HILLARY WINS WEST VIRGINA PRIMARY, EXPERTS ASK DOES IT MATTER? Delegate Count Largely Unaffected,

BELIEFNET REPORTS: BUSH ADVISOR BACKS BARACK

The Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell is pastor of Windsor Village United Methodist Church, the largest United Methodist congregation in the nation. Often described as a ‘spiritual advisor’ to President George W. Bush, Caldwell introduced Bush at the 2000 Republican National Convention and delivered the benedictions at the 2001 and 2005 presidential inaugurations. He endorsed Senator Barack Obama for president in January

When you called President Bush to say you were endorsing Senator Barack Obama, how did he respond?

He had shared his thoughts with me about Senator Obama months before I called and told him I was going to endorse. And he says he likes him as a person. He told me that early on, before the Senator even announced he was running for president. He has a tremendous amount of respect for him.

NY OBSERVER; HILL BACKER NY CONG RANGEL ON CLINTON”S MARATHON

Charlie Rangel said the proof that Hillary Clinton can still win the Democratic nomination is that she is still pursuing the Democratic nomination. Either she has a chance, he said, or she’s nuts.

“If mathematically she couldn’t get the nomination, it would mean that Obama has won and so she wouldn’t be in the race,” said Rangel. “And so obviously mathematically she can.”

When asked how she could win the nomination, Rangel replied, “I don’t know, but if mathematically she cannot win, then why aren’t we declaring Obama the winner? I mean, it doesn’t make sense. It is not my job to explain how, if she put $6 million of her money, the team is still together, the campaign is still going on, why do I have to explain mathematically why she can’t win? If mathematically she can’t win, then they are crazy. They ought to go to an insane asylum.”

He added, “Anybody who really knows that they can’t win and they won’t quit, there is really something wrong with them.”

Clinton is still in the race. So by that logic she must see some way of winning. What is it?

“I have no clue,” said Rangel, explaining it wasn’t his job as chairman of the House’s Ways and Means Committee to chart or analyze Clinton’s path to the nomination.

BUSH TO VISIT MASADA: HIS LAST STAND?

The Israel Project reports:

U.S. President George Bush is scheduled to arrive in Israel for the second time this year on Wednesday (May 13) in honor of Israel’s sixtieth birthday. During his visit, Bush will give an historic address to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, and will speak at the international Presidents Conference hosted by Israeli President Shimon Peres.

Bush is also slated to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Peres and visit the ancient fortress of Masada, site of the last stand of Jews rebelling against the Roman army in 73 CE.

US LISTED IRAQ’S PALESTINE HOTEL AS TARGET IN 2003

DEMOCRACY NOW: Fmr. Military Intelligence Officer Reveals US Listed Palestine Hotel in Baghdad as Target Prior to Killing of Two Journalists in 2003

Last month marked the fifth anniversary of the US military shelling of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. The attack killed two journalists: Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk and Jose Couso, a cameraman for the Spanish television network Telecinco. The Pentagon has called the killings accidental, but in this broadcast exclusive Army Sgt. Adrienne Kinne (Ret.) reveals she saw secret US military documents that listed the hotel as a possible target. Kinne also discloses that she was personally ordered to eavesdrop on Americans working for news organizations and NGOs in Iraq.

A NEW DISASTER THREATENS BURMA

BOSTON GLOBE: BANGKOK - An estimated 1.5 million Burmese are on the
brink of a “massive public health catastrophe,” the British charity Oxfam warned yesterday, as desperate survivors of Cyclone Nargis poured out of the
devastated Irrawaddy Delta into regional towns in search of water, food, and other help.

Burma is facing a “perfect storm” of conditions that could lead to an outbreak of waterborne disease, said Sarah Ireland, Oxfam’s regional director.

“The ponds are full of dead bodies, the wells have saline water, and even things like a bucket are in scarce supply,” Ireland said. She appealed for Burmese authorities, who have restricted access to the country, to allow humanitarian agencies to send in technical and health specialists to help prevent disease outbreaks.

INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS CALLS FOR CLUSTER BOMB BAN

Representatives from over a hundred governments are meeting in Dublin, Ireland, 19-30 May, to finalize a new treaty to ban the use, manufacture and stocking of cluster munitions. The conference is the culmination of a negotiation process that began in Oslo in February 2007. Its supporters believe that the treaty will be as effective as the 1997 Ottawa Treaty has been in dealing with anti-personnel landmines - now banned by three-quarters of the world’s states.

Cluster munitions are usually bombs, rocket or artillery shells which open to release up to 650 smaller ‘bomblets’. These bomblets, known as submunitions, disperse and explode over a wide area. Experience over the last four decades shows that between 10 and 40% of them fail to detonate. As a result, vast areas of land are polluted with live ammunition, primed to explode at the touch of a spade or a child’s hand. The ICRC has called for a ban on unreliable and inaccurate sub-munitions to spare future generations from their lethal consequences: ‘Its bad enough that civilians are caught up in the fighting and suffer incredible pain and disruption…but to us it is repugnant that this killing and injuring of civilians will go on for years or decades,’ says the ICRC’s Peter Herby.

There is a rising groundswell of support for the new treaty which would prohibit the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of cluster munitions; and require the elimination of current stocks, help for victims and clearance of existing contamination. Military officers also recognize the importance of the new Treaty. According to Lt Colonel Jim Burke of the Irish Defence Forces, military commanders “don’t want unreliable or inaccurate munitions, they also don’t want to be in a position of being forced to use a weapon which is stigmatized internationally and they don’t want to be accused of disobeying international humanitarian law.”

It took the 2006 war in southern Lebanon to make the world finally sit up and take notice of the dreadful consequences of cluster munitions. In just one month an estimated 37 million square metres of land were contaminated with up to a million unexploded cluster submunitions. More than 250 civilians and clearance operators have been killed and injured by them since the fighting ended.

Portside: ICFTU UNIONS CALL FOR ACTION ON FOOD CRISIS

In response to the deepening global food crisis the
ITUC has called on governments and world institutions
to take far-reaching measures to guarantee food
security for all. ‘This is an opportunity to
completely revamp the failed policies which have led to
this crisis, and it is vital that governments and the
global institutions do more than just fiddle at the
edges of a system which simply isn’t delivering for the
world’s people’, said ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder.

‘The factors behind soaring food and agricultural
commodity prices are part of the same set of global
policies which have resulted in massive global
financial instability and intensifying climate change,
and these three current global crises must be tackled
through root and branch reform and effective regulation
that can deliver decent work. Large parts of the
global agricultural system are built upon poverty wages
and violation of workers’ fundamental rights. No
durable solution to the crisis can be found unless the
appalling worker rights record in global agriculture is
addressed’, Ryder added.