He remains "in principle opposed to referendums, as they are incompatible with representative parliamentary government, the true hallmark of the British constitutional system. It is simply not true to say that referendums have become an unavoidable part of our constitution."

She warned: "If the Treaty of Lisbon is ratified and implemented, and devolution to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland continues apace, in fifteen to twenty years time, THIS HOUSE OF COMMONS WILL HAVE ONLY TWO FUNCTIONS - ONE WILL BE TO RAISE TAXES, AND THE OTHER WILL BE TO AUTHORISE WAR."

She also warned that "If the EU Health Directive as it stands goes through in ten years time we won't be able to run the NHS." She criticised the fact that "THINGS HAPPEN BY STEALTH" so often in the European Union, saying: "MY FUNDAMENTAL MISGIVING OF THE LISBON TREATY IS THAT IN TERMS OF CHECKS AND BALANCES, it has completed the tool box, with the exception of defence and taxation, so that if the EU wishes to do something in any member state, it can use one tool or another, whether it's legislation, or whether it's court cases, you name it - it can now do it. Because it is either shared competence, or it is by co-decision, it can always do it now." SHE SAID: "WE ARE MAKING FEWER AND FEWER DECISIONS THAT MATTER... I CAN'T TELL MY CONSTITUENTS WHERE THE BUCK STOPS."

We have three objectives: TO DEVELOP A BIGGER EUROPEAN CAPACITY FOR DEPLOYMENT AND PLANNING; SECONDLY, TO ACCELERATE EFFORTS TOWARDS STANDARDISATION OF MILITARY EQUIPMENT; THIRDLY, TO STRENGTHEN THE INTERNAL MARKET IN ARMS AND TECHNOLOGY TRANSFERS. At the end, we will have to take on the budget problem. There cannot be solidarity in security policy without an examination of budgetary solidarity."

On the role of EU President, he says, "We need a character who has an awareness of European solidarity, who has sufficient authority to shed light on the work of the European Council but who knows when to take a back seat if necessary so that consensus can be found in the Council. Jacques Delors was very good at doing that. We need to find someone who fits this profile by December. The majority of our partners do not want a representative of a country which has the most exemptions. Tony Blair has a lot of charisma, but there doesn't seem to be a consensus emerging in his favour."

Asked whether he is in favour of Javier Solana for EU Foreign Minister, he says: "It has not been ruled out. But on all these appointments, we mustn't underestimate the expectations of our citizens. With the Lisbon Treaty, they figure we are entering a new era and that it must be embodied by new personalities. IT WOULD BE DANGEROUS IF IN EUROPE WE UNDERESTIMATE THIS ASPIRATION FOR RENEWAL."

The program, in the form of a puppet show, was circulated by MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute). THE SHOW FEATURES A CHILD WHO HAS BROKEN INTO THE WHITE HOUSE AND THREATENS TO KILL THE UNITED STATES PRESIDENT. When the latter calls for his guards, the child tells him, "There are no guards, and your people have surrendered." The boy, weeping sadly, tells the Bush puppet that he has come to kill him to avenge the death of his parents and siblings: "You killed daddy in the Iraq war... As for my mom ? you and the criminal Zionists killed her in Lebanon. You and the criminal Zionists also killed my younger and older brothers in the Gaza holocaust. I'm an orphan, you criminal!... You made me an orphan! You took everything from me, Bush! I must take revenge on you, with this sword of Islam, the Prophet's Al-Battar sword!"

The child also tells Bush that he has not come alone: "I have brought thousands of thousands of children from Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. You have denied all these children their fathers and mothers. That's why I have come to take revenge on you and on all the criminal traitors who collaborated with you." Bush himself then begins crying, begging for mercy and offering the child toys, food and a visit to the White House. The boy then says, "You are impure, Bush, so you are not allowed inside the White House... because it has been turned into a great mosque for the nation of Islam."

The boy also explains his desire to kill Bush "just like Mu'az killed Abu Lahab" - a reference to the death of an opponent of Mohammed that is recounted at length in the Koran. The child then stabs the Bush puppet repeatedly, and the show ends with the boy saying with satisfaction, "Ahhh, I killed him." THE SHOW PROVIDES FURTHER CONFIRMATION OF THE PREMISE OF THE MOVIE FITNA, WHICH ATTEMPTS TO SHOW HOW THE KORAN ENCOURAGES MOSLEMS TO KILL INFIDELS AND TAKE OVER THE WORLD.

THE INTERNET IS ROUTINELY CENSORED IN CHINA but Beijing is committed by its "host city contract" to giving the estimated 30,000 media expected for the Olympics the freedom to report as they have at previous Games. "There was some criticism that the Internet closed down during events relating to Tibet in previous weeks.

"Our concern is that the press is able to operate as it has at previous Games during Games time," added Gosper, speaking on the sidelines of the inspection of preparations for the August 8-24 Games. "I'm satisfied that the Chinese understand the need for this and that they will do it."

The Australian, also chairman of the IOC's press commission, said BLOCKING THE INTERNET DURING THE GAMES "WOULD REFLECT VERY POORLY" ON THE HOST COUNTRY but was confident the Chinese would fulfill the obligations of their agreement. "They've given us a huge commitment and CHANGED THEIR LEGISLATION EXTENSIVELY to enable the international press to report on the Games," he said. NEW LAWS LOOSENING THE RESTRICTIONS ON FOREIGN MEDIA IN CHINA WENT INTO OPERATION ON JANUARY 1 LAST YEAR BUT ARE DUE TO EXPIRE IN OCTOBER.

CHINA USED THE VISIT AS A TEST. If the communist regime could allow in a dozen or so capitalist sportsmen and manage to avoid total collapse, then perhaps it could afford to open up a little more. A year after their visit, US President Richard Nixon came to Beijing.

And China's course was set. The Starbucks, the McDonalds, Mercedes and BMWs you can see everywhere in China can be traced right back to the fact that Tim Boggan and his team-mates came here 37 years ago with their ping-pong bats. "WHEN YOU HEAR THAT SPORT AND POLITICS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH EACH OTHER, WHAT DO YOU THINK?" I ASK. "I THINK IT IS CRAZY, YOU KNOW THAT THEY CERTAINLY DO," HE SAYS.

Liang Geliang was chosen to play the Americans in 1971. "We were all happy to see the American team come to China," he says. "We felt there was an urgent need for communications between us." After the ice broke, people like Liang Geliang began to enjoy opportunities they had never had before. Instead of demonising the West, China eventually allowed its people to live there - so Liang Geliang and his family moved to Germany for a while. "Playing ping-pong is an art, but the sport itself goes beyond this. Of course we want to win championships but there is more to it than that. WE MUST PUT POLITICS FIRST." After years spent hating money, China allowed its citizens to make it instead.

There is perhaps a certain symmetry here. China's first important sporting event - the ping-pong of 1971 - brought China, the US and the West together. Now, its second big event - the Olympics of 2008 - will test the strength of the ties made through sport.

It is a proverb world leaders might do well to bear in mind as their impoverished populations struggle with food costs driven ever higher by RECORD OIL PRICES, WEATHER AND SPECULATORS TRADING IN LOCAL MARKET PLACES AND ON GLOBAL FUTURES EXCHANGES. Anger over high food and fuel costs has spawned a rash of violent unrest across the globe in the past six months.

From the deserts of Mauritania to steamy Mozambique on Africa's Indian Ocean coast, people have taken to the streets. There have been "tortilla riots" in Mexico, villagers have clashed with police in eastern India and hundreds of Muslims have marched for lower food prices in Indonesia.

Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly vulnerable: most people survive on less than $2 a day in countries prone to droughts and floods where agricultural processes are still often rudimentary. FOR AFRICAN HOUSEHOLDS, EVEN A SMALL RISE IN THE PRICE OF FOOD CAN BE DEVASTATING WHEN MEALS ARE A FAMILY'S MAIN EXPENSE.

While an official statement on EU support and presence at the Beijing Olympic games was not issued, disagreement amongst EU leaders was underlined at the meeting this weekend by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner who said "The German position and the British position are not the same," with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier not attending the opening ceremonies.

Lord Lamont told the paper: "We will effectively turn the Salisbury Convention on its head. The convention is clear that the House of Lords cannot overturn a manifesto commitment. This will be the House of Lords attempting to enforce a manifesto commitment." Challenged on whether he thought ministers had lied over the need for a referendum, he said: "I HESITATE TO ACCUSE PEOPLE OF BEING DISHONEST. BUT I WOULD COME CLOSE TO IT ON THIS ISSUE."

The article notes that much will depend on what orders Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, issues to his peers. Lord Falkland, one of 78 Lib Dem peers, told the paper: "I will be voting for a referendum and, if I am brave enough to withstand the glares of my colleagues, I will speak in the debate. When you give an undertaking, as we clearly did in our last manifesto, you cannot have it both ways. A MANIFESTO COMMITMENT HAS TO BE SACROSANCT."

The figures, revealed in the recent budget, also show that Britain will make even larger net payments to the EU in the coming years. In 2008-09, the net payment will be £6.1 billion and in 2009-10, £6.4 billion. Gordon Brown had declared in last year's budget that the UK's overall contribution to the EU this year would be £3.3bn. The rises are the result of a 2005 agreement by Tony Blair - with Gordon Brown's backing - to a staged series of cuts in the UK rebate.

Paul Stephenson of Open Europe was quoted in the Express: "THESE FIGURES JUST HIGHLIGHT THE SHEER LEVEL OF BLAIR'S SELL-OUT TO BRUSSELS IN 2005. It's hardly surprising that he's now the frontrunner to become the next president of the EU. LAST YEAR THE EU'S ACCOUNTANTS WERE UNABLE TO SIGN OFF OVER £43BN WORTH OF SPENDING. UNTIL THE EU GETS ITS HOUSE IN ORDER, GORDON BROWN SHOULD REFUSE TO SEND ANY MORE CHEQUES TO BRUSSELS."

CORN PRICES HAVE SKYROCKETED IN RECENT YEARS, HELPED BY THE BURGEONING ETHANOL INDUSTRY, WHICH TURNS THE CROP INTO FUEL, AND RISING WORLDWIDE DEMAND FOR FOOD. The higher prices have hurt poultry, beef and pork companies, who use corn to feed their animals. Farmers are expected to plant 86 million acres of corn this year, the Department of Agriculture predicted Monday, down 8 percent from 2007, when the amount of corn planted was the highest since World War II. The decreased supply could drive corn prices even higher - a cost for food producers that could be passed on to consumers.

According to the Agriculture Department, corn planting is expected to remain at historically high levels but could be down this year BECAUSE OF THE HIGH EXPENSE OF GROWING CORN and favorable prices for other crops, such as soybeans. As many farmers have made that switch, soybean planting is expected to be up 18 percent this year, at almost 75 million acres.

Though the ethanol industry is heavily subsidized and has contributed to the rise in prices, a decrease in corn production could hurt that business, too. Higher prices for the crop could be passed on to those filling their cars up with the renewable fuel. THE NUMBER OF ETHANOL PLANTS HAS INCREASED FROM 50 IN 1999 TO 134 NOW WITH MORE BEING BUILT, ACCORDING TO THE RENEWABLE FUELS ASSOCIATION. AN AVERAGE, 100 MILLION GALLON-PER-YEAR ETHANOL PLANT CONSUMES ABOUT 33 MILLION BUSHELS OF CORN.

Around the globe, people are protesting and governments are responding with often counterproductive controls on prices and exports - A NEW POLITICS OF SCARCITY IN WHICH ENSURING FOOD SUPPLIES IS BECOMING A MAJOR CHALLENGE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY. Plundered by severe weather in producing countries and by a boom in demand from fast-developing nations, the world's wheat stocks are at 30-year lows. Grain prices have been on the rise for five years, ending decades of cheap food.

Drought, a declining dollar, a shift of investment money into commodities and use of farm land to grow fuel have all contributed to food woes. But population growth and the growing wealth of China and other emerging countries are likely to be more enduring factors.

After long opposition, MEXICO'S GOVERNMENT IS CONSIDERING LIFTING A BAN ON GENETICALLY MODIFIED CROPS, TO ALLOW ITS FARMERS TO COMPETE WITH THE UNITED STATES, where high-yield, genetically modified corn is the norm. The European Union and parts of Africa have similar bans that could also be reconsidered. A NUMBER OF GOVERNMENTS, including Egypt, Argentina, Kazakhstan, and China, HAVE IMPOSED RESTRICTIONS TO LIMIT GRAIN EXPORTS AND KEEP MORE OF THEIR FOOD AT HOME.

YET $1 TRILLION IS THE AMOUNT OF DEFAULTS AND WRITEDOWNS AMERICANS WILL LIKELY WITNESS BEFORE THEY EMERGE AT THE FAR SIDE OF THE BURSTING CREDIT BUBBLE, estimates Charles R. Morris in his shrewd primer, "The Trillion Dollar Meltdown." That calculation assumes an orderly unwinding, which he doesn't expect.

"The sad truth," he writes, "is that subprime is just the first big boulder in an avalanche of asset writedowns that will rattle on through much of 2008." EXPECT THE LANDSLIDE TO CASCADE THROUGH HIGH-YIELD BONDS, COMMERCIAL MORTGAGES, LEVERAGED LOANS, CREDIT CARDS AND - THE BIG UNKNOWN - CREDIT-DEFAULT SWAPS, Morris says. The notional value for those swaps, which are meant to insure bondholders against default, covered about $45 trillion in portfolios as of mid-2007, up from some $1 trillion in 2001, he writes.

Morris sketches a scenario in which hedge fund counterparty defaults would ripple through default swap markets, TRIGGERING WRITEDOWNS OF INSURED PORTFOLIOS, DEMANDS FOR COLLATERAL, AND A RUSH TO GRAB CASH FROM DEFAULTING GUARANTORS. THE CREDIT SYSTEM WOULD SUFFER "AN UTTER THROMBOSIS," HE SAYS, MAKING THE SUBPRIME CRISIS "LOOK LIKE A WALK IN THE PARK."

At the heart of the proposals, agreed on Wednesday by Hank Paulson, US Treasury secretary, and Alistair Darling, UK chancellor, is the creation of a body made up of senior Treasury and regulatory figures from London and Washington.

Mr Brown and Mr Bush will discuss greater UK-US co-operation in tackling the financial crisis when they meet at a Nato summit in Bucharest this week and a Washington summit next month. Whitehall officials say the new UK-US working group, whose membership and terms of reference are being finalised, will seek to establish a common approach on how to respond to the crisis before next month's meetings of the Group of Seven, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

However, officials say that, given the huge role that London and New York play in financial markets, the significance of the new body will go beyond that.

The Great Global Warming Swindle is based on sound science and interviews with real climate scientists. "An Inconvenient Truth,"on the other hand, IS MOSTLY AN EMOTIONAL PRESENTATION FROM A SINGLE POLITICIAN. The scientific arguments presented in "The Great Global Warming Swindle" can be stated quite briefly:

1. THERE IS NO PROOF THAT THE CURRENT WARMING IS CAUSED BY THE RISE OF GREENHOUSE GASES FROM HUMAN ACTIVITY. Ice core records from the past 650,000 years show that temperature increases have preceded - not resulted from - increases in CO2 by hundreds of years, suggesting that the warming of the oceans is an important source of the rise in atmospheric CO2. As the dominant greenhouse gas, water vapor is far, far more important than CO2 - and, in any case, water vapor is not within our control.

The current warming is likely to be part of a natural cycle of climate warming and cooling that's been traced back almost a million years. It accounts for the Medieval Warm Period around 1100 A.D., when the Vikings settled Greenland and grew crops, and the Little Ice Age, from about 1400 to 1850 A.D., which brought severe winters and cold summers to Europe, with failed harvests, starvation, disease, and general misery. Advocates have tried to deny the existence of these historic climate swings and claim that the current warming is "unusual" by using spurious analysis of tree rings and other proxy data, resulting in the famous "hockey-stick" temperature graph. THE HOCKEY-STICK GRAPH HAS NOW BEEN THOROUGHLY DISCREDITED.

2. IF THE CAUSE OF WARMING IS MOSTLY NATURAL, THEN THERE IS LITTLE WE CAN DO ABOUT IT. We cannot control the inconstant sun, the likely origin of most climate variability. None of the schemes for greenhouse gas reduction currently bandied about will do any good; they are all irrelevant, useless, and wildly expensive: Ironically, even if CO2 were responsible for the observed warming trend, all these schemes would be ineffective - unless we could persuade every nation, including China, to cut fuel use by 80 percent!

3. FINALLY, NO ONE CAN SHOW THAT A WARMER CLIMATE WOULD PRODUCE NEGATIVE IMPACTS OVERALL. The much-feared rise in sea levels does not seem to depend on short-term temperature changes, as the rate of sea-level increases has been steady since the last ice age, 10,000 years ago. In fact, many economists argue that the opposite is more likely - that warming produces a net benefit, that it increases incomes and standards of living. But the main message of The Great Global Warming Swindle is much broader. WHY SHOULD WE DEVOTE OUR SCARCE RESOURCES TO WHAT IS ESSENTIALLY A NON-PROBLEM, AND IGNORE THE REAL PROBLEMS THE WORLD FACES: hunger, disease, denial of human rights - not to mention the threats of terrorism and nuclear wars? And are we really prepared to deal with natural disasters; pandemics that can wipe out most of the human race, or even the impact of an asteroid, such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs? YET POLITICIANS AND THE ELITES THROUGHOUT MUCH OF THE WORLD PREFER TO SQUANDER OUR LIMITED RESOURCES TO FASHIONABLE ISSUES, RATHER THAN CONCENTRATE ON REAL PROBLEMS. Just consider the scary predictions emanating from supposedly responsible world figures: THE CHIEF SCIENTIST OF GREAT BRITAIN TELLS US that unless we insulate our houses and use more efficient light bulbs, the Antarctic will be the only habitable continent by 2100, with a few surviving breeding couples propagating the human race. Seriously!

I imagine that in the not-too-distant future all the hype will have died down, particularly if the climate should decide to cool - as it did during much of the past century; WE SHOULD TAKE NOTE HERE THAT IT HAS NOT WARMED SINCE 1998. Future generations will look back on the current madness and wonder what it was all about. They will have movies like An Inconvenient Truth and documentaries like The Great Global Warming Swindle to remind them.

Author details:- S. FRED SINGER, AN ATMOSPHERIC PHYSICIST, is Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, and former founding Director of the US Weather Satellite Service. He is author of Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming's Unfinished Debate. (This article was originally published in May 22, 2007)