RUSSIA USING OIL AS A WEAPON

You wanna know why we're in Iraq? Because the Russians (and the Chinese) are in Iran. And this is what they do with oil.

Three days after the Czech Republic signed an agreement with the United States to host a tracking radar for an antiballistic missile system that Russia vehemently opposes, the authorities in Prague said the flow of Russian oil to their country was beginning to dwindle.

In a statement on Friday, Czech officials declined to link the reduced supply to the deal signed Tuesday in Prague. Still, though the flow of oil can vary for technical reasons, it was clear that the Czechs suspected a connection and intended to ask the Russians to explain the decline.

Russia maintains that the missiles meant to shoot down other missiles pose a threat to its own nuclear deterrence. The Bush administration says they are intended instead to counter a threat from Iran, which launched nine missiles on Wednesday.

In one of his first foreign policy tests since becoming Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev said this week that Russia intended to retaliate. “We are extremely upset by this situation,” Mr. Medvedev said at a news conference in Japan, where he was attending a Group of 8 summit meeting.

“We will not be hysterical about this, but we will think of retaliatory steps,” he said.

Shipments to Czech oil refineries through the Druzhba pipeline, which ties Siberian fields to the Czech Republic, are declining, the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade said. It did not say by how much.

WOMAN DETERMINED TO STOP SEXUAL ENCOUNTERS AT LOCAL PARKS

Talk about cock-blocking...You go girl!

IRAN CLERICS TO AHMADINEJAD: SHUT UP WITH THIS "HIDDEM IMAM" BUSINESS ALREADY

Word has it that they're not too happy with his taking inspiration from Spongebob Squarepants either.

Clerics have told President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to stick to more worldly issues after he was quoted as saying the "hidden imam" of Shiite Islam was directing Iran.

Ahmadinejad has always been a devotee of the Mahdi, the twelfth imam of Shiite Islam, who Shiites believe disappeared more than a thousand years ago and who will return one day to usher in a new era of peace and harmony.

But in a speech to theology students broadcast by state television on Monday, Ahmadinejad went further than ever before in emphasising his belief that the Mahdi is playing a critical role in Iran's day-to-day politics.

"The Imam Mahdi is in charge of the world and we see his hand directing all the affairs of the country," he said in the speech, which appears to date from last month but has only now been broadcast.

"We must solve Iran's internal problems as quickly as possible. Time is lacking. A movement has started for us to occupy ourselves with our global responsibilities, which are arriving with great speed."

Two leading clerics retorted that Ahmadinejad would be better off concentrating on Iran's social problems -- most notably its double-digit inflation -- than indulging in such mystical rhetoric.

"If Ahmadinejad wants to say that the hidden imam is supporting the decisions of the government, it is not true," sniped Gholam Reza Mesbahi Moghadam, the spokesman of the conservative Association of Combatant Clerics.

"For sure, the hidden imam does not approve of inflation of 20 percent, the high cost of living and numerous other errors," he said, according to the Kargozaran daily.

Ali Asghari, a member of the conservative Hezbollah faction in parliament, told the president not to link the management of the country to the imam.

"Ahmadinejad would do better to worry about social problems like inflation ... and other terrestrial affairs," Etemad Melli daily quoted him as saying.

Since becoming president in 2005, Ahmadinejad has repeatedly stated that his government is paving the way for the return of the Mahdi and chided his foes for not believing that his return is imminent.

Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad and other believers of the "hidden Imam" are lining up, waiting for the mothership.

EU DECIDES THEY'D RATHER EAT THAN ADDRESS GLOBAL WARMING: ABANDONS BIOFUEL TARGETS

In a rare moment of sobriety, the EU has decided that it's more important to have food to eat than to address the coming global warming apocalypse.

The European commission is backing away from its insistence on imposing a compulsory 10% quota of biofuels in all petrol and diesel by 2020, a central plank of its programme to lead the world in combating climate change.

Amid a worsening global food crisis exacerbated, say experts and critics, by the race to divert food or feed crops into biomass for the manufacture of vehicle fuel, and inundated by a flood of expert advice criticising the shift to renewable fuel, the commission appears to be getting cold feet about its biofuels target.

In March last year, European leaders sought to seize the global moral high ground by backing the commission's climate change package aimed at making Europe the world's first low-carbon economy. In January, the commission fleshed out the details of the measures, based on a carbon trading scheme which is to supply the bulk of the cuts in greenhouse gases.

But since then there has been a torrent of expert reports citing biofuels as part of the climate change problem.

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No doubt this will enrage those scientists whose life has been devoted to advancing the biofuel industry by perpetuating the global warming hoax. It would appear that even EU lawmakers aren't so brave as to try and pimp the hoax to starving citizens. You have to question the legitimacy of a scientific community that, for years, preached biofuels as a solution to "global warming" and now, characterizes it as part of the problem. Of course, there are many questions as to the legitimacy of Big Science as it relates to the global warming hoax. It just that no one of any substance seems willing to ask those questions.
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