“We expect the Saudi government to pursue the issue through correct channels instead of creating media hype,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry™s newly-appointed spokesman, Abbas Araqchi said on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia™s state media reported that the country had arrested 10 more suspects in what it claimed was a spy ring linked to Iran. The kingdom had arrested 18 others people in the same case in March 2012.

According to Saudi state media those detained include 24 Saudi nationals, one Turk, two Lebanese citizen, and allegedly one Iranian.

œIt was alleged [by the Saudi Arabia] that a network of spies, who were arrested in late March last year, were connected to Iran. At the time, we stressed the fallacy of this claim,” Araqchi added.

The spokesman noted that the Foreign Ministry summoned the Saudi Arabian chargé d’affaires in Tehran and protested the allegations in March 2012, requesting a formal explanation from the Saudi side.

Araqchi said Iran had requested consular access to the Iranian national two months ago but œunfortunately there has been no response from Saudi officials.”

Saudi activists say there are more than 30,000 political prisoners, mostly prisoners of conscience, in jails across the Kingdom.

According to the activists, most of the detained political thinkers are being held by the government without trial or legitimate charges and have been arrested for merely looking suspicious. Some of the detainees have reportedly been held without trial for more than 16 years.

PG/HGH/SS

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

The fact was exposed before a meeting of the grouping in Jordan, where British Foreign Secretary William Hague moaned that œSyrian President Bashar al-Assad cannot be part of a solution to the Syrian crisis”.

“We want a solution without Assad. We do not accept the stay of Assad,” Hague said ahead of the meeting in Amman.

William Hague said the UK government will renew its attempts to seek to lift an embargo against foreign-backed terrorists in Syria in a fresh bid to provide them heavy weapons.

Hague made the threatening remarks at a joint press conference with Jordan’s Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh.

“The UK and France seek to end the ban on arming Syrian rebels. Any decision to be taken will be discussed with the Syrian National Coalition and in cooperation with other entities”, he said.

The grouping includes Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, the United States, Britain, France, Turkey, Germany and Italy.

This comes as a U.S. Senate panel has already endorsed plans to give Syrian terrorists lethal arms.

The developments come as the Syrian Army continues to advance deeper into the strategic town of Qusayr, an area which has been the focal point of clashes between government forces and terrorists for weeks.

The army forces have managed to restore security and stability to Al-Akari and Tal Sar villages and hunted down rebels in the town of al-Hamidieh on the outskirts of al-Qusayr, state-run SANA news agency said Wednesday.

The army pushed its way into al-Qusayr city early Sunday after taking control of its surburb after 46 days of battling.

MOL/MOS/HE

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

President Obama’s newly appointed election reform commission is  filled with election officials who have a record of supporting progressive election reforms—even though some of them are known for working in red states under conservative Republicans. 

Whether Congress listens to this panel’s suggestions is another matter. Half of the 10-member panel are election state and local officials who have participated in numerous retreats sponsored by the Pew Center on the States where they have endorsed  voter registration modernization that would be a vast improvement over what’s widely in practice in election administration today. Regardless of political party, they generally agreed that voter registration—which is the gateway to the process—could be made more accurate, cost-effective and efficient. As important, they all don’t think very highly of politicizing the voting process. Their fundamental commitment is making sure eligible voters can cast ballots.

The backbone of their recommendations at Pew in 2010 was creating a system where states use a mix of government databases to draw up lists of eligible voters. Then states are left to decide how they will contact those voters and what people must do to activate their registrations before casting a ballot. This centrist compromise doesn’t entirely please progressives, who want states to universally register everyone. And it doesn’t please conservatives either, who want to make voter registration and the process of voting more difficult, in order to maintain GOP political power in states with increasingly diverse populations.

But, if Obama’s blue ribbon committee draws on the thinking that’s been done by these same people, what’s likely to emerge is a system where the government draws up eligible voter lists, attempts to contact new voters and people who move, and has better voter information databases and tracking ability on Election Day to ensure that anyone who wants to vote has an easier time crossing the finish line and casting a ballot. One impact of this more modernized approach—which would appeal to Republicans—is that a larger state role in enrolling voters would lessen the need for registration drives that have been attacked as unprofessional, such as by ACORN in 2008. However, the fact that states might rely on government data to identify people as eligible voters also would put GOP “voter integrity groups” out of business, because the government would be using data gathered under penalty of perjury.

Obama’s panel is headed by two of the country’s top election lawyers—Democrat Bob Bauer and Republican Benjamin Ginsberg—who are known for using any tactic to win and then saying there’s nothing wrong with the process because their side won. The panel also has people whose professional lives are in corporate America and not in running elections. Both these lawyers and executives are likely to defer to the real experts—people who have run elections for years.

In that latter category is former Tennessee Republican Secretary of State Trey Grayson; Clark County, Nevada (Las Vegas), Registrar Larry Lomax; former Texas Director of Elections Ann McGeehan; Maricopa County, Arizona, (Phoenix) longtime election official Tammy Patrick, and Michigan Director of Elections Christopher Thomas. These officials know exactly what does and doesn’t work in elections. They may get mixed reveiws from some progressive groups, but many of them have improved voting in their state, though that hasn’t gotten press attention.

For example, in Michigan, under a Republican Secretary of State, Christopher Thomas instituted an Election Day affidavit that a person who said she had registered—but wasn’t on the polling place list—could sign, under penalty of perjury, to get a ballot and vote. A handful of states have this option, which gives the benefit of the doubt to voters.

This article originally appeared on : AlterNet

Sociologists asked Russians about their attitude towards
20th-century leaders. Some 56 percent of respondents have positive
feelings about Brezhnev, who led the USSR from 1964 till 1982. A
target of countless Soviet jokes and anecdotes, he is now disliked
by 29 percent of people, Levada revealed.

The first ruler of the Soviet Union, Lenin, is seen in a good
light by 55 percent of Russians, while exactly one-half of Russians
favor Stalin. However, over one-third of respondents do not approve
of the leader, who is often described as “bloody
tyrant.” 

Nikita Khruschev – who was Soviet premier during the Cuban
missile crisis – is liked by 45 percent of Russians. That figure is
slightly less than modern-day supporters of Tsar Nicholas II, who
was overthrown in 1917; he got kind reviews from 48 percent of
respondents. 

And at the bottom of the list, two-thirds of respondents gave
negative evaluations to the first and only Soviet President,
Mikhail Gorbachev, and the first Russian President Boris,
Yeltsin.

The late Yeltsin is viewed positively by only 22 percent of
Russians, while his predecessor Gorbachev is seen as Russia’s worst
leader ever, according to the poll. The architect of perestroika is
now disliked by 66 percent of Russians, and only one-fifth of the
population has warm feelings about the Soviet president.

Experts link Brezhnev’s popularity among the population to
financial well-being during his epoch, which was the “peak of
Soviet socialism.” Stalin is associated with victory in World
War II, which explains why he is favored by modern
Russians.

“No one would want to live in Stalin’s era, but he
personifies what now is in shortage: Justice and equality in
fear,” Professor Valery Solovei told Kommersant daily.
Gorbachev and Yeltsin’s time brought “only defeats” and no material
prosperity, political analyst Sergey Chernyakhovsky explained.

“Gorbachev’s rule ended up with the dissolution of the USSR,
which is still considered by Russians as the 20th-century
catastrophe,” said Aleksey Grazhdankin, deputy head of the
Levada Center. Attitudes towards Yeltsin worsened following his
1992 reforms, which lead to inflation and the closure of many
businesses, he added.

Harsh politicians are always perceived better than liberal ones,
Grazhdankin said: “Freedom brings uncertainty, while people
prefer certainty and clear perspectives… Rights and freedoms are
too abstract, and the majority of people don’t need them. First of
all, people appreciate the right to social guarantees and
labor.”

This article originally appeared on : RT

Tax lost in tax havens is enough to end global extreme poverty
twice over according to new figures published by Oxfam,
Wednesday.

Although a deal was done earlier this month to get some of these
tax havens to be more transparent and share tax information, there
is still no tax deal on the table that will benefit poor countries
who are struggling to reclaim billions of dollars.

In the agreement British tax havens in the Caribbean have said
they will provide information on offshore bank accounts.

Tax havens take desperately needed cash from poor countries as
well as from citizens at home who are being hit by austerity
measures, the international agency said.

Some of the major world, EU and British tax havens are the
Bahamas, Luxembourg, the British Virgin Islands and the Isle of
Mann, which is located under 50miles away from the UK mainland.

“These figures put the UK at the center of a global tax
system that is a colossal betrayal of people here and in the
poorest countries who are struggling to get by, and put the
government on the side of the privileged few,” said Emma Seery,
Oxfam’s head of Development Finance and Public Services, in a
statement.

The $156 billion in lost tax revenue is estimated by Oxfam to be
just a fraction of the total tax lost, as it only reflects the
amount of tax individuals are neglecting to pay and doesn’t include
tax dodged by companies that costs poor countries a further $160
billion a year.

Oxfam is part of the Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign, which
is calling on the G8 to make all tax havens join a multinational
agreement to share tax information.

The campaign includes more than 200 UK anti-poverty
organizations and calls on the British government use its
presidency of the G8 to launch a Convention on Tax Transparency,
where countries would commit to preventing individuals and
companies from making their wealth untraceable.

“The crucial thing at G8 is that any tax deal is
multilateral, which means the developing world would be able to
recoup the money owed to them,” Emma Seery told RT.

The UK Prime Minister David Cameron is attending an EU summit
Wednesday where European heads of state and government will be
addressing the unfair global tax system. Two thirds of the world’s
offshore wealth, some $12.29 trillion is sitting in European linked
tax havens, including the British ones.

“Britain’s credibility is on the line; talking tough on tax,
whilst continuing to usher a third of the world’s wealth into UK
tax havens, risks making a mockery of David Cameron’s leadership at
the G8 summit in June,” Seery said.

Oxfam says the EU is set to fail on imposing countermeasure
sanctions against tax havens and those using them and that they
won’t come out of Brussels with a deal.

In fact the EU meeting will be about harmonizing tax across the
trading bloc. Attempts for a better exchange of information on what
tax multinationals are paying, which were meant to be global rather
than European in scope, have been taken over by various attempts to
create a consolidated EU corporate tax base.

This article originally appeared on : RT

Two elementary schools were destroyed in the EF-5 twister that
killed at least 24 people on Monday and injured
hundreds of others. Seven children were found dead in the debris of
the Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla.

Authorities believe that everyone who was at Briarwood
Elementary School survived the deadly tornado, which ravaged the
building with 200 mph winds.

“You could just feel the pressure just building like you were
in an airplane, just the pressurization of the cabin and your ears
popping and the debris starts flying and the roof falling in,”
Briarwood’s first-grade teacher Sheri Bittle told ABC. “And
everything in your classroom falling in on you.”

Both of the destroyed schools lacked tornado shelters, which
would have potentially prevented many of the casualties and
fatalities that occurred on May 20. More than 100 Oklahoma schools
currently have metal safe rooms, which can be built above ground or
underground and sustain winds up to 250 mph.

These rooms may be the difference between life and death in
states where the tornado risk is high, but lack of funding to build
them has prevented elementary schools like Plaza Towers and
Briarwood from constructing shelters of their own.

Retrofitting a school with a safe room shelter costs an
estimated $600,000 to $1 million per building, Bloomberg News
reports. Albert Ashwood, director of the Oklahoma Department of
Emergency, told the news agency that his department can’t afford to
provide every school with a shelter, but that he is looking into
whether the two schools had ever even applied for federal funding
to build safe rooms.

“You have a limited amount of funds,” he said. “You
set priorities. It’s not a matter of they were being left
out.”

But Oklahoma residents refer to Moore as “Tornado Alley”, since
the area has been struck by devastating twisters more than any
other region in the US. In May 1999, a tornado took a similar path,
ravaging Moore, killing 41 people, and costing the US $1 billion in
damages.

Some residents believe that safe rooms should be a priority in
Oklahoma – particularly in Moore, since it has a history of falling
victim to tornadoes.

“If they can afford a $5 million football stadium, they can
afford a safe room,” 67-year-old John Lemmon, a Moore resident
who lives near Plaza Towers Elementary School, told Bloomberg.
“They should have done it right after they had the last big
one.”

While both elementary schools were reduced to rubble, students
at Plaza Towers Elementary School were worse off. This traditional
school building was constructed with a long line of classrooms that
were all under a single roof. When the tornado caused the building
to crumble, students were trapped in the wreckage of the structure,
and at least seven of them died. 

Briarwood Elementary School was divided into four sections, with
several classrooms in each pod. Between these pods were openings
that led students outside, which allowed students to escape the
collapsing walls and ceilings.

No children died at Briarwood as they escaped the falling debris
with backpacks over their heads. But both schools could have
ensured the safety of their students if they had metal safe rooms
to retreat into during natural disasters.

Now that children have died in the May 20 twister that ravaged
Moore, Okla., the Federal Emergency Management Agency may
reconsider providing the funding for safe rooms. The city of Moore
has long been trying to acquire funds to buy them, and the city in
February wrote on its website that FEMA requirements have held them
back.

“If you don’t have disasters, you don’t have additional money
for mitigation for safe rooms, but without disasters there’s not a
set funding source just for safe rooms,” FEMA director Craig
Fugate told ABC, indicating that changes may only occur when it’s
too late to reverse the damage.

This article originally appeared on : RT

Parliament Officials meet in Brussels to address the burden the
€1 trillion tax evasion is having on the EU economy, and have again
called to end fraud and ‘offshore’ zones. 

The European Parliament agreed to halve the 1 trillion figure by
2020 through an aggressive dismantling of tax loopholes and
havens.  The MEP’s also approved state resources to go
after and prosecute tax evaders, in hopes of recovering lost
assets.

“At a time when finances are tight and taxpayers are
squeezed, it’s only right that we crack down on those who pursue
illegal means to avoid making any contribution to public coffers,
and who put smaller competitors at a disadvantage,” said
Conservative MEP Martin Callanan, in a direct challenge to British
PM David Cameron to make tax evasion a priority in the UK

Austria, notorious for its banking secrecy, has joined
its EU partners in the quest against tax fraud, and supports the
one year banking secrecy deadline. According to Tax Research UK, a
blog maintained by an “anti-poverty campaigner and tax expert”
according to the Guardian.

The blog’s owner also is involved with Tax Justice Network and
is the director of Tax Research LLP.

The poverty charity Oxfam said on Tuesday that the EU has missed
out on £100 billion from individual tax scammers.

Oxfam has called for a blacklist of tax havens and believes EU
member states should impose sanctions on members who provide
platforms for such activity.

Ireland has vehemently denied it is a tax haven and on Wednesday
called for an international clampdown on multinationals, yet sits
at the center of the controversy. On Monday, it became known that
Apple Inc. paid just 2 percent on $74 billion
overseas income, which was mostly facilitated by a loophole in
Ireland’s tax code.

The ‘Irish double dip’ allows a company to file two subsidiaries
in Ireland with a corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent, which is far
less than the 35 percent rate in the US, for example.

This ‘legitimate tax abuse’ by high-profile corporates such as
Amazon, Google, and Apple hijacked the EU summit agenda.

Martin Callanan has called for an end to tax-havens and doesn’t
blame the companies, but the governing bodies which allow such a
framework.

“Nobody can blame companies for wanting to look after
share-holders’ capital by minimizing their tax bill in a legal
manner,” he said.

Getting all member states to abide by one tax code, seems near
impossible.

“While companies may be using loopholes to pay as little tax
as possible, the truth is it’s a national issue. It’s up to the
relevant member states to change their tax codes and tighten the
net.”

The EU has already agreed to strengthen savings tax agreements
with European countries widely regarded as tax havens -
Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Andorra and San Marino.

Luxembourg has taken a lead and has agreed to an automatic
information exchange with the United States.

This article originally appeared on : RT

Chairman of Iran Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Alaeddin Boroujerdi said on Wednesday that the “Leaders of the fake Zionist regime (of Israel) only issue such empty threats to boost the morale of terrorists.”

Pointing to the recent advancements made by the Syrian army against militants in the western city of al-Qusayr in the central province of Homs near the Lebanese border, Boroujerdi said Tel Aviv threats are aimed at preventing the blockade of al-Qusayr, which is the main channel of arms supply to militants.

The Iranian lawmaker stated that the Syrian army has maintained its powerful position against foreign threats throughout the two-year unrest and has defeated militants in various fronts.

On Tuesday, Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz reiterated threats to launch more attacks against Syria, saying Israel is prepared to œto take a stronger hand in the conflict” against Syria.

The warning came after the Syrian army said in a statement that it had destroyed an Israeli military vehicle which had crossed the ceasefire line in the occupied Golan Heights.

The Israeli regime has recently boosted its military activities in the Golan Heights, where clashes between the Syrian army and the militant groups continue.

Syria has been gripped by unrest for over two years, and many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security personnel, have been killed in the foreign-sponsored militancy.

PG/HGH/SS

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

He said on Wednesday that the decisions by the Guardian Council – a 12-member body consisting of six jurists and six theologians – were made in the right direction to create yet another epic election on June 14.

Amoli Larijani further noted that the top constitutional supervisory body has the final say in vetting candidates and those who were not approved should abide by the law.

The senior Iranian official also asked the candidates to refrain from character assassination during presidential debates.

Iran™s Interior Ministry on Wednesday published the list of hopefuls approved to run in the country™s 11th presidential election.

The candidates are Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Saeed Jalili, former Telecommunications Minister Mohammad Gharazi, President of the Center for Strategic Research of the Expediency Council Hassan Rohani, former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati, former First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref, Secretary of the Expediency Council Mohsen Rezaei, Iranian lawmaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel and Tehran Mayor Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf.

The eight candidates were approved by the Guardian Council after a 10-day vetting process.

The Council has not approved, among others, former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, and a close aide to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Esfandiyar Rahim Mashaei.

MP/HGH/SS

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Dana El Baltaji
Bloomberg
May 22, 2013

Communities inhabited by Shiite Muslims and President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority will be “wiped off the map” if the strategic city of Al-Qusair in central Syria falls to government troops, rebel forces said.

“We don’t want this to happen, but it will be a reality imposed on everyone,” Colonel Abdel-Hamid Zakaria, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army in Turkey, told Al-Arabiya television yesterday. “It’s going to be an open, sectarian, bloody war to the end.”

Fighter planes and heavy artillery pounded the city today, the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in an e-mail. It said two people were killed during clashes between rebels and government troops backed by Hezbollah fighters, bringing the death toll from clashes at Al-Qusair in the last three days to more than 90.

Read full article

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This article was posted: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 at 9:58 am

Tags: foreign affairs, war

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This article originally appeared on : Infowars