A DeSmogBlog investigation reveals that Robert Bauer, former White House Counsel and President Barack Obama’s personal attorney, works at the corporate law firm Perkins Coie LLP, which does legal work for TransCanada’s South Central LNG Project, formerly known as Alaska Gas Pipeline Project.

Furthermore, Dan Sullivan, current Commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Natural Resources, and former Alaska Attorney General and former Assistant Secretary of State in the Bush Administration, is a former Perkins attorney.

These findings come in the immediate aftermath of a recent investigation revealing the contractor hired by Obama’s U.S. State Department to do the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the northern half of TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands export pipeline – Environmental Resources Management, Inc. (ERM Group) – lied on its June 2012 conflict-of interest filing. ERM Group checked the box on the form saying it had no current business ties to TransCanada.

In fact, ERM – a member of the American Petroleum Institute (API), which has spent over $22 million lobbying on tar sands and Keystone XL since 2008 – does maintain business ties to TransCanada, the investigation revealed. This includes an ongoing consulting relationship with South Central LNG, co-owned by TransCanada, ExxonMobil, BP and ConocoPhillips.

Under 18 USC § 1001, making a “materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation…[to the] executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States” is a crime punishable by up to five years in jail.

On top of his job at Perkins Coie, Bauer — a well-known architect of bending campaign finance law to allow more corporate money to flood into electoral races — served as general counsel to President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. He also serves as general counsel to the Democratic National Committee and did electoral law work for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.

His wife, Anita Dunn is the co-owner of SDKnickerbocker, former Obama Communications Director, senior advisor for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign and is the former communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee under then-Senator Kerry. She’s met with top Obama administration officials more than 100 times since leaving in 2009, according to a recent New York Times investigation.

Dunn currently does public relations work on behalf of TransCanada and freight rail industry lobbying group, American Association of Railroads (AAR). The tar sands pipeline boom comes alongside a freight rail boom to carry tar sands crude and fracked oil from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale.

“ERM lied on its conflict of interest disclosure form, and State was either asleep at the wheel or chose to look the other way,” FOE’s Ross Hammond told The Washington Post in a recent piece commenting on ERM’s “Pinocchio moment.”

Given the myriad ties that bind, “looking the other way” appears more plausible.

Perkins Coie’s Legal Bidding for Democrats, TransCanada AK Gas Pipeline Project

Perkins Coie is a global firm with 19 offices worldwide and maintains close ties to the Democratic Party above and beyond Bob Bauer.

Bauer’s colleague Mark Ellis, for example, does legal work on behalf of the “Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors Associations and numerous U.S. senators and representatives and their campaigns,” according to his Perkins Coie biography.

The Oil and Gas legal work portion of Perkins’ website highlights its legal work in Alaska.

“In Alaska, our lawyers have long represented leading oil and gas companies on the North Slope and the Cook Inlet…We are extensively involved in efforts to develop the Point Thomson field and commercialize Alaska’s natural gas resources with a pipeline to Lower 48 markets.”

The “efforts to…commercialize Alaska’s natural gas resources with a pipeline to Lower 48 markets” that Perkins’ website refers to is the South Central LNG Project co-owned by TransCanada.

A map on the original Alaska Gas Pipeline Project website depicts the route:

“The project is designed to connect Alaska’s North Slope natural gas resources to new markets and deliver a reliable and secure source of clean burning energy for decades to come,” explain TransCanada and ExxonMobil on the original Alaska Gas Pipeline Project website. “TransCanada and ExxonMobil have the expertise, experience, and financial capability to develop what would be one of the largest privately funded energy projects in the history of North America.”

Before providing legal aide to South Central LNG, Perkins helped the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) – co-owned by Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, BP, ConocoPhillips and Chevron and often referred to as the Alyeska Pipeline – get up and running. TAPS takes oil from the Alaska North Slope to the Valdez Marine Terminal, home of the Exxon Valdez spill.

Perkins’ legal aide, in fact, made TAPS a reality according to an interview appearing online with Perkins’ veteran attorney Guy Martin. Martin was instrumental in opening Perkins’ office focusing on Alaska in Washington DC.

“I actually took a little, first-floor townhouse on Capitol Hill, and opened what was really a two- or three-person office. It was the first state office, and we worked pretty much exclusively on the pipeline,” said Martin. “The Trans-Alaska Pipeline Act was passed as the direct result of the passing of the Settlement Act.”

Perkins Coie attorney L. John Iani – former Region 10 (which includes Alaska) Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator from 2001-2004 under President George W. Bush — also formerly lobbied  for the Alaska Gas Pipeline Project working for TransCanada from 2005-2008,Congressional lobbying disclosure records  show. He did so while working for Van Ness Feldman from 2004-2010, a firm that today lobbies on behalf of TransCanada’s Keystone XL.

Perkins still does legal work on behalf of TAPS and defended it in the 2010 case Alyeska Pipeline Service Company v. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

AK DNR Run by Former Perkins Attorney 

Alaska Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Commissioner Dan Sullivan formerly worked at Perkins Coie from 1996-2006.

His task as head of Alaska’s DNR, by law, is to serve as an oil and gas industry watchdog. As such, he will aid in overseeing whether South Central LNG becomes a reality. Sullivan — it’s important to remember — was named Attorney General by former Alaska Republican Gov. Sarah Palin of “drill baby, drill” fame in June 2009.

Prior to his appointment as Attorney General, Dan Sullivan served as Assistant Secretary of State during the Bush administration, reporting to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Sullivan’s full title was Assistant Secretary for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs. Wikileaks diplomatic cables reveal that while at the State Department, Sullivan helped negotiate oil and gas deals with Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Norway, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and France.

It was also under Bush and during Sullivan’s time at the State Department that the original TransCanada Keystone tar sands pipeline was approved in March 2008. Three months later, in June 2008, TransCanada proposed Keystone XL to the State Department.

In March 2012, President Obama issued an Executive Order to expedite the building of Keystone XL’s southern half from Cushing, OK to Port Arthur, TX. It is the northern, border-crossing half whose final destiny is now in the hands of President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry.

“Americans Know a Rat When They Smell One” 

Anita Dunn will likely be working overtime in the coming weeks and months using her insider/outsider status to ensure its approval on behalf of the client she shares with her husband Bob Bauer’s law firm, TransCanada.

“Only in the ethically-challenged world of K Street lobbyists could it be considered OK for a power couple like Dunn & Bauer to exploit their White House connections to promote the interests of a foreign corporation like TransCanada,” Hammond told DeSmogBlog in an interview.

“Beltway insiders may yawn at the fact that TransCanada has hired people so close to President Obama and Secretary Kerry to push their dirty and dangerous pipeline, but ordinary Americans know a rat when they smell one.”

Steve Horn is a Madison, WI-based freelance investigative journalist and Research Fellow at DeSmogBlog, where this piece originally appeared.

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

Supporters of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi in Cairo. (File photo)

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Italy, Portugal apologize to Bolivia for blocking airspace to its presidential plane

The aircraft carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales was forced to land in the Austrian capital Vienna on July 3, 2013 (file photo).

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Saudi-backed Bahraini regime forces have attacked dozen of houses in a village near the capital Manama, as crackdown on anti-regime protesters continues.

Bahrain’s main opposition party, the al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, said that regime forces have rummaged through the protestersâ„¢ homes in the village of Diraz on the northwestern coast of the Persian Gulf country. The group added that the forces have also stormed into the houses in Sitra and Hamad, the Sanad residential area and al-Dair village.

On Monday, a 55-year-old Bahraini identified as Saeed Abdullah Marzouq died after regime forces shot tear gas into residential neighborhoods in the village of Diraz.

The latest fatality comes ahead of a planned anti-regime protest on August 14, the date that marks the withdrawal of British forces from the Persian Gulf Island back in 1971.

Last year, Amnesty International warned about the Bahraini regime’s misuse of tear gas against protesters and called for an investigation into the tear gas-related deaths.

Bahrainis have been staging anti-regime demonstrations since mid-February 2011, demanding political reforms and a constitutional monarchy, a demand that later changed to an outright call for the ouster of the ruling Al Khalifa family following its brutal crackdown on popular protests.

Scores have been killed, many of them under torture while in custody, and thousands more detained since the popular uprising in Bahrain began.

Protesters say they will continue holding anti-regime demonstrations until their demand for the establishment of a democratically-elected government and an end to rights violations is met.

IA/PR

Republished with permission from: Press TV

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Picture taken on July 16, 2013 shows a wall of tributes for former South African President Nelson Mandela outside the Medi Clinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria.

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• calling for Israeli soldiers to be tried in international courts;

• urging boycotts of Israel, its companies or citizens;

• denying Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state; and/or

• inciting racism or advocacy for armed struggle against Israel.

Republished with permission from: Stephen Lendman

Republished with permission from: Stephen Lendman

July 9, 2013
 |

Here’s my experience in speaking apocalyptically about the serious challenges humans face: No matter how carefully I craft a statement of concern about the future of humans, no matter how often I deny a claim to special gifts of prognostication, no matter now clearly I reject supernatural explanations or solutions, I can be certain that a significant component of any audience will refuse to take me seriously. Some of those people will make a joke about “Mr. Doom and Gloom.” Others will suggest that such talk is no different than conspiracy theorists’ ramblings about how international bankers, secret cells of communists, or crypto-fascists are using the United Nations to create a one-world government. Even the most measured and careful talk of the coming dramatic change in the place of humans on Earth leads to accusations that one is unnecessarily alarmist, probably paranoid, certainly irrelevant to serious discussion about social and ecological issues. In the United States, talk of the future is expected to be upbeat, predicting expansion and progress, or at least maintenance of our “way of life.”

Apocalyptic thinking allows us to let go of those fanciful visions of the future. As singer/songwriter John Gorka puts it: “The old future’s gone/We can’t get to there from here.” The comfortable futures that we are comfortable imagining are no longer available to us because of the reckless way we’ve been rolling the dice; there is nothing to save us from ourselves. Our task is to deal with our future without delusions of deliverance, either divine or technological. This planet is not a way station in a journey to some better place; it is our home, the only home we will know. We will make our peace with ourselves, each other, and the larger living world here.

The first step in thinking sensibly about the future, of course, is reviewing the past. The uncertainty of our future will be easier to accept and the strength to persevere will be easier to summon if we recognize:

–We are animals. For all our considerable rational capacities, we are driven by non-rational forces that cannot be fully understood or completely controlled. Even the most careful scientist is largely an emotional creature, just like everyone else.

–We are band/tribal animals. Whatever kind of political unit we live in today, our evolutionary history is in small groups; that’s how we are designed to live.

–We are band/tribal animals living in a global world. The consequences of the past 10,000 years of human history have left us dealing with human problems on a global scale, and with 7 billion people on the planet, there’s no point in fantasizing about a retreat to Eden.

With that history in mind, we should go easy on ourselves. As Wes Jackson said, we are a species out of context, facing the unique task of being the first animals who will have to self-consciously impose limits on ourselves if we are to survive, reckoning not just with what we do in our specific place on the planet but with what other people are doing around the world. This is no small task, and we are bound to fail often. We may never stop failing, and that is possibly the most daunting challenge we must face: Can we persevere in the quest for justice and sustainability even if we had good reasons to believe that both projects ultimately will fail? Can we live with that possibility? Can we ponder that and yet still commit ourselves to loving action toward others and the non-human world?

Said differently: What if our species is an evolutionary dead end? What if those adaptations that produced our incredible evolutionary success — our ability to understand certain aspects of how the world works and manipulate that world to our short-term advantage — are the very qualities that guarantee our human systems will degrade the life-sustaining systems of the world? What if that which has allowed us to dominate will be that which destroys us? What if humanity’s story is a dramatic tragedy in the classical sense, a tale in which the seeds of the hero’s destruction are to be found within, and history is the unfolding of the inevitable fall?

We love stories of individual heroes, and collectively we tend to think of ourselves as the heroic species. The question we might ask, uncomfortably, about those tales of heroism: Is Homo sapiens an epic hero or a tragic one? Literature scholars argue over the specific definitions of the terms “epic” and “tragedy,” but in common usage an epic celebrates the deeds of a hero who is favored by, and perhaps descended from, the gods. These heroes overcome adversity to do great things in the service of great causes. Epic heroes win.

A tragic hero loses, but typically not because of an external force. The essence of tragedy is what Aristotle called “hamartia,” an error in judgment made because of some character flaw, such as hubris. That excessive pride of protagonists becomes their downfall. Although some traditions talk about the sin of pride, most of us understand that taking some pride in ourselves is psychologically healthy. The problem is excessive pride, when we elevate ourselves and lose a sense of the equal value of others. When we fall into hubris individually, the consequences can be disastrous for us and those around us. When we fall into that hubris as a species — when we ignore the consequences of the exploitation on which our “lifestyle” is based — the consequences are more dramatic.

What if our task is to give up the dream of the human species as special? And what if the global forces set in motion during the high-energy/high-technology era are beyond the point of no return? Surrounded by the big majestic buildings and tiny sophisticated electronic gadgets created through human cleverness, it’s easy for us to believe we are smart enough to run a complex world. But cleverness is not wisdom, and the ability to create does not guarantee we can control the destruction we have unleashed. It may be that there is no way to rewrite this larger epic, that too much of the tragedy has already been played out.

But here’s the good news: While tragic heroes meet an unhappy fate, a community can learn from the protagonist’s fall. Even tragic heroes can, at the end, celebrate the dignity of the human spirit in their failure. That may be our task, to recognize that we can’t reverse course in time to prevent our ultimate failure, but that in the time remaining we can recognize our hamartia, name our hubris, and do what we can to undo the damage.

That may be the one chance for us to be truly heroic, by learning to leave center stage gracefully, to stop trying to run the world and to accept a place in the world. We have to take our lives seriously but take Life more seriously.

We certainly live in a dangerous time, if we take seriously the data that our vast intellectual enterprises have produced. Ironically, the majority of intellectuals who are part of those enterprises prefer to ignore the implications of that data. The reasons for that will of course vary, and there is no reason to pretend these issues are simple or that we can line up intellectuals in simple categories of good/bad, brave/cowardly, honest/dishonest. Reasonable people can agree on the data and disagree on interpretation and analysis. Again, my argument is not that anyone who does not share my interpretation and analysis is obviously wrong or corrupt; many of the assertions I have made require more lengthy argument than available in this space.

But I hold to one point without equivocation: When the privileged intellectuals subsidized by the institutions of the dominant culture look away from the difficult issues that we face today, they are failing to meet their moral obligations. The more privileged the intellectual, the greater the responsibility to use our resources, status, and autonomy to face these issues. There is a lot riding on whether we have the courage and the strength to accept that danger, joyfully. This harsh assessment, and the grief that must accompany it, is not a rejection of joy. The two, grief and joy, are not mutually exclusive but, in fact, rely on each other, and define the human condition. As Wendell Berry puts it, we live on “the human estate of grief and joy.”

This inevitably leads to the question: where can we find hope? My short answer: Don’t ask someone else where to find it. Create it through your actions. Hope is not something we find, but is something we earn. No one has the right to be hopeful until they expend energy to make hope possible. Gorka’s song expresses this: “The old future’s dead and gone/Never to return/There’s a new way through the hills ahead/This one we’ll have to earn/This one we’ll have to earn.”

Berry speaks repeatedly of the importance of daily practice, of building a better world in a practical ways that nurture real bonds in real communities that know their place in the world. He applies this same idea to a discussion of hope:

[Y]ou’re not under any obligation to construct a hope for the whole human race. What you are required to do is to be intelligent. And that means you’ve got to have an array of examples you want more or less to understand. Some are not perfect, and others are awful, and to be intelligent you’ve got to know why some are better than the others.

If people demand that intellectuals provide hope — or, worse, if intellectuals believe it is their job to give people hope — then offering platitudes about hope is just another way of avoiding the difficult questions. Clamoring for hope can be a dangerous diversion. But if the discussion of hope leads to action, even in the face of situations that may be hopeless, then we can hold onto what Albert Camus called a “stubborn hope”:

Tomorrow the world may burst into fragments. In that threat hanging over our heads there is a lesson of truth. As we face such a future, hierarchies, titles, honors are reduced to what they are in reality: a passing puff of smoke. And the only certainty left to us is that of naked suffering, common to all, intermingling its roots with those of a stubborn hope.

I would call this a hope beyond hope, the willingness not only to embrace that danger but to find joy in it. The systems that structure our world have done more damage than we can understand, but no matter how dark the world grows, there is a light within. That is the message of the best of our theological and secular philosophical traditions, a recurring theme of the best of our art. Wendell Berry has been returning to this theme for decades in essays, fiction, and poetry, and it is the subject of one of his Sabbath poems:

It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,

for hope must not depend on feeling good

and there is the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.

You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality

of the future, which surely will surprise us,

and hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction

any more than by wishing. But stop dithering.

The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?

Tell them at least what you say to yourself.

This is what I say to myself: Whatever our chances of surviving, we define ourselves in the present moment by what we do. There are two basic tasks in front of us. First, we should commit some of our energy to movements that focus on the question of justice in this world, especially those of us with the privilege that is rooted in that injustice. As a middle-class American white man, I can see plenty of places to continue working, in movements dedicated to ending white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and U.S. wars of domination.

I also think there is important work to be done in experiments to prepare for what will come in this new future that we can’t yet describe in detail. Whatever the limits of our predictive capacity, we can be pretty sure we will need ways of organizing ourselves to help us live in a world with less energy and fewer material goods. We all have to develop the skills needed for that world (such as farming and gardening with fewer inputs, food preparation and storage, and basic tinkering), and we will need to recover a deep sense of community that has disappeared from many of our lives. This means abandoning a sense of ourselves as consumption machines, which the contemporary culture promotes, and deepening our notions of what it means to be humans in search of meaning. We have to learn to tell different stories about our sense of self, our connection to others, and our place in nature. The stories we tell will matter, as will the skills we learn.

Berry’s basis for hope begins with a recognition of where we are and who we are, at our best:

Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.

Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground

underfoot. Be lighted by the light that falls

freely upon it after the darkness of the nights

and the darkness of our ignorance and madness.

Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you,

which is the light of imagination. By it you see

the likeness of people in other places to yourself

in your place. It lights invariably the need for care

toward other people, other creatures, in other places

as you would ask them for care toward your place and you.

In my own life, I continue to work on those questions of justice in existing movements, but I have shifted a considerable amount of time to helping build local networks that can create a place for those experiments. Different people will move toward different efforts depending on talents and temperaments; we should all follow our hearts and minds to apply ourselves where it makes sense, given who we are and where we live. After offering several warnings about arrogance, I’m not about to suggest I know best what work other people should do. If there is any reason for hope, it will be in direct proportion to our capacity for humility and seeing ourselves as part of, not on top of, the larger living world. Berry ends that Sabbath poem not with false optimism but a blunt reminder of how easy it is for us to fall out of right relation with ourselves, others, and the larger living world:

No place at last is better than the world. The world

is no better than its places. Its places at last

are no better than their people while their people

continue in them. When the people make

dark the light within them, the world darkens.

The argument I have made rests on an unsentimental assessment of the physical world and the life-threatening consequences of human activity over the past 10,000 years. We would be wise not to plan on supernatural forces or human inventions to save us from ourselves. It is unlikely that we will be delivered to a promised land by divine or technological intervention. Wishing the world were less harsh will not magically make it less harsh. We should not give into the temptation to believe in magic. As James Howard Kunstler puts it, we should stop “clamoring desperately for rescue remedies that would allow them to continue living exactly the way they were used to living, with all the accustomed comforts.”

But we should keep telling stories. Our stories do not change the physical world, but they have the potential to change us. In that sense, the poet Muriel Rukeyser was right when she said, “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”

Whatever particular work intellectuals do, they are also storytellers. Artists tell stories, but so do scientists and engineers, teachers and preachers. Our work is always both embedded in a story and advancing a story. Intellectual work matters not just for what it discovers about how the world works, but for what story it tells about those discoveries.

To think apocalyptically is not to give up on ourselves, but only to give up on the arrogant stories we modern humans have been telling about ourselves. Our hope for a decent future — indeed, any hope for even the idea of a future — depends on our ability to tell stories not of how humans have ruled the world but how we can live in the world. The royal must give way to the prophetic and the apocalyptic. The central story of power — that the domination/subordination dynamic is natural and inevitable — must give way to stories of dignity, solidarity, equality. We must resist not only the cruelty of repression but the seduction of comfort.

The songs we sing matter at least as much as the machines we build. Power always assumes it can control. Our task is to resist that control. Gorka offers that reminder, of the latent power of our stories, in the fancifully titled song “Flying Red Horse”:

They think they can tame you, name you and frame you,

Aim you where you don’t belong.

They know where you’ve been but not where you’re going,

And that is the source of the songs.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

July 12, 2013
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For the past few years speech has moved online, leading to fierce debates about its regulation. Most recently, feminists have led the charge to purge Facebook of misogyny that clearly violates its hate speech code. Facebook took a small step two weeks ago, creating a feature that will remove ads from pages deemed “controversial.” But such a move is half-hearted; Facebook and other social networking websites should not tolerate hate speech and, in the absence of a government mandate, adopt a European model of expunging offensive material.

Stricter regulation of Internet speech will not be popular with the libertarian-minded citizens of the United States, but it’s necessary. A typical view of such censorship comes from Jeffrey Rosen, who argues in The New Republic that,

“…given their tremendous size and importance as platforms for free speech, companies like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Twitter shouldn’t try to be guardians of what Waldron calls a “well-ordered society”; instead, they should consider themselves the modern version of Oliver Wendell Holmes’s fractious marketplace of ideas–democratic spaces where all values, including civility norms, are always open for debate.”

This image is romantic and lovely (although misattributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, who famously toed both lines on the free speech debate, instead of John Stuart Mill) but it’s worth asking what this actually looks like. Rosen forwards one example:

“Last year, after the French government objected to the hash tag “#unbonjuif”–intended to inspire hateful riffs on the theme “a good Jew …”–Twitter blocked a handful of the resulting tweets in France, but only because they violated French law. Within days, the bulk of the tweets carrying the hashtag had turned from anti-Semitic to denunciations of anti-Semitism, confirming that the Twittersphere is perfectly capable of dealing with hate speech on its own, without heavy-handed intervention.”

Reddit, for instance, has become a veritable potpourri of hate speech; consider Reddit threads like  /r/nazi, /r/killawoman, /r/misogny, /r/killingwomen. My argument is not that these should be taken down because they are offensive, but rather because they amount to the degradation of a class that has been historically oppressed.  Imagine a Reddit thread for /r/lynchingblacks or /r/assassinatingthepresident. We would not argue that we should sit back and wait for this kind of speech be “outspoken” by positive speech, but that it should be entirely banned.

American free speech jurisprudence relies upon the assumption that speech is merely the extension of a thought, and not an action. If we consider it an action, then saying that we should combat hate speech with more positive speech is an absurd proposition; the speech has already done the harm, and no amount of support will defray the victim’s impression that they are not truly secure in this society. We don’t simply tell the victim of a robbery, “Hey, it’s okay, there are lots of other people who aren’t going to rob you.” Similarly, it isn’t incredibly useful to tell someone who has just had their race/gender/sexuality defamed, “There are a lot of other nice people out there.”

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

July 15, 2013
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The American people have suffered a coup d’etat, but they are hesitant to acknowledge it. The regime ruling in Washington today lacks constitutional and legal legitimacy. Americans are ruled by usurpers who claim that the executive branch is above the law and that the US Constitution is a mere “scrap of paper.”

An unconstitutional government is an illegitimate government. The oath of allegiance requires defense of the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” As the Founding Fathers made clear, the main enemy of the Constitution is the government itself. Power does not like to be bound and tied down and constantly works to free itself from constraints.

The basis of the regime in Washington is nothing but usurped power. The Obama Regime, like the Bush/Cheney Regime, has no legitimacy. Americans are oppressed by an illegitimate government ruling, not by law and the Constitution, but by lies and naked force. Those in government see the US Constitution as a “chain that binds our hands.”

The South African apartheid regime was more legitimate than the regime in Washington. The apartheid Israeli regime in Palestine is more legitimate. The Taliban are more legitimate. Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein were more legitimate.

The only constitutional protection that the Bush/Obama regime has left standing is the Second Amendment, a meaningless amendment considering the disparity in arms between Washington and what is permitted to the citizenry. No citizen standing with a rifle can protect himself and his family from one of the Department of Homeland Security’s 2,700 tanks, or from a drone, or from a heavily armed SWAT force in body armor.

Like serfs in the dark ages, American citizens can be picked up on the authority of some unknown person in the executive branch and thrown in a dungeon, subject to torture, without any evidence ever being presented to a court or any information to the person’s relatives of his/her whereabouts. Or they can be placed on a list without explanation that curtails their right to travel by air. Every communication of every American, except face-to-face conversation in non-bugged environments, is intercepted and recorded by the National Stasi Agency from which phrases can be strung together to produce a “domestic extremist.”

If throwing an American citizen in a dungeon is too much trouble, the citizen can simply be blown up with a hellfire missile launched from a drone. No explanation is necessary. For the Obama tyrant, the exterminated human being was just a name on a list.

The president of the United States has declared that he possesses these constitutionally forbidden rights, and his regime has used them to oppress and murder US citizens. The president’s claim that his will is higher than law and the Constitution is public knowledge. Yet, there is no demand for the usurper’s impeachment. Congress is supine. The serfs are obedient.

The people who helped transform a democratically accountable president into a Caesar include John Yoo, who was rewarded for his treason by being accepted as a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt school of law. Yoo’s colleague in treason, Jay Scott Bybee was rewarded by being appointed a federal judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. We now have a Berkeley law professor teaching, and a federal circuit judge ruling, that the executive branch is above the law.

The executive branch coup against America has succeeded. The question is: will it stand? Today, the executive branch consists of liars, criminals, and traitors. The evil on earth seems concentrated in Washington.

Washington’s response to Edward Snowden’s evidence that Washington, in total contravention of law both domestic and international, is spying on the entire world has demonstrated to every country that Washington places the pleasure of revenge above law and human rights.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

July 16, 2013
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Let’s talk life expectancy.

The stats first. They tell a clear story: Americans now live shorter lives than men and women in most of the rest of the developed world. And that gap is growing.

Back in 1990, shouts a new study published last week in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association, the United States ranked just 20th on life expectancy among the world’s 34 industrial nations. The United States now ranks 27th – despite spending much more on health care than any other nation.

Americans, notes an editorial the journal ran to accompany the study, are losing ground globally “by every” health measure.

Why such poor performance? Media reports on last week’s new State of U.S. Healthstudy hit all the usual suspects: poor diet, poor access to affordable health care, poor personal health habits, and just plain poverty.

In the Wall Street Journal, for instance, a chief wellness officer in Ohio opined that if Americans exercised more and ate and smoked less, the United States would surely start moving up in the global health rankings.

But many epidemiologists – scientists who study health outcomes – have their doubts. They point out that the United States ranked as one of the world’s healthiest nations in the 1950s, a time when Americans smoked heavily, ate a diet that would horrify any 21st-century nutritionist, and hardly ever exercised.

Poor Americans, then as now, had chronic problems accessing health care. But poverty, epidemiologists note, can’t explain why fully insured middle-income Americans today have significantly worse health outcomes than middle-income people in other rich nations.

The University of Washington’s Dr. Stephen Bezruchka has been tracking these outcomes since the 1990s. The new research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Bezruchka told Too Much last week, should worry Americans at all income levels.

“Even if we are rich, college-educated, white-skinned, and practice all the right health behaviors,” he notes, “similar people in other rich nations will live longer.”

A dozen years ago, Bezruchka published in Newsweek the first mass-media commentary, at least in the United States, to challenge the conventional take on poor U.S. global health rankings.

To really understand America’s poor health standing globally, epidemiologists like Bezruchka posit, we need to look at “the social determinants of health,” those social and economic realities that define our daily lives.

None of these determinants matter more, these researchers contend, than the level of a society’s economic inequality, the divide between the affluent and everyone else. Over 170 studies worldwide have so far linked income inequality to health outcomes. The more unequal a society, the studies show, the more unhealthy most everyone in it – and not the poor alone.

Just how does inequality translate into unhealthy outcomes? Growing numbers of researchers place the blame on stress. The more inequality in a society, the more stress on a daily level. Chronic stress, over time, wears down our immune systems and leaves us more vulnerable to disease.

This same stress drives people to seek relief in unhealthy habits. They may do drugs or smoke – or eat more “comfort foods” packed with sugar and fat.

Inequality has an equally potent impact on policy decisions around health.

“A substantial proportion of our adult health,” as Stephen Bezruchka explained last week, gets programmed in the early years of a child’s life. Given this reality, guaranteeing every child the best possible supports in the early years ought to be priority number one for any society committed to better health for all.

But unequal nations do precious little of this guaranteeing. The nations with the highest ranking for child well-being turn out to be the nations with the most equal distributions of income.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

July 9, 2013
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Here’s my experience in speaking apocalyptically about the serious challenges humans face: No matter how carefully I craft a statement of concern about the future of humans, no matter how often I deny a claim to special gifts of prognostication, no matter now clearly I reject supernatural explanations or solutions, I can be certain that a significant component of any audience will refuse to take me seriously. Some of those people will make a joke about “Mr. Doom and Gloom.” Others will suggest that such talk is no different than conspiracy theorists’ ramblings about how international bankers, secret cells of communists, or crypto-fascists are using the United Nations to create a one-world government. Even the most measured and careful talk of the coming dramatic change in the place of humans on Earth leads to accusations that one is unnecessarily alarmist, probably paranoid, certainly irrelevant to serious discussion about social and ecological issues. In the United States, talk of the future is expected to be upbeat, predicting expansion and progress, or at least maintenance of our “way of life.”

Apocalyptic thinking allows us to let go of those fanciful visions of the future. As singer/songwriter John Gorka puts it: “The old future’s gone/We can’t get to there from here.” The comfortable futures that we are comfortable imagining are no longer available to us because of the reckless way we’ve been rolling the dice; there is nothing to save us from ourselves. Our task is to deal with our future without delusions of deliverance, either divine or technological. This planet is not a way station in a journey to some better place; it is our home, the only home we will know. We will make our peace with ourselves, each other, and the larger living world here.

The first step in thinking sensibly about the future, of course, is reviewing the past. The uncertainty of our future will be easier to accept and the strength to persevere will be easier to summon if we recognize:

–We are animals. For all our considerable rational capacities, we are driven by non-rational forces that cannot be fully understood or completely controlled. Even the most careful scientist is largely an emotional creature, just like everyone else.

–We are band/tribal animals. Whatever kind of political unit we live in today, our evolutionary history is in small groups; that’s how we are designed to live.

–We are band/tribal animals living in a global world. The consequences of the past 10,000 years of human history have left us dealing with human problems on a global scale, and with 7 billion people on the planet, there’s no point in fantasizing about a retreat to Eden.

With that history in mind, we should go easy on ourselves. As Wes Jackson said, we are a species out of context, facing the unique task of being the first animals who will have to self-consciously impose limits on ourselves if we are to survive, reckoning not just with what we do in our specific place on the planet but with what other people are doing around the world. This is no small task, and we are bound to fail often. We may never stop failing, and that is possibly the most daunting challenge we must face: Can we persevere in the quest for justice and sustainability even if we had good reasons to believe that both projects ultimately will fail? Can we live with that possibility? Can we ponder that and yet still commit ourselves to loving action toward others and the non-human world?

Said differently: What if our species is an evolutionary dead end? What if those adaptations that produced our incredible evolutionary success — our ability to understand certain aspects of how the world works and manipulate that world to our short-term advantage — are the very qualities that guarantee our human systems will degrade the life-sustaining systems of the world? What if that which has allowed us to dominate will be that which destroys us? What if humanity’s story is a dramatic tragedy in the classical sense, a tale in which the seeds of the hero’s destruction are to be found within, and history is the unfolding of the inevitable fall?

We love stories of individual heroes, and collectively we tend to think of ourselves as the heroic species. The question we might ask, uncomfortably, about those tales of heroism: Is Homo sapiens an epic hero or a tragic one? Literature scholars argue over the specific definitions of the terms “epic” and “tragedy,” but in common usage an epic celebrates the deeds of a hero who is favored by, and perhaps descended from, the gods. These heroes overcome adversity to do great things in the service of great causes. Epic heroes win.

A tragic hero loses, but typically not because of an external force. The essence of tragedy is what Aristotle called “hamartia,” an error in judgment made because of some character flaw, such as hubris. That excessive pride of protagonists becomes their downfall. Although some traditions talk about the sin of pride, most of us understand that taking some pride in ourselves is psychologically healthy. The problem is excessive pride, when we elevate ourselves and lose a sense of the equal value of others. When we fall into hubris individually, the consequences can be disastrous for us and those around us. When we fall into that hubris as a species — when we ignore the consequences of the exploitation on which our “lifestyle” is based — the consequences are more dramatic.

What if our task is to give up the dream of the human species as special? And what if the global forces set in motion during the high-energy/high-technology era are beyond the point of no return? Surrounded by the big majestic buildings and tiny sophisticated electronic gadgets created through human cleverness, it’s easy for us to believe we are smart enough to run a complex world. But cleverness is not wisdom, and the ability to create does not guarantee we can control the destruction we have unleashed. It may be that there is no way to rewrite this larger epic, that too much of the tragedy has already been played out.

But here’s the good news: While tragic heroes meet an unhappy fate, a community can learn from the protagonist’s fall. Even tragic heroes can, at the end, celebrate the dignity of the human spirit in their failure. That may be our task, to recognize that we can’t reverse course in time to prevent our ultimate failure, but that in the time remaining we can recognize our hamartia, name our hubris, and do what we can to undo the damage.

That may be the one chance for us to be truly heroic, by learning to leave center stage gracefully, to stop trying to run the world and to accept a place in the world. We have to take our lives seriously but take Life more seriously.

We certainly live in a dangerous time, if we take seriously the data that our vast intellectual enterprises have produced. Ironically, the majority of intellectuals who are part of those enterprises prefer to ignore the implications of that data. The reasons for that will of course vary, and there is no reason to pretend these issues are simple or that we can line up intellectuals in simple categories of good/bad, brave/cowardly, honest/dishonest. Reasonable people can agree on the data and disagree on interpretation and analysis. Again, my argument is not that anyone who does not share my interpretation and analysis is obviously wrong or corrupt; many of the assertions I have made require more lengthy argument than available in this space.

But I hold to one point without equivocation: When the privileged intellectuals subsidized by the institutions of the dominant culture look away from the difficult issues that we face today, they are failing to meet their moral obligations. The more privileged the intellectual, the greater the responsibility to use our resources, status, and autonomy to face these issues. There is a lot riding on whether we have the courage and the strength to accept that danger, joyfully. This harsh assessment, and the grief that must accompany it, is not a rejection of joy. The two, grief and joy, are not mutually exclusive but, in fact, rely on each other, and define the human condition. As Wendell Berry puts it, we live on “the human estate of grief and joy.”

This inevitably leads to the question: where can we find hope? My short answer: Don’t ask someone else where to find it. Create it through your actions. Hope is not something we find, but is something we earn. No one has the right to be hopeful until they expend energy to make hope possible. Gorka’s song expresses this: “The old future’s dead and gone/Never to return/There’s a new way through the hills ahead/This one we’ll have to earn/This one we’ll have to earn.”

Berry speaks repeatedly of the importance of daily practice, of building a better world in a practical ways that nurture real bonds in real communities that know their place in the world. He applies this same idea to a discussion of hope:

[Y]ou’re not under any obligation to construct a hope for the whole human race. What you are required to do is to be intelligent. And that means you’ve got to have an array of examples you want more or less to understand. Some are not perfect, and others are awful, and to be intelligent you’ve got to know why some are better than the others.

If people demand that intellectuals provide hope — or, worse, if intellectuals believe it is their job to give people hope — then offering platitudes about hope is just another way of avoiding the difficult questions. Clamoring for hope can be a dangerous diversion. But if the discussion of hope leads to action, even in the face of situations that may be hopeless, then we can hold onto what Albert Camus called a “stubborn hope”:

Tomorrow the world may burst into fragments. In that threat hanging over our heads there is a lesson of truth. As we face such a future, hierarchies, titles, honors are reduced to what they are in reality: a passing puff of smoke. And the only certainty left to us is that of naked suffering, common to all, intermingling its roots with those of a stubborn hope.

I would call this a hope beyond hope, the willingness not only to embrace that danger but to find joy in it. The systems that structure our world have done more damage than we can understand, but no matter how dark the world grows, there is a light within. That is the message of the best of our theological and secular philosophical traditions, a recurring theme of the best of our art. Wendell Berry has been returning to this theme for decades in essays, fiction, and poetry, and it is the subject of one of his Sabbath poems:

It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,

for hope must not depend on feeling good

and there is the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.

You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality

of the future, which surely will surprise us,

and hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction

any more than by wishing. But stop dithering.

The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?

Tell them at least what you say to yourself.

This is what I say to myself: Whatever our chances of surviving, we define ourselves in the present moment by what we do. There are two basic tasks in front of us. First, we should commit some of our energy to movements that focus on the question of justice in this world, especially those of us with the privilege that is rooted in that injustice. As a middle-class American white man, I can see plenty of places to continue working, in movements dedicated to ending white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and U.S. wars of domination.

I also think there is important work to be done in experiments to prepare for what will come in this new future that we can’t yet describe in detail. Whatever the limits of our predictive capacity, we can be pretty sure we will need ways of organizing ourselves to help us live in a world with less energy and fewer material goods. We all have to develop the skills needed for that world (such as farming and gardening with fewer inputs, food preparation and storage, and basic tinkering), and we will need to recover a deep sense of community that has disappeared from many of our lives. This means abandoning a sense of ourselves as consumption machines, which the contemporary culture promotes, and deepening our notions of what it means to be humans in search of meaning. We have to learn to tell different stories about our sense of self, our connection to others, and our place in nature. The stories we tell will matter, as will the skills we learn.

Berry’s basis for hope begins with a recognition of where we are and who we are, at our best:

Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.

Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground

underfoot. Be lighted by the light that falls

freely upon it after the darkness of the nights

and the darkness of our ignorance and madness.

Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you,

which is the light of imagination. By it you see

the likeness of people in other places to yourself

in your place. It lights invariably the need for care

toward other people, other creatures, in other places

as you would ask them for care toward your place and you.

In my own life, I continue to work on those questions of justice in existing movements, but I have shifted a considerable amount of time to helping build local networks that can create a place for those experiments. Different people will move toward different efforts depending on talents and temperaments; we should all follow our hearts and minds to apply ourselves where it makes sense, given who we are and where we live. After offering several warnings about arrogance, I’m not about to suggest I know best what work other people should do. If there is any reason for hope, it will be in direct proportion to our capacity for humility and seeing ourselves as part of, not on top of, the larger living world. Berry ends that Sabbath poem not with false optimism but a blunt reminder of how easy it is for us to fall out of right relation with ourselves, others, and the larger living world:

No place at last is better than the world. The world

is no better than its places. Its places at last

are no better than their people while their people

continue in them. When the people make

dark the light within them, the world darkens.

The argument I have made rests on an unsentimental assessment of the physical world and the life-threatening consequences of human activity over the past 10,000 years. We would be wise not to plan on supernatural forces or human inventions to save us from ourselves. It is unlikely that we will be delivered to a promised land by divine or technological intervention. Wishing the world were less harsh will not magically make it less harsh. We should not give into the temptation to believe in magic. As James Howard Kunstler puts it, we should stop “clamoring desperately for rescue remedies that would allow them to continue living exactly the way they were used to living, with all the accustomed comforts.”

But we should keep telling stories. Our stories do not change the physical world, but they have the potential to change us. In that sense, the poet Muriel Rukeyser was right when she said, “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”

Whatever particular work intellectuals do, they are also storytellers. Artists tell stories, but so do scientists and engineers, teachers and preachers. Our work is always both embedded in a story and advancing a story. Intellectual work matters not just for what it discovers about how the world works, but for what story it tells about those discoveries.

To think apocalyptically is not to give up on ourselves, but only to give up on the arrogant stories we modern humans have been telling about ourselves. Our hope for a decent future — indeed, any hope for even the idea of a future — depends on our ability to tell stories not of how humans have ruled the world but how we can live in the world. The royal must give way to the prophetic and the apocalyptic. The central story of power — that the domination/subordination dynamic is natural and inevitable — must give way to stories of dignity, solidarity, equality. We must resist not only the cruelty of repression but the seduction of comfort.

The songs we sing matter at least as much as the machines we build. Power always assumes it can control. Our task is to resist that control. Gorka offers that reminder, of the latent power of our stories, in the fancifully titled song “Flying Red Horse”:

They think they can tame you, name you and frame you,

Aim you where you don’t belong.

They know where you’ve been but not where you’re going,

And that is the source of the songs.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

July 12, 2013
 |

For the past few years speech has moved online, leading to fierce debates about its regulation. Most recently, feminists have led the charge to purge Facebook of misogyny that clearly violates its hate speech code. Facebook took a small step two weeks ago, creating a feature that will remove ads from pages deemed “controversial.” But such a move is half-hearted; Facebook and other social networking websites should not tolerate hate speech and, in the absence of a government mandate, adopt a European model of expunging offensive material.

Stricter regulation of Internet speech will not be popular with the libertarian-minded citizens of the United States, but it’s necessary. A typical view of such censorship comes from Jeffrey Rosen, who argues in The New Republic that,

“…given their tremendous size and importance as platforms for free speech, companies like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Twitter shouldn’t try to be guardians of what Waldron calls a “well-ordered society”; instead, they should consider themselves the modern version of Oliver Wendell Holmes’s fractious marketplace of ideas–democratic spaces where all values, including civility norms, are always open for debate.”

This image is romantic and lovely (although misattributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, who famously toed both lines on the free speech debate, instead of John Stuart Mill) but it’s worth asking what this actually looks like. Rosen forwards one example:

“Last year, after the French government objected to the hash tag “#unbonjuif”–intended to inspire hateful riffs on the theme “a good Jew …”–Twitter blocked a handful of the resulting tweets in France, but only because they violated French law. Within days, the bulk of the tweets carrying the hashtag had turned from anti-Semitic to denunciations of anti-Semitism, confirming that the Twittersphere is perfectly capable of dealing with hate speech on its own, without heavy-handed intervention.”

Reddit, for instance, has become a veritable potpourri of hate speech; consider Reddit threads like  /r/nazi, /r/killawoman, /r/misogny, /r/killingwomen. My argument is not that these should be taken down because they are offensive, but rather because they amount to the degradation of a class that has been historically oppressed.  Imagine a Reddit thread for /r/lynchingblacks or /r/assassinatingthepresident. We would not argue that we should sit back and wait for this kind of speech be “outspoken” by positive speech, but that it should be entirely banned.

American free speech jurisprudence relies upon the assumption that speech is merely the extension of a thought, and not an action. If we consider it an action, then saying that we should combat hate speech with more positive speech is an absurd proposition; the speech has already done the harm, and no amount of support will defray the victim’s impression that they are not truly secure in this society. We don’t simply tell the victim of a robbery, “Hey, it’s okay, there are lots of other people who aren’t going to rob you.” Similarly, it isn’t incredibly useful to tell someone who has just had their race/gender/sexuality defamed, “There are a lot of other nice people out there.”

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

July 15, 2013
 |

The American people have suffered a coup d’etat, but they are hesitant to acknowledge it. The regime ruling in Washington today lacks constitutional and legal legitimacy. Americans are ruled by usurpers who claim that the executive branch is above the law and that the US Constitution is a mere “scrap of paper.”

An unconstitutional government is an illegitimate government. The oath of allegiance requires defense of the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” As the Founding Fathers made clear, the main enemy of the Constitution is the government itself. Power does not like to be bound and tied down and constantly works to free itself from constraints.

The basis of the regime in Washington is nothing but usurped power. The Obama Regime, like the Bush/Cheney Regime, has no legitimacy. Americans are oppressed by an illegitimate government ruling, not by law and the Constitution, but by lies and naked force. Those in government see the US Constitution as a “chain that binds our hands.”

The South African apartheid regime was more legitimate than the regime in Washington. The apartheid Israeli regime in Palestine is more legitimate. The Taliban are more legitimate. Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein were more legitimate.

The only constitutional protection that the Bush/Obama regime has left standing is the Second Amendment, a meaningless amendment considering the disparity in arms between Washington and what is permitted to the citizenry. No citizen standing with a rifle can protect himself and his family from one of the Department of Homeland Security’s 2,700 tanks, or from a drone, or from a heavily armed SWAT force in body armor.

Like serfs in the dark ages, American citizens can be picked up on the authority of some unknown person in the executive branch and thrown in a dungeon, subject to torture, without any evidence ever being presented to a court or any information to the person’s relatives of his/her whereabouts. Or they can be placed on a list without explanation that curtails their right to travel by air. Every communication of every American, except face-to-face conversation in non-bugged environments, is intercepted and recorded by the National Stasi Agency from which phrases can be strung together to produce a “domestic extremist.”

If throwing an American citizen in a dungeon is too much trouble, the citizen can simply be blown up with a hellfire missile launched from a drone. No explanation is necessary. For the Obama tyrant, the exterminated human being was just a name on a list.

The president of the United States has declared that he possesses these constitutionally forbidden rights, and his regime has used them to oppress and murder US citizens. The president’s claim that his will is higher than law and the Constitution is public knowledge. Yet, there is no demand for the usurper’s impeachment. Congress is supine. The serfs are obedient.

The people who helped transform a democratically accountable president into a Caesar include John Yoo, who was rewarded for his treason by being accepted as a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt school of law. Yoo’s colleague in treason, Jay Scott Bybee was rewarded by being appointed a federal judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. We now have a Berkeley law professor teaching, and a federal circuit judge ruling, that the executive branch is above the law.

The executive branch coup against America has succeeded. The question is: will it stand? Today, the executive branch consists of liars, criminals, and traitors. The evil on earth seems concentrated in Washington.

Washington’s response to Edward Snowden’s evidence that Washington, in total contravention of law both domestic and international, is spying on the entire world has demonstrated to every country that Washington places the pleasure of revenge above law and human rights.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

July 16, 2013
 |

Let’s talk life expectancy.

The stats first. They tell a clear story: Americans now live shorter lives than men and women in most of the rest of the developed world. And that gap is growing.

Back in 1990, shouts a new study published last week in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association, the United States ranked just 20th on life expectancy among the world’s 34 industrial nations. The United States now ranks 27th – despite spending much more on health care than any other nation.

Americans, notes an editorial the journal ran to accompany the study, are losing ground globally “by every” health measure.

Why such poor performance? Media reports on last week’s new State of U.S. Healthstudy hit all the usual suspects: poor diet, poor access to affordable health care, poor personal health habits, and just plain poverty.

In the Wall Street Journal, for instance, a chief wellness officer in Ohio opined that if Americans exercised more and ate and smoked less, the United States would surely start moving up in the global health rankings.

But many epidemiologists – scientists who study health outcomes – have their doubts. They point out that the United States ranked as one of the world’s healthiest nations in the 1950s, a time when Americans smoked heavily, ate a diet that would horrify any 21st-century nutritionist, and hardly ever exercised.

Poor Americans, then as now, had chronic problems accessing health care. But poverty, epidemiologists note, can’t explain why fully insured middle-income Americans today have significantly worse health outcomes than middle-income people in other rich nations.

The University of Washington’s Dr. Stephen Bezruchka has been tracking these outcomes since the 1990s. The new research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Bezruchka told Too Much last week, should worry Americans at all income levels.

“Even if we are rich, college-educated, white-skinned, and practice all the right health behaviors,” he notes, “similar people in other rich nations will live longer.”

A dozen years ago, Bezruchka published in Newsweek the first mass-media commentary, at least in the United States, to challenge the conventional take on poor U.S. global health rankings.

To really understand America’s poor health standing globally, epidemiologists like Bezruchka posit, we need to look at “the social determinants of health,” those social and economic realities that define our daily lives.

None of these determinants matter more, these researchers contend, than the level of a society’s economic inequality, the divide between the affluent and everyone else. Over 170 studies worldwide have so far linked income inequality to health outcomes. The more unequal a society, the studies show, the more unhealthy most everyone in it – and not the poor alone.

Just how does inequality translate into unhealthy outcomes? Growing numbers of researchers place the blame on stress. The more inequality in a society, the more stress on a daily level. Chronic stress, over time, wears down our immune systems and leaves us more vulnerable to disease.

This same stress drives people to seek relief in unhealthy habits. They may do drugs or smoke – or eat more “comfort foods” packed with sugar and fat.

Inequality has an equally potent impact on policy decisions around health.

“A substantial proportion of our adult health,” as Stephen Bezruchka explained last week, gets programmed in the early years of a child’s life. Given this reality, guaranteeing every child the best possible supports in the early years ought to be priority number one for any society committed to better health for all.

But unequal nations do precious little of this guaranteeing. The nations with the highest ranking for child well-being turn out to be the nations with the most equal distributions of income.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

July 16, 2013
 |

How much do we really know about addiction? The brutal truth is, not a lot. Sure, we’ve come a long way since  the days when“treatment” involved the drunkard’s cloak or frying brains, but there are still some fairly hefty gaps in our knowledge. How is it that two people can use the same drug, but only one of them becomes addicted? Why do some people find quitting easier than others? And why does a cure for one person have no effect on the next?

It’s heartening to know, then, that in laboratories around the world, geneticists, psychologists, biologists and neuroscientists are carrying out all sorts of weird and wonderful experiments in the name of addiction research.

What’s my stake in this? Well, I’m no scientist, but I am deeply passionate about the subject. I’ve spent four years reading up on evolutionary psychology for my blog, Womanology, which is an attempt to fathom the mysteries of the dating world, and I’m a volunteer with Science London, a charity that organizes social events with a scientific twist. I’ve also battled my fair share of demons: In my 43 years on this earth, I’ve been hooked on gambling, pornography, tobacco, video games, alcohol and cocaine. (I’m pretty sure I’d have been addicted to sex, too, if I’d ever managed to track down a reliable supplier.)

So when I heard that Science London was putting on a talk called ” Addicted Fish: How useful are animal models in understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms that underlie addiction?” I signed up like a shot.

Can fish really tell us anything about human behaviour? Whoever heard of a herring hooked on heroin?

The speaker was Dr. Matt Parker, a geneticist at Queen Mary University London (and until last month, it seems pertinent to mention, a 30-a-day man). He began, in front of a small but committed crowd in a room above a pub in central London, by addressing the question on everyone’s lips: Why fish?

Well, they’re not actually as different as you might think. You’ve no doubt heard the statistic that humans share 98% of their genes with chimpanzees. Well, it turns out that we also have around 85% of DNA in common with mice and rats–and a surprising 70% with zebrafish. The basic workings of most vertebrates, it turns out, are pretty similar.

The main sticking point for addiction research is that there’s only so much you can carry out on humans. You can perform tests (within limits) on people who are already addicted, but you can’t ethically make someone addicted and then see how their brain changes. (Some would argue that you can’t ethically do this to any living beings, but I’m not going to start that discussion here.) So for a long time, the experimental subject of choice has been that old standby, the rat.

It soon emerged that rats, like people, can develop pernicious habits. Scientists have bred coke-fiend rats, skaghead rats, chain-smoking rats and dipso rats, and they all exhibited symptoms similar to those seen in humans: anticipation, response to conditional cues (things associated with the stimulant, such as flashing lights), withdrawal symptoms and relapse.

They seemed to go through the exact same stages of dependency, too: irregular use, regular use, habitual use, cravings, a phase where they develop tolerance to the stimulant and experience withdrawal when denied it, and finally, the compulsive drug-seeking stage, when they will choose the drug ahead of more important things, such as food and sex.

In the tests, many of them at Cambridge University, a number of techniques were used to deliver the drug. Sometimes the rats would have to press a lever to obtain the stimulant; sometimes they would have to push their noses through a specific hole after a light flashed on.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins’s’ prison movie The Shawshank Redemption is one of the most popular repeats on cable. The story is set in the 1940s. When convicted wife-killer Robbins screws up, he’s thrown into solitary confinement, a dark dungeon, for only a couple of weeks, which is seen as brutal punishment. All through the “prison cycle” of movies in the ’30s and ’40s, from E ach Dawn I Die to Brute Force, solitary is relatively brief before the misbehaving prisoner is released into the general population.

In the past few days, in the largest prison protest in California’s history, nearly 30,000 inmates have gone on hunger strike in the country’s largest prison system. Such near-insurrections are not unusual in America’s prison-industrial complex. Last year’s “starve for change” strike in Georgia lasted 36 days before it was broken. All across the country correctional authorities always respond with the same Pavlovian scenario: first, a news blackout; second, flat-out denial of the obvious; third, official press releases acknowledging a strike but downgrading numbers; fourth, mass punishment by withdrawal of privileges, and away from media’s glare, beatings by guards on militants. 

California officials have followed this protocol almost to the letter. As of today, 7,600 prisoners remain on hunger strike at 23 of California’s 33 prisons. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation refuses to acknowledge the strike is a political protest, calling it a “mass disturbance.”

The prisoners’ core issue is the use of “no human contact” solitary confinement in special “control cells” or the infamous SHU, segregated housing unit. California holds 4,500 inmates in solitary. In Pelican Bay prison, inmates are cooped up in tiny, 7-by-11-foot windowless cells, sometimes without radio or TV, 23 hours a day. They cannot make or receive phone calls or have contact visits with family or friends. They have no access to rehab programs and cannot attend religious services. The average inmate stays in isolation for over seven years, and in some cases much longer. The Catholic Conference of Bishops, not your standard liberal group, has called for a change in “this inhuman form of punishment.”

You qualify for solitary either because you’re a real threat (killed another prisoner or guard) or unsubstantiated gossip that you belong to, or are affiliated with, a gang such as Mexican Mafia or Crips. Evidence of a gang association is possession of books like Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” or Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” or using words like tio and hermano–Spanish for uncle and brother.

SHU can be a bloody killing field. A few years ago CBS reporter Mike Wallace found that in Corcoran State prison in Northern California the guards routinely staged inmate fights in the segregated unit, wagering on the outcome, and if fights got out of control shooting the inmates involved. Scores of inmates have been shot and eight killed in these fights. When Wallace returned to Corcoran to follow up he found that guards, now wary of shooting prisoners, retaliated by encouraging inmate-on-inmate rape.

Californians like to think of themselves as more progressive and tolerant than the rest of America. The underfunded, overcrowded, guards-union-tyrannized prison system is a huge exception because of how we handle our inmates, female as well as male.

The Sacramento Bee, Los Angeles Times and Center for Investigative Reporting have revealed that from 2006 to 2010, nearly 150 female inmates were pressured to undergo sterilization via tubal ligation. (One of the California prison doctors is quoted saying that sterilizing women or removing their ovaries provided “an important service to poor women,” and that the money spent on sterilizing them isn’t “huge…compared to what you save in welfare paying for the unwanted children….”)

Some of these imprisoned guys have done horrendous crimes, but nobody deserves inhuman isolation that, in some cases, can go on not for weeks or months but for many years. In the past, solitary was a temporary punishment. Today it’s a life sentence of psychological torture. Who wouldn’t go crazy?

California prisoners in isolation account for 5 percent of the total prison population but account for nearly half the suicides.

MSNBC, the “liberal” network, airs “Lockup” on weekends which probably gets higher ratings than the same networks’ Rachel Maddow. This prison-reality show is designed to scare us by interviewing zombie-like psychopaths who can’t wait to tell the camera how they chopped the head off their cellmate. It’s gripping, disgusting TV. They’ve convinced me I don’t want these bloodthirsty creeps ever released to roam around my neighborhood. But I also don’t see much point in killing their souls with endless solitary. You can sometimes get out of solitary by telling the warden you’ve left the gang; the problem is, once you’re back out on the yard you’re known as a snitch worth murdering.

Of the 160,000 prisoners in California, two-thirds are African American and Latino. The feds, under Obama and his attorney general Eric Holder, refuse to intervene.

Being a prison guard–even though you have the backing of a powerful union–is shitty work. Being the politician in charge of it all (hey, Gov. Jerry Brown! What happened to your Jesuit ethics?) is even shittier.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

July 16, 2013
 |

When as a teenager Katherine Angel felt herself suddenly overflowing with lust, she began to wonder: Where are the similarly hungry women? In “Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell,” she says of her burgeoning erotic wanting, “The words I would have put this into, had I felt the urge – the words I still put this into – are these: I feel like a man.”

This is a book for every woman who has ever felt like a man for being sexual.

It is largely a sexual autobiography, but also self-conscious proof-positive that women are capable of being just as desirous as men. She writes poetically about having her partner ejaculate on her: “I love this. The sudden wet coolness on me. The smell: summer rain on cement. Fresh, open windows.” Of her lover’s swollen member, she says, “It is beautiful. It unnerves me, in its gorgeous attentiveness.” It would be a daringly personal work for any woman to write, but perhaps especially so for Angel, a Cambridge-educated academic and feminist who has researched female sexual dysfunction.

More than the personal risks, though, she explores the challenges and contradictions of being a sexual woman in a culture that – oh, you know – fears, suppresses and devalues female sexuality. Angel connects the way women are generally socialized to be “sympathetic, charming, unselfish” to the ways in which they take on male wanting as their own – or, as she puts it, the “porousness, in intuiting the other’s desire, and conflating it with one’s own.”

She beautifully details the Fun House mirror maze of desire. She writes of watching porn, “I imagine sex with her – or is it me? – through his eyes. I see myself as he might. I allow myself desire for her through my desire for him.” (That is an observation that completely jibes with sex research showing that female porn viewers spend a lot of time looking at the women’s bodies and the men’s faces responding to them.)

Not only does she find herself adopting her partner’s wants but also protecting him from his own masculine insecurity:

Yes, you are my big man, fucking me. Yes, you’re so big so hard. Yes, you are everything you feel under pressure to be. I am not disappointed! You know that deep well of fear that flickers in your eyes? I can see it, I can feel it, and I am telling you that it does not exist. I am pouring myself into that well; I block it up with my sympathy, my empathy, my acute feeling for your anxiety. I am proof of your masculinity, of your endless potency.

But this isn’t pure self-sacrifice, as she later admits in a characteristically complicating conclusion: “I lock him into his masculinity. I am anxious to protect it, for it pains me, it pains my femininity, to see it fragmented.” In Angel’s view, she’s as invested in her partner’s masculinity as he is in her femininity, and they limit each other because of it.

I spoke to Angel by phone about how feminism initially constrained her sexuality, what sexual empowerment truly means and why she decided to include the story of her abortion in a book about female desire.

It seems that writing this book comes with its risks, given the personal nature of it, the subject matter and your work in academia. Why did you feel compelled to take that risk?

At a very deep level there was a story I needed to tell as a writer, that was to do with understanding the way these very complicated questions about sexuality and feminism and power and gender kind of play themselves out in my life. There was a story I needed to articulate, and I needed to do so in a very particular voice. Part of that feeling was looking around and seeing how incredibly problematic we seem to find women, desire, women’s experience of their bodies, all those kinds of issues.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

July 16, 2013
 |

There is a global consensus that Israel’s unceasing annexation and seizure of Palestinian land, water and natural resources, and its ongoing military control of the Palestinian Occupied Territories and Gaza, spell not only misery for the millions of Palestinians suffering today, but also disaster in the long term for all the region’s inhabitants, Israeli and Palestinian alike.

Much like the response to South African apartheid in the 1980s, a worldwide movement of citizen voices has arisen to ensure that, as consumers, investors and simple human beings, people of conscience will no longer participate in practices that allow the occupation regime to benefit from silent inclusion in business as usual.

This movement is having a growing and profound impact.

Just this month, Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni announced that unless Israel can show it has begun to engage in good faith negotiations with the Palestinians, the growing European movement toward boycotting Israeli settlement goods–those made with resources from or in factories and farms situated on land stolen from Palestinians–will soon extend to all Israeli goods, to huge effect on Israel’s economy.

Across the world, consumers are galvanizing public opinion and making changes that are setting the stage for real change. In South Africa, for instance, many products that have been imported under the “Made in Israel” label have now been forced, under vociferous objections from the Israeli government, to change their labeling to “Originating in West Bank–Israel Goods”–an admission that is a first step toward exposing Israeli fictions about the provenance of much of its export industry, but that also opens the door to further, and sure-to-be-successful, legal challenges under international law to Israel’s appropriation of Palestinian resources.

Among the goods forced to re-label in South Africa are those produced by the luxury skin care firm Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories. Ahava has its manufacturing facility and visitors center in the illegal settlement of Mitzpe Shalem in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The company uses in its products mud sourced from the occupied shores of the Dead Sea, and its goods are made in the Occupied West Bank. But here in the United States, Ahava still gets away with labeling its products “Made in Israel.”

All that is changing: the worldwide boycott movement is catching up with Ahava, while human rights groups within Israel have worked assiduously to document Ahava’s illegal practices and misleading public relations campaigns. American retailers now have nowhere practically or rhetorically to hide–they can no longer credibly claim ignorance or confusion.

For its next drive, CodePink’s Stolen Beauty campaign, which has been for the past five years organizing and educating specifically around Ahava cosmetics, will be pressing U.S. retailer Nordstrom, as well as one of its owners, Calvert Investments, to live up to their oft-proclaimed commitments to social responsibility, and remove Ahava products from Nordstrom’s shelves.

Over the years the Stolen Beauty campaign has scored numerous victories: Ahava spokesmodel Kristin Davis was suspended from publicity work as an Oxfam Goodwill Ambassador for the duration of her Ahava contract; Abigail Disney renounced her share of the profits and the corpus of her family fund’s investment in Ahava; the flagship Ahava store in London’s Covent Garden lost its lease because of biweekly protests by human rights advocates; the Presbyterian and Methodist denominations in the United States and the United Church of Canada voted to boycott Ahava products. Many shops, once informed about the company’s illegal practices, have stopped carrying Ahava products.

Now it’s Nordstrom’s turn.

Nordstrom prides itself on its commitment to “caring.” On the “Nordstrom Cares” page of its website the company claims, “We’ve always followed a simple philosophy when it comes to running our business: Leave it better than you found it. This also describes Nordstrom’s commitment to social responsibility. Since our early days, we’ve focused on doing the right thing for our employees and our customers. We continue to make every effort to be an ethical company where people want to work and shop.”

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

July 16, 2013
 |

The following was originally published on JustUs Talking.

My grandson is too young to know anything about the events surrounding the death of Trayvon Martin or the trial of George Zimmerman, yet the outcome of the trial may have a significant impact on his life. He’s too young to watch the news and frankly doesn’t care about it unless it concerns his favorite character, Elmo, after all he’s not yet 2 years old.

He started talking about six months ago, his first intelligible word was ‘Hello’. He understands it is a greeting so he uses it constantly, whenever we’re walking down the street or through a store he says hello to everyone he sees and will continue to say it until they respond to him. Because he is still a baby and very personable, he almost always gets a smile and hello back from the people he greets. Sometimes, people ignore him, or look the other way, but to date I’ve never noticed any anger or hostility or fear directed his way.

Right now when people see him they see a cute, well-dressed little boy with a winning smile and engaging personality, his blackness is a matter of minimal significance. Unfortunately, I know at some point that will change. At some point — I’m not sure at what age — people will look at him and the first thing they’ll see will be his color and everything else about him — his smile, his openness, his intelligence, his desire to engage — will be filtered by their view about his color, whether they find his very existence menacing and they will act accordingly. This fact is not new to me, it’s something I’ve thought about ever since his birth but the events of this weekend have elevated that occasional thought into a real worry.

At what age does a black male become a threat in America? Is it 15, 10 or is it as young as 5? I know police have not been hesitant to handcuff and arrest young children and treat them like criminals. The following picture is seared into my memory:

At what age does a black male become a threat? I wanted to believe that we are no longer a country that sees all black males as potentially threatening but that’s a belief not grounded in reality. The reality is we are a country where a substantial percentage of the population sees black males (particularly young ones) as potentially threatening despite having twice elected a decidedly non-threatening black man as President.

My grandson is being raised to feel free in all environments, to move fluidly across the broad span of socio-economic spaces in society. That’s how I raised his father and it’s how his father wants to raise him. One would think it’s admirable to raise a child that way but I’m beginning to fear it could be a liability. We can raise him to feel free everywhere but what happens when he runs into someone who doesn’t believe he is free to be anywhere? What happens when he runs into someone like George Zimmerman who believes people who look like him are ‘punks’ or criminals who should be monitored, controlled and even killed if they seem threatening. How do I protect him from that without restricting his freedom?

I don’t believe the majority of people think or act like George Zimmerman, I don’t even think the majority of white people think or act like Zimmerman. The problem with this case and the outcome of the trial is that it sends the wrong message. Instead of discouraging vigilantism and racial profiling, it served to justify and excuse it. Not just because of the jury verdict — which was not unreasonable given the evidence and lawyering — but because of the media and political conversation that has surrounded it.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

July 16, 2013
 |

The most important thing about the Zimmerman verdict is that it’s a clear demonstration of how the American legal system is only about law. It is not about justice. It is not even about the consequences of killing another person.

The verdict demonstrates that, despite the protestations of the law that it is about justice, that’s only a pretense to cover the reality: that when the law produces justice, it’s a fluke, an accident, a surprise. The law is only about the law.

And it’s no wonder, when you stop to think about who makes laws and why. Justice is one of the last things on the legislative mind, if it ever gets there at all.

And so the Zimmerman verdict can be seen as a metaphor for the American way of life and death these days, a psychic rorschach blot of our culture, a measure of the zeitgeist in the United States of Zimmerman, the US of Z.

In the distorting mirror of the Zimmerman verdict we glimpse all too much of who we are today as a nation – not what each of us is, nor what all of us are, but an inescapable collage of how exceptional we are in so many ways of which we should be ashamed. Here’s a sampling of those reflections.

A Rough Guide to Life in the United States of Zimmerman, the US of Z

In the US of Z the law allows people to hunt each other.

In the US of Z you can be a self-appointed volunteer vigilante, and you have permission to decide a person is up to no good based solely on the color of his skin, and maybe the time of day and your own bigotry.

In the US of Z you may racial profile to your heart’s content and the judge won’t let it be used against you in court.

In the US of Z, you don’t have to feel remorse if you kill someone, even if that person did nothing wrong, even if you went out of your way to get to kill him. You can just believe it was God’s plan.

In the US of Z, there is confusion about whether Trayvon Martin is another Medgar Evers or Emmett Till. He might have grown up to be a Medgar Evers. He died an Emmett Till.

In the US of Z, the acquittal of someone who stalked and killed a young black man comes as no surprise. But it’s still surprising that Zimmerman’s defense attorney asserted, in all apparent seriousness, that in the same circumstances, Zimmerman would not even have been charged if he was black.

In the US of Z, it is no surprise for a black man to go uncharged when he does not survive his arrest. That’s not what the defense attorney meant, because in the US of Z, it’s the killer Zimmerman who is somehow the victim.

In this US of Z, there are white people who believe that black people don’t care about dead black boys except when whites kill them.

Is It Ever Fair to Arrest a Judge’s Son?

In this US of Z, people still think it’s unfair that Zimmerman was even arrested 44 days after the killing. They don’t believe that George Zimmerman’s father, Robert Zimmerman, a retired Virginia Supreme Court magistrate, reportedly talked the police out of arresting George the night he killed Trayvon.

In the US of Z, the Zimmerman verdict no doubt gives some hope to Michael David Dunn, 45, a Florida white man who killed an unarmed black teenager in the back seat of a car for having the music too loud, shooting him at least eight times. Dunn has pleaded not guilty, saying he felt threatened and acted in self defense, and besides the law gives him the right to stand his ground.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

This file photo shows Iranian and P5+1 negotiators talking during a meeting in the Kazakh city of Almaty in late February.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Activists at Argentinaâ„¢s state-owned YPF oil company headquarters to protest an energy deal between YPF and US oil giant Chevron in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Pakistanâ„¢s foreign ministry has rejected reports that pro-Taliban terrorists in Pakistan have joined the foreign-backed militants fighting against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

On Thursday, Pakistanâ„¢s Foreign Office spokesman Azaz Ahmed Chaudhry said that Å“no militant has left the country.”

He said that Islamabad would never like terrorist groups to travel to other countries and take part in terrorist activities, adding that Å“Pakistani officials will never allow them to do so.”

Spokesman for Pakistanâ„¢s Interior Ministry, Umar Hameed also repudiated the reports, saying that Pakistanâ„¢s security forces are on the alert at all exit points of the country and nobody can travel abroad illegally.

Meanwhile, Pakistanâ„¢s envoy in Damascus Wahid Ahmed refuted the reports, saying the embassy has not received any complaint concerning the presence or activity of pro-Taliban terrorists in the Arab country.

On Sunday, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) commanders in Pakistan said they have set up camps and sent hundreds of militants to Syria.

“We have established our own camps in Syria. Some of our people go and then return after spending some time fighting there,” a Taliban commander said on condition of anonymity.

Foreign-sponsored militancy in Syria has taken its toll on the lives of many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security personnel, since March 2011.

Damascus says the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants are foreign nationals.

On July 12, Mohammad Amin, a Taliban operative and Å“coordinator of the Syrian base,” said that the Taliban base was set up in Syria some six months ago. He added that it sends Å“information and feedback” on the situation in Syria.

Western powers and their regional allies including the Israeli regime, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are partners in supporting anti-Syria militant groups, such as al-Qaeda-linked terrorists, to destabilize Syria and overthrow the Syrian government.

IA/PR

Republished with permission from: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Gunmen have assassinated a prominent pro-Syria figure in southern Lebanon, Syrian official SANA news agency says.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Iranian President-elect Hassan Rohani says a fundamental foreign policy during his tenure will be to enhance relations with neighboring states, particularly Pakistan.

Å“The expansion of ties with neighboring and Muslim countries, especially Pakistan, will be among the next administrationâ„¢s foreign policy priorities,” Rohani said on Tuesday in response to a congratulatory message by Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.

Rohani thanked Zardari for having sent him the congratulatory message over his victory in Iranâ„¢s presidential election, expressing satisfaction over the growing trend of constructive cooperation between Tehran and Islamabad.

The amicable ties as well as the deep historical, cultural and Islamic bonds between Iran and Pakistan have laid the groundwork for strengthening mutual relations and helping establish peace and tranquility in the region, Rohani said.

The Iranian president-elect expressed hope that Tehran-Islamabad relations will further develop in all areas based on good neighborliness and mutual respect.

Also in response to a congratulatory message by President of Guinea Conakry Alpha Conde, Rohani expressed hope that Tehran-Conakry ties would further expand on all political, economic and cultural fronts.

Rohani won Iranâ„¢s June 14 presidential election, garnering 50.7 percent of a total of 36,704,156 ballots. The voter turnout in the election was 72.7 percent, according to Iranâ„¢s Interior Ministry.

The Iranian president-elect currently represents Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei in the Supreme National Security Council. He is also a member of the Assembly of Experts, the Expediency Council and the director of the councilâ„¢s Center for Strategic Research.

YH/NN/HJL

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Picture shows Indian schoolchildren waiting in line for their mid-day meal at a government primary school in the outskirts of Hyderabad on June 13, 2011.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

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Republished with permission from: World Socialist Web Site

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Republished with permission from: World Socialist Web Site

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Republished with permission from: World Socialist Web Site

European Union Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton is to visit Egypt, a day after the Egyptian interim government was sworn in.

Ashton said on Wednesday that her visit to Cairo was aimed at discussing the current political changes in the country.

“I am going to Egypt to reinforce our message that there must be a fully inclusive political process, taking in all groups which support democracy,” Ashton said.

On Tuesday, the cabinet of Egyptian interim President Adly Mansour was sworn in with liberal economist Hazem el-Beblawi being chosen as new prime minister.

Chief of the Armed Forces General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi holds the post of first deputy prime minister while retaining his defense portfolio.

Nabil Fahmy, who served as Egyptâ„¢s ambassador to Washington from 1999 to 2008, holds the post of foreign minister and Morsiâ„¢s interior minister, Mohammed Ibrahim, retains his portfolio.

This is while the Muslim Brotherhood, which had earlier dismissed the interim government’s reconciliation offer as lies, has refused to recognize the new cabinet and denounced it as “illegitimate.”

Tension has intensified since the Egyptian army pushed former President Mohamed Morsi aside, suspended the constitution, dissolved the parliament on July 3 and immediately declared the chief justice of Egyptâ„¢s Supreme Constitutional Court, Adli Mansour, as interim president.

At least 100 people have been killed in an unrelenting wave of violent clashes between Morsi supporters, his opponents and security forces since the president was ousted by the military and put under Å“preventive” arrest.

SZH/PR

Republished with permission from: Press TV

The head of the United Nations (UN) cultural agency has expressed Å“deep shock” after seeing images depicting the destruction of World Heritage sites in Syria.

Å“Irina Bokova, the Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), said she was deeply shocked at news of further destruction of cultural heritage in Syria, particularly reports of damage to the Crac des Chevaliers, a World Heritage site,” said Martin Nesirky, spokesperson for UN secretary general on Tuesday.

Bokova has also called for an end to the damage to World Heritage sites in the Arab country, he added.

Å“Irina Bokova calls upon the perpetrators to cease the destruction immediately and urges all the parties to the conflict to take the necessary measures to ensure the safeguarding of this World Heritage site along with all of Syriaâ„¢s cultural property,” Nesirky said.

Bokova also made reference to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and asked all parties in Syria crisis to avoid damaging the cultural property in the country.

The Crac des Chevaliers is among six sites in Syria recently inscribed to the UNESCO List of World Heritage in Danger.

Å“The danger listing is intended to mobilize all possible support for the safeguarding of these properties, which are recognized by the international community as being of outstanding universal value for humanity as a whole,” UNESCO said in the statement.

Syria has been gripped with deadly unrest since 2011. According to the UN, more than 90,000 people have been killed and millions of others displaced in the violence.

Damascus says the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants are foreign nationals.

The Syrian government says the West and its regional allies — especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey — are supporting the militants.

The militants from a number of countries have been crossing into Syria to fight against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, contributing to an international effort to destabilize the Arab country.

Several international human rights organizations say the foreign-sponsored militants have committed war crimes in Syria.

IA/PR

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Outgoing UN special envoy to Iraq Martin Kobler has slammed the leaders of the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) for human rights violations in Camp Hurriya in Iraq.

Addressing the UN Security Council On Tuesday, Kobler said, Å“Of increasing concern are the human rights abuses in Camp Hurriya itself by the camp leadership. Hundreds of daily monitoring reports suggest that the lives of Camp Hurriya (formerly known as Camp Liberty) members are tightly controlled.”

Å“A significant number of residents have reported to UN monitors that they are not free to leave the camp, to participate in the resettlement process offered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), to contact family members outside Iraq or to have contact with other relatives even within the camp itself,” the UN special envoy to Iraq added.

The UN envoy added that some MKO members had complained about being deprived of medical treatment by the groupâ„¢s leaders.

The MKO – listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community – fled Iran in 1986 for Iraq, where it received the support of Iraq’s executed dictator Saddam Hussein, and set up a camp (Camp Ashraf) near the Iranian border.

In December 2011, the United Nations and Baghdad agreed to relocate some 3,000 MKO members from Camp New Iraq, formerly known as Camp Ashraf, in Diyala Province, to Camp Hurriya – a former US military base near Baghdad International Airport.

The UN seeks to relocate the MKO members to third countries as part of its agreement with Baghdad to facilitate the groupâ„¢s complete exit from Iraq.

Kobler said in June that 71 members had been transferred to Albania, and Germany had also proposed to accept around 100 members.

The group is notorious for carrying out numerous terrorist acts against Iranian civilians and officials.

Tehran has repeatedly called on Baghdad to expel the terrorist group, but the US has been blocking the expulsion by pressuring the Iraqi government.

MYA/NN/HJL

Republished with permission from: Press TV

A strong tremor measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale has struck southern Peru, but no casualties have so far been reported by authorities in the Latin American nation.

The powerful tremor was detected late Tuesday by the US Geological Survey (USGS).

The quakeâ„¢s epicenter, according to the USGS, was located 53 miles (85 km) northwest of the city of Arequipa in southwestern Peru, at a depth of nearly 52 miles (84 km).

Arequipa is the capital and largest city of the province of Arequipa and reported to be the second most populous city in the western South American country, bordering Ecuador and Colombia in the north, Brazil in the east, Bolivia and Chile in the south and the Pacific Ocean in the west.

Earthquakes measuring 6 and above are regarded as strong enough to cause severe damage.

So far, Peruvian authorities have offered no reports of casualties or damages.

MFB/MFB

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Afghan officials and bystanders are pictured at the site of a roadside bomb blast in Ghazni province on July 3, 2013.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Afghan officials and bystanders are pictured at the site of a roadside bomb blast in Ghazni province on July 3, 2013.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Australian Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare during a press conference on August 30, 2012.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Former CIA director David Petraeus will take a teaching post at the City University of New York on an annual salary of $1, after the public institution was hit with a barrage of criticism over news its initial plans to pay him a six-figure sum.

Bringing on the former commander of the Allied Forces in
Afghanistan was meant to give CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College a
huge PR boost this fall, but instead it turned into a scandal
once Petraeus’ salary figure of $200,000 surfaced. This at a time
when an Associate Professor’s salary at the institution averages
around $90,000, according to glassdoor.com.

Documents showing negotiations over the former military boss’
salary dating back to April were originally reported by Gawker.
According to initial reports, Petraeus would conduct a seminar
and two lectures per academic year for “$200,000 per annum,
supplemented by funds from a private gift,” CUNY chancellor
Matthew Goldstein wrote. The salary was still being negotiated at
that time.

Petraeus then wrote to Ann Kirschner, the dean of CUNY’s Macaulay
College, telling her “The truth is that I could have had
gotten more money or more prestigious places.”

The university eventually landed on the slightly lower sum of
$150,000 as Petraeus’ annual salary.

As public outrage at the publicly-funded educational institution
flowed, Republican city assemblyman Kieran Michael Lalor wrote a
letter to CUNY’s administration asking them to
“reconsider” spending six figures on a “celebrity”.
Bill de Blasio, a left-leaning candidate for mayor of New York
whose bid has been endorsed by the CUNY faculty’s union, asked
Interim Chancellor Bill Kelly to replace Petraeus’ contract with
a salary comparable to what other instructors receive. Brad
Lander, a New York City Council progressive, also started a
petition against the high salary, arguing the money would be
better used to cover the “30% tuition increase that CUNY has
been implementing over five years.”

On Monday, it was announced by Petraeus’ lawyer that the general
would fill the post for just $1.


“The general never was taking on this teaching assignment for the
money,” said Robert Barnett, the lawyer. “Once controversy
arose about the amount he was being paid, he decided it was much
more important to keep the focus on the students, on the school
and on the teaching, and not have it be about the money.”
Therefore Petraeus agreed to wave his salary “to remove money
as a point of controversy,” Barnett said.

Following the public exposure of the anticipated salary,
Kirschner in a statement dismissed the controversy as
“unfortunate,” saying, “We felt that we had the
opportunity to bring somebody of extreme stature to be with our
students and that whether the salary was $200,000 or $150,000 he
was absolutely worth it.”

Republished with permission from: RT

Former CIA director David Petraeus will take a teaching post at the City University of New York on an annual salary of $1, after the public institution was hit with a barrage of criticism over news its initial plans to pay him a six-figure sum.

Bringing on the former commander of the Allied Forces in
Afghanistan was meant to give CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College a
huge PR boost this fall, but instead it turned into a scandal
once Petraeus’ salary figure of $200,000 surfaced. This at a time
when an Associate Professor’s salary at the institution averages
around $90,000, according to glassdoor.com.

Documents showing negotiations over the former military boss’
salary dating back to April were originally reported by Gawker.
According to initial reports, Petraeus would conduct a seminar
and two lectures per academic year for “$200,000 per annum,
supplemented by funds from a private gift,” CUNY chancellor
Matthew Goldstein wrote. The salary was still being negotiated at
that time.

Petraeus then wrote to Ann Kirschner, the dean of CUNY’s Macaulay
College, telling her “The truth is that I could have had
gotten more money or more prestigious places.”

The university eventually landed on the slightly lower sum of
$150,000 as Petraeus’ annual salary.

As public outrage at the publicly-funded educational institution
flowed, Republican city assemblyman Kieran Michael Lalor wrote a
letter to CUNY’s administration asking them to
“reconsider” spending six figures on a “celebrity”.
Bill de Blasio, a left-leaning candidate for mayor of New York
whose bid has been endorsed by the CUNY faculty’s union, asked
Interim Chancellor Bill Kelly to replace Petraeus’ contract with
a salary comparable to what other instructors receive. Brad
Lander, a New York City Council progressive, also started a
petition against the high salary, arguing the money would be
better used to cover the “30% tuition increase that CUNY has
been implementing over five years.”

On Monday, it was announced by Petraeus’ lawyer that the general
would fill the post for just $1.


“The general never was taking on this teaching assignment for the
money,” said Robert Barnett, the lawyer. “Once controversy
arose about the amount he was being paid, he decided it was much
more important to keep the focus on the students, on the school
and on the teaching, and not have it be about the money.”
Therefore Petraeus agreed to wave his salary “to remove money
as a point of controversy,” Barnett said.

Following the public exposure of the anticipated salary,
Kirschner in a statement dismissed the controversy as
“unfortunate,” saying, “We felt that we had the
opportunity to bring somebody of extreme stature to be with our
students and that whether the salary was $200,000 or $150,000 he
was absolutely worth it.”

Republished with permission from: RT

[unable to retrieve full-text content]An earthquake measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale has struck southern Peru, according to the US Geological Survey.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

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Republished with permission from: Green Med Info

Five thousand people a month are dying in Syria due to Å“the drastic deterioration of the conflict,” according to UN assistant secretary general for human rights.

Ivan Simonovic made the remarks during a briefing at the UN Security Council on Tuesday.

“In Syria today, serious human rights violations, war crimes and crimes against humanity are the rule,” he added.

Syria has been gripped by deadly unrest since 2011. According to the UN, more than 90,000 people have been killed and millions of others displaced in the violence.

Damascus says the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants are foreign nationals.

The Syrian government says the West and its regional allies — especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey — are supporting the militants.

The militants from a number of countries have been crossing into Syria to fight against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, contributing to an international effort to destabilize the Arab country.

Several international human rights organizations say the foreign-sponsored militants have committed war crimes in Syria.

The Syrian troops have recently conducted successful clean-up operations across the country, inflicting heavy losses on Takfiri extremists.

The Syrian Armyâ„¢s push against the militants rattled their foreign sponsors.

Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said on June 26 that Saudi Arabia is trembling with fear because of the Syrian Armyâ„¢s recent successes against the militants.

In a meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Jeddah, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal insisted on June 25 that the militants in Syria must be armed with anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons.

Zoubi said that the Saudi weapons and money is the main reason behind bloodshed in Syria, adding that Faisal Å“is lost in the Syrian blood.”

GJH/MHB

Republished with permission from: Press TV

A Norwegian neo-Nazi musician with links to mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik has been arrested in France on suspicion of plotting a Å“major terrorist act.”

The French Interior Ministry said on Tuesday that Kristian ËœVargâ„¢ Vikernes constituted “a potential threat to society.”

Vikernes, a black metal musician and writer known as Varg, was arrested in southwestern France after his wife bought four rifles, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

Driven by his fascist and anti-Islamic beliefs, Breivik killed 77 people in a car bomb attack on government buildings in Oslo and a shooting rampage on Utoeya Island on July 22, 2011.

It was Norway’s worst massacre since World War II. Last year, Breivik was given a 21-year prison sentence, which is the maximum penalty in Norway.

According to an official at the prosecutor’s office, Breivik sent a copy of a manifesto setting out his ideology to Vikernes before the attacks.

“That was at the origin of the investigation… There were several suspicions that made the services fear he could possibly carry out a violent act,” the official said, adding that Vikernes’ wife had a legal firearms permit when she bought the four rifles.

French Interior Minister Manuel Valls also said that the police suspected that Vikernes may have been planning a Å“massacre” and searched his house for weapons and explosives.

Å“Having received the manifesto before (Breivik) committed his crimes and having been sentenced in Norway in the past for murder, this individual, who was close to a neo-Nazi movement, was likely to prepare a large terrorist act,” Valls added.

In 1991, Vikernes established the one-man music project Burzum and became part of the early Norwegian black metal scene.

In 1992, he along with other members of the scene burned down at least three Christian churches in Norway.

Between 1992 and 1993, Vikernes recorded four albums as Burzum and another with black metal band Mayhem.

Shortly after Mayhem guitarist Oystein ‘Euronymous’ Aarseth was stabbed to death in August 1993, Vikernes was arrested and charged with the murder.

After being convicted of the murder of Euronymous, the arson of three churches, the attempted arson of a fourth church, and theft and storage of explosives, Vikernes was sentenced to 21 years in prison in May 1994.

While serving time in prison, he became affiliated with the Heathen Front and several of his writings on Germanic paganism were published. He also recorded two dark ambient albums in prison, which also went on sale at the time.

In 2009, Vikernes was released and moved to France with his wife and three children.

GJH/NT/HGL

Republished with permission from: Press TV

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/trayvon_george_the_perfect_crime_reflections_on_zimmerman_trial_20130716/

Posted on Jul 16, 2013

Republished with permission from: TruthDig

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of GreenMedInfo or its staff.

Republished with permission from: Green Med Info

Despite needed cuts to big ticket US defense programs, an investigation into Northrop Grumman’s lobbying efforts reveals the military contractor kept its costly Global Hawk drone flying despite the Pentagon’s own attempt to kill the project.

Though the proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles into use by
America’s military is seemingly unstoppable, at least one drone
project, the $223-million Global Hawk, was determined to be
underperforming and unnecessary in a report put together by top
officials in 2011.

“The Block 30 [version of
Global Hawk] is not operationally effective,” the
Pentagon’s head testing official declared in a May 2011 report
about the drones, which were being assembled by Northrop in
Palmdale, California. According to The Center for Public
Integrity (CPI), neither that report nor efforts by both the
White House and top Army officials managed to thwart the drone
program.

It was projected that cancellation of new orders of the Global
Hawk, a lumbering unmanned reconnaissance aircraft with the
wingspan of a tanker, would save the government $2.5 billion over
five years. Those cuts would have also placed already built and
deployed Global Hawks into storage in favor of America’s
ubiquitous spy plane, the U-2, which could accommodate more
sensors and fly higher than the drone.

In February of 2012 the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, told the House Armed Services Committee
in that the Global Hawk had “fundamentally priced itself out of our
ability to afford it.” Dempsey’s statements were further
pushed by the White House, which twice told Congress that it
“strongly” objected to
additional Global Hawk orders.

Despite the determination that the Global Hawk, the largest drone
currently serving with US forces, was to be killed, the lobbying
effort mounted by Northrop proved unstoppable.

According to Gordon Adams, a former senior White House budget
official for national security, halting the momentum on a large
defense contractor project is easier said than done.

“Killing a major program, in
production, is rather like vampire-killing,” Adams told
CPI. “You have to drive a
silver stake through its heart to make sure it is dead.”

Adams described the defense contractor’s response as “entirely predictable” and highly
effective.

“Hire the right people, target
the right people, contribute to the right people, then link them
together with subcontractors and go for the gold,” says
Adams.  

Adams tells CPI that the Global Hawk fiasco mimics many other
defense contractor campaigns to sustain embattled programs.
 

“It eked out more F-22
[fighters] than the Air Force wanted. It extended the C-17
[transport] production line by several years as Congress ordered
up 10 more aircraft beyond what the Air Force needed,”
Adams points out.

A congressional source familiar with the Global Hawk program
tells CPI that, ironically, the drone proved to be problematic
and ultimately unneeded to the US Air Force because it was
developed and built before combat commanders even specified their
needs.

As a result of Northrop’s rush to produce the large drones, once
in service, problems that required additional testing and
modifications meant that the cost for a single Global Hawk
increased by 150 per cent, from $88 million in 2001 to $223
million in 2012, according to the Government Accountability
Office.

Hints that the Global Hawk program was headed for the chopping
block prompted Northrop to create a ‘Support Global Hawk’ website
in late 2011. That website listed all of the suppliers involved,
their congressional districts as well as the lawmakers
representing them. The defense contractor also distributed fliers
throughout Capitol Hill, with maps showing the locations of the
drone’s manufacturing sites, military bases and subcontractors.

According to CPI, another major element of Northrop’s campaign to
keep the Global Hawk alive involved major campaign contributions:
key members of the House Armed Services Committee and a related
subcommittee received a total of $941,000 in contributions
between 2009 and 2012.

Of the 26 lobbyists who fought on behalf of Northrop’s Global
Hawk were three former Republican aides to the House
Appropriations Committee. Part of that team was also Northrop’s
VP for Government Relations, Sid Ashworth, who had served for 14
years as a staff member on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Ultimately, Northrop’s efforts paid off, and despite efforts by
the Pentagon and the Obama administration to kill the program the
fiscal year 2013 defense authorization bill passed by Congress
will require the Air Force to fly the Block 30 Global Hawks
through 2014, costing $260 million per year. The bill also
stipulates that the US spend as much as $443 million on three
additional Global Hawk drones.

Republished with permission from: RT

Most people have no idea that the U.S. financial system is on the brink of utter disaster. If interest rates continue to rise rapidly, the U.S. economy is going to be facing an economic crisis far greater than the one that erupted back in 2008. At this point, the economic paradigm that the Federal Reserve has constructed only works if interest rates remain super low. If they rise, everything falls apart. Much higher interest rates would mean crippling interest payments on the national debt, much higher borrowing costs for state and local governments, trillions of dollars of losses for bond investors, another devastating real estate crash and the possibility of a multi-trillion dollar derivatives meltdown. Everything depends on interest rates staying low. Unfortunately for the Fed, it only has a certain amount of control over long-term interest rates, and that control appears to be slipping. The yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries has soared in recent weeks. So have mortgage rates. Fortunately, rates have leveled off for the moment, but if they resume their upward march we could be dealing with a nightmare scenario very, very quickly.

In particular, the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries is a very important number to watch. So much else in our financial system depends on that number as CNN recently explained…

Indeed, since May, just before Bernanke announced a probable end to QE3, the yield on 10-year Treasuries has jumped around almost one percentage point, to 2.6%, wiping out more than two years of interest payments. The markets clearly fear that far higher long-term rates are lurking in the absence of exceptional policies to rein them in.

That’s a crucial issue, because those rates are highly influential in determining the future performance of stocks, bonds, and real estate. Investors grant equities higher multiples when long-term rates are lower; both longer-maturity Treasuries and corporate bonds jump when rates decline; and developers pocket more cash flow from their projects when they borrow cheaply, raising the values of office and apartment buildings. When rates reverse course, so do all of those prices the Fed has been endeavoring to swell as a tonic for the economy.

Even though the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries has risen substantially, it is still very low. It has a lot more room to go up. In fact, as the chart posted below demonstrates, the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries was above 6 percent back in the year 2000…

And the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries should rise substantially. It simply is not rational to lend the U.S. government money at less than 3 percent when the real rate of inflation is about 8 percent, the Federal Reserve is rapidly debasing the currency by wildly printing money and the federal government has been piling up debt as if there is no tomorrow…

Anyone that lends the U.S. government money at current rates is being very foolish. You will end up getting back money that has much less purchasing power than you originally invested.

Why would anyone do that?

But if interest rates rise, the U.S. government could be looking at some very hairy interest payments very rapidly. For example, if the average rate of interest on U.S. government debt just gets back to 6 percent (and it has been far higher than that in the past), the federal government will be shelling out a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt.

State and local governments all over the nation could also very rapidly be facing a nightmare scenario.

Detroit is already on the verge of formally declaring the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States, and there are many other state and local governments from coast to coast that are rapidly heading toward financial disaster even though borrowing costs are super low right now.

If interest rates start rising dramatically, it would cause a huge wave of municipal financial disasters, and municipal bond investors would lose massive amounts of money…

“Muni bond investors are in for the shock of their lives,” said financial advisor Ric Edelman. “For the past 30 years there hasn’t been interest rate risk.”

That risk can be extreme. A one-point rise in the interest rate could cut 10 percent of the value of a municipal bond with a longer duration, he said.

Many retail buyers, though, are not ready for the change and “when it starts, it will be too late for them to react,” he said, adding that he was encouraging investors to look at their portfolio allocation and make changes to protect themselves from interest rate risks now.

In fact, bond investors of all types could be facing monstrous losses if interest rates go up dramatically.

It is being projected that if U.S. Treasury yields rise by an average of 3 percentage points, it will cause bond investors to lose a trillion dollars.

And already we have started to see a race for the exits in the bond market. A total of 80 billion dollars was pulled out of bond funds during the month of June alone. If you want a visual of the flow of money out of the bond market, just check out the chart in this article.

We are witnessing things happen in the financial markets that have not happened in a very, very long time.

And junk bonds will be hit particularly hard. About a decade ago, the average yield on junk bonds was about twice what it is right now. When the junk bond crash comes, there is going to be mass carnage on Wall Street.

But of much greater importance to most Americans is what is happening to mortgage rates. As mortgage rates rise, it becomes much more difficult to sell a house and much more expensive to buy a house.

According to CNBC, there is an increasing amount of concern that the rise in mortgage rates that we are witnessing could throw the real estate market into absolute turmoil…

The housing recovery is in for a major pause due to higher mortgage rates. It is not in the numbers now, and it won’t be for a few months, but it is coming, according to one noted analyst. The market has seen rising rates before, but never so far so fast; there is no precedent for a 45 percent spike in just six weeks. The spike is causing a sense of urgency now, a rush to buy before rates go higher, but that will be short term. Home sales and home prices will both come down if rates don’t return to their lows, and the expectation is that they will not.

We have seen the number of mortgage applications fall for four weeks in a row, and at this point mortgage applications have declined by 28 percent over the past month.

That is an absolutely stunning decline, but it just shows the power of interest rates.

Let’s try to put this into real world terms.

A year ago, the 30 year rate was sitting at 3.66 percent. The monthly payment on a 30 year, $300,000 mortgage at that rate would be $1374.07.

If the 30 year rate rises to 8 percent, the monthly payment on a 30 year, $300,000 mortgage at that rate would be $2201.29.

Does 8 percent sound crazy to you?

It shouldn’t. 8 percent was considered to be normal back in the year 2000…

This is what we are talking about when we talk about the “bubbles” that the Federal Reserve has created. The housing market is now completely and totally dependent on these artificially low mortgage rates. If rates go back to “normal”, the results would be absolutely devastating.

But of course the biggest problem with rapidly rising interest rates is the potential for a derivatives crisis.

There are several major U.S. banks that have tens of trillions of dollars of exposure to derivatives. The following is from one of my previous articles entitled “The Coming Derivatives Panic That Will Destroy Global Financial Markets“…

JPMorgan Chase

Total Assets: $1,812,837,000,000 (just over 1.8 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $69,238,349,000,000 (more than 69 trillion dollars)

Citibank

Total Assets: $1,347,841,000,000 (a bit more than 1.3 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $52,150,970,000,000 (more than 52 trillion dollars)

Bank Of America

Total Assets: $1,445,093,000,000 (a bit more than 1.4 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $44,405,372,000,000 (more than 44 trillion dollars)

Goldman Sachs

Total Assets: $114,693,000,000 (a bit more than 114 billion dollars – yes, you read that correctly)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $41,580,395,000,000 (more than 41 trillion dollars)

That means that the total exposure that Goldman Sachs has to derivatives contracts is more than 362 times greater than their total assets.

The largest chunk of those derivatives contracts is made up of interest rate derivatives.

I have mentioned this so many times before, but it bears repeating that there are approximately 441 trillion dollars worth of interest rate derivatives sitting out there.

If rapidly rising interest rates suddenly cause trillions of dollars of those bets to start going bad, we could potentially see several of the “too big to fail” banks collapse at the same time.

So what would happen then?

Would the federal government and the Federal Reserve somehow come up with trillions of dollars (or potentially even tens of trillions of dollars) to bail them out?

The Federal Reserve has created a giant mess, and when this current low interest rate bubble ends our financial system is going to slam very violently into a very solid brick wall.

As Graham Summers recently pointed out, entrusting Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke with control of our financial system is like putting a madman behind the wheel of a speeding vehicle…

Imagine if you were in the car with a driver who was going 85 MPH down a road with a speed limit of 35 MPH (this isn’t a bad metaphor as there is absolutely no evidence that QE creates jobs or GDP growth so there is no reason for the Fed to be doing it in the first place).

The guy is obviously out of control. The dangers of driving this fast are myriad (crashing, running someone over, etc.) while the benefits (you might get where you want to go a little faster assuming you don’t crash) are minimal.

Now imagine that the driver turned to you and said, “I’m thinking about slowing down.” Seems like a great idea doesn’t it? But then a mere two minutes later he says “ we need to continue at 85 MPH for the foreseeable future.”

At this point any sane person would scream, “STOP.” The driver is clearly a madman and shouldn’t be let anywhere near the driver’s seat. Moreover, he’s totally lost all credibility and isn’t to be trusted.

That’s our Fed Chairman.

Sadly, most Americans do not understand any of this.

Most Americans have no idea about the immense economic pain that is going to hit us when interest rates go back to normal levels.

All of this could have been avoided, but instead the American people let the central planners over at the Federal Reserve run wild.

When the bubble finally bursts, the official unemployment rate is going to rocket well up into the double digits, millions of families will lose their homes and America will find itself in the middle of the worst economic crisis in modern U.S. history.

Please share this article with as many people as you can. We need to help people understand what is coming so that they will not be blindsided by it.

Republished with permission from: The Economic Collapse

A DeSmogBlog investigation reveals that Robert Bauer, former White House Counsel and President Barack Obama’s personal attorney, works at the corporate law firm Perkins Coie LLP, which does legal work for TransCanada’s South Central LNG Project, formerly known as Alaska Gas Pipeline Project.

Furthermore, Dan Sullivan, current Commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Natural Resources, and former Alaska Attorney General and former Assistant Secretary of State in the Bush Administration, is a former Perkins attorney.

These findings come in the immediate aftermath of a recent investigation revealing the contractor hired by Obama’s U.S. State Department to do the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the northern half of TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands export pipeline — Environmental Resources Management, Inc. (ERM Group) — lied on its June 2012 conflict-of interest filing. ERM Group checked the box on the form saying it had no current business ties to TransCanada.

In fact, ERM – a member of the American Petroleum Institute (API), which has spent over $22 million lobbying on tar sands and Keystone XL since 2008 – does maintain business ties to TransCanada, the investigation revealed. This includes an ongoing consulting relationship with South Central LNG, co-owned by TransCanada, ExxonMobil, BP and ConocoPhillips.

Under 18 USC § 1001, making a “materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation…[to the] executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States” is a crime punishable by up to five years in jail.

On top of his job at Perkins Coie, Bauer — a well-known architect of bending campaign finance law to allow more corporate money to flood into electoral races — served as general counsel to President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. He also serves as general counsel to the Democratic National Committee and did electoral law work for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.

His wife, Anita Dunn is the co-owner of SDKnickerbocker, former Obama Communications Director, senior advisor for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign and is the former communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee under then-Senator Kerry. She’s met with top Obama administration officials more than 100 times since leaving in 2009, according to a recent New York Times investigation.

Dunn currently does public relations work on behalf of TransCanada and freight rail industry lobbying group, American Association of Railroads (AAR). The tar sands pipeline boom comes alongside a freight rail boom to carry tar sands crude and fracked oil from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale.

“ERM lied on its conflict of interest disclosure form, and State was either asleep at the wheel or chose to look the other way,” FOE’s Ross Hammond told The Washington Post in a recent piece commenting on ERM’s “Pinocchio moment.”

Given the myriad ties that bind, “looking the other way” appears more plausible.

Perkins Coie’s Legal Bidding for Democrats, TransCanada AK Gas Pipeline Project

Perkins Coie is a global firm with 19 offices worldwide and maintains close ties to the Democratic Party above and beyond Bob Bauer.

Bauer’s colleague Mark Ellis, for example, does legal work on behalf of the “Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors Associations and numerous U.S. senators and representatives and their campaigns,” according to his Perkins Coie biography.

The Oil and Gas legal work portion of Perkins’ website highlights its legal work in Alaska.

“In Alaska, our lawyers have long represented leading oil and gas companies on the North Slope and the Cook Inlet…We are extensively involved in efforts to develop the Point Thomson field and commercialize Alaska’s natural gas resources with a pipeline to Lower 48 markets.”

The “efforts to…commercialize Alaska’s natural gas resources with a pipeline to Lower 48 markets” that Perkins’ website refers to is the South Central LNG Project co-owned by TransCanada.

A map on the original Alaska Gas Pipeline Project website depicts the route:

“The project is designed to connect Alaska’s North Slope natural gas resources to new markets and deliver a reliable and secure source of clean burning energy for decades to come,” explain TransCanada and ExxonMobil on the original Alaska Gas Pipeline Project website. “TransCanada and ExxonMobil have the expertise, experience, and financial capability to develop what would be one of the largest privately funded energy projects in the history of North America.”

Before providing legal aide to South Central LNG, Perkins helped the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) — co-owned by Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, BP, ConocoPhillips and Chevron and often referred to as the Alyeska Pipeline – get up and running. TAPS takes oil from the Alaska North Slope to the Valdez Marine Terminal, home of the Exxon Valdez spill.

Perkins’ legal aide, in fact, made TAPS a reality according to an interview appearing online with Perkins’ veteran attorney Guy Martin. Martin was instrumental in opening Perkins’ office focusing on Alaska in Washington DC.

“I actually took a little, first-floor townhouse on Capitol Hill, and opened what was really a two- or three-person office. It was the first state office, and we worked pretty much exclusively on the pipeline,” said Martin. “The Trans-Alaska Pipeline Act was passed as the direct result of the passing of the Settlement Act.”

Perkins Coie attorney L. John Iani — former Region 10 (which includes Alaska) Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator from 2001-2004 under President George W. Bush — also formerly lobbied for the Alaska Gas Pipeline Project working for TransCanada from 2005-2008, Congressional lobbying disclosure records show. He did so while working for Van Ness Feldman from 2004-2010, a firm that today lobbies on behalf of TransCanada’s Keystone XL.

Perkins still does legal work on behalf of TAPS and defended it in the 2010 case Alyeska Pipeline Service Company v. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

AK DNR Run by Former Perkins Attorney

Alaska Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Commissioner Dan Sullivan formerly worked at Perkins Coie from 1996-2006.

His task as head of Alaska’s DNR, by law, is to serve as an oil and gas industry watchdog. As such, he will aid in overseeing whether South Central LNG becomes a reality. Sullivan — it’s important to remember — was named Attorney General by former Alaska Republican Gov. Sarah Palin of “drill baby, drill” fame in June 2009.

Prior to his appointment as Attorney General, Dan Sullivan served as Assistant Secretary of State during the Bush administration, reporting to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Sullivan’s full title was Assistant Secretary for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs. Wikileaks diplomatic cables reveal that while at the State Department, Sullivan helped negotiate oil and gas deals with Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Norway, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and France.

It was also under Bush and during Sullivan’s time at the State Department that the original TransCanada Keystone tar sands pipeline was approved in March 2008. Three months later, in June 2008, TransCanada proposed Keystone XL to the State Department.

In March 2012, President Obama issued an Executive Order to expedite the building of Keystone XL’s southern half from Cushing, OK to Port Arthur, TX. It is the northern, border-crossing half whose final destiny is now in the hands of President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry.

“Americans Know a Rat When They Smell One”

Anita Dunn will likely be working overtime in the coming weeks and months using her insider/outsider status to ensure its approval on behalf of the client she shares with her husband Bob Bauer’s law firm, TransCanada.

“Only in the ethically-challenged world of K Street lobbyists could it be considered OK for a power couple like Dunn & Bauer to exploit their White House connections to promote the interests of a foreign corporation like TransCanada,” Hammond told DeSmogBlog in an interview.

“Beltway insiders may yawn at the fact that TransCanada has hired people so close to President Obama and Secretary Kerry to push their dirty and dangerous pipeline, but ordinary Americans know a rat when they smell one.”

Republished with permission from: Global Research

The fireball in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, flashed around the world last week as a very hot news item. Thirty-five people are now confirmed to have been killed, with 15 more still missing and presumed dead, as a result of the explosions of crude oil carried by the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway’s (MM&A) runaway freight train. When Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper quickly showed up to offer his condolences, this also made international news.

What has not received quite as much international attention as it has here in Canada, is what has since been revealed about Transport Canada, the federal government regulator of the railway industry which decided only last year to allow MM&A to run each train with only one engineer.

Amidst all the apportioning of blame — and there is plenty enough to go around — our sober attention must also turn to what this appalling incident, like the terrible Bangladeshi textile factory fire just over a month ago, tells us about the dark side of competitive markets, and the complicity of governments committed to facilitating their spread around the world.

Market-Driven Logic

The ugly logic underlying this tragedy was starkly revealed by Ed Burkhardt, the president and CEO of the MM&A railway’s parent company, Rail World Inc, in an interview on CBC television on 9 July, the day after Harper visited the devastated town. The fundamental reason the train wasn’t being overseen on that now-infamous night, he averred, was that the 2 per cent higher labour costs entailed in hiring more workers to guard their trains would lead to a company raising their freight rates to compensate by 2 per cent, which would result in it losing the business to some other company that wasn’t paying for workers to guard their trains. However callous this sounds, he spoke nothing less than the truth when he added: “That’s the way it works.”

The “it” here is our market-driven capitalist world. As Burkhardt explained, the largest corporations in the freight train industry compete with each other by outsourcing the more accident-prone operations to smaller companies with low profit margins. And these smaller companies compete in a world where one-man train operations have become the norm in other countries. “If you go overseas, almost everybody has one-man crews,” he said. “Go to the UK, they are running 100 freight trains and 10,000 passenger trains every day with one-man crews.”

The players in this world are not only the businesses that compete in it, big and small, but also the politicians of every stripe who promise to get governments off their backs to help them do so. This should once and for all be understood as an offer to carry business on the backs of governments. They have authored the free trade agreements whose key provisions are designed to leverage the sorts of regulations that promote competitiveness from one jurisdiction to another. And they have appointed people to regulatory bodies who sustain the logic of competitiveness.

At the heart of the competitive logic behind “this is the way it works,” in this instance as in so many others, was the reduction of the number of workers to save labour costs. In the 1970s, North American freight trains usually carried five-man crews around the clock. As crew sizes shrank over the following decades, the effect of this downsizing, in turn, was to have more workers competing for jobs, which of course drives down wages — including, eventually, those of the one person left running the train.

This is not an unintended consequence of competitive markets. It is their purpose.

One can be sure that the case made to Transport Canada for permission to run a one-man crew made reference to the common use of one-man train crews in the UK. The integrated nature of global capitalism today means that so long as people in one place buy into the peddlers of the logic of competitiveness, they become inadvertently complicit in the uses made by it by the peddlers of it elsewhere. –

 Leo Panitch is the Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy at York University, and is the co-author of The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire (Verso, 2012). This article first appeared on the www.guardian.co.uk website.

Republished with permission from: Global Research

Congolese army soldiers stand over the body of an alleged M23 fighter in Kanyarucinya, around 12 kilometers from Goma in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on July 16, 2013.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Police in Detroit, Michigan have launched an internal investigation after a Detroit Free Press photographer was detained for filming a group of officers as they arrested a suspect on a public street on Thursday, July 11.

Mandi Wright was traveling to an assignment with a newspaper
reporter when the pair came upon eight officers making an arrest.
The video, since posted online, shows Wright capturing a pat-down
before she is approached by an officer, who orders Wright to
“back up” before covering the camera lens and demanding
she “turn it off.”

Wright identifies herself as a photographer for the Free Press,
to which the officer responds with “I don’t care who you
are.” He then reaches for the camera and Wright can be heard
asking “Are you touching me?” before the images cut off.
Witnesses say the two tussled before uniformed officers put
Wright in handcuffs for interfering with an arrest. 

Wright, 47, has accused the police of wrongfully confiscating her
iPhone and briefly leaving her locked up alone with the suspect
she filmed being arrested. She has also asserted that the memory
card from her newspaper-issued cell phone camera went missing
after an officer wrestled the device away from her, according to
the Free Press. 

“I was just surprised at how quickly it escalated,”
Kathleen Gray, the reporter traveling with Wright, told the Free
Press. “There was no
effort to try to figure out who we were or what we were doing. It
was just immediately going for the phone.” 

The photographer was held in police custody for over six hours.
Wright has said that at least part of that time was spent alone
in an interrogation room with the original suspect. Deputy Chief
James Tolbert said, if the latter claim is verifiable, “that
could be a serious breach of department policy.”

Missing – along with a satisfactory explanation – was Wright’s
SIM card, which stores files on a cell phone. The video was
preserved on Wright’s iPhone’s internal memory. 

Tolbert, speaking to the Free Press, refused to name the officer
who first accosted Wright but said the internal investigation
will examine “the whole incident, from start to end. What we
did, what she did, the whole nine.” 

The deputy chief told editors of the Free Press the incident had
already become a point of embarrassment for the department and he
reminded officers they are not authorized to impede an individual
from filming. 

While putting the onus on police, Free Press Editor Paul Anger
was conciliatory about the incident.

“First, our photographer was doing what any journalist — or
any citizen — has a right to do in a public place,” he said.
“All she knew was that someone had grabbed her and her phone.
We understand the difficult job that police officers do and we
understand how tensions can rise. Yet some of the police actions
all through this incident need scrutiny — not the actions of our
photographer.”

Republished with permission from: RT

TENTH ANNIVERSARY SILENT PROTEST

ROYAL COURTS OF JUSTICE,

THURSDAY 18^th JULYb 2013

2pm PHOTOCALL

The campaign to re-open the inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly is holding a silent, gagged, protest outside the Royal Courts of Justice, London, on Thursday 18^th July 2pm, to mark the tenth anniversary of Dr Kelly’s death and to demand the re-opening of his inquest.

Campaigners demand Dr Kelly’s inquest, as his right under British law, to examine all the evidence, including the fresh evidence. The coroner ‘speaks for the dead to protect the living.’ Campaigners demand due process of British law and transparency, for the clear establishment of truth and justice.

All single, unexplained deaths require an inquest under British law. Dr Kelly’s unexplained death, according to many centuries of British law, should have been examined in a proper coronial inquest, with the option of a jury, the power to subpoena witnesses, testimony given under oath, with cross-examination and the requirement to establish suicide beyond reasonable doubt.

Instead, Section 17A of the Coroners Act 1988 was quickly invoked — which is used to cover multiple deaths, as with train disasters — probably uniquely, for Dr Kelly’s single, unexplained death. The result was the Hutton Inquiry, engaged only to look into ‘the circumstances surrounding Dr Kelly’s death’, neither overseen by a coroner, nor with the proper powers of an inquest.

There is fresh evidence which requires the scrutiny of a proper coronial inquest. Thames Valley Police FoI responses reveal that there were no fingerprints on six items found with Dr Kelly’s body, including the knife with which he is said to have cut his ulnar artery, blister packs of Co-proxamol tablets, which he is said to have swallowed, an opened water bottle, a watch, spectacles and mobile phone. No gloves were found at the scene.

Lord Hutton requested the records provided to the Hutton Inquiry, not produced in evidence, be closed for 30 years, and that medical reports and photographs be closed for 70years. The Ministry of Justice was unable to explain the legal basis for Lord Hutton’s order.

The Dr Kelly Inquest Campaign demands due process of law — the re-opening of Dr Kelly’s inquest — and transparency, to achieve truth and justice.

For further press information contact:

Jayne Venables

01904 627211

07876 748255

Republished with permission from: Global Research

Infowars.com
July 16, 2013

The horrors of massive electronic data collection available to the world is accurately depicted in the video below.

A world where restaurants, shopping malls and movie theater have access to intimate information on individuals is not only eerie, but downright disturbing.

You will no longer have the luxury of making your own decisions regarding your health, as restaurants will decide for you.

High cholesterol? No salt for you.

It’s your Birthday? No need to inform us. Through our electronic database we are ahead of the curve and have already prepared your cake for you.

Finally, once your dinner is finished, you receive a hand-written note from the first lady herself, Michelle Obama, thanking you for eating healthy.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 at 5:13 pm

Tags: education, environment, food, gmo

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

Infowars.com
July 16, 2013

The horrors of massive electronic data collection available to the world is accurately depicted in the video below.

A world where restaurants, shopping malls and movie theater have access to intimate information on individuals is not only eerie, but downright disturbing.

You will no longer have the luxury of making your own decisions regarding your health, as restaurants will decide for you.

High cholesterol? No salt for you.

It’s your Birthday? No need to inform us. Through our electronic database we are ahead of the curve and have already prepared your cake for you.

Finally, once your dinner is finished, you receive a hand-written note from the first lady herself, Michelle Obama, thanking you for eating healthy.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 at 5:13 pm

Tags: education, environment, food, gmo

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

Central African Republic President Michel Djotodia says the former president he ousted in a coup in March can return to the country now.

At a press conference held during a visit to the West African country of Benin on Tuesday, Djotodia stated that former President Francois Bozizé could come back to the CAR.

“Bozize is Central African. He can return home when calm is restored. He is free and we will not oppose his return,” Djotodia said.

In May, CAR authorities issued an international arrest warrant for Bozizé, accusing him of “crimes against humanity” and “inciting genocide.”

The current CAR president did not say whether Bozizé would be arrested upon his return or not.

After being toppled, Bozizé, who was the CAR president from 2003 to 2013, escaped to Cameroon, but his current whereabouts are unknown.

Also on Tuesday, a CAR police source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the authorities had launched an investigation after the bodies of five young men were discovered in the Ubangi River, which passes through the CAR capital Bangui.

The source named Seleka as the main suspects due to the fact that the five victims were wearing T-shirts bearing the image of Bozizé.

Later, state prosecutor Alain Tolmo confirmed the news, saying, “In the past 48 hours, the bodies have been floating in the Ubangi River… The bodies were tied by cords… Two of the bodies have been identified and returned to relatives. The three others have not yet been identified.”

A relative of one of the victims said, “The (identified) bodies are in the community hospital morgue. But it is clear that the two youngsters were savagely tortured until they died, for whatever reasons.”

On January 11, Bozizé and representatives of the Seleka rebels signed an agreement in Libreville, Gabon, after three days of negotiations brokered by regional neighbors.

However, the deal fell through, and Michel Djotodia, leading thousands of Seleka rebels, captured Bangui and proclaimed himself president after seizing power from Bozizé on March 24.

The Seleka fighters launched an offensive against the CAR government in December 2012.

There are many mineral resources, including gold and diamonds, in the Central African Republic. However, the country is extremely poor and has faced a series of rebellions and coups since it gained independence in 1960.

NT/HGL

Republished with permission from: Press TV

“Under socialism, production is entirely directed by the orders of the central board of production management,” explained Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973), sociologist, philosopher and Austrian School economist.

Under central planning, intrinsically, the few do the planning while the many are required to become cogs in what Mises called an “industrial army,” a herd of individuals without authentic individuality who are well-trained to be yielding and unimaginative, “bound to obey his superior’s orders.”

The problem, aside from this lack of freedom and power for the majority, is the limited knowledge, an inescapable shortcoming, among the planners and societal designers.

As F. A. Hayek explained in his book The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism: “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

We see, for instance, how little the central planners really knew over the past half century about the military victories and nation building they imagined they could centrally design in Vietnam, Cuba, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

We saw, too, how Hillary Clinton in 1993, with a severe case of fatal conceit, self-importantly imagined how she could successfully redesign the entire American healthcare system by holding a series of closed-door meetings with a small cadre of Ivy League academics who had basically no medical knowledge, limited business experience, and no real appreciation of the central role that individual incentives and personal sovereignty play in a free and decentralized society, for both healthcare providers and healthcare consumers.

The resulting health reform plan was a top-down, command-and-control system, simultaneously coercive, punitive, complex, politically naïve and economically destructive, the core of which was a mandate for employers to provide health insurance coverage for all their employees, regardless of their ability of pay.

Asked by Virginia Congressman Norman Sisisky what could be done to ease the burden of her healthcare mandates on small businesses, Mrs. Clinton retorted in her best let-‘em-eat-cake style, “I can’t go out and save every undercapitalized entrepreneur in America.”

What her condescending reply didn’t acknowledge was how it was precisely her plan’s costly mandates on employers that would directly cause a certain portion of America’s entrepreneurs to become undercapitalized.

In short, the undercapitalizations that her mandate would inevitably cause, plus the resulting bankruptcies, business retrenchments, and job losses, weren’t her problem.

And Hillary Clinton’s verdict on business owners who couldn’t afford to give 100 percent healthcare coverage to 100 percent of their employees? “Where I come from, free loaders and free riders get no respect,” she proclaimed.

The message from central planning was loud and clear: Go out of business if you can’t pay for our vision.

Now, two decades after Hillary Clinton’s central planning debacle, the ill-designed Obamacare system is similarly running off the rails on its way to implementation.

On July 2, the Obama administration announced a postponement of the employer mandate, to 2015, a key funding source for Obamacare.

That surprise policy change (an illegal action by the administration, since it violates the law passed by Congress) was soon followed by an announcement from the Department of Health and Human Services that it won’t attempt to verify individual eligibility for Obamacare subsidies.

That now makes Obamacare a plan that dries up its funding while simultaneously setting in motion a half-baked “honor system” scheme that’s sure to increase the level of fraudulent handouts.

And still, the central planners plod along, displaying more faith than knowledge, unwilling to recognize what Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman so succinctly explained: “The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.”

Ralph R. Reiland is an associate professor of economics and the B. Kenneth Simon professor of free enterprise at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.

Republished with permission from: The New American

Infowars.com
July 16, 2013

Led by Senator Feinstein, Congress passes a complete ban on the Second Amendment.

The President does not veto the bill and the U.S. military is tasked with enforcing the ban.

Americans must now turn in their firearms.

Armed with well-oiled weapons set to full auto, troops begin their assault on a peaceful suburban family in their quiet household, all in the name of reducing “gun violence.”

The use of deadly force is justified.

But will they encounter resistance?

All the entries for the Operation Paul Revere contest are in. Showcased videos are selected for general interest and their selection does not imply that they are finalists or have met all the contest requirements.

All of the views expressed in the films are not necessarily endorsed by Infowars.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 at 5:05 pm

Tags: activism, constitution, gun rights

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

[unable to retrieve full-text content]An Egyptian army camp in the Sinai Peninsula, near the border with the Gaza Strip, has been attacked by militants using rockets and machine guns, according to security sources and witnesses.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Turkey arrests 30 in crackdown on anti-govt. protests

Turkish police detain a man during a silent protest in Taksim Square, Istanbul. (file photo)

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Infowars.com
July 16, 2013

Glenn Beck likes to pretend he is a Libertarian. But he’s not, in fact he is not even close.

As the video here documents, Beck has hitched his wagon to a number of key statist initiatives, including the bankster bailout mega-swindle and the VAT, or value added tax, that would confiscate billions of dollars a year from an already tax besieged American middle class.

Beck also supports the PATRIOT Act, arguably the most un-libertarian single piece of legislation to pass through Congress in the past decade. If Beck supports the PATRIOT Act, it makes perfect sense he supports the police state and the destruction of liberty.

The video here also demonstrates how Beck has “riffed” off Alex Jones. Beck has filched Alex’s material wholesale, a fact so blatantly obvious it cannot be denied. And then Beck has the audacity to turn around and claim he experiences a visceral hatred and disgust for Jones, an animosity so deep he is unable to utter Alex’s name.

Running just shy of 35 minutes, this mini-documentary is a primer exposing the shill and fraudster Glenn Beck, a snake oil salesman who is attempting to not only capitalize on constitutionalists and libertarians, but turn the gullible and naïve away from the truth. Glenn Beck is not only rat poison. He is an operative inserted on the fringes of the liberty movement with a singular mission — destroy any real and viable opposition to the establishment.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 at 4:40 pm

Tags: constitution, domestic news, police state

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

Bedouins hold a banner during a demonstration against Israeli government’s plans to relocate Bedouins in the Negev desert, on July 15, 2013 in the southern city of Be’er Sheva. (Photo: David Buimovitch/AFP/Getty Images)A national day of protests and strikes swept Israel and occupied Palestine Monday as demonstrators filled the streets to voice their opposition to Israel’s Prawer ‘ethnic cleansing’ Plan that would forcibly evict and displace up to 70 thousand indigenous Palestinian Bedouins from the Naqab/Negev region in southern Israel.

Street protests spread through major Palestinian cities and towns Monday, including Ramallah, Gaza City, Hebron, and Nablus.

A 700-strong protest in the southern Israeli city of Be’er Sheva, under the banner of “The Prawer Plan will not pass,” blocked a major thoroughfare and was shut down by police, who arrested at least 14 people.

Palestinian communities shuttered many commercial establishments Monday in a strike endorsed by the Arab Higher Monitoring Committee, but not the PLO. Photos show Palestinian marketplaces sitting closed and empty.

Israel’s Prewar Plan, passed in the Knesset in late June, aims to displace tens of thousands of Bedouins and destroy 35 “unrecognized villages,” forcing Bedouins into government resettlement villages.

The Adelah Legal Center for Minority Rights in Israel says the Prawer Plan, if implemented, would be “the largest single act of forced displacement of Arab citizens of Israel since the 1950s.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Prawer Plan a necessary step to put an end to “illegal building by Negev Bedouin.”

Yet, Bedouins declare that Israeli zoning laws deem their indigenous communities illegal in order to create legal justification for ethnic cleansing of the Negev.

Bedouins, native to Israel’s southern Naqab/Negev desert, used to number nearly 100,000. Since the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians–known as the ‘Nakba, or ‘great catastrophe’–Israel has used arguments of illegality to carry out forced evictions, raids, and demolitions of homes and schools, making it near impossible for Bedouin villages to develop livable infrastructure.

Some Bedouins refer to this as the ‘constant Nakba.’

“There are no paved roads, no schools, no electricity or water grids, no telephone lines, and no sewage system,” Amir Qweider, a student at Ben Gurion University who lives in the unrecognized village of Zarnouq, told Electronic Intifada. “The difference between the Jewish settlements and Arab villages is the embodiment of racial discrimination, even though we both are Israeli citizens.”

The Prawer Plan moves forward despite ‘complete rejection‘ by Bedouin communities.

_____________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Republished with permission from: Common Dreams

The acquittal of George Zimmerman has unleashed a wave of fury unlike anything the United States has seen in a very long time. All over the country there have been incidents where young people have expressed their frustrations by committing violent acts. Someone needs to tell them that violence is definitely not the answer. No matter how you may feel about the Zimmerman verdict, there is absolutely no excuse for committing violence against innocent people. America is never going to be able to come together until we start choosing to love one another and forgive one another. Anyone that chooses to regard a certain group of people as “the enemy” because they have a different skin color is part of the problem. When you cut any of us open, we all bleed red blood on the inside. We are all brothers and sisters, and we need to start behaving that way. Unfortunately, many are choosing to go down the path of violence instead, and the list of Trayvon Martin revenge attacks is growing rapidly. The following are some of the more prominent incidents from the last couple of days…

*Baltimore, Maryland

In a post that drew nearly 50 comments on Facebook, real estate agent Christina Dudley said she was walking to her car just before 9 p.m. when she saw several young black males and two black females chasing a 37-year-old Hispanic man west on North Linwood Avenue past East Fairmont Avenue.

“One of the boys had a handgun out and it was pointed at the back of him,” Dudley said in an interview.

They caught up to the man at the corner of Fairmount and N. Streeper Street, and the male with the gun beat the victim with what appeared to be his gun while others kicked and stomped him, Dudley said.

“They were just yelling and calling him names as they ran after him, but once they were hitting him and after that they started yelling, “This is for Trayvon, [expletive],” said Dudley, who heard the chant repeated multiple times.

*Jacksonville, Florida

The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office is facing accusations that it covered up a hate crime by denying that the murder of two brothers in a parking lot on Sunday night was related to the Trayvon Martin case, despite the fact that a sticker was placed on the brother’s truck which read “Free Zimmerman”.

At around 8:45 p.m. at the 7000 block of Normandy Blvd, Jacksonville, 24-year-old Andrew Austin Bohannon and 19-year-old Matthew Ryan Bohannon were sitting in their truck in the Golden Corral parking lot when they were approached by another car carrying multiple occupants.

After “some type of conversation” between the two parties, multiple shots were fired at the brothers. One was killed instantly while another was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at a local hospital.

“Now rumors have spread that the deadly shooting is in retaliation to a bumper sticker placed on the Bohannon’s truck that said “Free Zimmerman,” reports FirstCoastNews.

*Senatobia, Mississippi

A man who says he was jogging alongside of a road when three black men abducted and beat him claims the alleged attack was in retaliation for George Zimmerman’s acquittal, police in Senatobia, Miss. told Fox News.

Police Chief Steve Holts told Fox News the alleged victim, who is white, was jogging Sunday night along Highway 51 when, he said, the suspects pulled over and ordered him to get inside their car.

“One of them asked, ‘Do you know who Trayvon Martin was?’” Holts quoted the man as saying. At that point, the men in the vehicle allegedly attacked him. The man, who the chief described as a young resident of the area, was treated  at a local hospital.

Memphis television station WREG reported the assailants allegedly told the victim, “This is for Trayvon.” The television station and The Democrat newspaper reported the jogger was badly beaten and later dropped off on a road between Senatobia and Coldwater, Miss.

*Oakland, California

Christian Hartsock, a conservative journalist and filmmaker, says he was assaulted and beaten down to the ground by a mob with repeated strikes to the face while reporting at a Trayvon Martin rally in downtown Oakland Sunday night.

*****

“One young man chanted ‘There’s gonna be some violence tonight!’” Hartsock said. “He then came up to me and demanded I erase the footage from my phone – another request I declined.”

“As two other young men interrogated me, their friend behind them came up and a young man then slugged me in the face about three times – hard – and demanded that I leave,” Hartsock said. “Then I began getting clocked by others in my left temple and jaw by other assailants and was mowed to the ground by about half a dozen of them.”

Hartsock feared the worst. “For a couple minutes I was pinned down to the ground – one gentleman on top of me slugging me across the face repeatedly as an indeterminable number of others kicked me in the side of the head, and tried to get my phone out of my hand… The harder my grip tightened, the harder their punches to my face became,” he said.

*Los Angeles, California

People protesting George Zimmerman‘s acquittal marched along Crenshaw Boulevard on Monday night, stomping on cars, chasing bystanders and storming a Wal-Mart.

Several protesters made their way into the Wal-Mart as guards scrambled to close security gates. A short while later, Los Angeles Police Department officers wearing helmets and carrying batons swarmed the store as others marched through the parking lot.

*Chester County, Pennsylvania

In Chester County, Pennsylvania, police are investigating graffiti on a building before it was set on fire: “KILL ZIMMERMAN.” Firefighters were called to the scene of the fire at ProSigns, a company manufacturing commercial signs for business, and found that phrase spray-painted in red on the front of the building. The firefighters put out the fire without significant damage. The fire has been ruled arson.

*Los Angeles, California

A CBS2/KCAL9 photographer and reporter were assaulted Monday night while covering a George Zimmerman protest in Crenshaw.

Reporter Dave Bryan was conducting an interview around 10 p.m. when the suspect tackled him and his photographer, the station confirmed.

“All of the sudden, this guy came up from behind, he had a hood, and he knocked David on the head and he pushed the camera guy down. The camera guy went down, the camera went down, David went down,” witness Joseph Deguerre, said. “I was in shock.”

*Oakland, California

A waiter was hit with what appeared to be a hammer while protecting the windows at Flora, a restaurant at the corner of Telegraph and 19th Street.

“Protesters with black masks approached the window and tried to bang at it,” said bartender Phillip Ricafort. “(The waiter) said, ‘Don’t do that!’ and the guy turned around and smacked him in the face with a hammer” or another metal object.

“It was gruesome,” said Ricafort. He said his co-worker was bleeding from the face.

Vandals also targeted Flora’s windows over the weekend; several windows were still boarded up.

However you may feel about the George Zimmerman trial, your response should not include violence. At a time like this, America needs to come together, and anyone that chooses to commit violence is just driving all of us farther apart.

Those that claim to support Trayvon Martin should be denouncing these acts of violence the loudest. If these kinds of revenge attacks continue, a whole lot more people are going to end up seriously injured, dead or in prison. Nobody should want to see that.

This is a time when people of all races need to come together and start loving one another. If we allow those that are trying to divide us to win, then we all lose.

About the author: Michael T. Snyder is a former Washington D.C. attorney who now publishes The Truth. His new novel entitled “The Beginning Of The End” is now available on Amazon.com.

Republished with permission from: The Truth Wins

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of GreenMedInfo or its staff.

Republished with permission from: Green Med Info

On Monday, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court began hearing arguments over the state law requiring a photo ID before voters may cast their ballots – a law that some claim is controversial, despite the seemingly common-sense approach to the voting process.

Pennsylvania is one of nine states to have passed a law requiring voters to show a state-issued ID before voting. Seventeen states require voters to show some kind of photo ID. Pennsylvania’s law was considered the strictest, as it permitted only certain types of IDs to be accepted.

Bloomberg News reports,

Pennsylvania’s law requires a driver’s license, state-issued ID or acceptable alternative such as a military ID to cast a ballot. The law requires that acceptable IDs must have an expiration date, which eliminates common forms of photo identification such as veterans’ IDs, commonwealth employee IDs and student IDs.

Temporary injunctions have prevented the law from being enforced, though it has been in place for the last three elections.

Prior to the 2012 election, Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson ruled against the measure, declaring that Pennsylvania officials did not provide ample time for voters to acquire their photo IDs.

“I expected more photo IDs to have been issued by this time,” Simpson said in the 16-page ruling. “I accept petitioners’ argument that in the remaining five weeks before the general election, the gap between the photo IDs issued and the estimated need will not be closed. Consequently, I am still not convinced in my predictive judgment that there will be no voter disenfranchisement. Under these circumstances, I am obliged to enter a preliminary injunction.”

Following that ruling, the Pennsylvania Deputy Secretary of State Shannon Royer said that state officials were “reviewing all legal options” but overall were “pleased” that the law was still upheld in the decision.

“Under today’s ruling, voter ID will be implemented on a different timeframe. This November, all voters will be asked to show photo ID when they vote, though it will not be required,” she said in a statement.

She also noted that the judge had not called the voter ID law unconstitutional. In fact, Simpson seemed to support the notion of presenting photo ID at voting booths, writing that the requirement is a “reasonable, non-discriminatory, non-severe burden when viewed in the broader context of the widespread use of photo ID in daily life.”

For Simpson, the issue was simply how feasible it would be for voters to acquire the proper identification in just a few weeks.

Critics have alleged that the law is unfair because it prevents people from exercising the right to vote, while others have asserted that the law is well within the limits of the Constitution and is necessary to prevent voter fraud.

“Voter I.D. is constitutional,” said Nils Hagen-Frederiksen, press secretary for the Pennsylvania governor’s office of general counsel. “The trial is about the implementation,” he continued. “Right now, in Pennsylvania, any eligible voter that needs an I.D. can get an I.D. free of charge.”

But opponents argue that the law disenfranchises certain voters, particularly minorities, who do not have a photo ID, and that the Republicans are pushing the measure for political reasons.

“This will disproportionately affect persons of color, Latinos, African-Americans and also certain populations. Our elderly really have a hard time getting I.D.,” Pennsylvania Democratic State Representative Vanessa Lowery Brown, chairman of the state’s Black Caucus, told Fox News. “This is a national agenda that is sweeping through our country, and unfortunately Pennsylvania is one of those battleground states that has been selected to implement this law.”

Of the over eight million registered Pennsylvania voters, an estimated 760,000 lacked a photo ID with fewer than 20,000 reportedly obtaining one.

Critics of the law contend that some people simply cannot be troubled to visit a state office for an I.D.

Fox News reported,

The American Civil Liberties Union presented two witnesses at the Harrisburg court, both women in their early ’90’s, who testified via videotape that they could not obtain a voter I.D. because of their fragile health and inability to drive.

“Should she put her own life in her hands to get an I.D?,” asked plaintiff lawyer Michael Rubin. “Getting there is only half the battle, it’s getting there, standing in line, waiting, no chairs, nowhere to sit, it is not something she could do … it’s thousands of others just like that.”

“They don’t have I.D.’s because they have not attempted to obtain them,” explained Hagen-Frederiksen, who added that the state provides “numerous” accommodations for people who need help getting the photo ID.

“You are making people go to a place that is not convenient,” claimed plaintiff lawyer David Gersch about the state’s system.

Despite assertions of an underhanded agenda, however, there is evidence that voter fraud has been prevalent in Pennsylvania, a battleground state. According to the Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt, “hundreds of cases of voting irregularities” took place during the 2012 primary election in Philadelphia, including “voting by non-registered individuals, voting by individuals in the incorrect party’s primary, voter impersonation, voting by non-US citizens, [and] voting more than once.”

Pennsylvania officials believe the law will ultimately be upheld in court, particularly since residents are able to get an ID at any of the 71 offices throughout the state. The Pennsylvania Department of State has offered a new card for voting purposes as a last resort for those who are unable to obtain state-issued IDs.

Hagen-Frederiksen points out that people do not need any proof of identity in some cases. “You don’t have to show anything; all you have to do is show up,” he said, adding, “The constitutional issue here is, is it a disproportionally unfair burden on a particular group or class of people? The photo I.D.’s are available to everyone; the centers are available to everyone.”

But Representative Lowery Brown stated that some of her constituents have complained that they were turned away from state offices when applying for an ID and had to return before they received one.

“Free ID is not free,” she insisted.

Judge Bernard McGinley is expected to issue a ruling in a few weeks, and most observers predict that the losing side of the case will appeal to the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court.

Photo of sign in Pennsylvania notifying voters of ID requirements: AP Images

Republished with permission from: The New American

There are no winners in the trial of George Zimmerman. The only question is whether the damage that has been done has been transient or irreparable.

Legally speaking, Zimmerman has won his freedom. But he can still be sued in a civil case, and he will probably never be safe to live his life in peace, as he could have before this case made him the focus of national attention and orchestrated hate.

More important than the fate of George Zimmerman, however, is the fate of the American justice system and of the public’s faith in that system and in their country. People who have increasingly asked, during the lawlessness of the Obama administration, “Is this still America?” may feel some measure of relief.

But the very fact that this case was brought in the first place, in an absence of serious evidence – which became ever more painfully obvious as the prosecution strained to try to come up with anything worthy of a murder trial – will be of limited encouragement as to how long this will remain America.

The political perversion of the criminal justice system began early and at the top, with the President of the United States. Unlike other public officials who decline to comment on criminal cases that have not yet been tried in court, Barack Obama chose to say, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

It was a clever way to play the race card, as he had done before, when Professor Henry Louis Gates of Harvard was arrested.

But it did not stop there. After the local police in Florida found insufficient evidence to ask for Zimmerman to be prosecuted, the Obama administration sent Justice Department investigators to Sanford, Florida, and also used the taxpayers’ money to finance local activists who agitated for Zimmerman to be arrested.

Political intervention did not end with the federal government. The city manager in Sanford intervened to prevent the usual police procedures from being followed.

When the question arose of identifying the voice of whoever was calling for help during the confrontation between Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, the normal police procedure would have been to let individuals hear the recording separately, rather than have a whole family hear it together.

If you want to get each individual’s honest opinion, you don’t want that opinion to be influenced by others who are present, much less allow a group to coordinate what they are going to say.

When the city manager took this out of the hands of the police, and had Trayvon Martin’s family, plus Rachel Jeantel, all hear the recording together, that’s politics, not law.

This was just one of the ways that this case looked like something out of “Alice in Wonderland.” Both in the courtroom and in the media, educated and apparently intelligent people repeatedly said things that they seemed sincerely, and even fervently, to believe, but which were unprovable and often even unknowable.

In addition, the testimony of prosecution witness after prosecution witness undermined the prosecution’s own case. Some critics faulted the prosecuting attorneys. But the prosecutors had to work with what they had – and they had no hard evidence that would back up a murder charge or even a manslaughter charge.

You don’t send people to prison on the basis of what other people imagine, or on the basis of media sound bites like “shooting an unarmed child,” when that “child” was beating him bloody.

The jury indicated, early on as their deliberations began, that they wanted to compare hard evidence, when they asked for a complete list of the testimony on both sides.

Once the issue boiled down to hard, provable facts, the prosecutors’ loud histrionic assertions and sweeping innuendoes were just not going to cut it.

Nor was repeatedly calling Zimmerman a liar effective, especially when the prosecution misquoted what Zimmerman said, as an examination of the record would show.

The only real heroes in this trial were the jurors. They showed that this is still America – at least for now – despite politicians who try to cheapen or corrupt the law, as if this were some banana republic. Some are already calling for a federal indictment of George Zimmerman, after he has been acquitted.

Will this still be America then?

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2013 CREATORS.COM

Republished with permission from: The New American

There are no winners in the trial of George Zimmerman. The only question is whether the damage that has been done has been transient or irreparable.

Legally speaking, Zimmerman has won his freedom. But he can still be sued in a civil case, and he will probably never be safe to live his life in peace, as he could have before this case made him the focus of national attention and orchestrated hate.

More important than the fate of George Zimmerman, however, is the fate of the American justice system and of the public’s faith in that system and in their country. People who have increasingly asked, during the lawlessness of the Obama administration, “Is this still America?” may feel some measure of relief.

But the very fact that this case was brought in the first place, in an absence of serious evidence – which became ever more painfully obvious as the prosecution strained to try to come up with anything worthy of a murder trial – will be of limited encouragement as to how long this will remain America.

The political perversion of the criminal justice system began early and at the top, with the President of the United States. Unlike other public officials who decline to comment on criminal cases that have not yet been tried in court, Barack Obama chose to say, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

It was a clever way to play the race card, as he had done before, when Professor Henry Louis Gates of Harvard was arrested.

But it did not stop there. After the local police in Florida found insufficient evidence to ask for Zimmerman to be prosecuted, the Obama administration sent Justice Department investigators to Sanford, Florida, and also used the taxpayers’ money to finance local activists who agitated for Zimmerman to be arrested.

Political intervention did not end with the federal government. The city manager in Sanford intervened to prevent the usual police procedures from being followed.

When the question arose of identifying the voice of whoever was calling for help during the confrontation between Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, the normal police procedure would have been to let individuals hear the recording separately, rather than have a whole family hear it together.

If you want to get each individual’s honest opinion, you don’t want that opinion to be influenced by others who are present, much less allow a group to coordinate what they are going to say.

When the city manager took this out of the hands of the police, and had Trayvon Martin’s family, plus Rachel Jeantel, all hear the recording together, that’s politics, not law.

This was just one of the ways that this case looked like something out of “Alice in Wonderland.” Both in the courtroom and in the media, educated and apparently intelligent people repeatedly said things that they seemed sincerely, and even fervently, to believe, but which were unprovable and often even unknowable.

In addition, the testimony of prosecution witness after prosecution witness undermined the prosecution’s own case. Some critics faulted the prosecuting attorneys. But the prosecutors had to work with what they had – and they had no hard evidence that would back up a murder charge or even a manslaughter charge.

You don’t send people to prison on the basis of what other people imagine, or on the basis of media sound bites like “shooting an unarmed child,” when that “child” was beating him bloody.

The jury indicated, early on as their deliberations began, that they wanted to compare hard evidence, when they asked for a complete list of the testimony on both sides.

Once the issue boiled down to hard, provable facts, the prosecutors’ loud histrionic assertions and sweeping innuendoes were just not going to cut it.

Nor was repeatedly calling Zimmerman a liar effective, especially when the prosecution misquoted what Zimmerman said, as an examination of the record would show.

The only real heroes in this trial were the jurors. They showed that this is still America – at least for now – despite politicians who try to cheapen or corrupt the law, as if this were some banana republic. Some are already calling for a federal indictment of George Zimmerman, after he has been acquitted.

Will this still be America then?

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2013 CREATORS.COM

Republished with permission from: The New American

The Ross Sea (John B. Weller / The Pew Charitable Trusts)The world’s “last ocean” will remain open for exploitation following a failed agreement amongst several countries that would have protected the Ross Sea along with the East Antarctica coastline from the global fishing industry.

The agreement, which was crafted within the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), whose 25 members have been meeting in Germany, would have established two massive Marine Protected Areas (2.3 million square kilometers) off the coastline of Antarctica and more than doubled the current area of protected ocean on the planet.

However, the proposal was essentially blocked on Tuesday by Russia, one of the few nations in the group who have fishing fleets in the region, in what campaigners called a “bad faith stalling tactic.”

Mongabay.com calls the area “the most pristine marine ecosystem on the planet.” The Ross Sea is home “to an abundance of penguins, whales, orcas, seals, and massive fish,” and has thus far “largely avoided the degradation that has impacted much of the world’s other marine waters,” according to the environmental news site.

“[The] Ross Sea is the last open ocean tract (i.e. not a reef) that still has a food web much like what one would expect the ‘Garden of Eden’ to have been like. That is: all the ‘fruits’ are still there, ready to be picked,” explained marine ecologist Dr. David Ainley in an interview with Mongabay.com.

Yet, as of Tuesday, as Steve Campbell of the Antarctic Ocean Alliance explains, “After two years of preparation, including this meeting, which Russia requested to settle the scientific case for the Ross Sea and East Antarctic proposals, we leave with nothing.”

According to the Guardian, CCAMLR requires unanimous agreement from all of its 25 member states to create reserves.

“There is a question as to whether it can successfully create MPAs in the short term. Until Russia [has] a change of heart, it’s not going to happen,” said Pew Charitable Trust Southern Ocean sanctuaries director Andrea Kavanagh.

“All of the world’s oceans – including those around Antarctica – are under increasing pressure that makes the protection of near pristine areas such as the Ross Sea and East Antarctica ever more urgent,” said Richard Page, Greenpeace Oceans campaigner.

“Considerable effort and rigorous scientific work have been put in by many CCAMLR Members to get this far. Russia must now work in good faith and make sure the proposals go forward at the next CCAMLR meeting to ensure a lasting legacy for future generations.”

“Antarctica’s ocean is one of the most vulnerable on Earth,” said Bob Zuur, of WWF’s Antarctic and Southern Ocean Initiative. “I am incredibly disappointed that CCAMLR missed this opportunity to protect the home of more than 10,000 species including most of the world’s penguins.”

_______________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Republished with permission from: Common Dreams

A protester carries poster of ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi during a demonstration in central Cairo on July 15, 2013.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

The man who helped three missing Cleveland women escape from captivity quickly became a national hero, but now says that he is unemployed, broke, and homeless.

In early May, 45-year-old Cleveland resident Charles Ramsey
quickly became a national hero after helping rescue three women
who were held captive against their will for a decade.

Video interviews with Ramsey went viral on the Internet, and his
name quickly became a trending topic on Twitter. As a result of
his heroic act and his newfound fame, Ramsey made about $50,000
from corporate speaking engagements and private donations, he
told the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview.

Even though Ramsey worked as a restaurant dishwasher and made
little money, he previously told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that he
would not accept any rewards offered by the FBI.

Although Ramsey accepted roughly $50,000, he now claims he is
homeless and broke, and that his life has been destroyed by his
newfound fame. Ramsey told the Daily Mail that he was fired from
his restaurant job because too many customers tracked him down to
shake his hand. He claims that he can’t keep a job because the
attention distracts from the work. And he contends that he is
homeless because no landlord wants to go through the hassle of
taking in a tenant surrounded by so much media attention. He says
he has been sleeping on couches for weeks. 

“I’m broke, bro, and that’s the truth,” Ramsey told the
British tabloid, explaining that his life has been a
“rollercoaster that just hasn’t stopped yet.”

He also told the Mail that those who believe he has a lot of
money have “very, very small brains”.

But just a few weeks ago, Ramsey spent $8,000 on a BMW, boasted
about his earnings and even started a business selling $25
T-shirts with his face printed on them. Ramsey’s neighbors argued
that he exaggerated his role in the rescue to gain the fame that
he now claims not to want.  

When asked what he did with the $50,000 he received from speaking
engagements and private donors, Ramsey said he had a lot of
expenses, and that “money goes fast if you have bills.” He
says a car is a small and necessary expense.

But Ramsey’s arguments starkly contradict those made by neighbors
and other Cleveland residents who know him. Aurora Marti, a
75-year-old neighbor who lives across the street from kidnapper
Ariel Castro’s house, said Ramsey has been wasting the money he
received.

“Charles has been living it up, he’s been drinking and
smoking,” she said. “He bought a new BMW and came by a few
weeks ago at night telling my son that he was going to be rich.
He made a T-shirt with his face on it that he was selling for
$25. I told my neighbor to buy one so I could burn it… He’s been
to Washington, New York, Florida. He’s been everywhere. He’s just
been telling lies. He wants the money.”

It remains unclear to what extent Ramsey’s statements are
true, but both neighborhood residents and Ramsey himself admit
that the Cleveland man has already spent a large portion of his
fame-related earnings.

Republished with permission from: RT

The man who helped three missing Cleveland women escape from captivity quickly became a national hero, but now says that he is unemployed, broke, and homeless.

In early May, 45-year-old Cleveland resident Charles Ramsey
quickly became a national hero after helping rescue three women
who were held captive against their will for a decade.

Video interviews with Ramsey went viral on the Internet, and his
name quickly became a trending topic on Twitter. As a result of
his heroic act and his newfound fame, Ramsey made about $50,000
from corporate speaking engagements and private donations, he
told the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview.

Even though Ramsey worked as a restaurant dishwasher and made
little money, he previously told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that he
would not accept any rewards offered by the FBI.

Although Ramsey accepted roughly $50,000, he now claims he is
homeless and broke, and that his life has been destroyed by his
newfound fame. Ramsey told the Daily Mail that he was fired from
his restaurant job because too many customers tracked him down to
shake his hand. He claims that he can’t keep a job because the
attention distracts from the work. And he contends that he is
homeless because no landlord wants to go through the hassle of
taking in a tenant surrounded by so much media attention. He says
he has been sleeping on couches for weeks. 

“I’m broke, bro, and that’s the truth,” Ramsey told the
British tabloid, explaining that his life has been a
“rollercoaster that just hasn’t stopped yet.”

He also told the Mail that those who believe he has a lot of
money have “very, very small brains”.

But just a few weeks ago, Ramsey spent $8,000 on a BMW, boasted
about his earnings and even started a business selling $25
T-shirts with his face printed on them. Ramsey’s neighbors argued
that he exaggerated his role in the rescue to gain the fame that
he now claims not to want.  

When asked what he did with the $50,000 he received from speaking
engagements and private donors, Ramsey said he had a lot of
expenses, and that “money goes fast if you have bills.” He
says a car is a small and necessary expense.

But Ramsey’s arguments starkly contradict those made by neighbors
and other Cleveland residents who know him. Aurora Marti, a
75-year-old neighbor who lives across the street from kidnapper
Ariel Castro’s house, said Ramsey has been wasting the money he
received.

“Charles has been living it up, he’s been drinking and
smoking,” she said. “He bought a new BMW and came by a few
weeks ago at night telling my son that he was going to be rich.
He made a T-shirt with his face on it that he was selling for
$25. I told my neighbor to buy one so I could burn it… He’s been
to Washington, New York, Florida. He’s been everywhere. He’s just
been telling lies. He wants the money.”

It remains unclear to what extent Ramsey’s statements are
true, but both neighborhood residents and Ramsey himself admit
that the Cleveland man has already spent a large portion of his
fame-related earnings.

Republished with permission from: RT

PURPOSE: Cancer screening programs have the potential of intended beneficial effects, but they also inevitably have unintended harmful effects. In the case of screening mammography, the most frequent harm is a false-positive result. Prior efforts to measure their psychosocial consequences have been limited by short-term follow-up, the use of generic survey instruments, and the lack of a relevant benchmark-women with breast cancer.

METHODS: In this cohort study with a 3-year follow-up, we recruited 454 women with abnormal findings in screening mammography over a 1-year period. For each woman with an abnormal finding on a screening mammogram (false and true positives), we recruited another 2 women with normal screening results who were screened the same day at the same clinic. These participants were asked to complete the Consequences of Screening in Breast Cancer-a validated questionnaire encompassing 12 psychosocial outcomes-at baseline, 1, 6, 18, and 36 months.

RESULTS: Six months after final diagnosis, women with false-positive findings reported changes in existential values and inner calmness as great as those reported by women with a diagnosis of breast cancer (Δ = 1.15; P = .015; and Δ = 0.13; P = .423, respectively). Three years after being declared free of cancer, women with false-positive results consistently reported greater negative psychosocial consequences compared with women who had normal findings in all 12 psychosocial outcomes (Δ>0 for 12 of 12 outcomes; P

CONCLUSION: False-positive findings on screening mammography causes long-term psychosocial harm: 3 years after a false-positive finding, women experience psychosocial consequences that range between those experienced by women with a normal mammogram and those with a diagnosis of breast cancer.

Republished with permission from: Green Med Info

While some current members of Congress continue to rally for the prosecution of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, a long-serving United States senator has sent a letter of support to the NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower.

According to correspondence published Tuesday by the Guardian’s
Glenn Greenwald, former two-term senator Gordon Humphrey (R-New
Hampshire) wrote the exiled Mr. Snowden to say, “you have done
the right thing in exposing what I regard as massive violation of
the United States Constitution.”

Snowden, 31, is currently in Russia where he has applied for
temporary asylum while he awaits assistance in traveling to one
of the Latin American countries that have approved similar
requests. He is wanted for espionage and other charges in the US
after fleeing in May and providing Greenwald and other
journalists with classified NSA documents detailing vast
surveillance programs operated by the US government.

The US Department of Justice has asked Russia repeatedly to
return Snowden to the US, and his revelations and conduct have
caused commotion across Washington and the rest of the world. But
while the administration of President Barack Obama continues to
insist Snowden is sent back to the US to stand trial, Humphrey
has words nowhere near as harsh.

“Having served in the United States Senate for twelve years as
a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, the Armed Services
Committee and the Judiciary Committee, I think I have a good
grounding to reach my conclusion,” the former lawmaker wrote.

“I wish you well in your efforts to secure asylum and
encourage you to persevere,” Humphrey added.

When contacted by Greenwald for verification, Humphrey wrote a
second letter, which has since been shared by the Guardian
journalist.

“Yes. It was I who sent the email message to Edward Snowden,
thanking him for exposing astonishing violations of the US
Constitution and encouraging him to persevere in the search for
asylum,” Humphrey wrote Greenwald.

“To my knowledge, Mr. Snowden has disclosed only the existence
of a program and not details that would place any person in
harm’s way. I regard him as a courageous whistleblower,” he
continued.

“I object to the monumentally disproportionate campaign being
waged by the US government against Edward Snowden, while no
effort is being made to identify, remove from office and bring to
justice those officials who have abused power, seriously and
repeatedly violating the Constitution of the United States and
the rights of millions of unsuspecting citizens.”

“Americans concerned about the growing arrogance of our
government and its increasingly menacing nature should be working
to help Mr. Snowden find asylum. Former Members of Congress,
especially, should step forward and speak out,” he concluded.

In a letter sent in response from Snowden to the former senator,
the NSA leaker thanked Humphrey and wrote, “I only wish more
of our lawmakers shared your principles,” adding that “the
actions I’ve taken would not have been necessary” had these
conversations occurred years earlier on Capitol Hill.

“The media has distorted my actions and intentions to distract
from the substance of Constitutional violations and instead focus
on personalities,” Snowden wrote. “It seems they believe
every modern narrative requires a bad guy. Perhaps it does.
Perhaps, in such times, loving one’s country means being hated by
its government.”

“If history proves that be so, I will not shy from that
hatred,” he wrote. “I will not hesitate to wear those
charges of villainy for the rest of my life as a civic duty,
allowing those governing few who dared not do so themselves to
use me as an excuse to right these wrongs.”

Snowden then went on to reaffirm allegations made previously by
Greenwald that classified knowledge of government programs will
continue to be released should the US or another government
attempt to plug up the leaks.

Snowden “has taken extreme precautions to make sure many
different people around the world have these archives to insure
the stories will inevitably be published,” Greenwald told the
Daily Beast last month.

“[I]f anything happens at all to Edward Snowden, he told me he
has arranged for them to get access to the full archives,”
the journalist said.

In his letter to Humphrey, Snowden wrote, “You may rest easy
knowing I cannot be coerced into revealing that information, even
under torture.”

Although Humphrey’s sentiments aren’t exactly shared en masse in
Washington, that isn’t to say the country at large disapproves of
Snowden’s actions. A poll conducted by Quinnipiac University released
earlier this month found that the majority of Americans perceive
Snowden as a man who did the right thing by releasing documents
about the NSA programs to the media.

“The verdict that Snowden is not a traitor goes against almost
the unified view of the nation’s political establishment,”
Peter Brown, assistant director of Quinnipiac’s polling
institute, said in a press release.

Humphrey, 72, served in the US Senate until 1990, after which
point he attempted twice, unsuccessfully, to run for governor of
New Hampshire.

Republished with permission from: RT

Republished with permission from: Stephen Lendman

Ted Nugent
Infowars.com
July 16, 2013

So this guy’s neighborhood has been burglarized off and on and the residents are very concerned for their safety and well-being. Neighbors agree to upkick their vigilance and overall level of awareness to watch out for each other and keep an eye out for suspicious individuals and behavior. It could be considered by an official designation such as “Neighborhood Watch”, but officially labeled or not, it is the purest form of Americans watching out for each other and being good neighbors.

So far so good.

So George Zimmerman sees what he believes is a suspicious individual in suspicious circumstances, and intelligently and responsibly pays attention and calls 9-1-1 to report what he sees to the officials. This gesture is proof positive he was not looking to do anyone harm or break any laws, but rather perform the fundamental responsibility of a neighbor who cares.

Doing nothing illegal or improper, he follows the individual while answering all the questions from the 9-1-1 operator to the best of his ability, keeping an eye on the individual so the authorities can hopefully intercept and determine exactly what is going on.

For reasons unknown, though I will comment on momentarily, after expressing racism and hostility on the phone to a friend in response to being followed, the suspect now changes course and turns towards George and immediately initiates a hostile verbal confrontation that quickly escalate to a violent physical assault. Within seconds, the suspect has overwhelmed George, has gained the advantage on top, pinning George to the ground, and further escalates the assault to deadly force by smashing George’s face, breaking his nose, and violently slamming his skull onto the concrete with all his youthful athleticism.

George screams frantically for help as Trayvon Martin pummels his face and head furiously, inflicting damaging and potentially life threatening wounds. Fearing for his life and about to lose consciousness at the hands of an enraged, violent attacker, George Zimmerman does what anyone who wishes to live would do, and he reaches for his concealed handgun, firing a single shot to neutralize the deadly force being wreaked upon him.

This represents the purest form of self-defense there is. It is exactly why people who believe in good over evil carry a gun to protect themselves from the well documented violence that plagues our country, in order to save our lives from a life threatening attack. Period.

Based on all evidence available to them, the professional law enforcement officers did not hold George Zimmerman on charges later that night. They saw it for what it was: cut and dried self-defense.

And so it was for a few weeks until the race-baiting industry saw an opportunity to further the racist careers of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, the Black Panthers. President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, et al, who then swept down on the Florida community refusing to admit that the 17-year-old dope smoking, racist gangsta wannabe Trayvon Martin was at all responsible for his bad decisions and standard modus operendi of always taking the violent route.

With an obvious racist chip on his shoulder, referencing the neighborhood watch guy as a “creepy ass cracker” to his fellow racist female friend who admitted under oath that that is how non-blacks are referred to normally in their circles, Trayvon had no reason not to attack, because it was the standard thug thing to do. See Chicago any day of the week.

With nearly 700 examples of this truism played out in Chicago in 2012 alone, no one can possibly dispute the recent surge in black racism increasing throughout Barack Obama’s presidency. To attempt to claim otherwise is a laughable lie.

The jury got it right, and non-racist America rejoices that there is still common sense, honesty and decency aware of identifying justice in this country. America also believes that the entire prosecutorial team should be ashamed of themselves and disbarred for ignoring the obvious and kowtowing to the pure racism that forced the politically correct lie that only black lives killed by non-blacks matter, which is why there are no headlines, no protests, no prosecutions and no Barak Obama or Eric Holder meddling in the nonstop black-on-black slaughter in their gun-free zone of Chicago.

Martin Luther King Jr. is rolling over in his grave that he sacrificed his life for the cause of judging people by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin, as so many of his own race carry in in self-destructive behavior while professional race mongers blame everything on racism. It is painful and heartbreaking to say and write this, but horrifically it is true. Blacks kill more blacks in a weekend in Chicago than the evil, vile Ku Klux Klan idiots did in 50 years. Truly earth shattering insane. And not a peep from Obama or Holder. Tragic.

The only racism on that night was perpetrated by Trayvon Martin, and everybody knows it.

Here’s the lesson from all this, America: Teach your children to not attack people for no good reason whatsoever. Conduct yourself in a responsible, civil manner, and everything will be just fine. Try to kill someone and that someone just may be exercising his or her Second Amendment rights and you could get shot. It’s called self-defense, and it is the oldest, strongest and most righteous instinct and God-given right known to man.

Ted Nugent is a rock and roll legend and is probably one of the greatest advocates for self defense in the world today. He is the author of “Ted, White, and Blue: The Nugent Manifesto” and “God, Guns & Rock ’N’ Roll”, released by Regnery Publishing. Learn more at Ted’s official website.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 at 2:46 pm

Tags: constitution, domestic news, gun rights

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

Paul Bedard
Washington Examiner
July 16, 2013

Despite the administration’s controversial decision to delay forcing companies to join Obamacare for a year, three-quarters of small businesses are still making plans to duck the costly law by firing workers, reducing hours of full-time staff, or shift many to part-time, according to a sobering survey released by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“Small businesses expect the requirement to negatively impact their employees. Twenty-seven percent say they will cut hours to reduce full time employees, 24 percent will reduce hiring, and 23 percent plan to replace full time employees with part-time workers to avoid triggering the mandate,” said the Chamber business survey provided to Secrets.

Under Obamacare, just 30 hours—not the nationally recognized 40 hours—is considered full-time. Companies with 50 full-time workers or more are required to provide health care, or pay a fine.

Read More

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This article was posted: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 at 2:39 pm

Tags: business, constitution, healthcare, legislation

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

Developing…

A diverse coalition of groups represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed suit against the NSA on Tuesday for its bulk, unconstitutional collection of Americans’ phone records.

The broad coalition represented in the case, First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA, includes Unitarian church groups, Greenpeace, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, People for the American Way (PFAW) and TechFreedom.Image: EFF

“The NSA’s unchecked collection of Americans’ telephone records, including the telephone records of organizations like PFAW, is a blatantly unconstitutional attack on our civil liberties,” PFAW President Michael Keegan said in a statement.

EFF explains that

At the heart of First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA is the bulk telephone records collection program that was confirmed by last month’s publication of an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) further confirmed that this formerly secret document was legitimate, and part of a broader program to collect all major telecommunications customers’ call histories. The order demands wholesale collection of every call made, the location of the phone, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and other “identifying information” for every phone and call for all customers of Verizon for a period of three months. Government officials further confirmed that this was just one of series of orders issued on a rolling basis since at least 2006.

“Who we call, how often we call them, and how long we speak shows the government what groups we belong to or associate with, which political issues concern us, and our religious affiliation,” stated EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. “Exposing this information — especially in a massive, untargeted way over a long period of time — violates the Constitution and the basic First Amendment tests that have been in place for over 50 years.”

“The sweeping collection of Americans’ telephone records is a profoundly problematic infringement on fundamental constitutional rights,” added Keegan.

Read the case below:

__________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Republished with permission from: Common Dreams

Family’s wiretapping fears and Michael Hastings’ death showcase the omnipresence of unconstitutional abuses.

Kit Daniels
Infowars.com
July 16, 2013

The Zimmerman family now share the same fears as the untold number of journalists under unconstitutional, domestic surveillance by the Obama Administration.

As reported recently by Steve Watson, Robert Zimmerman, George Zimmerman’s brother, admitted that he is concerned that the Obama Administration is wiretapping his family’s phones during a July 16 interview on Fox News.

“We do have concerns and always have of having our phones tapped,” Zimmerman said. “Having our phones, you know, listened to by the administration or whomever because George’s now as we know continuously the subject of ongoing investigation.”

“So a lot of the things we do are connecting in person and that’s how we’ve managed to stay hidden for so long.”

Robert said that in-person communication is “old school” but still works.

Unfortunately, resorting to “old school” communication is an emerging trend as Obama’s domestic spy gate continues to record all forms of digital communication known to man.

Back in May when the news broke that the Obama Administration seized the phone records of Associated Press reporters, it became clear that it was not safe for whistleblowers and leakers to talk on the phone.

Edward Snowden’s revelations in June exposed that the government collected everyone’s phone calls, not just reporters.

Informants are once again reduced to shifting potted plants around their patios in order to signal a meeting with journalists.

Even when journalists receive news tips face-to-face in a damp parking garage, they may not be safe with that information.

As we reported recently, Rolling Stone journalist Michael Hastings died when his front-engined Mercedes C250 burst in an explosion so powerful that the flames exceeded the heights of houses nearby.

The Mercedes’ fuel efficient, four-cylinder engine was found nearly 150 feet behind the car.

A close friend of Hastings’, Staff Sergeant Joe Biggs, confirmed that the journalist was working on a story involving the CIA, his “biggest story yet.”

It is daunting to imagine the magnitude of the CIA story considering that his 2010 story entitled The Runaway General led to U.S. Army general Stanley McChrystal’s resignation as commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Hastings was told he would be “hunted down and killed” over The Runaway General.

But his untimely death may have been triggered by bombshell information he received for his CIA story.

Through the nightmare ordeal of the Trayvon Martin shooting, the Zimmerman family became wide awake and aware of the massive extent of Obama’s intrusive surveillance.

Yet these unconstitutional abuses effect the lives of everyone, not just the Zimmerman family and news journalists.

Republished with permission from: Infowars

Julie Wilson
Infowars.com
July 16, 2013

Andrea Hernandez, a student who refused to wear a Radio Frequency Identification Technology (RFID) chip that was implemented by her San Antonio High School, has won the battle as the school begins to second guess the controversial program.

On Monday, Northside Independent School District (NISD) announced that they are nixing the RFID tracking program.

The school claims the program was a waste of money and only increased attendance by half of a percent.

When 15-year old Hernandez protested the program claiming it was in violation of her religious beliefs, the school forced her to choose between wearing the RFID chip or attending a different school.

The teenager and her family sued the district, but a Texas federal judge concluded that her rights had not been breached, which supported the school’s decision and upheld the ultimatum they gave Hernandez.

The judge’s decision came in the wake of the school attempting to accommodate the girl by allowing her to wear an ID tag without the chip.

The teenager’s family didn’t end the fight there, they appealed the ruling to the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that submitting to the ID tag even without the chip, was still against her “sincerely held beliefs.”

Hernandez agreed to attend a new school during the litigation process.

According to the school’s website, the RFID program, also known as the “Student Locator Project,” was meant to meet three goals. These three goals included increasing student safety and security, improving attendance accuracy and to provide multi-purpose “Smart” student ID cards.

The pilot program introduced at two schools, Jay High School and Jones Middle School, both located in San Antonio, TX., were intended to last one year and then reevaluated at the end of that year.

Officials say the program was implemented at schools with low attendance rates, and would be applied to 4,200 students, costing the taxpayer half a million dollars to implement, and an additional $136,000 annually to continue.

The schools claimed the RFID program would make students safer by allowing access to their location at all times during the school day, but was restricted to tracking students on school grounds and during school hours only.

However, the chips are tracked by a private company where the signal is never turned off. RFID hackers have repeatedly shown how easy it is to gain access to information stored in the chips. Some chips are even re-writable and the information on them can be deleted or replaced.

This makes the children wearing the chips very susceptible to unwanted attention from strangers that could potentially track them indefinitely.

Unfortunately, Texas isn’t the only school attempting to use tax payer money to track its’ students, several other schools across the nation have made similar moves.

In 2010, a federally funded preschool in Richmond, Ca., began using the RFID chips in students’ clothing, and as far back as 2005, an elementary school outside of Sacramento, Ca., also tried the chips but ditched it after parents expressed their outrage over the program.

Northside had originally contemplated implementing the program in 110 other schools, but whether the district intends to move forward with those plans is unknown.

Despite the lack of popularity among these invasive tracking programs, another one has begun to surface, the iris scanner.

The iris scanner is part of the growing trend of “biometrics,” a development that allows software to identify you based on physical characteristics.

A Florida school recently rolled out the iris scanning program on an elementary, middle and high school, conducting a test-run on its’ students without the consent of their parents. The tracking technology allowed the students to be tracked upon entering and exiting their school bus.

Industry insiders say the iris scanning technology will soon be used in airports, banks and on ATMs. Some high-security offices like Bank of America’s headquarters already have the technology in use.

Officials say not to worry though, because the data collected from the iris scanners looks like a bunch of 1s and 0s if seen by an outsider, and you can assure the data is safe because it’s owned by the airports, schools and businesses that utilize them.

Republished with permission from: Infowars

Ben O’Neill
mises.org
July 16, 2013

What is the purpose of telecommunication and internet surveillance?

The NSA presents its surveillance operations as being directed toward security issues, claiming that the programs are needed to counter terrorist attacks. Bald assertions of plots foiled are intended to bolster this claim.[1] However, secret NSA documents reveal that their surveillance is used to gather intelligence to achieve political goals for the US government. Agency documents show extensive surveillance of communications from allied governments, including the targeting of embassies and missions.[2] Reports from an NSA whistleblower also allege that the agency has targeted and intercepted communications from a range of high-level political and judicial officials, anti-war groups, US banking firms and other major companies and non-government organizations.[3] This suggests that the goal of surveillance is the further political empowerment of the NSA and the US government.

Ostensibly, the goal of the NSA surveillance is to prevent terrorist acts that would harm or kill people in the United States. But in reality, the primary goal is to enable greater control of that population (and others) by the US government. When questioned about this issue, NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake was unequivocal about the goal of the NSA: “to own the internet and find out what everybody is doing.”[4]

“To own the internet” – Public-private partnerships in mass surveillance

The internet is, by its very nature, a decentralized arrangement, created by the interaction of many private and government servers operating on telecommunications networks throughout the world. This has always been a major bugbear of advocates for government control, who have denigrated this decentralized arrangement as being “lawless.” Since it began to expand as a tool of mass communication for ordinary people, advocates for greater government power have fought a long battle to bring the internet “under control” – i.e., under their control.

The goal of government “ownership of the internet” entails accessing the facilities that route traffic through the network. This is gradually being done through government control of the network infrastructure and the gradual domination of the primary telecommunications and internet companies that provide the facilities for routing traffic through the network. Indeed, one noteworthy aspect of the mass surveillance system of the NSA is that it has allegedly involved extensive cooperation with many “private” firms operating under US law. This has allegedly included major security, telecommunications and internet companies, as well as producers of network software and hardware.

Examples of such “public-private partnerships” are set out in leaked documents of the NSA. An unnamed US telecommunications company is reported to provide the NSA with mass surveillance data on the communications of non-US people under its FAIRVIEW program.[5] Several major computing and internet companies have also been explicitly named in top secret internal NSA material as being current providers for the agency under its PRISM program.[6] Several of these companies have issued denials disavowing any participation in, or prior knowledge of the program, but this has been met with some scepticism.[7] (Indeed, given that the NSA did not anticipate public release of its own internal training material, it is unlikely that the agency would have any cause to lie about the companies they work with in this material. This suggests that the material may be accurate.)

Many of these companies have supplied the NSA with data from their own customers, or created systems which allow the agency access to the information flowing through telecommunications networks. They have done so without disclosure to their own customers of the surveillance that has occurred, by using the blanket advisement that they “comply with lawful requests for information.” By virtue of being subject to the jurisdiction of US statutes, all of these companies have been legally prohibited from discussing any of their dealings with the NSA and they have been well placed for retaliatory action by the many regulatory agencies of the US government if they do not cooperate. In any case, it appears from present reports that many companies have been active partners of the agency, assisting the NSA with illegal surveillance activities by supplying data under programs with no legitimate legal basis.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

This has been a common historical pattern in the rise of totalitarian States, which have often sought to incorporate large business concerns into their network of power. Indeed, the very notion of “public-private partnerships” in this sector readily brings to mind the worst aspects of fascist economic systems that have historically existed. The actions of US companies that have cooperated in the NSA’s mass surveillance operations calls into question the “private” status of these companies. In many ways these companies have acted as an extension of the US government, providing information illegally, in exchange for privileges and intelligence. According to media reports, “Such cooperation is an extremely delicate issue for the companies involved. Many have promised their customers data confidentiality in their terms and conditions. Furthermore, they are obliged to follow the laws of the countries in which they do business. As such, their cooperation deals with the NSA are top secret. Even in internal NSA documents, they are only referred to by the use of code names.”[8]

We began this discussion by asking the purpose of telecommunication and internet surveillance. The answer lies in the uses to which those surveillance powers are being put, and will inevitably be put, as the capacity of the NSA expands. The true purpose of the NSA is not to keep us safe. Its goal is to own the internet, to own our communications, to own our private thoughts – to own us.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 at 2:03 pm

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

The swamp of monied interests that can influence politicians and public servants is thick with campaign funders and armies of lobbyists. But there’s a way to reach office holders that’s even easier to pull off, a snap to conceal, and carries few consequences: It’s called “buckraking,” otherwise known as taking giant fees for speaking once you’ve left office.

There is a long-held tradition that public officials who accept ginormous fees for speaking engagements from industries connected to their work are both unethical and unseemly, and rules prohibit sitting lawmakers from cashing in. But hey, if you’ve left office, what the biggie? It’s difficult to determine exactly how the prospect of future payments may sway legislative outcomes for politicians, but it certainly makes you wonder. If you think that down the road you can get a big payout from, say, financial firms for looking kindly upon them in office, well, maybe that’s just what you’ll do.

In our current redux of the Gilded Age, any delicate concerns about impropriety are certainly not stopping politicial heavies. The A-list can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per speech, and many of them are cleverly setting up complicated, deliberately opaque corporate structures that enable them to hide how much money they’re taking in. Even lesser entities, like former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, can expect handsome payments. Gibbs has reportedly made a cool $2 million for talks since leaving his position in 2011.

The people on the following list are so hypnotized by Mammon that any sense of discretion, proportion, or protecting their legacy and reputation has been tossed out the window. Is their buckraking a form of legal bribery? You decide.

1. Bill Clinton: The former president is considered the grand champion of buckrakers, earning esteem among fellow speechifyers for his cleverness, deft maneuvering, and ability to haul in breathtaking sums. Rivals can only salivate when they hear that Bubbah, as Leslie Larson reported in the New York Daily News, recently got paid $500,000 in advance for a 45-minute speaking gig at the 90th birthday soiree for Israeli President Shimon Peres. That’s $11,000 per minute, Larson observed.

And even that windfall didn’t match the $750,000 payout he got from speaking to the Swedish-based telecom giant Ericsson in Hong Kong. Or the $700,000 he received from a newspaper publishing company in Lagos, Nigeria. As president, Clinton allowed Wall Street to run roughshod over the American public, and so it’s no surprise that business forums, big banks, and financial institutions clamor to return the favor by hiring him for lucrative speaking jobs, including Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros, Citigroup, and Deutsche Bank. Clinton has raked in an estimated $89 million in speaking fees since he left public office. We only know this because his wife’s position as a high-ranking federal official required him to disclose the dough.

2. Hillary Clinton: Taking a page from her husband’s playbook, the former Secretary of State has leapt onto the speaker circuit gravy train with such enthusiasm that the New York Times and the Washington Post just ran feature stories on her epic buckraking. As Amy Chozik of the Times reports, “For about $200,000, Mrs. Clinton will offer pithy reflections and Mitch Albom-style lessons from her time as the nation’s top diplomat. (‘Leadership is a team sport.’ ‘You can’t win if you don’t show up.’ ‘A whisper can be louder than a shout.’)”

Such pablum is worth high dollar to organizations like the American Society of Travel Agents and the National Association of Realtors, as well as to private equity managers and business honchos. Given the possibility of a 2016 presidential run, such blatant cashing in may have costs, but it looks like Clinton is betting that getting her message out to crowded auditoriums and taking in a king’s ransom to do so is worth it. She’s used her speech gigs to talk about immigration reform, foreign policy, healthcare, and other issues. Is it a conflict of interest? Not, as the Post points out, if you consider Clinton getting huge sums speaking to audiences with, oh, millions of dollars at stake in federal tax policies and such to be just another friendly chat.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

What has two arms, two legs and 28 hydraulically actuated joints? Its name is ATLAS, and it could be in charge of saving your life someday.

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is
always unveiling new gizmos and gadgets, but the latest effort
from DARPA is something that seems more out of a sci-fi movie
than a science lab. The Defense Department’s experimental unit is
looking to see what kind of robot it can develop to someday
provide humanitarian aid and disaster relief, and its outsourcing
that mission to scientists from the likes of MIT and other
prestigious institutions participating in its latest Virtual
Robotics Challenge (VRC).

When the VRC got underway last week, DARPA provided the six
competing teams with access to ATLAS, a 6-foot-2-inch, 330-pound
(1.8 m, 250 kg) robot that ideally will be able to enter disaster
areas someday and provide relief efforts in instances where
direct human involvement is impractical or impossible.

“During the first 24 hours [of Fukushima], there were several
opportunities for intervention to help make the disaster less
severe,” DARPA’s Dr. Gill Pratt told Ars Technica, “but
unfortunately, people could not go in to that zone because the
radiation was too high, and as a result, the disaster was worse
than it could have been.”

In order to see what solutions could exist in the event of
another nuclear disaster, this year’s VRC will ask scientists to
work through December 2013 at programing the ATLAS skeleton to
interact in the most efficient way possible. The builders behind
the robot’s body, Boston Dynamics, say ATLAS “is a high
mobility, humanoid robot designed to negotiate outdoor, rough
terrain” with the ability for bipedal locomotion and the
other perks that come with a few pairs of limbs.

“In extremely challenging terrain, ATLAS is strong and
coordinated enough to climb using hands and feet, to pick its way
through congested spaces,” Boston Dynamics said.

Boston Dynamics and DARPA have provided several copies of the
ATLAS robot to this year’s VRC competitors in hopes of seeing who
can put the best set of brains inside the hunk of metal.
Competitors this year include the Institute for Human and Machine
Cognition, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, TRACLabs Inc,
Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Virginia Tech and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“The Virtual Robotics Challenge was a proving ground for
teams’ ability to create software to control a robot in a
hypothetical scenario,” Dr. Pratt said in a statement issued
by DARPA. “Now these seven teams will see if their
simulation-honed algorithms can run a real machine in real
environments. And we expect all teams will be further refining
their algorithms, using both simulation and experimentation.”

In a video released by DARPA, so far ATLAS can walk briskly,
avoid obstacles, climb stairs and even withstand the force of a
mid-sized wrecking ball set to swing at its torso. After all, the
six teams will have to prove that their personally-programmed
ATLAS can withstand any event that a future army of robots might
have to endure if unleashed in the wild: for humanitarian
purposes, of course.

Republished with permission from: RT

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Jenny McCarthy, a former model and comedienne, is set to be the next co-host of ABC’s The View, a popular morning talk show with an all-woman cast. She is replacing Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who recently jumped ship to Fox News, cable’s longtime home of attractive women who specialize in reactionary sneering.

McCarthy certainly has a more pleasant, or at least less confrontational, television style. Really the only problem with hiring her is that her life’s mission at this point is the advancement of dangerous fictions about vaccines. She devotes a great deal of energy to promoting the untrue belief that vaccines lead to autism, and it seems possible that she now views her career as a television personality and prominent celebrity as a means of carrying out her mission to spread what she believes is the truth about autism.

Vaccines don’t cause autism. Vaccines, instead, prevent disease. Vaccines have wiped out a score of formerly deadly childhood diseases. Vaccine skepticism has helped to bring some of those diseases back from near extinction. Children have actually died as a result. Vaccine skepticism isn’t just some “alternative viewpoint” that is stupid but ultimately harmless, like “detoxing” or 9/11 Trutherism. Parents have been convinced by McCarthy and the people she works with and promotes. They have foregone vaccination for their children. The result has been the recurrence and spread of preventable diseases. It’s incredibly irresponsible for a broadcast television network to think Jenny McCarthy should be on television – in a position where her job is to share her opinions – every day. It should seriously be a major scandal.

The cynicism and contempt of this hiring is almost funny: In replacing the widely hated Hasselbeck with McCarthy, Walters and company didn’t select a new conservative, to maintain the panel’s political balance. They just went with someone who says dumb, inflammatory things. It’s basically a tacit admission that they were simply casting for “the pretty idiot one.” McCarthy ought to be insulted, if if weren’t for for the fact that she’s probably incredibly grateful to be on network TV at all, after flailing through a series of poorly conceived late-night cable talk show launches.

But McCarthy’s idiocy is of a very different, and much more damaging nature than the standard-issue right-wing idiocy of Elisabeth Hasselbeck. McCarthy is not expressing a disagreeable political position, she is spreading misinformation that has actual, tangible health risks. America’s public health authorities should be sounding the alarm. The American Medical Association and the surgeon general should be publicly calling on ABC to reverse its decision to hire McCarthy. They should have begun the campaign before the announcement was official.

Vaccine conspiracies, like so much modern cult conspiracy culture, perpetuates itself and lives on indefinitely thanks to the community-building and archiving of the Internet. With the help of some very prominent advocates, with huge audiences and a great deal of influence, it has spread far beyond the fringe. McCarthy has been one of the movement’s most prominent voices for years, and, infuriatingly, much of the media has treated her bullshit as weepy celebrity “awareness-raising” fare instead of crackpotted nonsense.

And some outlets have taken it much, much further. Here is Ms. McCarthy’s intact Huffington Post author’s page. It would be nice if, at some point, the Huffington Post actually retracted the various noxious vaccine conspiracies they used to print regularly in the quack-infested “Living” section. All of it, at the the moment, is still online, uncorrected, from this to this to this to this to all of this to this to this. I dunno, maybe a couple dozen editors’ notes are in order, for the sake of future Googling parents? Could someone at AOLstop scamming old people for a second and get on this?

Numerous people, including Time’s great TV critic James Poniewozik, have already written about the irresponsibility of the McCarthy hire. But infuriatingly the press’ false equivalency addiction has even infected coverage of whether or not vaccines cause autism, a debate featuring, on the one side, the entire medical establishment, and, on the other, one totally discredited doctor and a bunch of random non-experts, some of whom are famous for reasons unrelated to medicine or scientific literacy. Here’s USA Today reporting the news:

Not everybody shared Walters’ delight. McCarthy, who has embraced the controversial claim that vaccinations cause autism, has drawn the ire of pro-immunization advocacy groups.

“Controversial claim.” “Pro-immunization advocacy groups.” Another name for “pro-immunization advocacy groups” would be “the entire mainstream medical profession.” This is a perfect example of the sort of case the nonpartisan reporter should feel free to referee.

If you care about keeping misinformation – misinformation that could hurt or kill not just the children of people who intentionally don’t vaccinate but other children as well – from being transmitted to people everywhere in the country every weekday, you should probably write ABC a polite note expressing your dismay. You should also, and this may be more effective, contact your senator and member of Congress and urge them to publicly criticize this hire. Parents and pediatricians, especially, should be loudly complaining.

While this hire is a travesty, it is fitting, at least, that Barbara Walters is managing to cram one last crime against journalism into her career before she retires.

Related Stories

• Why Jenny McCarthy Is Too Dangerous for “The View”
• Zimmerman Trial and #ThatThirdHand

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

Republished with permission from: Global Research

An Afghan interpreter arrested on suspicion of torturing and murdering civilians has accused US Special Forces of ordering the atrocities, but denied personal responsibility.

Six weeks ago, Afghan authorities detained Zakeria Kandahari, a
translator who says he worked for US Special Forces for the past
nine years. Police claim Kandahari took part in the torture and
murder of Afghan civilians in Wardak Province. At least nine
corpses have been recovered in the region, one belonging to Sayid
Mohammed, a local resident who was last seen being taken into US
custody and whose body was found mutilated and footless.
Mohammed’s corpse was found in close proximity to the Nerk
Special Forces base in May.

In documents obtained by Reuters, Afghan investigators say that a
cell phone video shows Kandahari beating Mohammed, but the
detainee suggested that US Special Forces were responsible for
what happened next.

In the document summarizing an interrogation, Kandahari
identified three soldiers of the US Special Forces, which he
referred to as “Dave, chief of the operations, Hagen and
Chris.” He alleged that all three men are fluent in Dari and
Pashto and linked them to the killings. Kandahari admitted
beating one of the deceased victims, but claims no role in the
murder.

“I also kicked him several times while I was taking him to the
base,” Kandahari told interrogators. “I handed him over to
Mr. Dave and Mr. Hagen, but later I saw his body in a black body
bag.”

Wardak residents have long complained that US Special Forces had
been secretly abducting local men and boys and subjecting them to
interrogation, torture and sometimes death. The Karzai government
has never directly accused US forces of doing this, but ordered
them to leave Wardak Province in February. The US-led military
coalition in Afghanistan has denied involvement in the torture or
disappearances, but Kandahari’s interrogation has revealed new
details that may shed further light on the mystery.

“Kandahari rejects all allegations leveled to him and links
the three soldiers to the killings,” the interview document
said. The former translator claims he was low ranking and had no
access to the Special Forces’ interrogation rooms.

A senior spokesman for the US Special Forces on
Tuesday reaffirmed to Reuters that the US is not
responsible for the civilian deaths, and claims that the military
already investigated the matter.

“U.S. forces conducted several investigations which determined
there was no credible evidence to substantiate misconduct by ISAF
or U.S. forces,” the spokesperson said. “Having said that,
ISAF takes all allegations of detainee abuse seriously and we
will continue to cooperate with the Afghan government on this
matter.”

But tensions regarding the matter remain high, and the
government’s decision to bar US troops from Wardak means Taliban
insurgents have the potential to operate in the region, which is
close to the capital.

Kandahari fled the base in January after President Hamid Karzai
ordered his arrest.  Maj. Gen. Manan Farahi, head of
intelligence for the Afghan Defense Ministry, told reporters last
week that the abuses against Wardak residents continued after
Kandahari fled, suggesting that US troops were behind the torture
and killings.

“Everybody knows and you should know that Zakaria Kandahari
and these people with him were there with the Americans and were
working for the Americans,” Farahi said in early July.
“Whether they killed people on their own or were directed by
the Americans to kill people, it needs extensive investigation.
Now that Mr. Kandahari is in custody most of these things will
become clear.”

Republished with permission from: RT

The United Nations says the refugee crisis resulting from the Syrian conflict is the worst since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Å“We have not seen a refugee outflow escalate at such a frightening rate since the Rwandan genocide almost 20 years ago,” UN refugee chief, Antonio Guterres, said in a statement on Tuesday.

Å“This crisis has been going on for much longer than anyone feared with unbearable humanitarian consequences,” the statement added.

During the Rwandan genocide, which occurred from April to July 1994, over two million Rwandans mainly Tutsis left their country to flee mass executions of Hutus.

Nearly 1.8 million Syrians have been registered in countries around Syria. The number however excludes the Syrians who had been displaced inside their country.

Guterres and the UN humanitarian chief, Valerie Amos, have appealed to the UN Security Council for international action in the face of the huge influx of Syrians escaping the violence.

The largest numbers of refugees are sheltered in often squalid camps across Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt.

UN figures show that more than four million Syrians have been internally displaced since the beginning of the unrest more than two years ago.

Syria crisis began in March 2011. Many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security forces, have been killed in the foreign-sponsored militancy.

The Syrian government says the West and its regional allies – especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey – are supporting the militants.

MAM/PR/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

ËœBritish govt. tax policy widens poor-rich gapâ„¢: report

Republished with permission from: Press TV

President Barack Obama laughs during a meeting with, from left, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Mona Sutphen, White House Counsel Bob Bauer, and Director of the Office of Health Reform Nancy-Ann DeParle in the Oval Office (Pete Souza / AP file )A DeSmogBlog investigation reveals that Robert Bauer, former White House Counsel and President Barack Obama’s personal attorney, works at the corporate law firm Perkins Coie LLP, which does legal work for TransCanada’s South Central LNG Project, formerly known as Alaska Gas Pipeline Project.

Furthermore, Dan Sullivan, current Commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Natural Resources, and former Alaska Attorney General and former Assistant Secretary of State in the Bush Administration, is a former Perkins attorney. 

These findings come in the immediate aftermath of a recent investigation revealing the contractor hired by Obama’s U.S. State Department to do the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the northern half of TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands export pipeline – Environmental Resources Management, Inc. (ERM Group) – lied on its June 2012 conflict-of interest filing. ERM Group checked the box on the form saying it had no current business ties to TransCanada.

In fact, ERM – a member of the American Petroleum Institute (API), which has spent over $22 million lobbying on tar sands and Keystone XL since 2008 – does maintain business ties to TransCanada, the investigation revealed. This includes an ongoing consulting relationship with South Central LNG, co-owned by TransCanada, ExxonMobil, BP and ConocoPhillips.

Under 18 USC § 1001, making a “materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation…[to the] executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States” is a crime punishable by up to five years in jail. 

On top of his job at Perkins Coie, Bauer – a well-known architect of bending campaign finance law to allow more corporate money to flood into electoral races – served as general counsel to President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. He also serves as general counsel to the Democratic National Committee and did electoral law work for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. 

His wife, Anita Dunn is the co-owner of SDKnickerbocker, former Obama Communications Director, senior advisor for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign and is the former communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee under then-Senator Kerry. She’s met with top Obama administration officials more than 100 times since leaving in 2009, according to a recent New York Times investigation. 

Dunn currently does public relations work on behalf of TransCanada and freight rail industry lobbying group, American Association of Railroads (AAR). The tar sands pipeline boom comes alongside a freight rail boom to carry tar sands crude and fracked oil from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale.

“ERM lied on its conflict of interest disclosure form, and State was either asleep at the wheel or chose to look the other way,” FOE’s Ross Hammond told The Washington Post in a recent piece commenting on ERM’s “Pinocchio moment.”

Given the myriad ties that bind, “looking the other way” appears more plausible. 

Perkins Coie’s Legal Bidding for Democrats, TransCanada AK Gas Pipeline Project

“Beltway insiders may yawn at the fact that TransCanada has hired people so close to President Obama and Secretary Kerry to push their dirty and dangerous pipeline, but ordinary Americans know a rat when they smell one.”

Perkins Coie is a global firm with 19 offices worldwide and maintains close ties to the Democratic Party above and beyond Bob Bauer. 

Bauer’s colleague Mark Ellis, for example, does legal work on behalf of the “Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors Associations and numerous U.S. senators and representatives and their campaigns,” according to his Perkins Coie biography.

The Oil and Gas legal work portion of Perkins’ website highlights its legal work in Alaska.

“In Alaska, our lawyers have long represented leading oil and gas companies on the North Slope and the Cook Inlet…We are extensively involved in efforts to develop the Point Thomson field and commercialize Alaska’s natural gas resources with a pipeline to Lower 48 markets.” 

The “efforts to…commercialize Alaska’s natural gas resources with a pipeline to Lower 48 markets” that Perkins’ website refers to is the South Central LNG Project co-owned by TransCanada.

A map on the original Alaska Gas Pipeline Project website depicts the route:

“The project is designed to connect Alaska’s North Slope natural gas resources to new markets and deliver a reliable and secure source of clean burning energy for decades to come,” explain TransCanada and ExxonMobil on the original Alaska Gas Pipeline Project website. “TransCanada and ExxonMobil have the expertise, experience, and financial capability to develop what would be one of the largest privately funded energy projects in the history of North America.”

Before providing legal aide to South Central LNG, Perkins helped the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) – co-owned by Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, BP, ConocoPhillips and Chevron and often referred to as the Alyeska Pipeline – get up and running. TAPS takes oil from the Alaska North Slope to the Valdez Marine Terminal, home of the Exxon Valdez spill. 

Perkins’ legal aide, in fact, made TAPS a reality according to an interview appearing online with Perkins’ veteran attorney Guy Martin. Martin was instrumental in opening Perkins’ office focusing on Alaska in Washington DC. 

“I actually took a little, first-floor townhouse on Capitol Hill, and opened what was really a two- or three-person office. It was the first state office, and we worked pretty much exclusively on the pipeline,” said Martin. “The Trans-Alaska Pipeline Act was passed as the direct result of the passing of the Settlement Act.” 

Perkins Coie attorney L. John Iani – former Region 10 (which includes Alaska) Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator from 2001-2004 under President George W. Bush – also formerly lobbied for the Alaska Gas Pipeline Project working for TransCanada from 2005-2008, Congressional lobbying disclosure records show. He did so while working for Van Ness Feldman from 2004-2010, a firm that today lobbies on behalf of TransCanada’s Keystone XL. 

Perkins still does legal work on behalf of TAPS and defended it in the 2010 case Alyeska Pipeline Service Company v. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. 

AK DNR Run by Former Perkins Attorney 

Alaska Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Commissioner Dan Sullivan formerly worked at Perkins Coie from 1996-2006. 

His task as head of Alaska’s DNR, by law, is to serve as an oil and gas industry watchdog. As such, he will aid in overseeing whether South Central LNG becomes a reality. Sullivan – it’s important to remember – was named Attorney General by former Alaska Republican Gov. Sarah Palin of “drill baby, drill” fame in June 2009.

Prior to his appointment as Attorney General, Dan Sullivan served as Assistant Secretary of State during the Bush administration, reporting to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Sullivan’s full title was Assistant Secretary for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs. Wikileaks diplomatic cables reveal that while at the State Department, Sullivan helped negotiate oil and gas deals with Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Norway, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and France.  

It was also under Bush and during Sullivan’s time at the State Department that the original TransCanada Keystone tar sands pipeline was approved in March 2008. Three months later, in June 2008, TransCanada proposed Keystone XL to the State Department. 

In March 2012, President Obama issued an Executive Order to expedite the building of Keystone XL’s southern half from Cushing, OK to Port Arthur, TX. It is the northern, border-crossing half whose final destiny is now in the hands of President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry.

“Americans Know a Rat When They Smell One” 

Anita Dunn will likely be working overtime in the coming weeks and months using her insider/outsider status to ensure its approval on behalf of the client she shares with her husband Bob Bauer’s law firm, TransCanada. 

“Only in the ethically-challenged world of K Street lobbyists could it be considered OK for a power couple like Dunn & Bauer to exploit their White House connections to promote the interests of a foreign corporation like TransCanada,” Hammond told DeSmogBlog in an interview.

“Beltway insiders may yawn at the fact that TransCanada has hired people so close to President Obama and Secretary Kerry to push their dirty and dangerous pipeline, but ordinary Americans know a rat when they smell one.”

© 2013 DeSmogBlog.com

Republished with permission from: Common Dreams

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Republished with permission from: Common Dreams

The nationwide demonstrations that followed Saturday’s “not guilty” verdict in the Sanford, Florida, trial of George Zimmerman featured placards that read, “Zimmerman: The people say guilty.” Never mind the trial, never mind the jury, it’s what “the people” think – or feel – that matters. The zealots of the French Revolution would have handled the case differently, one might imagine, executing the will of “the people” by marching Zimmerman directly to the guillotine. That would likely have been an outcome pleasing as well to America’s young “revolutionaries” of a few decades ago, crying out for “Power to the people!” Sometimes the world still seems stuck in 1968.

The “verdict” of people in the street is one thing. But when someone found not guilty by a jury in a court of law is pronounced guilty by the editorial board of the prestigious New York Times, it becomes a little harder to ignore. To be sure, America’s “newspaper of record” did not exactly say in its Monday morning editorial that Zimmerman was “guilty” of either murder or manslaughter in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. But the concluding paragraph constitutes, if not a conviction, then at least an indictment of Zimmerman – and his gun.

In the end, what is most frightening is that there are so many people with guns who are like George Zimmerman. Fear and racism may never be fully eliminated by legislative or judicial order, but neither should our laws allow and even facilitate their most deadly expression. Trayvon Martin was an unarmed boy walking home from the convenience store. If only Florida could give him back his life as easily as it is giving back George Zimmerman’s gun.

Perhaps, then, a sliver of a silver lining in the dark cloud over Trayvon Martin’s death may be found in the fact that it has given high-minded editorial writers another opportunity to publish their opposition to “fear and racism.” There was no doubt fear on the part of both parties when Zimmerman and Martin confronted one another on a dark street on the night of the shooting. There is a good deal less certainty about the claim of racism. What is conspicuous is the lack of evidence of it. Surely, if the prosecutors could have uncovered any evidence of racism by Zimmerman, it would have been a part, and a highly publicized part, of the case they presented in court.

Attorney General Eric Holder has confirmed that the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the possibility of prosecuting Zimmerman for civil rights violations. To do so successfully, the federal lawyers will have to overcome what Fox News has politely called “evidence hurdles.” According to a McClatchy news report, the FBI has already interviewed dozens of people for evidence of racial bias on Zimmerman’s part and has come up empty. Sanford police detective Chris Serino told FBI agents last year that he considered Zimmerman as having “a little hero complex, but not as a racist,” Fox News reported.

The Times is not, of course, the only news medium to try to make the facts of the Zimmerman case fit the preordained conclusion of racism. USA Today columnist Rem Rieder has pointed out ways in which major segments of the nation’s news media “got [the] Zimmerman case wrong from the start.” One example is the editing by NBC News of Martin’s “911” call to the police to make it sound as though the neighborhood watch captain’s reason for suspecting Martin might be a criminal intruder was because he was black. In fact, he only mentioned the teenager’s race when asked about it by the police dispatcher.

Attorney General Holder also implied a racial motive for the shooting when he spoke of the need to address “underlying attitudes, mistaken beliefs and stereotypes that serve as the basis for these too common incidents.” Evidence that Holder has already determined the outcome of the Justice Department’s investigation may also be seen in his reference to the “tragic, unnecessary shooting death” of Trayvon Martin. Unnecessary? Zimmerman’s lawyers argued it was a case of self-defense and the jury, with its “not guilty” verdict, registered its unanimous agreement. An act of self-defense is, by definition, one that is necessary to defend one’s one life and limb.

It is possible, of course, that Holder had in mind the “unnecessary” following of Martin by Zimmerman, leading to the deadly confrontation. But merely following someone is not a crime, a point one of Zimmerman’s attorneys wanted to point out to the jury, but was prevented by the judge from doing so.

Finally, there is the rhetorical question, posed by columnists in the Times and elsewhere, of how the case might have turned out if the racial roles had been reversed – if the shooter had been a black man and the victim an unarmed white teenager. The argument is that white jurors would in that case have voted to convict the gunman. But sadly, neither black-on-white nor white-on-black killings are rare events in America. Chances are that if Zimmerman had been black and Martin white, most of the nation never would have heard of the shooting. It would have been a local story and one not all that unusual. And there would be no investigation by a federal Department of Justice into the feasibility of charging the shooter with a “hate crime” and a violation of civil rights.

That’s another way of looking at the absence of the “equal protection of the laws,” guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Republished with permission from: The New American

People gather at a mosque targeted by bomber in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on June 21, 2013.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, says the P5+1 group of world powers hopes to resume negotiations with Iran over its nuclear energy program “as soon as possible.”

“We very much hope that will be soon and we look forward to meeting with them as soon as possible,” Ashton said in a statement on Tuesday after meeting with top officials from the P5+1 — United States, Russia, China, France, and Britain plus Germany — in Brussels to discuss the blocâ„¢s future talks with Iran.

She said the P5+1 group was waiting for Iran to nominate a negotiating team after the victory of Hassan Rohani as the countryâ„¢s new president. Rohani takes office on August 3.

Iran and the P5+1 have held several rounds of talks on a range of issues, with the main focus being on Tehranâ„¢s nuclear energy program.

The latest round of negotiations between the two sides was held in Istanbul, Turkey, on May 16. Two earlier meetings had been also held in the Kazakh city of Almaty on April 5-6 and February 26-27.

On Monday, Russian Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations Pyotr Ilyichov and China’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Wang Min called for the resumption of Iran-P5+1 talks as soon as possible.

The US, Israel, and some of their allies have repeatedly accused Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.

Tehran has categorically rejected the accusation, arguing that as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it is entitled to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

Meanwhile, numerous inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities by the IAEA have never found any evidence showing that the Iranian nuclear energy program has been diverted toward non-civilian purposes.

SF/KA/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

irishtimes.com
July 16, 2013

The trial of former Goldman Sachs bond trader Fabrice Tourre was about “Wall Street greed,” a lawyer for the US Securities and Exchange Commission said as the trial began yesterday.

The SEC accuses Mr Tourre of misleading investors in a mortgage investment calledAbacus 2007-AC1 by not telling them that a hedge fund was involved in selecting the underlying assets and betting against it.

Matthew Martens, a lawyer for the SEC, told the jury the deal Mr Tourre put together was “secretly designed to maximize the potential it would fail” to the benefit of the hedge fund, which made about $1 billion.

“In the end, Wall Street greed drove Mr Tourre to lie and deceive,” Mr Martens said.

But Pamela Chepiga, a lawyer for Mr Tourre, countered that the SEC was trying to turn her client into a “scapegoat.”

“This is not a case about whether you approve or disapprove of Wall Street,” she said.

The trial, scheduled to last three weeks, stems from a lawsuit the SEC filed against Goldman Sachs and Mr Tourre in 2010.

Mr Tourre, who is no longer with Goldman and is earning a doctorate in economics at the University of Chicago, is on trial alone after Goldman agreed to pay a $550 million settlement in July 2010.

Mr Tourre, wearing a black suit and orange tie, sat with his counsel as the lawyers made their opening arguments. He did not speak during yesterday’s proceedings, although he is expected to testify later in the trial.

The SEC contends Mr Tourre, at the time a vice president at Goldman, failed to disclose that Paulson & Company , the hedge fund run by billionaire John Paulson, was involved in picking mortgage securities tied to the Abacus investment and that it was also shorting, or betting against, it.

Mr Martens said Mr Tourre, the principal Goldman employee involved in the Abacus deal, had a duty to be truthful with investors. Instead, he hid “critical information” in order to get them to buy in.

Mr Tourre also misled ACA Capital Holdings , a third-party firm ostensibly brought in to select the securities included in the CDO, into believing that Paulson was an equity investor in Abacus rather than taking a short position, Mr Martens said.

The SEC contends ACA would not have participated had it known Paulson was betting against the investment. A different firm decided not to participate as ACA’s portfolio selection agent when Mr Tourre told it Paulson was going short, Mr Martens said.

“His solution was trickery and half-truths,” he said. “His solution was securities fraud.”

Mr Martens also displayed a much-cited email sent on January 23rd, 2007, by Mr Tourre to his girlfriend at the time, saying of the financial markets that the “whole building is about to collapse anytime now.”

“Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab … standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstruosities!!!” the email said.

Investors lost more than $1 billion after almost all the securities tied to the transaction were downgraded, the SEC says. Paulson earned about the same amount thanks to his bet, the SEC says.

Goldman made $15 million in fees on the deal, Mr Martens said.

As part of training in anti-bullying tactics, educators in New Jersey are learning police interrogation techniques, NJ Spotlight reports.Bullying behavior at a school playground. (Photo: Thomas Ricker/cc/flickr)

Hundreds of teachers and administrators–most of whom were designated as anti-bullying specialists at their schools–took part in training sessions this spring, with similar sessions slated for the fall.

Some of the training sounded innocuous:

Lengthy PowerPoint presentations offered tips on how to talk with students of all ages and how to interpret their words and body language. There was also step-by-step guidance on how to interpret the state’s new bullying law and what classifies a fight between two kids as a potential bullying incident.

But, NJ Spotlight reports, the attendees were also “getting lessons in police interrogation techniques.” An outside expert included a New Jersey State Police sergeant, and there were sessions

that included detailed investigation and “interview” techniques. (One suggestion: never use the word “interrogation.”)

“There are certain investigative techniques that are useful that a counselor or even an administrator may never have learned,” said David Nash, coordinator for LEGAL ONE, which conducted the trainings along with the state Department of Education.

________________________

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Republished with permission from: Common Dreams

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Egypt’s interim President Adly Mansour (C) and the newly sworn-in interim cabinet pose for a group photo on July 16, 2013.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

The recent disclosures made by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden have generated commotion in Congress and the White House alike. Will the United States judicial branch be next to weigh in with what could be the most colossal response yet?

The Department of Justice has asked for the 30-year-old former
Booz Allen Hamilton worker to be extradited to the US to face
charges of espionage, and members of both the House and Senate
have already held their share of emergency hearings in the wake
of Snowden’s series of disclosures detailing the vast
surveillance programs waged by the US in utmost secrecy. But with
the executive and legislative branches left worrying about how to
handle the source of the leaks – and if the policies publicized
should have existed in the first place – the courts could soon
settle some disputes that stand to shape the way the US conducts
surveillance of its own citizens.

Both longstanding arguments and just-filed claims have garnered
the attention of the judicial branch in the weeks since the
Guardian newspaper first began publishing leaked NSA documents
attributed to Snowden on June 6. But while the courts have relied
previously on stalling or stifling cases that challenge Uncle
Sam’s spy efforts, civil liberties experts say the time may be
near for some highly anticipated arguments to finally be heard.

Cindy Cohn, the legal director of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, told the Washington Post that the NSA leaks credited
to Snowden have been a “tremendous boon” to the plaintiffs
in recently filed court cases challenging the surveillance state.
The courts are currently pondering at least five important cases,
Cohn told the Post, which could for once and for all bring some
other issues up for discussion.

Since June 6, the American Civil Liberties Union, a Verizon Wireless
customer and the founder of conservative group Judicial Watch
have all filed federal lawsuits against the government’s
collection of telephony metadata, a practice that puts basic call
records into the government’s hands without a specific warrant
ever required and reported to the media by Mr. Snowden. Larry
Klayman of Judicial Watch has also sued over another revelation
made by Snowden – the PRISM Internet eavesdropping program – and
the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, has asked the
Supreme Court to vacate the order compelling Verizon Business Network
Services to send metadata to the feds.

Perhaps most important, however, is a California federal court’s
recent decision to shutdown the government’s request to stop the
case of Jewel vs. NSA from proceeding. That debate first
began in 2008 when Jewel, a former AT&T customer, challenged
the government’s “illegal and unconstitutional program of
dragnet communications surveillance” as exposed by a
whistleblower at the telecom company. That case has seen
roadblock after roadblock during the last five years, but all
that changed earlier this month. The government long argued
that Jewel v. NSA can’t go up for discussion because the
issues at hand are privileged as ‘state secrets’ and can’t be
brought into the public realm.

“[T]he disclosure of sensitive intelligence sources and
methods . . . reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally
grave harm to national security,” the government wrote in one
earlier filing. “The very purpose of these
cases is to put at issue whether the NSA undertook certain
alleged activities under presidential authorization after 9/11,
and whether those activities continue today. At every stage, from
standing to the merits, highly classified and properly privileged
intelligence sources and methods are at risk of disclosure. The
law is clear, however, that where litigation risks or requires
the disclosure of information that reasonably could be expected
to harm national security, dismissal is required.”

Following Snowden’s recent disclosures, though, Judge Jeffrey
White of the Northern District of California ruled on July 8 that
there’s a way for those cases to still be heard.

“The court rightly found that the traditional legal system can
determine the legality of the mass, dragnet surveillance of
innocent Americans and rejected the government’s invocation of
the state secrets privilege to have the case dismissed,” the
EFF’s Cohn, who is working on the case, said in a statement
issued at the time of the ruling. “Over the last month, we
came face-to-face with new details of mass, untargeted collection
of phone and Internet records, substantially confirmed by the
Director of National Intelligence. Today’s decision sets the
stage for finally getting a ruling that can stop the dragnet
surveillance and restore Americans’ constitutional rights.”

Weighing in weeks later to the Post, Cohn said that outcome could
have more of an impact than many might imagine. “It’s
tremendous, because anything that allows these cases to proceed
is important,” she said.

Speaking to the New York Times this week, American Civil
Liberties Union attorney Jameel Jaffer said that until now the
government has operated a “shell game” to shield it’s
surveillance programs from litigation. “[T]he statute has been
shielded from judicial review, and controversial and far-reaching
surveillance authorities have been placed beyond the reach of the
Constitution,” he said.

Should Cohn’s prediction come true, though, the courts could
decide to weigh in and reshape the way the government currently
conducts surveillance.

According to University of Pittsburgh law professor Jules Lobel,
a victory there could come in more than one way. “There is a
broader function to these lawsuits than simply winning in
court,” he told the Post. “The government has to respond,
and forcing them to go before a court might make them want to
change aspects of the programs.”

“The government does things to avoid embarrassment,’’ he
added, “and lawsuits are a key pressure point.’’

Interviews to the Post and the Times come just days after Sen.
Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), a long-time member of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, said he thought the revelations made by Snowden may
influence the White House to reconsider their surveillance
practices before the courts can even have their chance.

“I have a feeling that the administration is getting concerned
about the bulk phone records collection, and that they are
thinking about whether to move administratively to stop it,”
Sen. Wyden told the Times.

“I think we are making a comeback,” he said.

Republished with permission from: RT

A collection of calligraphy works and Qurâ„¢anic art pieces created by Iranian calligraphy masters are to be auctioned at the capital city of Tehran.

The event will be the second auction of calligraphy works after the first edition held last year, the director of the auction Mohammad Reza Kamarei announced.

Mohammad Ehsai, Yadollah Kaboli, Mojtaba Sabzeh, Ali Ganji, Elaheh Khatami, Rasoul Moradi, Azim Fallah, Mojtaba Karami, Hossein Salehi and Gholam Hossein Amirkhani are among the artists whose works will be represented at the event.

The auction is also to host a poster created by the late giant of Iranian graphic art Morteza Momayyez. The poster depicts an image inspired by Qurâ„¢anic stories.

The last yearâ„¢s top-priced work belonged to Jalil Rasouliâ„¢s calligraphic painting titled Bismillah Bird.

Bismillah Bird features a bird-shaped calligraphy of Bismillah in oil and acrylics on two plates of gold in size of 2X2 meters.

Iran as one of the leading countries in art of calligraphy has held various international exhibitions during recent years. Many eminent Iranian calligraphers have been also honored in a number of international competitions so far.

The second auction of Iranian calligraphy works is scheduled to take place in early August.

FGP/FGP

Republished with permission from: Press TV

A British court has described a woman at the centre of a $20m London property fraud case as a prostitute pretending to be a Saudi Arabian princess, who had been borrowing millions of dollars from UK banks to fund her lifestyle.

Sara Al Amoudi claims to be the daughter of Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi, a Saudi businessman who was ranked the 63rd richest man in the world by Forbes in 2011 and is estimated to have a wealth of around $12.3bn.

She arrived at the London High Court last week in a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce with an ËœHRHâ„¢ number plate and accompanied by three bodyguards.

Sara Al Amoudi is accused by London property developers Amanda Clutterbuck and Ian Paton of being a fraud after they transferred six luxury London apartments worth £14m ($20.8m) into her name as part of a larger property deal which they believed would be funded by the Al Amoudi family.

Funds for the larger deal failed to materialise and Clutterbuck and Paton claimed the 30-year old woman refused to return ownership of the six apartments, which are based in up-market London areas such as Knightsbridge and Belgravia, the court was told.

Å“I thought I was living through an Alfred Hitchcock film, in which reality seemed to be totally distorted. Mr Nichol had drunkenly admitted that the so-called Saudi Arabian Ëœprincessesâ„¢ were in fact prostitutes,” Clutterbuck told the court, before claiming Al Amoudi and her sister allegedly worked as prostitutes at a £750,000 flat hear the Harrods department store.

Å“By deploying her fraudulent misrepresentations, she persuaded them to transfer the properties to her at nominal cost. The only money she paid for the properties was in fact the costs of redeeming existing mortgages and charges on them which she largely funded with the monies she had already fraudulently obtained from HSBC Bank by representing herself to be someone she was not – the daughter of Sheikh Mohammed

Hussein al Amoudi,” Stuart Cakebread, the legal representative for Clutterbuck and Paton, was quoted as saying in court by the Daily Telegraph.

“The promised funding from Miss Al Amoudi never materialised. She now refuses to transfer the titles to the properties back to Miss Clutterbuck and Mr Paton. Their case is that she is a fraud who lied to them [and] to banks in order to obtain loans, money [and] property. The identity of Ms Al Amoudi is a key issue in this action,” he added.

Lawyers representing Sheikh Al Amoudi told the Telegraph: Å“This woman is not our client’s daughter.”

Representatives for Al Amoudi claimed she was receiving a weekly allowance of £100,000, which was delivered to London from Saudi Arabia each week in a suitcase and Paton was hired to manage these funds.

She denied she planned to enter into a joint venture with the couple and said the six properties were bought with funds being managed by Paton.

A report by the Daily Mail said Al Amoudi had borrowed £4m from HSBC and a statement from Barclays bank alleged she had £165m in her bank account.

Dubbed ËœThe Vamp in the Veilâ„¢ by the British media, Al Amoudi claimed to have dated footballer Freddie Ljungberg and actors Colin Farrell and Joaquin Phoenix and previously appeared in court in 2010 when her ex-boyfriend, Swedish model Patrick Ribbsaeter, was cleared of assaulting her chauffeur.

The case continues and Al Amoudi is set to give evidence in the coming days.

MOL/HE

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Dissident Tajik journalist Dadajan Ataollah has been arrested upon his arrival in Sheremetyevo International Airport in the Russian capital, Moscow.

Ataollah was arrested by the Russian police on Monday when he was stepping off the Prague-Moscow flight on Monday, July 15, according to one of his friends.

Details of his arrest still remain unclear, but analysts says his detention might be linked to releasing a series of programs and videos on K+ satellite television channel and internet social networks to criticize Tajik officials.

This is not the first time that Ataollah is arrested in Russia. He was detained briefly in Moscow in 2001.

The dissident journalist escaped an assassination attempt in 2012 and was subsequently hospitalized in Moscow. No arrest has been made in connection with the attempt on his life.

Ataollah, who says he has won political asylum from a European country, has said that Tajik officials cannot ask the Russian government to extradite him.

SF/KA/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

July 16, 2013
 |

Documents released by a Maryland county’s sheriff department reveal that an aide to a man with down syndrome who died at the hands of police warned law enforcement officials about his condition.

The Associated Press reports that 18-year-old Robert Ethan Saylor was sitting in a movie theater in Frederick, Maryland in January. He had watched “Zero Dark Thirty” with his aide, who is unnamed in the documents. But the man with down syndrome wanted to watch the movie again. Saylor was acting violent outside the theater and insisted on going back in, and he did. But a manager told Saylor’s aide that he could not be in the theater without a ticket. So three off-duty police officers who were working as security guards near the theater were called in to help.

“I explained, ‘Yes, we are having a little issue, I’ll handle it. We just have to be patient,’” said the aide. “Then a sheriff came and said, ‘Another show is starting. I have to go get him out.’ I explained Ethan is (sic) Down syndrome.” The aide added that if the police touched Saylor, he would “freak out.”

Saylor was cursing at the officers, and the off-duty cops threatened to arrest him. Saylor began to flail and call for his mother, and the police then attempted to restrain Saylor. All four of them fell on a ramp, and the three officers placed three sets of handcuffs on Saylor. Then, he went quiet and was unresponsive, and the officers did CPR on him after removing the handcuffs. One witness said one cop had a knee on Saylor’s back, but nobody said the police touched Saylor’s neck.

Whatever the case, Saylor died as a result of asphyxia, and there was damage to his larynx. But a grand jury determined that no charges against the officers will be forthcoming, according to the AP.

The heartbreak for the Saylor family didn’t end there, though. They had to wait several months for the evidence presented to the jury to be released. The police delayed the release of the documents recently released until an internal affairs investigation was completed. “This matter has been investigated thoroughly,” said Daniel Karp, an attorney for the sheriff’s office. “It’s obviously a tragic and unfortunate incident, but the deputies did nothing wrong.”

The Saylor family and advocacy groups met with the Justice Department in the months after Robert’s death, and called on Maryland to open an independent investigation. The family’s lawyer say they are exploring the possibility of filing a civil suit.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

File photo shows Tehran Oil Refinery.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Foreign-sponsored militants load a mortar in the Sidi Meqdad suburb of Damascus. (File photo)

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Even though government minister, and occupation denier, Naftali Bennett has claimed that talk of boycotts against Israel is absurd, it seems other officials in Israel are in fact worried and there is growing “concern” over the possibility of an international economic boycott of Israel.

Investment committees for European banks are considering recommending their institutions bar loans to Israeli companies that have economic links with the Palestinian occupied territories. Check that wording, “economic links” – this ensnares many more businesses than those directly operating within the territories.Last week, Haaretz reporter Yossi Verter referenced this as “ the mother of all fears” a “nightmare scenario” and warned of an “economic tsunami”.

Bluntly titled “Danger ahead: an Israel boycott“, today’s Haaretz editorial does not mince words:

In Friday’s Haaretz, Yossi Verter reported that the relevant government ministries had recently received disturbing news. Major banks in Europe with operations around the world have been exploring the possibility of barring loans to Israeli companies that have a business or economic link with the occupied territories. According to the information received, these banks’ investment committees have been considering recommending barring their institutions from providing loans, or any other assistance, to Israeli companies that manufacture, build or conduct commerce in the territories, or to banks that provide mortgage lending or loans to builders or buyers of housing in the territories.

Although the recommendations have been rejected for the time being − after an Israeli lobbying campaign that came against the backdrop of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s diplomatic initiative in the region − the proposal will continue to hover over Israel.

The magnitude of the danger this poses to the Israeli economy is hard to overstate. A European economic boycott of those with any connection to the occupied territories would be very broad. And Livni is warning that it would spread way beyond that. Even at this point, the worldwide Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement ‏(BDS‏) has chalked up a not-inconsiderable number of achievements.

As a result, Israel is facing its moment of truth. Is it prepared to pay a steep economic price for its continued occupation of the West Bank and for its diplomatic inaction? Is it ready to pay the price of the government’s refusal to work for the establishment of a Palestinian state, to which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed back in 2009, with the economic implications that such a boycott entails?

And yesterday Gideon Levy endorsed the BDS campaign. From his article, “The Israeli patriot’s final refuge: boycott“:

We have considered the alternatives. A boycott is the least of all evils, and it could produce historic benefits. It is the least violent of the options and the one least likely to result in bloodshed. It would be painful like the others, but the others would be worse.

On the assumption that the current status quo cannot continue forever, it is the most reasonable option to convince Israel to change. Its effectiveness has already been proven. More and more Israelis have become concerned recently about the threat of the boycott. When Justice Minister Tzipi Livni warns about it spreading and calls as a result for the diplomatic deadlock to be broken, she provides proof of the need for a boycott. She and others are therefore joining the boycott, divestment and sanction movement. Welcome to the club.

The change won’t come from within. That has been clear for a long time. As long as Israelis don’t pay a price for the occupation, or at least don’t make the connection between cause and effect, they have no incentive to bring it to an end…… As long as the arrogance and self-victimization continue among the Chosen People, the most chosen in the world, always the only victim, the world’s explicit stance won’t change a thing.

……..

Change will only come from the outside…….The distinction between products from the occupation and Israeli products is an artificial creation. It’s not the settlers who are the primary culprits but rather those who cultivate their existence. All of Israel is immersed in the settlement enterprise, so all of Israel must take responsibility for it and pay the price for it. There is no one unaffected by the occupation, including those who fancy looking the other way and steering clear of it. We are all settlers.

……

And it can happen here too. Israel’s economy will not withstand a boycott. It is true that at the beginning it will enhance the sense of victimhood, isolationism and nationalism, but not in the long run. It could result in a major change in attitude. When the business community approaches the government, the government will listen and also perhaps act. When the damage is to every citizen’s pocketbook, more Israelis will ask themselves, maybe for the first time, what it’s all about and why it’s happening.

It’s difficult and painful, almost impossibly so, for an Israeli who has lived his whole life here, who has not boycotted it, who has never considered emigrating and feels connected to this country with all his being, to call for such a boycott. I have never done so. I have understood what motivated the boycott and was able to provide justification for such motives. But I never preached for others to take such a step. However, with Israel getting itself into another round of deep stalemate, both diplomatic and ideological, the call for a boycott is required as the last refuge of a patriot.

Republished with permission from: Global Research

Sounding more like a free-market economist than the thoroughly establishment analyst that he is, Blake Clayton, writing for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in a paper published last week, built a carefully crafted case for the elimination of all federal controls on exporting crude oil. Clayton, who received two master’s degrees from the University of Chicago and Cambridge University along with a doctorate from Oxford, was blunt: “Federal lawmakers should overturn the ban on exporting crude oil produced in the United States.” He noted:

Removing all proscriptions on crude oil exports, except in extraordinary circumstances, will strengthen the U.S. economy and promote the efficient development of the country’s energy sector.

He’s referring to the 34-year-old ban on crude oil exports enacted during the 1970s, which reflected concerns about energy independence in light of the Arab oil embargo that led to high gasoline prices, shortages, and long waiting lines at gas stations. The series of enactments which began with the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, which was followed by the Export Administration Act of 1979. These acts have morphed into rules that are now referred to as “short supply controls,” and have placed the final decision on the licensing of crude oil exports in the hands of the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), a department buried deep inside the Commerce Department. According to those rules, the BIS

will review … applications to export crude oil on a case-by-case basis and … will approve such applications if BIS determines that the proposed export is consistent with the national interest.

This is important to know, according to Clayton, because such a bottleneck, manned by unknown bureaucrats with little accountability deep in the bowels of a huge government agency, makes it nearly impossible for potential exporters to ship excess crude oil overseas. And as the United States continues to expand its ability to produce new supplies of crude, it will increasingly need to find foreign buyers. With the present cap in place, however, incentives to continue to explore and expand the country’s potential oil shale resources will be dampened and diminished severely in the next couple of years. In a word, the bureaucracy could end the oil boom single-handedly.

Clayton explains:

Restrictions on crude oil exports are already beginning to undermine the efficiency of the U.S. oil economy. Much of the country’s rapidly growing production of light crude oil … comes from either areas where refiners are not interested in or able to process it, given that many U.S. refineries are configured to run lower-quality crude oil, or in parts of the country with inadequate transportation infrastructure. With few viable domestic buyers, producers are forced to choose between leaving oil in the ground and pumping it at depressed prices.…

Today’s export restrictions run the risk of dampening U.S. crude oil production over time.…

Letting drillers reap extra profits from selling crude oil overseas, if the market dictates, would provide greater incentives for drilling, stimulating new supply. It would also encourage investment in oil and gas production in the United States rather than abroad. In oil-producing regions, more workers would be hired for oil exploration and production, as well as for local service industries. Greater policy certainty regarding exports would also catalyze the expansion of U.S. energy infrastructure.…

Without compelling reasons for continuing to restrict crude exports, and given the potential benefits, Congress should liberalize the crude oil export regime.

This change in policy prescription was presented in February by Maria van der Hoeven, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, an autonomous intergovernmental organization established in 1974 to advise its members about imbalances in supply and demand and to recommend policy changes to rectify them. Writing in the Financial Times, van der Hoeven said that this bottleneck “could threaten the economic viability of these new supplies, potentially stopping the boom in its tracks … either US crude is shipped abroad or it stays in the ground.”

An Austrian economist and professor of finance at the University of Michigan, Mark Perry noted that the United States now has nearly 60 billion barrels of technically recoverable shale oil, “an astounding amount considering shale oil production didn’t exist a decade ago.” Because of that new technology, oil production in the United States last year grew by a million barrels a day and is expected to grow by an additional three million barrels a day in the next five years. But only if there’s a market for it. As Perry writes,

If we don’t lift our ban on oil exports – a relic of the Arab oil embargo and Iranian Revolution in the 1970s – we run the risk of capping production and impeding our own economic growth.…

By lifting the ban on U.S. crude exports, we have the opportunity not only to encourage domestic production and reap its economic rewards but to shape the global oil market. That’s a position of strength we should seize.

Unwinding the labyrinthine complex of laws, regulations, rules, and guidelines that have been issued over the last three decades is going to take some doing, according to Benjamin Salisbury, a senior energy policy analyst at FBR Capital Markets Corporation. Politicians are known for waiting until the very last minute to address an issue, preferring to wait until a crisis is in full throat rather than remove its cause in advance. Said Salisbury:

For politicians to do anything, the pain has to come first. You have to see the rig count fall and then and only then can we have a decision about whether we want to export crude.

When they do address the issue, politicians will be confronted with numerous noisy competing interests, including oil companies, citizens concerned about gas prices at the pump, foreign policy “experts” like Clayton representing the CFR, and common sense economists like Perry, each with an opinion and a point of view. Any change in the current regulations throttling the export of crude oil is likely to come slowly, painfully, and only long after the current boom in shale oil production has slowed significantly. Whether the opinion expressed by Clayton of the CFR represents a major policy shift for that cabal that has controlled American foreign policy for decades or is just the expression of a single opinion by a rogue researcher remains to be seen. But the impact of the clash between the laws of supply and demand and the government interference surrounding them will likely be felt very soon.

A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
. 

Republished with permission from: The New American

The general manager of major league baseball’s St. Louis Cardinals has ordered the grounds crew at Busch Stadium, the team’s ballpark, to stop etching a cross and the number “6” – which very much resembled the Christian “fish” symbol – into the pitcher’s mound, after a fan complained about what he insisted was a nod to Christianity.

Over the past several weeks, apparently beginning in May, a grounds crew member had been etching the figures into the pitcher’s mound as a tribute to the Cardinals most legendary player, Stan “The Man” Musial, a devout Christian, who died in January at the age of 92.

But when a fan wrote to a local paper to complain about the symbols, Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak quickly stopped the practice, explaining to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “It’s just not club policy to be putting religious symbols on the playing field or throughout the ballpark.”

The complainer turned out to be former St. Louis resident and long-distance Cardinals fan Michael Vines, who happened to spy the Christian symbols on the mound while watching a televised game, and promptly wrote a letter to the St. Louis Riverfront Times to vent. Vines complained that it was out of line for the team to display “religious iconography on the infield at Busch Stadium, a place of hallowed ground not just for Christians, but for Cardinal fans of all religions, including none at all.”

Vines argued that the “team and stadium may be privately owned, but they are civic institutions. Out of respect to a devoted and diverse fan base who also has some skin in the game, not to mention a diverse group of players, ownership has a responsibility and obligation to prohibit religious symbols of any kind from being placed in the field.”

Mozeliak told the Post-Dispatch that “once we learned of it, I did contact the grounds crew and just asked that they don’t…. I didn’t ask for the reason behind it. I just asked for it to stop.”

The decision prompted a firestorm of comments from fans and local residents. At least one fan agreed with Vines, writing that “a baseball field is not a place to advertise one’s religious or personal opinions. It’s a place where people of all shapes and sizes can come and enjoy a sport. Busch Stadium is not a bastion of Christian thought; it’s a baseball field that [is] paid for by our taxes. Get it off the mound. I’m a Cardinals fan, but not a Christian. I don’t want to root for a team that has some religious connotation.”

Others expressed their disgust at the team’s decision to cave in to secular pressure. One fan observed, “These corporate guys are so gutless, they’ll accept any tyranny as long as they keep getting their dollars – complete with ‘In God We Trust’ written on them. How about Mr. Mozeliak refuse to take this money with God written on it if he’s so sensitive?”

One Cardinals fan wrote that “as a Christian, I loved that someone could express themselves and not worry about necessarily being politically correct.”

Even the ACLU of Eastern Missouri weighed in, saying that the Cardinals, “as a private organization … enjoy the constitutionally protected freedom to choose to display a symbol of religious faith on their private property, or to choose not to.”

The Christian News Network noted that in spite of the contrived controversy, “the St. Louis Cardinals just observed their 23rd annual ‘Christian Day at the Ballpark‘ [July 7]…. The event featured Willie Robertson of the A&E television show Duck Dynasty, who shared his testimony in a special post-game program, along with several Cardinals players.”

Republished with permission from: The New American

Concerns over special interests groups pushing for federal hearing

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
July 16, 2013

In a media appearance Tuesday morning, the brother of the recently acquitted George Zimmerman said that he and his family have concerns that the Obama administration is tapping their communications.

Appearing on Fox News, Robert Zimmerman said “We do have concerns and always have of having our phones tapped, having our phones listened to by the administration or whomever.”

“A lot of the things that we do are connecting in person–that’s how we’ve managed to stay hidden for so long. It’s kind of old school, but it works…We’re back to what we were doing in March of 2012, because it’s right in everybody’s mind right now.” he added, referring to staying safe in the wake of several threats and acts of violence related to last week’s “Not Guilty” decision.

Zimmerman’s brother also stated that the family is worried that the Department of Justice is being pressured by special interest groups to open a federal investigation into the case.

“I think Eric Holder is being pressured by some groups who were calling for, initially, just an arrest. These same groups keep moving around the goal posts: the NAACP, Al Sharpton, the Rainbow Push Coalition with Jesse Jackson.” Zimmerman noted.

“First they wanted just a simple arrest and that’s it, have his fair day in court and whatever the verdict is, we’ll respect it. Then when the verdict was coming they wanted him to be found guilty. But the verdict isn’t what they wanted, so now they’re moving the goal post again, and calling on the Department of Justice to investigate him more.” the brother added.

“I understand the Justice Department’s responding to pressure,” Zimmerman continued. “But I think that the American people need a little bit of time to digest those two words ‘Not Guilty.’ It doesn’t mean nothing happened. I think most of the people who were upset with that outcome didn’t actually pay attention to the trial.”

Speaking about how his brother is coping with the media frenzy and reaction to the case, Zimmerman described the impact it has had.

“He’s been confined not just by an ankle bracelet, but psychologically and emotionally confined to being in that courtroom every day. Seeing people try to put him in prison for the rest of his life. When that’s all gone and you’re in essence a free man, and they cut that ankle bracelet off of your ankle and the judge tells you you have no further business before the court, in that instant your reality changes. It’s very jarring.”

“Freedom is a very new notion to him,” he stated.

Watch the full interview below:

–––––––––––––––––––––-

Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham, and a Bachelor Of Arts Degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 at 11:46 am

Tags: domestic news, gun rights

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

Over the next two millennia, the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet is projected to contribute to half of all sea-level rise. (Photo: Rita Williaert/ cc/ Flickr)“Greenhouse gases emitted today will cause sea level to rise for centuries to come,” concluded a team of scientists behind a new study published Monday in the National Academy of Sciences.

The study, conducted by a group from Germany’s Pottsdam Institute for Climate Impact, found the sea levels may rise by as much as 2.3 meters (roughly 7.5 feet) with each degree Celsius that global temperatures increase.

“Sea-level rise might be slow on time scales on which we elect governments, but it is inevitable and therefore highly relevant for almost everything we build along our coastlines, for many generations to come,” cautioned Anders Levermann, lead author of the study.

The study is the first of its kind to combine evidence from climate history with computer simulations of contributing factors to long-term sea-level increases: thermal expansion of oceans, the melting of mountain glaciers and the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

According to their findings, though thermal expansion and melting glaciers are thus far the greatest contributing factors to sea-level change, the melting of the ice sheets will be the dominant contributors within the next two millennia.

As Levermann explains, because of their enormous mass, the oceans and ice sheets are slow in responding to the global temperature increase. However, like a rolling stone, “once heated out of balance, they simply don’t stop.”

“CO2, once emitted by burning fossil fuels, stays an awful long time in the atmosphere,” he adds. “Consequently, the warming it causes also persists.”

Scientists predict that as much as half of total sea-level rise will come from ice-loss in Antarctica, with Greenland melting contributing another 25 percent. 

Describing the impact of the study’s predictions, David Vaughan, head of the ice2sea project, told Reuters the most grave consequences will be seen in the frequency and severity of storms.

“It’s not about chasing people up the beach or the changing shape of coastlines,” he said. “The big issue is how the storms will damage our coasts and how often they occur. That’ll increase even with small levels of sea rise in coming decades.”

“Continuous sea-level rise is something we cannot avoid unless global temperatures go down again,” Levermann adds. “Thus we can be absolutely certain that we need to adapt.”

_____________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Republished with permission from: Common Dreams

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has expressed optimism about consolidation of Iran-Europe ties under new Iranian president, Hassan Rohani, who will take office early next month.

Å“We hope that after the administration of Rohani takes office, we will witness the enhancement of European countriesâ„¢ cooperation and interaction with Tehran,” said Salehi at a Tuesday meeting with the outgoing Austrian Ambassador to Tehran Thomas Buchsbam.

Rohani emerged victorious in Iran’s June 14 presidential election, which was marked by a high voter turnout. He won 50.7 percent of a total of over 36 million ballots counted.

Salehi also praised the long-standing friendly relations between Iran and Austria, adding, Å“There is no obstacle on the way of development and expansion of Iran-Austria ties.”

Buchsbam, for his part, praised Iranâ„¢s ample potential for mutual cooperation and expressed optimism that under the next administration of Rohani, Tehran-Vienna relations will witness further growth particularly in the economic, commercial and tourism sectors.

ASH/KA/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

The Americans do not only spy on governments, authorities and private individuals across the world with the help of their secret services; they also understand how to push forward the global interests of their companies with full force. An impressive example of this is the agriculture giant Monsanto, the leading manufacturer of genetically modified seeds in the world.

A glimpse into the world of Monsanto shows that companies which delivered the pesticide ‘Agent Orange’ to the US military in the Vietnam war had close connections with the central power in Washington, with tough people from the field of the US secret services and with private insurance companies.

By MARIANNE FALCK, HANS LEYENDECKER AND SILVIA LIEBRICH

“Imagine the internet as a weapon”

In the global fight against genetic engineering, the US group draws on dubious methods, strange helpers — and the power of Washington. Critics of the group feel they are being spied upon.

The US group Monsanto is a giant in the agriculture business: and number one in the controversial field of plant genetic engineering. For its opponents, many of whom live in Europe, Monsanto is a sinister enemy. Time and again mysterious things happen, which make the enemy seem yet more sinister.

In the previous month, the European environmental organisation ‘Friends of the Earth’ and the German Environmental and Nature Protection Association (BUND) wanted to present a study on the pesticide glyphosate in the human body. Weed killers containing glyphosate are the big seller for Monsanto. The company aims for more than two billion dollars turnover for the Roundup product alone. ‘Roundup herbicide’ has a “long history of safe use in more than 100 countries”, Monsanto emphasises.

As viruses attack their computers, the eco-activists ask themselves: “could we be seeing ghosts?”

However, there are studies which show that the product may damage plants and animals and the latest study shows that many large city inhabitants now have the field poison in their bodies, without knowing it. Exactly what the spray can trigger in an organism is, as with so many things in this field, disputed.

Two days before the study across 18 countries was set to be published, a virus disabled the computer of the main organiser, Adrian Bepp. There was a threat that press conferences in Vienna, Brussels and Berlin would be cancelled. “We panicked”, remembers Heike Moldenhauer from BUND. The environmental activists were under extreme time pressure.

Moldenhauer and her colleagues have widely speculated about the motives and identity of the mysterious attacker. The genetic engineering expert at BUND believes the unknown virus suppliers wanted in particular to “generate confusion”. Nothing is worse for a study than a cancelled press conference: “we did ask ourselves at the time if we were seeing ghosts”, said Moldenhauer.

There is no evidence that Monsanto was the ghost or had anything to do with the virus. The company does not do things like that. It takes pride in operating “responsibly”: “Today, it is very easy to make and spread all kinds of allegations,” Monsanto claims. They say that “over and over there are also dubious and popular allegations spread, which disparage our work and products and are in no way based on science.”

Critics of the group see things differently. This is due to the wide network Monsanto has developed across the world. There are ties with the US secret services, the US military, with very hard operating private security companies and of course, with the US government.

A conspicuously large number of Monsanto critics report regular attacks by professional hackers. The secret services and military also like to employ hackers and programmers. These specialise in developing Trojans and viruses in order to penetrate foreign computer networks. Whistle-blower Edward Snowden has indicated the connection between intelligence services actions and economic drive. However, this sinister connection has been overshadowed by other monstrosities.

Some powerful Monsanto supporters know a lot about how to carry out a cyber war. “Imagine the internet as a weapon, sitting on the table. Either you use it or your opponent does, but somebody’s going to get killed” said Jay Byrne, the former head of public relations at Monsanto, back in 2001.

Companies regularly fight with dubious methods to uphold what they see as their right: but friend or foe, him or me — that is fighting talk and in a war, you need allies. Preferably professionals. Such as those from the secret service milieu, for example.

Monsanto contacts are known to the notorious former secret service agent Joseph Cofer Black, who helped formulate the law of the jungle in the fight against terrorists and other enemies. He is a specialist on dirty work, a total hardliner. He worked for the CIA for almost three decades, among other things as the head of anti-terroism. He later became vice president of the private security company Blackwater, which sent tens of thousands of soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan under US government orders.

Investigations show how closely connected the management and the central government in Washington are, as well as with diplomatic representatives of the USA across the world. In many instances, Monsanto has operationally powerful assistants. Former Monsanto employees occupy high offices in the USA in government authorities and ministries, industrial associations and in universities; sometimes in almost symbiotic relationships. According to information from the American Anti-Lobby-Organisation, Open Secrets Org, in the past year, 16 Monsanto lobbyists have taken up sometimes high ranking posts in the US administration and even in regulatory authorities.

For the company, it is all about new markets and feeding a rapidly growing world population. Genetic engineering and patents on plants play a big role here. Over 90 % of corn and soya in the USA is genetically modified. In some parts of the rest of the world the percentage is also growing constantly.

Only the European markets are at a standstill. Several EU countries have many reservations about the Monsanto future, which clearly displeases the US government administration. In 2009, the German CSU politician, Ilse Aigner, Federal Minister for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, also banned the corn type MON810 from German fields. When she travelled to the USA shortly afterwards, she was approached by her US colleague, Tom Vilsack about Monsanto. The democrat was once governor in the agricultural state of Iowa and distinguished himself early on as a supporter of genetic engineering. The genetic engineering industry elected him as ‘governor of the year’ in 2001.

Unfortunately, there is no recording of the discussion between Vislack and Aigner. It was said to be controversial. A representative for the Federal Government described the tone: there were “huge efforts to force a change in direction of the German government regarding genetic policy.” The source preferred not to mention details the type of “huge efforts” and the attempt “to force” something. That is not appropriate between friends and partners.

Thanks to Snowden and Wikileaks, the world has a new idea of how these friends and partners operate where power and money are concerned. The whistle-blowing platform published embassy dispatches two years ago, which also included details about Monsanto and genetic engineering.

For example, in 2007, the former US ambassador in Paris, Craig Stapleton, suggested the US government should create a penalties list for EU states which wanted to forbid the cultivation of genetically engineered plants from American companies. The wording of the secret dispatch: “Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU.” Pain, retaliation: not exactly the language of diplomacy.

Monsanto led the fight to allow the famous genetically engineered corn plant MON810 in Europe with lots of lobbying — the group completely lost the fight. It was even beaten out of the prestigious French and German markets. An alliance of politicians, farmers and clergy rejected genetic engineering in the fields and the consumers do not want it on their plates. But the battle is not over. The USA is hoping that negotiations started this week for a free-trade agreement between the USA and the EU will also open the markets for genetic engineering.

Lobbying for your own company is a civic duty in the USA. Even the important of the 16 US intelligence services have always understood their work as being a support for American economic interests on the world markets. They spy on not only governments, authorities and citizens in other countries under the name of the fight against terror, they also support American economic interests, in their own special way.

A few examples?

Monsanto denies the accusations and emphasises that it operates “responsibly”

More than two decades ago, when Japan was not yet a major economic power, the study ‘Japan 2000’ appeared in the USA, created by the employees of the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). Japan, the study read, was planning a kind of world takeover with a ‘reckless trade policy’. The USA would be the losers, stated the study. The national security of the USA was at threat, it continued and the CIA gave the call to war.

America’s economy must be protected from the European’s “dirty tricks”, explained former head of the CIA James Woolsey. This, he maintained, is why the “continental European friends” were spied upon. A clean America.

The whistle-blower Snowden was once in Switzerland for the CIA and during this time, he reported on which tricks the company was said to have tried in order to win over a Swiss banker to spy on account data. The EU allowed the American services to take a close look at its citizens’ financial business. Allegedly, this was to dry up money sources for terror. The method and purpose are highly dubious.

In Switzerland, the scene of many earlier espionage novels now plays one of these episodes that make Monsanto especially mysterious and enigmatic: In January 2008, the former CIA agent Cofer Black travelled to Zurich and met Kevin Wilson, at the time Monsanto’s safety officer for global issues. About what did the two men talk? Probably the usual: Opponents, business, mortal enemies.

The investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, who wrote the reference work about Blackwater, the company specializing in mercenaries, wrote in the American weekly The Nation in 2010 about the reported strange meeting in Zurich. He had received leaked documents once again. These show: Monsanto wanted to put up a fight. Against activists who destroyed the fields. Against critics, who influenced the mood against the genetic modification company. Cofer Black is the right man for all seasons: “We’ll take off the kid gloves”, he declared after the 11 September terrorist attacks, and tasked his CIA agents in Afghanistan to take out Osama bin Laden: “Get him, I want his head in a box.” However, he also understands a lot about the other secret service business, which operates with publicly available sources. When he meets with the Monsanto safety officer Wilson, Cofer Black is still the Vice (President) at Blackwater, who has the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA and, of course private companies as customers. However, there was a lot of anxiety in January 2008, because the mercenaries of the security company had shot 17 civilians in Iraq and some Blackwater employees had drawn attention by bribing Iraqi government employees. It just so happened that Cofer Black was at the same time head of the security company Total Intelligence Solutions (TIS), which was a subsidiary of Blackwater, not saddled with the same devastating reputation, however staffed with some excellent and versatile experts.

According to their own statements, Monsanto was conducting business with TIS at the time and not with Blackwater. It is without doubt that Monsanto received reports from TIS about the activities of critics. The activities in question were those that would have presented a risk for the company, its employees or its operating business. The information collected ranged from terrorist attacks in Asia to the scanning of websites and blogs. Monsanto emphasizes that TIS only used publicly accessible material when preventing said risk.

This matched Black’s modus operandus. No shady dealings.

There used to be rumors that Monsanto wanted to take over TIS to mitigate their risk — and there are new rumors these days that the group allegedly is considering a takeover of the company Academi that emerged after a few transformations from the former Blackwater Company. Is anything correct about these rumors? “As a rule we are not disclosing details about our relations with service providers, unless that information is already available to the public,” is the only commentary from Monsanto.

Every company has its own history, and the history of Monsanto includes a substance, which the turned the company into a demon not only not only for the aging 1968ers: Monsanto was one of the leading manufacturers of the pesticide Agent Orange, which was used until January 1971 by the US military in the Vietnam War. Forests were defoliated by constant chemical bombardment to make the enemy visible. Arable land was poisoned, so that the Vietcong had nothing to eat. In the sprayed areas, the teratogenic effects increased more than ten times. Children were born without noses, without eyes, with hydrocephalus, with facial clefts and the US military stated that the Monsanto agent was as harmless as aspirin.

Is everything allowed in war? Especially in the new fangled cyber war?

It is already obvious that somebody makes life difficult for Monsanto critics and an invisible hand ends careers. However, who is this somebody? The targets of these attacks are scientists, such as the Australian Judy Carman. Among other things, she has made a name for herself with studies of genetically modified plants. Her publications were questioned by the same professors which also attacked the the studies of other Monsanto critics.

It does not stop at skirmishes in the scientific community. Hackers regularly target various web pages where Carman publishes her studies and the sites are also systematically observed, at least that is the impression Carman has. Evaluations of IP log files show that not only Monsanto visits the pages regularly, but also various organizations of the U.S. government, including the military. These include the Navy Network Information Center, the Federal Aviation Administration and the United States Army Intelligence Center, an institution of the US Army, which trains soldiers with information gathering. Monsanto’s interest in the studies is understandable, even for Carman. “But I do not understand why the U.S. government and the military are having me observed,” she says.

The organization GM Watch, known to be critical of gene technology, also experiences strange events. Editor Claire Robinson reports continued hacker attacks on the homepage since 2007. “Every time we increase the page security just a bit, the opposite side increases their tenacity and following are new, worse attacks”, she says. She also cannot believe the coincidences that occur. When the French scientist Gilles Eric Seralini published a controversial study on the health risks of genetically modified maize and glyphosate in 2012, the web site of GM Watch was hacked and blocked. The same repeats when the opinion of the European food inspectorate (EFSA) is added to the site. The timing was skilfully selected in both cases. The attacks took place exactly when the editors wanted to publish their opinion.

It has not yet been determined who is behind the attacks.

Monsanto itself, as stated, emphasizes that the company operates “responsibly”.

The fact is, however, that much is at stake for the group. It is about an upcoming bill. Especially about the current negotiations on the free trade agreement. Particularly sensitive is the subject of the agricultural and food industry. The Americans want to open the European markets for previously prohibited products. In addition to genetically engineered plants controversial feed additives and hormone-treated beef are subject of the negotiations. The negotiations will probably extend over several years.

The Americans want to use the Free Trade Agreement to open the European GMO Market.

The negotiations will be detailed. Toughness will rule the day. US President Barack Obama has therefore appointed Islam Siddiqui as chief negotiator for agriculture. He has worked for many years for the US ministry of agriculture as an expert. However, hardly anyone in Europe knows: From 2001 to 2008, he represented CropLife America as a registered lobbyist. CropLife America is an important industry association in the United States, representing the interests of pesticide and gene technology manufacturers — including of course Monsanto. “Actually, the EU cannot accept such a chief negotiator because of bias”, says Manfred Hausling, who represents the Green Party in the EU parliament.

Copyright Suddeutsche Zeitung, 2013,

Translated by New Europe Translations for Sustainable Pulse (Original in German)

Republished with permission from: Global Research

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood says the newly sworn-in cabinet of interim Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi is “illegitimate.”

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Yemenâ„¢s Shia Houthi movement says US-backed Takfiri militants are planning to initiate a war in the northern part of the country.

In a video released by the Houthi-linked Ansarullah website, people from a number of countries including France, Russia, the US and Somalia are seen erecting forts in Dammaj district in the city of Sa’ada located near Yemen’s border with Saudi Arabia.

The video also showed that the Takfiri militants harassed people living in the area and tried to find residential buildings for the foreigners working with them in Dammaj district.

Most Takfiris have identified themselves with the shadowy al-Qaeda terror network and are widely known to have committed countless atrocities against people opposing their views.

Meanwhile, Yemenâ„¢s Zaidi population, also known as Houthis, have long been protesting against oppression and discrimination by Yemenâ„¢s Saudi-backed government.

Yemenâ„¢s Shia Houthi movement draws its name from the tribe of its founding leader Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi.

MAM/PR

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
July 16, 2013

Appearing on the Piers Morgan show, the “friend, not-girlfriend” of Trayvon Martin, Rachel Jeantel, said the jury that acquitted George Zimmerman is “old school.”

“Well, the jury, they see their facts,” she said. “My thoughts of the jury, they old, that’s old school people. We in a new school, our generation, my generation.”

Morgan did not allow Jeantel to elaborate. He wandered off into the spelling of the word “cracker,” a derogatory word used to describe white people. During the Zimmerman trial, Jeantel insisted the word is not racist, but a cultural thing. This ludicrous idea was parroted by the liberal corporate media, the same media that said Paul Deen is a racist.

It shouldn’t be too difficult to decipher what Ms. Jeantel was getting at. She thinks it is “old school” to go into a jury box without prejudice and a political agenda. Her generation apparently wants to throw out vior dire — procedures used to weed out inappropriate potential jurors — and do away with the concept of peremptory challenge used to exclude bias during jury selection.

Considering the train wreck otherwise known as public education and the increasingly idiocratic character of American society, it should not be surprising that Jeantel and millions of other people from her generation are completely ignorant of the Sixth Amendment, or for that matter the totality of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It isn’t merely Jeantel’s generation that is ignorant of the Constitution. Plenty of oldsters from the Baby Boomer generation also suffer from this deficiency.

The Sixth Amendment reads as follows: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.”

Jeantel and the Trayvon mob, by and large, are not interested in justice or the rule of law. They are interested in racial retribution, a concept nursed along over the period of several decades by the liberal establishment and its philosophy of political correctness. Said to redress historical injustices in matters such as race, class, gender, and sexual orientation, political correctness now overrides the founding principles of our former republic. Some are more equal than others due to an ideologically skewed interpretation of history.

The Brit Piers Morgan, who has repeatedly demonstrated his contempt for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, deftly steered Rachel Jeantel away from elaborating her opinion that courts in the United States are “old school” and should be instead, like the courts of the Soviet Union or communist Cuba, forums for the excoriation of officially mandated enemies, not for justice.

Ms. Jeantel provided a glimpse of the new Red Terror. In the Soviet Union, the purpose of public trials was “not to demonstrate the existence or absence of a crime,” but to “provide yet another forum for political agitation and propaganda for the instruction of the citizenry,” as Richard Pipes explains.

The liberal version of Red Terror failed to produce the desired outcome. George Zimmerman was acquitted by an “old school” jury, a fact that has moved a violent idiocracy into the streets and has prompted the Justice Department to consider a double jeopardy show trial that will work to impose a politically correct outcome.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 at 11:40 am

Tags: constitution, domestic news

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

New study conducted by an international team of researchers has unveiled the mystery of a genetic flaw which significantly increases the risk of obesity.

A type of gene called FTO, which is known as fat-boosting gene, has put many lives at higher risks of obesity that is estimated to be one in six people.

The recent study revealed that FTO made fatty foods more tempting and affected on hunger hormone called ghrelin, according to the paper published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

The team, led by researchers at University College London, studied people with two copies of the FTO gene inherited from each parent. Each copy comes in a high and a low-risk form.

Those people who have two-high risk copies of the FTO gene are reported to be 70% more likely to become overweight than those ones with low-risk genes.

Examining the two groups unraveled that the level of hunger hormone did not fall in men with the high-risk genes after eating meal and even their ghrelin levels began to increase quickly.

Furthermore, a series of brain scans after a meal demonstrated that in the high-risk patients pictures of high-fat foods were more appealing than in the low-risk group.

“Their brain is set up to be particularly interested in anything to do with high-calorie food,” said Dr Rachel Batterham, head of the centre for obesity research at University College London.

While experts have tied a person’s genetic code to obesity, they believe that drugs targeting ghrelin might reduce weight gain.

Å“Protein meals do lower ghrelin more, so anything that suppresses ghrelin is more likely to be effective in FTO patients,” Batterham explained while stressed that exercise such as cycling was also an excellent way to reduce ghrelin levels.

FGP/FGP

Republished with permission from: Press TV

The US has expanded negotiations with Manila and is seeking to build facilities and storage sites in the Philippines, as well as gain greater access to bases for its aircraft and warships. Bases the US is considering are all facing the South China Sea.

Talks for greater US military presence in the South China Sea
comes as the territorial dispute between China and the
Philippines is heating up. Since February, the Philippine
military has complained that Chinese navy and government vessels
have increased their presence in the disputed area.

Ambassador Jose Cuisia this week told reporters that the
Philippines plans to provide the US with greater access to its
bases on a temporary and rotational basis, which would bolster
its defense. Although Manila will not provide permanent basing
rights to the US, it would allow the US to have a wider presence
in the South China Sea.

The 1998 Visiting Forces agreement allows US forces to maintain a
rotational presence in the Philippines, but Washington is now
looking to expand upon that and fund its own facilities.

“We need to expand (the 1998 pact) further because we may have
to build some additional facilities,” Cuisia said during a
press conference in Manila.  Such facilities would be funded
for “joint use” and would allow the US to store its
military equipment and supplies in the Philippines. Cuisia claims
that such facilities would allow the country to be prepared for
potential humanitarian aid and disaster relief efforts.

“Then whenever it’s needed it’s so much easier to use that
equipment because it’s already there,” Cuisia said.

Facilities and military bases that the US wants to use for its
aircraft and warships are facing the South China Sea, which would
allow Washington to operate its warships and aircraft near the
disputed territory.

The Philippine military last month told Reuters that it plans to
restore air and naval bases at Subic Bay, which is a former US
Navy facility that would provide the US with a strategic location
in the region. Military and diplomatic sources this month told
Reuters that all of the military facilities that the US is
requesting greater access to are facing China.

The US has already used Subic Bay for ship visits, and US defense
contractor Huntington Ingalls Industries last year set up an
operation to service US Navy ships. James Hardly, Asia-Pacific
editor for HIS Jane’s Defense Weekly, told the New York Times
that this might be an indication that the US will keep its
warships and aircraft in the Philippines in the long run.

“Certainly the buildup in Subic by companies that expect to
support the US military suggests and expectation that this is
going to be a semi permanent presence,” he said.

Carl Baker, program director of the Pacific Forum of the Center
for Strategic and International Studies, told Voice of America
that talks of a base-sharing plan is another indicator that the
US may be creating a permanent presence in the Philippines.

“I think that’s sort of the model that they’re following,”
he said. “So they can put people on these bases on a more
permanent basis without calling it ‘permanent basing.’”

News of the expanded US presence in the Philippines may ignite
further anger in Chinese officials as tensions between the two
Asian nations remain high. In late 2012, the US announced
that it would increase its number of troops, aircraft and ships
that rotate through the Philippines — a statement that angered
Chinese officials and prompted Chinese media to describe the
Philippines as troublemakers seeking conflict. At the time,
Chinese Communist Party Chief Xi Jinping urged his military to
prepare for a struggle.

The Philippines is currently locked in a dispute with China over
claims in the South China Sea, in particular the resource-rich
Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal. Cuisia told reporters
that informal talks between Manila and Washington have reached
the ministerial level, and that both sides are hoping to strike a
deal before President Benigno Aquino steps down in 2016.

Republished with permission from: RT

“I’m lucky I wasn’t killed, you know?”

Adan Salazar
Infowars.com
July 16, 2013

A jogger claims he was knocked unconscious and sent to the hospital after being assaulted by three men who stated they were going to beat him “for Trayvon.”

Devin Dickey, a resident of Senatobia, Miss., a city 30 miles south of Memphis, Tenn., says he was stretching Sunday night when a car pulled up and asked him a question he couldn’t understand.

“I got closer to the car. He told me to get in the car, and I said, ‘No.’ You know what guys, I’m not gonna do that. I don’t want to,” said Dickey. “He looked at the driver and said, ‘Give me the damn gun.’”

Dickey had no choice but to enter the vehicle. The men drove him around then stopped, at which point Dickey was taken out of the car and asked if he knew Trayvon.

“He said, ‘Do you know who Trayvon is?’ I said, ‘No,’ thinking of somebody local. He said, ‘Trayvon Martin.’ I said ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘I’m going to beat your … For Trayvon.’ ”

According to Dickey, the men pummeled him with a barrage of kicks and beatings to the head, causing him to pass out. Police found him on the side of the road after he had called his wife.

“I’m lucky I wasn’t killed you know,” said Dickey.

Photos provided to WMC-TV show Dickey’s face swollen and bruised. Police say they are investigating the incident.

The jogger’s assault is part of a string of retaliatory violence stemming from anger over George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the murder trial of Florida teen Trayvon Martin.

Today, we wrote on accusations leveled against the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office claiming it helped cover up the hate crime murder of two brothers who were possibly attacked due to a bumper sticker on their truck that read “Free Zimmerman.”

Yesterday, we also reported on the beating of a conservative journalist and filmmaker who says he was approached repeatedly by protestors demanding he stop filming. The journalist says he was surrounded by an angry mob and attacked by an interminable number of people before he was miraculously able to fend them off.

The incidents are also reminiscent of beatings that took place in 2012 in the name of “justice for Trayvon.”

In April 2012, Matthew Owens was seriously injured in Mobile, Alabama, after “about 20 African American adults beat Owens – who is white – into a bloody pulp with brass knuckles, pipes and even paint cans,” according to the Huffington Post. “Now that’s justice for Trayvon,” said one of the assailants.

Also in 2012, the Toledo Blade reported that a 78 year old man was attacked by a gang of thugs. “While Mr. Watts was down the boys kicked him, over and over, shouting, ‘[Get] that white [man]. This is for Trayvon … Trayvon lives, white [man]. Kill that white [man],’ according to a police report,” the newspaper reported.

Despite the tide of violence, media coverage is primarily fixated on how the federal government plans to pursue additional charges against Zimmerman, including a civil rights violation.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 at 10:48 am

Tags: domestic news

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

[unable to retrieve full-text content]

read more

Republished with permission from: Common Dreams

Last month’s protests swept through Brazil’s cities, bringing hundreds of thousands onto the streets to protest rampant political corruption, declining government services and rising public costs.

Contrary to the rosy economic picture that the World Bank and the IMF have tried to paint over the past decade, Brazil’s growing discontent with the neoliberal model is now on full display.

Find out more in this week’s GRTV Backgrounder on Global Research TV.

Republished with permission from: Global Research

Eric Draven
Alt Headlines
July 16, 2013

Everyday, more and more people are waking up and discovering that Monsanto and their many products are being found to be a hazard to human health. It does not matter how much PR money Monsanto spends, people all over the world are realizing the truth.

Last year’s first real independent GMO study conducted in Europe demonstrated the long-term effects of GMO corn and the effects of Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup fed to rats. The tumor growth rate of the lab rats fed a GMO diet was alarming.

This sparked a huge grassroots movement culminating into the March Against Monsanto, which took place on May 25th 2013 and drew in millions of people in over 400 cities across the world. Finally humanity is waking up to the reality of GMOs.

Read More

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This article was posted: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 at 11:08 am

Tags: environment, eugenics, food, gmo

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Republished with permission from: Infowars