Although Israel stayed away, its hard-line government dictated the conference agenda and terms of discussion. Foreign ministers and high-level delegations from 23 nations and six international organizations convened in
London on March 1 to try and advance the “peace process” between the Palestinians and Israelis. The attendees included the newly elected Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan,Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the European Union’s (EU) foreign policy chief Javier Solana and World Bank president James D. Wolfensohn.

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ROTTACH-EGERN, Germany—Britons were voting even as Bilderberg was gathering here Thursday, May 5, and the British luminaries gave grudging support to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labor Party because of his backing of the pending European Constitution (EC). But they remain angry that Blair joined the United States in the invasion of Iraq.
A French referendum on the proposed EC May 29 has Bilderberg deeply concerned. The outcome is in doubt and defeat would be a severe blow to Bilderberg’s long-term effort to establish a globalist government.

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Mike Peters
Introduction
Despite their reputation for 'empiricism', British academics have tended to treat political power by means of abstract concepts rather than empirical information about the actions of determinate individuals and groups (e.g. Giddens, 1984, 1985; Scott, 1986). After a brief efflorescence of empirical studies of the so-called 'Establishment' in the early 1960s, sociologists in Britain became diverted from empirical investigation of power, as the study of national and international power-structures became conducted under the aegis of increasingly abstract theoretical categories derived from Marxism, and in particular by a wave of concepts based on Poulantzas's 'structuralist' critique of Miliband, and was followed by ever more esoteric discussions of the 'theory' of the state (e.g. Jessop, 1990), culminating in the hegemony of a post-Marxist version of Gramsci's conception of 'hegemony' - in which 'struggle' is posited without any identifiable human beings as its active protagonists, and with the stakes reduced to ideas rather than concrete interests.

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By Shaun Waterman
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
Published May 13, 2005
Two declassified reports from the Canadian intelligence service say young Islamic militants with Canadian nationality or residency have been through terrorist training camps in Afghanistan or elsewhere and constitute "a clear and present danger to Canada and its allies."
    "The presence of young, committed jihadists in Canada is a matter of grave concern," states one of the reports, highlighting fears that the northern neighbor might become a staging post for terror attacks in the United States.
    "They represent a clear and present danger to Canada and its allies and are a particularly valuable resource for the international Islamic terrorist community in view of their language skills and familiarity with Western culture and infrastructure," says the report, titled "Sons of the Father: The Next Generation of Islamic Extremists in Canada."

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TEL AVIV [MENL] -- Israel's military brass expects that the West Bank would become the next arena in a resurgence of the Palestinian war against Israel.
Senior military officers said Palestinian insurgency groups, supported by Iran, Hizbullah and Syria, have sought to deploy heavy weapons into the West Bank for attacks against Israeli communities both in the area as well as within the pre-1967 borders of the Jewish state. They said the military and security services believe the ruling Fatah movement along with the opposition Hamas smuggled the first Palestinian missiles into the West Bank in early 2005.

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Incessant human rights violations by the occupying forces; Israel’s continued illegal policies aimed at changing the legal status, demographic composition and character of occupied East Jerusalem; the dire socio-economic situation in Palestine; and the need to put an end to Israel’s colonization of Palestinian land were highlighted as critical issues that required concrete action by the international community, as the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People met this morning.
In her statement on the latest developments in the Middle East and the situation in the OccupiedPalestinianTerritory, the Chargée d’Affaires of the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations, Somaia S. Barghouti, said that the situation remained very critical, for improvements on the ground had only been minor.  The Palestinian Authority had taken steps to calm the situation in line with its firm commitment to the Sharm el-Sheikh understandings.  Unfortunately, those measures had taken place against the backdrop of incessant human rights violations by the occupying forces, including the killing of 30 civilians since the Sharm el-Sheikh understandings and the injuring of at least 241 others.

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By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent  
Iran may postpone resumption of uranium reprocessing, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the head of Iran's Atomic Organization, told Tehran state-run television Thursday.
Israeli experts monitoring Iran's "nuclear diplomacy" assume the Iranians are playing a game of nerves. Tehran continually explores the limits of patience in Europe and Washington, but is careful not to cross any red lines which would propel the Iranian nuclear issue into the UN Security Council.

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By The Associated Press  
TEHRAN - More than 200 young men and women presented themselves Thursday as volunteers to carry out suicide bomb attacks against Israelis and Americans in Iraq.
The meeting was organized at Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery, south of Tehran, by the Headquarters for Commemorating Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement, a shadowy group that has sought volunteers for attacks in Iraq and Israel since last year.

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By The Associated Press  
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado - The government has offered to donate 35 acres beside the Sea of Galilee for an evangelical Christian center to boost Christian tourism, a newspaper reported Wednesday.
The government told a group of evangelical leaders, including the Rev. Ted Haggard of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, it would be willing to improve a nearby airport and provide power, water and phone lines for the center, The Gazette of Colorado Springs reported in Wednesday editions.


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WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The Defense Department has been quietly suspending joint military projects with Israel.
U.S. government sources said several key projects with Israel have been suspended or significantly slowed down in 2005. They said the slowdown has been gradual and could soon affect major projects, such as the Arrow-2 missile defense program.
"It's all about China," a government source said. "The Pentagon, with full support of the administration, does not want to deal with Israeli products or technology that could be sent to China."

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The U.S. House Of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a spending package on Thursday, May 5, that would, in part, establish a nationally issued, federally approved ID card. The card will be issued within 3 years of the legislations approval.
Starting three years from now, if you live or work in the United States, you'll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service. Practically speaking, your driver's license likely will have to be reissued to meet federal standards.

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{GoogleVerticalBanner} IBM is betting on the market acceptance of RFID tags, and by and large, that's a good thing. I still don't see the privacy concern about these tags. On the other hand, IBM was precisely the corporation that helped automate the Nazi regime's "efficient" handling of Jewish prisoners, thanks to IBM punchcard machines. Is history repeating itself?
- AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (Reuters) -- International Business Machines Corp opened a test center for radio tags in Nice, France on Thursday to keep up with fast growing interest from retailers, manufacturers and transport firms.\

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{GoogleVerticalBanner} The FDA is currently reviewing the privacy issues surrounding the use of RFID chips as implants in hospital workers and health care workers. The idea is to use these RFID chips as security devices to control access to patient records and hospital supplies...
VeriChip, the company that makes radio frequency identification--RFID--tags for humans, has moved one step closer to getting its technology into hospitals.
The Federal Drug Administration issued a ruling Tuesday that essentially begins a final review process that will determine whether hospitals can use RFID systems from the Palm Beach, Fla.-based company to identify patients and/or permit relevant hospital staff to access medical records, said Angela Fulcher, vice president of marketing and sales at VeriChip.

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