News All Over

There is so much "stuff" happening that news flash is in order.

Israel and Palestine
No one will be surprised that during the Israeli withdraw from the Gaza strip that the plan is to full military control of all Palestinian cities. But in a surprise move, Qatar has aligned with Israel and stripped 15,000 Qataris of their citizenship. Now I wonder what the deal was behind that move.

"Secret" Global Energy Plan
The Bush administration has been under both domestic and international heat about global warming and withdrawing the U.S. from the Kyoto Protocol. Now we discover that the U.S. has been in secret negotiations with Australia for the last year to come up with a joint Asia plan (China, India, and South Korea) to reduce greenhouse gases. While the "agreement" is not yet public, it is assumed that it has no targets or timetables. Sure sounds like a Bush administration plan. The BBC is saying that the new climate plan "rivals" Kyoto. Does that mean too little, too late, and they will "talk" about it?

Apparently, "the deal" allows participating nations to set their own emissions standards with no enforcement mechanism. How is that any different than the current state of affairs? And why is this being pushed a "movement" on the issue? Beat the heck out of me. Purportedly, part of the agreement is to participate in the transfer of "clean" technologies. It would be nice if the U.S. would implement a few of those itself.

Oil flows green
According to the St. Petersburg Times, part of the vaunted energy bill was to redraw the Florida coastal boundaries just long enough to allow off shore drilling. As you may recall, Jeb and George had agreed to "preserve" Florida from off-shore drilling. Whoops.

CAFTA is in
Despite the resistance Bush twisted enough arms to get CAFTA passed last night. CAFTA "eliminate most tariffs and import restrictions between the United States and five Central American nations -- Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua -- as well as the Dominican Republic." If the NAFTA experience proves anything, this will been a boon for multinationals and a boondoggle for U.S. (and Central American) workers.

Dear Karl
For his long suffering effort on behalf of the President, Karl Rove got a raise. Yep, the head man up for leaking an NOC identity (Plame) got a raise the beginning of July to $161,000 a year. Bush does reward "loyalty."

I'm sure we do it too
MI5 attempted to recruit Abu Qatada - an assumed top al Qaeda operative. This is the "don't bite the hand that feeds you" strategy.