Do Chinese Babies Have Any Rights?

Do the Chinese Infants (and their parents) have any right, at least, in China?

Up to five percent of infants in Shanghai could have kidney stones after drinking tainted milk formula

See

Demand Answers From Chinese Govt

Related Links:

• Fonterra File (Index page)
  

Misogynist Finland: Torn Apart by Violence [and Vodka]

Update 2:

The moderators correctly identified nature of the Finnish massacre! The shooter was a woman-hater. Eight women and two men were massacred, a 9th woman is seriously injured. Gunman dead.

Update 1:

The gunman was identified as Matti Juhani Saari, a 22-year-old student at the Kauhajoki School of Hospitality.

Saari entered a classroom and fired at students taking an exam killing 10. He then threw firebombs at his victims burning their bodies beyond recognition. At least two other people were wounded.

Finland’s second school shooting in 10 months leaves 9 dead.

A Finnish student shot dead nine others at a vocational school in western Finland Tuesday before shooting himself.

This was the second school shooting incident in less than a year in a sparsely populated country of 5.3 million people and 4 nuclear reactors, torn apart by greed, violence [and vodka.]

“A cold-blooded shooter entered the building with an automatic pistol and started cutting down students,” said a maintenance worker at the “Kauhajoki School of Hospitality (!)” in the town of Kauhajoki.

“He also shot towards me, did not say anything and once the bullets started to whiz by I started running for my life.”

The shooting followed another school killing in Finland at Jokela high school in November 2007, where Pekka-Eric Auvinen killed six fellow students, the school nurse and the principal.

Related Reports:

• Student kills nine in Finnish school shooting
• Epidemic of Domestic Violence Plagues Finland
• Violence against Women in Finland, (8 April 2008)
• Gunman Kills 8, Then Himself at High School (Jokela high school)

What Others Say:

• This country is going straight down the toilet

terres

Image of the Day: Anti-Internal Security Act (ISA) Activists

Malaysia Needs to Reflect Hard

Anti-Internal Security Act (ISA) activists show their bald heads after shaving to show their support for those detained under ISA in Kuala Lumpur September 21, 2008. The government came under intense pressure after the police arrested a blogger, a journalist and an opposition MP under the draconian Internal Security Act (ISA) that allows indefinite detention without trial.  REUTERS/Zainal Abd Halim. Image may be subject to copyright!

Gangster Resigns Japan Govt. over Tainted Chinese Rice

Japan minister quits in rice row

(BBC-UK) 04:08 GMT, Friday, 19 September 2008

Mr Ota only took over his portfolio in August this year

Japan’s farm minister, Seiichi Ota, has tendered his resignation because of a food scandal involving tainted rice.

Mr Ota’s ministry has admitted it was told in January 2007 that a food company was distributing rice tainted with pesticide.

Mr Ota had earlier said he saw no need to make “too much of a fuss over it”.

It has since emerged that the rice, destined for industrial uses, was resold as a food product and served to the elderly.

The rice has been found to be tainted with pesticides and mould, and was known to be unfit for human consumption.

No-one has been reported as ill as a result of eating the rice; a government official said this was because the density of contaminants was low.

“I met Prime Minister [Yasuo] Fukuda and told him my decision to resign, considering the seriousness of the tainted rice problem for the society,” Mr Ota said.

Japanese broadcaster NHK said his resignation had been accepted.

Japan faces general elections soon, possibly as early as next month.

Contamination spreads

As information trickled out, it became clear that the bad rice was sold to more than 300 firms, including brewers, food ingredient wholesalers and sweet makers.

Mr Ota had played down the effects of the rice in the food chain

A government report released this week showed that the rice was imported from China, Vietnam and elsewhere, and intended for use in the making of glue and other industrial products.

Instead, the Osaka-based Mikasa Foods company sold the rice on to firms which used it for making foods that have been distributed to hospitals and care homes.

Young people have also been affected as the bad rice was used in making some snacks sold in convenience stores, and in school lunches.

Japanese media reported that police said on Wednesday that the president of one of the small companies that had bought the rice from Mikasa Foods, had committed suicide by hanging himself.

When Mr Ota’s ministry first heard of the tainted rice entering the food chain, he said it was unable to uncover any wrongdoing.

Mr Ota only took over the portfolio in August this year.

The BBC’s Chris Hogg in Tokyo says the minister has come under fire after admitting his ministry “overlooked” the illegal distribution of rice unfit for human consumption.

Our correspondent says Mr Ota is known for his slips of the tongue, such as his expressed confidence that no-one would die from eating tainted rice and that no fuss was necessary.

The senior bureaucrat at the agriculture ministry had already resigned.

Copyright BBC. See Fair Use Notice!

[Submitted by a reader]

Another Human Tragedy Deepens in China

Sanlu/Fonterra Tainted Milk Powder Victims Multiply

At least 6,200 infants across the country are known to have developed kidney stones after consuming Sanlu’s melamine-tainted baby formula, and three have died, China’s Xinhua news agency reported.

Ji Chuntang, the mayor of Shijiazhuang, capital of north China’s Hebei Province, was dismissed on Thursday over a tainted milk powder scandal, after he was relieve of his duties as vice secretary of the Shijiazhuang Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) yesterday. (Source)

The Big Guns at CPC who are responsible for the extent of government corruption in China escape punishment, once again.

Fonterra, the New Zealand partner of Sanlu in their joint venture milk powder operations,  will also evade prosecution and, in all likelihood, would not have to pay a penny in compensation to its Chinese victims.

Related Links:

• To NZ PM Clark: Confirm or Deny!
• CPC Big Guns: The Root of All Evil in China
• Global Food Alert: Deadly Baby Milk From China, New Zealand
• Chinese, New Zealand contaminated milk powder kills two

• Consumers being deceived of origin of powdered-milk: New Zealand Dairy Products Bangladesh marketing products with fake information
• New Zealand Health Warnings

• Victims of Sanlu-Fonterra Business Venture Top 6,200

Fonterra had Foreknowledge

• Dozens of Chinese babies die ‘from fake milk’ [2004]
• China ‘fake milk’ scandal deepens [2004]

Truth About New Zealand

• The Truth About ‘100% Pure New Zealand’
• The poisoning of New Zealand

Palestinian farms dry up, Jewish settlers lawns grow greener

Illegal Jewish settlers receive 5 time more water than Palestinians

As Palestinian farms dry up, the lawns on lands occupied by illegal Jewish settlers grow greener. Scant rainfall this year has hit the entire area hard. However, Palestinians are hit hardest because Israel controls the water including West Bank’s three main aquifers.

Palestinians get only about 20 percent of the water they need for irrigation. Israel controls about 50 West Bank wells and directs the entire capacity of about 50 million mainly to Jewish settlements.

An Israeli human rights group, B’tselem, recently reported that Israeli households consumed about 3.5 times more water than Palestinian households.

In reality, the figure is probably closer to 5 to 1, against palestinians.

“A recent U.N. report found that Palestinians in some of the hardest-hit communities were spending as much as 30 percent to 40 percent of their income on water delivered by truck. The Israeli Water Authority did not return several calls from Reuters to request similar information about Israeli consumers.“

CPC Big Guns: The Root of All Evil in China

Tian Wenhua, the board chairwoman and general manager of China dairy giant Sanlu Group, is fired. Now it’s time to claim substantial damages from Fonterra.

The sacking of Tian Wenhua, the board chairwoman and general manager of China dairy giant Sanlu Group, is of course a good move. But both she and the directors from Fonterra should be prosecuted and punished to the maximum extent of the law. The Chinese parents owe this to their babies.

“She was also removed from her post as the secretary of the corporation committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), according to Party authorities of Hebei Province an Shijiazhuang City.” Xianhu reported.

This move is of course a damage control measure, aimed to make the rest of the CPC look good.

What are the roles of Hu Jin-tao, Wen Jia-bao and Jiang Mianheng in the milk powder scandal?

Here’s the rest of this story by Xinhua:

SHIJIAZHUANG, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) — Four local officials in north China’s Hebei Province were fired on Tuesday following the baby milk powder scandal across the country.

Two babies with kidney stones at a hospital in Lanzhou, capital of northwest China’s Gansu Province, Sept. 11, 2008.  (Xinhua Photo)

Zhang Fawang, vice mayor in charge of agricultural production of Hebei provincial capital Shijiazhuang, and Sun Renhu, the city’s animal husbandry administration chief, were fired late Tuesday following legal procedures, according to a decision made by the city’s legislative body.

Shijiazhuang Food and Drug Administration Bureau director ZhangYi and the city’s Quality and Technical Inspection Bureau chief LiZhiguo were also dismissed from their posts for loose supervision on the milk suppliers.

Tian Wenhua, the board chairwoman and general manager of Shijiazhuang-based dairy giant Sanlu Group, was also fired from her posts. She was also removed from her post as the secretary of the corporation committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), according to Party authorities of Hebei Province an Shijiazhuang City.

An estimated 1,253 infants, including two fatally, across the country developed kidney stones after drinking Sanlu’s baby formula tainted by melamine, a chemical believed to help increase the protein content in the milk.

However, the contamination has spread to other dairy companies as the country’s top quality watchdog said Tuesday they found the chemical melamine in 69 batches of baby milk powder produced by 22companies nationwide.

The authorities ordered a halt to the sale of the tainted products which included such well-known brands as Mengniu, Yili and Yashili, among others.

Gao Qiang, the Communist Party chief of the Ministry of Health, visited baby patients in Hebei on Tuesday. The province alone has reported a total of 861 infants suffering urinary system stones, with 61 of them hospitalized.

Gao, also head of the emergency team for handling Sanlu tainted milk, ordered timely and effective diagnosis and treatment for infants sickened by the contaminated milk.

Experts should be organized to go to remote rural areas to check the sick infants and urge them to be sent to hospitals for diagnosis and treatment, he said while visiting sick babies and medical staff in Hebei People’s Hospital and Hebei Children’s Hospital.

According to the ministry, the two deaths occurred both in the northwest Gansu Province. They were a five-month-old boy who died on May 1 after his family refused further treatment and an eight-month-old girl whose family also refused an operation and removed her from hospital on July 22 on which day she died. Both of the two were bred with the Sanlu formula and suffered kidney failure.

Zhang Zhenling, Sanlu’s vice president, apologized to the public on Monday.
“The serious safety accident of the Sanlu formula milk powder for infants has caused severe harm to many sickened babies and their families. We feel really sad about this,” he said while reading a letter of apology to reporters.

Sanlu, which is 43 percent owned by New Zealand dairy company Fonterra, has been ordered to halt production. The Hebei provincial government decided on Tuesday to dispatch four working teams to Sanlu Group for a thorough investigation.

So far, four milk dealers have been arrested and 22 others detained for questioning by Hebei police.

Among the arrested were two brothers surnamed Geng in Zhengding County, Hebei. They told police that they had been selling three tons of contaminated milk per day since the end of last year.

The elder Geng said they added the chemical into the milk to make it appear to contain more protein as they had suffered losses after their milk had been rejected several times by Sanlu Group for failing to meet quality standards.  Editor: Mu Xuequan

COPYRIGHT the author or Xinhua News Agency.

Related Links:

• To NZ PM Clark: Confirm or Deny!
• Chinese, New Zealand contaminated milk powder kills two
• Global Food Alert: Deadly Baby Milk From China, New Zealand
• Consumers being deceived of origin of powdered-milk: New Zealand Dairy Products Bangladesh marketing products with fake information
• New Zealand Health Warnings

Fonterra had Foreknowledge

• Dozens of Chinese babies die ‘from fake milk’ [2004]
• China ‘fake milk’ scandal deepens [2004]

Truth About New Zealand

• The Truth About ‘100% Pure New Zealand’
• The poisoning of New Zealand

Future of China

• Corruption Threatens China’s Future

Image of the Day: Police liability insurance

Freedom of What?

Mick Kelly shows off a bruise at a news conference, Friday, in St. Paul, that he said he received after getting hit by a projectile fired by riot police on anti-war protesters Thursday night. Photo: Jim Mone, AP. Image may be subject to copyright.

Police made about 152 arrests in association with the GOP convention in Denver… In St. Paul, police arrested about 660 … [Source]

US human rights violations exposed
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-03/13/content_6533121.htm

Full Text of Human Rights Record of United States in 2007
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-03/13/content_6533800.htm

Police liability insurance

See Main Entry:

Police liability insurance

Haiti: An Unending Nightmare of Humanitarian Crisis

The Haiti Nightmare

“I have never seen anything so painful,” as what he has just seen in Haiti. — Paul Farmer

Paul Farmer is a professor of medical anthropology at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Partners in Health.  http://pih.org. He is the author of The Uses of Haiti,  Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor and From Outrage to Courage: Women Taking Action for Health and Justice. 

Recent interview: Haiti Struggles with Humanitarian Disaster in Aftermath of Deadly Storms

The catastrophe in Haiti

“The catastrophe in Haiti is only a partly natural disaster. It is not natural that Haiti will once again suffer more deaths in the storms than all the other countries in the storm paths, combined. The deadly combination of poverty, weak governance and foreign interference has left the country unable to enforce laws on cutting down trees, install adequate drainage systems or effectively execute disaster planning and response. Haiti has never recovered the governmental capacity it lost in the U.S.-supported coup d’état in 2004, and we are now seeing the consequences.

“Although the international community’s emergency help is needed now, it is even more important in the long term for the donor countries to let Haiti develop its governmental capacity, so it can respond to the next, inevitable natural disaster. This means no more undermining of Haitian governments, even if we do not like their policies; canceling Haiti’s unfair debt to the International Financial Institutions like the World Bank; and implementing trade policies that allow Haiti to develop a broad-based, sustainable national economy.” —BRIAN CONCANNON

Brian Concannon,  is the Director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. http://www.ijdh.org.

End the war in Iraq, invest in our future!

Please forward widely. 1 million doors. 1 million conversations. 1 million voters. Be one of the 25,000 peace activists to knock on a Million Doors for Peace on Saturday, September 20. United For Peace and Justice is joining with other major national organizations and scores of local groups across the country to send a message to Congress: End the war in Iraq, bring all our troops home, and start investing in our country’s future! We have marched in massive numbers, but now we are using a new model for organizing a movement with long-term staying power at the grassroots level. On Saturday, September 20, in all fifty states, we will knock on a million doors to: Talk to our neighbors about the war and its costs to our communities Ask that they sign a petition to Congress that calls for an end to the war Discuss what we can do in this important election year to build up the antiwar movement in our own neighborhoods When you sign-up here, you will get: 40 names of registered voters in your zip code Hand-outs and petitions Talking points and tips for effective door-knocking In some areas, peace and justice groups will be hosting a gathering of volunteers for a brief training and to pair up volunteers who prefer to canvass in a team. If this is being organized in your direct or nearby area, you will receive a Million Doors for Peace email with the meet-up information. Help us take the next step in building the antiwar movement! September 20 is the day to engage one-on-one with our neighbors to strengthen the movement to end the war. Sign-up right now at the Million Doors for Peace website here.

UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE www.unitedforpeace.org | 212-868-5545 PO Box 607; Times Square Station; New York, NY 10108

Kucinich renews impeachment call

	Rep. Kucinich, ImpeachBush press conference renews impeachment call Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Radhika Miller of ImpeachBush.org Yesterday, representative Dennis Kucinich submitted 50,000 more names to the clerk of the House demanding impeachment. On Tuesday, Rep. Jim McDermott (D.-WA) spoke on the House floor in favor of impeachment. As Rep. Kucinich said yesterday, more than 2 million Americans have signed petitions demanding impeachment, making it one of the greatest exercises in grassroots democracy in recent times. Impeachment has become an unavoidable issue on the floor of the House of Representatives, despite the efforts to take impeachment “off the table.” This amazing development is the result of the work of ImpeachBush.org and others who are petitioning, and joining rallies in cities and towns across the country to demand impeachment. Please make a donation right now to keep up this momentum. Excerpts from Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s remarks from yesterday’s press conference: “Standing with me here today are representatives of organizations who have been part of a national grassroots impeachment movement which has collected over a million signatures.  Nationally over two million people have signed impeachment petitions.  I want to thank the leaders for their efforts and work with them to continue to build a movement for truth. “9/11 is the day the world changed.  We want today, September 10, 2008 to be a new beginning in our efforts to change the world.  For my part, I am going to ask those grassroots leaders who have channeled their energies into defending the Constitution and the rule of law to join me in this new endeavor.” Radhika Miller of ImpeachBush: Good afternoon, my name is Radhika Miller. I am here representing ImpeachBush.org that was formed by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark on January 18, 2003 from the stage of a rally of 500,000 people who were demonstrating on the National Mall just across the street to demand no war of aggression against Iraq. Today, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi have died and tens of thousands of US service members have been killed or badly wounded. These horrific casualties took place because George W. Bush was allowed and not punished for initiating a war of unprovoked aggression. Since that time, more than one million people have voted at ImpeachBush.org in favor of impeachment. Volunteers from around the country collect these ImpeachBush petitions. We want to thank Dennis Kucinich for having the courage and honesty to introduce 35 articles of impeachment in June of this year. Representative Kuncinch speaks for tens of millions of people who insist that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and all officials be held accountable for criminal misconduct, breaking the peace in an unprovoked war of aggression and for shredding the Constitution. The fact that Bush has four months left in office does not matter one bit when it comes to violating the Constitution. As one speaker after another made clear in the July 25 hearing of the House Judiciary Committee hearing: impeachment is a constitutionally mandated duty and not a matter of partisan politics. If Congress refuses to carry out its obligations it sends a message to all future presidents, from either Party, that the Constitution has been stripped of all meaning. We have a duty to act and we will. Please make a donation Please make a donation right now to keep up this momentum.

Protecting the Crown’s Extrafinancial Investments in Afghanistan?

submitted by a NZ reader:

Heaven knows what the New Zealand SAS are doing in Afghanistan

The British journalist Robert Fisk visiting New Zealand this week to promote his new book spoke to a local journalist in Wellington about western military presence in Middle East:

Concerning New Zealand’s special forces, who are based in Afghanistan, he said:

“Heaven knows what they (the SAS) are doing and Afghanistan is a disaster anyway.”

He said New Zealand was under no threat from any country in the Middle East.

“There are no Syrian soldiers on the streets of Wellington.

“(Western nations) have no business to be there, historically it is a disaster. We never have any business there, we’re always going to the Middle East with huge armies.

The morally castrated New Zealand “Defence Minister”, Phil Goff, immediately declared: “I’d say Mr Fisk should talk to the Hazara people whose civic leaders were executed in the market place, whose 2000-year-old cultural heritage, the Bamyan statutes of Buddha, were destroyed.”

Ah, so the New Zealand SAS are not there to protect the poppy fields and the thriving opium business and the drug warlords, they are there playing Bamyan Buddha dolls with the local kids!

The following is an excerpt from The SAS (SPECIAL AIR SERVICE): Prince Philip’s manager of terrorism,  by Joseph Brewda.

SAS methods and procedures

According to the British Army handbook, the SAS is “particularly suited, trained, and equipped for counter-revolutionary operations,” with a specialization in “infiltration,” “sabotage,” “assassination,” as well as “liaison with, organization, training, and control of friendly guerrilla forces operating against the common enemy.” From its inception in World War II, Special Air Services was detailed to run sabotage behind enemy lines and to organize popular revolt, at first in North Africa, and then in the Balkans, where another Stirling cousin, Fitzroy Maclean, ran British operations.

At the end of the war, SAS was disbanded, but it was soon revived to crush the Malay insurgency in Malaysia, and the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya. The principle employed was to take over the insurgency from within, and use it to destroy the native population. In his 1960 book Gangs and Countergangs, Col. Frank Kitson boasted that the British were covertly leading several large-scale Mau Mau units, and that many, if not all Mau Mau units had been synthetically created by the colonial authorities. As a result of this practice, 22 whites were killed during the insurgency, as compared to 20,000 natives.

Based on this principle, SAS emphasized recruitment of natives, as it received increasing responsibilities for overseeing counterinsurgency within the postwar empire, as well as organizing insurgencies elsewhere. In New Zealand, 30% of SAS was drawn from the indigenous Maori tribes, later supplemented by Sarawak tribesmen from Indonesia. By the 1960s, New Zealand SAS was active throughout Southeast Asia, organizing tribal revolts against the Burmese government, and stirring similar movements in Northeast India. Similarly, SAS squadrons based in Rhodesia ran the 1960s tribal separatist insurgency in Zaire. They later recruited and deployed natives in terrorist raids in Mozambique and Zambia.

Today, there are three known SAS regiments, comprising 4,500 highly trained commandos in total. Training exercises for 15-man teams simulate terrorist assaults, in order, it is said, to “know the mind of the terrorist.” Such teams are often sent abroad, to train British Commonwealth and other military units in the techniques of terrorist assault, as well as the use of tribal auxiliaries in covert warfare. Through such means, SAS has built an extensive terrorist control capability, especially in its former colonies. Its soldiers currently serve officially in some 30 countries.  Full article is available here.

Afghanistan, Opium and the Taliban

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (February 15, 2001 8:19 p.m. EST)
(Source)
U.N. drug control officers said the Taliban religious militia has nearly wiped out opium production in Afghanistan — once the world’s largest producer — since banning poppy cultivation last summer.

A 12-member team from the U.N. Drug Control Program spent two weeks searching most of the nation’s largest opium-producing areas and found so few poppies that they do not expect any opium to come out of Afghanistan this year.

“We are not just guessing. We have seen the proof in the fields,” said Bernard Frahi, regional director for the U.N. program in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He laid out photographs of vast tracts of land cultivated with wheat alongside pictures of the same fields taken a year earlier — a sea of blood-red poppies. (Full report)

End of Taliban will bring rise in heroin

By Richard Lloyd Parry in Islamabad
The Independent (Source)
Date: 19 October 2001

The defeat of the Taliban would result in a surge in opium production, which has beenvirtually halted in Afghanistan by the Kabul regime over the last year, United Nations officials have warned.

A new UN survey reveals that the Taliban have completed one of the quickest and most successful drug elimination programmes in history.

Vice creeps back to Kandahar. Ellen Knickmeyer, Associated Press – (Source) Image may be subject to copyright.

The area of land given over to growing opium poppies in 2001 fell by 91 per cent compared with the year before, according to the UN Drug Control Programme’s (UNDCP) annual survey of Afghanistan. Production of fresh opium, the raw material for heroin, went down by an unprecedented 94 per cent, from 3,276 tonnes to 185 tonnes.

Almost all Afghan opium this year came out of territories controlled by America’s ally in the assault on Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance. Because of a ban on poppy farming, only one in 25 of Afghanistan’s opium poppies was being grown in Taliban areas. (Full story)

Fisk on Israel-led US Foreign policy:

Having studied for 30 years the United States’ Middle East policies, I can tell you that regardless of whether Barack Obama or John McCain won the upcoming American presidential election, the new president would not bring peace to the area, Fisk said.

“Every time there’s an American presidential election the Arabs say `Ah, maybe there’ll be change in the Middle East. Maybe America will be fairer, maybe it will concern itself with the security of the Arabs as well as the Israelis’.

“And then afterwards there’ll be a war in the Middle East and the President will call upon both sides to exercise restraint and there’ll be billions of dollars of weapons sent to Israel to bomb Lebanon, or whoever they are bombing.

“My experience over 32 years is whoever’s in the White House, the bombs go on falling. And they will.”

Related Links:

• NZ troops in Afghanistan popular with locals
• NZ forces need to leave Middle East – Fisk
• The SAS: Prince Philip’s manager of terrorism
• Afghanistan, Opium and the Taliban

Image of the Day: Premature Relief

Time to Abolish Thai Monarchy!

Anti-government demonstrators celebrate a court ruling ordering Thailand’s Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej to stand down, at the Government House in Bangkok September 9, 2008. Protesters occupying Thailand’s Government House to force the resignation of Samak vowed on Tuesday to continue their sit-in despite the court verdict against Samak.  REUTERS/Adrees Latif.

Related Links:

• Country in Focus: Thailand
• Time to Abolish the Monarchy in Swaziland

Image of the Day: The Unreality!

Hiding Behind the Monkey Mask

Riot police face off with demonstrators as the police block a bridge into downtown St. Paul to keep protesters from getting close to the site at the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minnesota September 4, 2008.  REUTERS/Damir Sagolj – Image may be subject to copyright!

Related Links:

• Time We Elected an Independent Candidate for President?
• P2. Time We Elected an Independent Candidate for President?