, they had been killing.

Reason No. Three is aluminum Sadr's determination to tell his Shiite reserves to stand up down, taking 60,000 potentiality slayers off the streets of Baghdad.

One more than than reason, the grimmest of all, was that after the years-long orgy of blood-letting, there were simply no more immature Iraki work force left to murder.

Whatever the reasons, the lowering of casualty listings and getting the Republic Of Iraq warfare off the presence pages of the newspapers came on Saint George Bush's ticker so he acquires recognition for it, just as acquires the duty for starting the warfare in the first place.

The autumn season, in fact, seemed to be going well for the President. In improver to relative quiet in Iraq, he have been able to utilize the new Democratic United States Congress as a snappy boy. It looks he have got been successful in casting them as "do-nothing," in malice of the fact that Democrats make not have the Numbers to overrule his veto or the senatorial "super-majority."

The President's root cell place was bolstered when men of science seemed to happen a replacement for embryonal root cells for experiments.

Finally, the President was able to raise the apparition of a new menace more unsafe than Republic Of Iraq was in 2003, according to his ain pronouncements. This clip it was our old antagonist Iran. On October 17th, President Shrub went farther than he had since standing in presence of the "Mission Accomplished" streamer in 2003. He actually implied that the atomic menace from Islamic Republic Of Iran mightiness precipitate "World War III."

One might believe that past experience would take the President to utilize more than temperate language, but what's done is done. All of which takes us to the one-two poke that have once again left the President and his disposal reeling.

National Intelligence Estimates are of import to any administration. They are a digest of the best grounds gathered by all the intelligence federal agencies available to the government.

They were used by the Shrub disposal in the run-up to the Republic Of Iraq war. In that case, they were spectacularly wrong. As recently as 2005, the N.I.E. had great assurance that Islamic Republic Of Iran was actively pursuing a atomic bomb. It was that information that led President Shrub and Frailty President Cheney to project Islamic Republic Of Iran as an at hand menace to our security.

Then the bombshell landed among us. Whatever atomic programme Islamic Republic Of Iran had, said the new estimate, it had ended in 2003. They didn't state "suspended," they said "halted." One must give the writers of the N.I.E. points for courageousness in handing that unrecorded grenade to the President.

It is also just to listen to the protagonists of the President who ask, "Why should we believe this appraisal if the former 1s were wrong?" Excellent point, except it then implores the inquiry of why the President should trust on any intelligence at all when courting mortally unsafe confrontation with other nations?

Strike two came when we heard that the Central Intelligence Agency had destroyed tapes that definitely shown their question techniques when questioning panic suspects. In my view, this volition bend out to be the more than annihilating blow to the to the disposal and, perhaps, the President personally. He have said, "We don't torture." Here was his opportunity to turn out it, but the grounds is gone, joining the spread in the Richard Nixon audiotape in the annals of political disasters.

These failures are not just the President's. They are ours, too, because we must dwell with the consequences. So far, only coal and ashes in our stocking this Christmas.

E-mails sent to Post editorialist Dent Clooney at volition be forwarded to him via regular mail.

Wife joins Army after husband loses leg in Iraq

SAN ANTONIO — Thomas More than a twelvemonth after marcher Alejandro Albarran lost portion of his right leg to a blast in Iraq, he still hasn't decided whether he'll remain in the Army.

"Right now, I'm leaning against it," Albarran said, looking ahead with antipathy to a possible desk job.

But whatever he decides, Spc. Albarran, 20, won't be leaving Army life behind now that his married woman enlisted to take his topographic point among the ranks.

"After everything he's gone through — and helium loves the Army — he sort of divine me," Janay Albarran said. "I made him a promise that I would complete what he started."

So, while he underwent five-day-a-week rehab to retrieve his balance and strength on a prosthetic leg at an Army rehabilitation installation here, she learned to hit a rifle and base in formation in boot encampment at Garrison Jackson, S.C.

Mrs. Albarran became Pvt. Albarran on Friday. The couple's 2-year-old girl is staying with a grandma in Arizona.

Across the Army, roughly 24,000 soldiers, roughly 9 percentage of the force, are married to other soldiers. There are no statistics on how many fall in after a partner or household member is badly wounded in combat, but Maj. Anne Edgecomb, an Army spokeswoman, said she's heard of sibs joining after the hurt or decease of a soldier and at least one adult female who joined after her hubby was killed in combat.

"The courageousness of our soldiers and their households is remarkable," she said.

Janay Albarran, 19, wasn't always thrilled with the prospect of Army life. She met her hubby at a high school football game game in Yuma, Ariz., near where they grew up.

She learned later from an online profile he already had signed up for the Army.

"I was like, 'Well, I met person and he's about to leave.' I was a small upset," Janay Albarran said. "I knew he was joining the Army and we're at war."

The couple married in February 2006, and he deployed to Republic Of Iraq six calendar months later.

He was in a Humvee escorting a unit of measurement that was sent to the scene of a detonated bomb in November 2006 when a 2nd blast hit. The vehicle reared up and slammed to the ground. Alejandro Albarran only retrieves flashes: a medick over him, the helicopter.

A 5 a.m. telephone phone call told Janay Albarran her hubby was ache and she should have got a bag packed.

She met him at Bruno Walter Reed Army Checkup Center in American Capital respective years later, and they traveled to Rupert Brooke Army Checkup Center in San Antonio, where some of the most severely wounded are treated.

It quickly became clear that attempts to salvage Alejandro Albarran's less right leg were failing. When the hurting became too great, he told his married woman to allow the docs amputate.

At first, Janay Albarran had to assist her hubby frock and acquire out his wheelchair.

"She had to be my memory. My short term memory is bad," said Alejandro Albarran, who also suffered a caput hurt in the blast.

But as he got more than mobile, the teen married woman who was afraid of guns decided to take her husband's topographic point in the ranks.

Janay Albarran will not, strictly speaking, be replacing her hubby in the Army. He was an infantryman, a place not unfastened to women. (But he observes with humiliation that she outscored him on her basic preparation rifle test.)

She anticipates to acquire a human resources assignment, one less likely to take to deployment in Iraq.

"It's just another job," Alejandro Albarran said, taking a interruption between weight lifting sets at the big amputee rehab installation here.

But a safe duty assignment isn't guaranteed.

Janay Albarran said she worries about possible deployment when she believes about their daughter, Iliana.

"That's the lone thing that panics me. He's already been hurt," she said. "If I make acquire deployed, I'm going to lose him so much. But it's nothing I can't handle."

Democratic Senator Durbin Chastises 'No-Can-Do' Republicans

Democratic Senator Dick Durbin
chastised Republicans for impeding congressional measurements to
remedy the lodging meltdown, forestall importations of unsafe toys
and convey military personnel back from Iraq.

''Sadly, Republicans in American Capital are determined to make
this a 'no-can-do' Congress,'' Durbin said in his party's weekly
radio computer address today in Washington. ''Republicans have got decided
it's in their party's involvement to forestall United States Congress from facing
the existent challenges of our day.''

Durbin, from Illinois, said that 2.2 million Americans face
foreclosure on their places and 44 million people who are making
their mortgage payments -- a 3rd of all householders -- are
seeing their place values fall.

''Yet, Senate Republicans blocked two measures this hebdomad that
would assist households facing foreclosure clasp on to their homes
and maintain the mortgage crisis from spreading,'' he said. ''The
mortgage crisis isn't just your neighbor's job any more,
it's everybody's problem.''

Republicans are also blocking a measure to maintain unsafe toys
out of American stores, he said.

''Twenty-five a million unsafe playthings have got been recalled
this twelvemonth -- that's Associate in Nursing all-time record,'' he said. ''And still
not one Republican senator would co-sponsor a stronger toy-
safety law.''

Durbin added that 160,000 Americans were still ''stuck in
the crossfire of Iraq's civil war.''

Democrats are ''determined to stop the warfare in Iraq
responsibly and convey the fighting back to Osama Bin Laden and al
Qaeda,'' he said.

To reach the newsmen on this story:
Christopher Swann in American Capital at .

Iraq: US military says 3 insurgents killed, 19 captured in raids along Tigris River valley

: U.S. military units killed three suspected insurrectionists and captured 19 Thursday inch forays targeting al-Qaida in Republic Of Iraq along the Tigris River River valley, the military said.

In one operation North of Baghdad, military personnel captured a adult male suspected of engagement in planning auto bomb attacks, the military said in a statement. Five more than suspects were also detained, and an armed adult male was killed during the operation near Khalis, 80 kilometres (50 miles) North of Baghdad, it said.

Meanwhile south of the capital, American soldiers captured another wanted adult male near Youssifiyah, the military said. He is suspected of being associated with al-Qaida inch Iraq, and of planning onslaughts on U.S. military personnel in the area, it said. The adult male came forward and identified himself to land troops, who arrested him and another suspect, the statement said.

Two work force were killed inch Mosul, 360 kilometres (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad, in an operation targeting an alleged al-Qaida in Republic Of Iraq leader, the military said. One of the men, armed with a knife, lunged at U.S. military personnel as they entered a building. Soldiers shot and killed him, along with another adult male in the edifice who was wrapped in cover with wires protruding from it, the military said.

It did not state whether the intended mark was among six suspects captured there, nor whether the wires in the cover were subsequently identified as explosives. Today in Africa & Center East

Five more than suspects were detained North of Beiji, 250 kilometres (155 miles) north of Baghdad, the statement said.

Bush Says Funding Iraq, Afghan Wars Is Congress's Top Priority

President Saint George W. Shrub said that
funding the warfares in Republic Of Iraq and Islamic State Of Afghanistan should be Congress's
top precedence when it go backs to American Capital adjacent week, and he
lashed out at Democrats for not acting on his disbursement request.

''Continued hold in support our military personnel will soon get to
have a detrimental impact on the trading operations of our military,'' Bush
said in his weekly radiocommunication computer address today.

Congress, which go backs to work Dec. Three after a two-week
recess, hasn't acted on a $50 billion down payment on the $190
billion Shrub requested earlier this twelvemonth because the legislation
contains linguistic communication career for a troop backdown from Iraq. Senate Republicans have got blocked bulk Democrats from passing
the legislation, and Shrub have threatened to blackball any measure
that includes a backdown provision.

In response, Defense Secretary Henry Martin Robert Bill Gates have directed
the military service heads to begin planning for the layoff of
about 200,000 civilian employees and contractors by mid-February
if United States Congress doesn't O.K. a auxiliary support petition for
the warfares in Republic Of Iraq and Islamic State Of Afghanistan before money runs out Dec. 14.

The threatened furlough is a first for the Pentagon, which
in March and last twelvemonth temporarily transferred money from the
annual budget into wartime disbursement until United States Congress passed all of
an exigency disbursement bill.

''It is clip for the United States Congress to make its occupation and give our
troops what they necessitate to protect America,'' Shrub said in his
radio address.

Shrub also called on United States Congress to update the foreign
intelligence surveillance act, base on balls statute law to prevent
middle-income families from being topic to higher levies under
the option lower limit tax, and to complete its work on annual
spending bills.

So far, United States Congress have approved just one of the 12 annual
appropriations measures that finances authorities operations. Democrats
are seeking to stop a budget fighting with Shrub by drafting a single
catch-all measurement that incorporates a littler addition in domestic
spending than they had previously demanded.

To reach the newsman on this story:
Holly Rosenkrantz in American Capital at