A Taliban militant aims his sophisticated gun at an unseen target. (file photo)

Republished with permission from: Press TV

CBS Baltimore
July 12, 2013

More than a dozen convicted killers are released from prison on a technicality, and dozens more could follow.

Monique Griego explains the Court of Appeals ruling at the center of this controversy.

All of these men were convicted before 1980. And since then, the court has changed the way juries are allowed to decide cases.

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This article was posted: Friday, July 12, 2013 at 9:49 am

Tags: domestic news, police state

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

NBC News
July 12, 2013

A judge has denied custody to a father who came to court in a Nazi uniform to get back his youngest child.

A hearing was held last month at Hunterdon County Family Court in Flemington, N.J., to determine whether Heath Campbell, 40, who gave all four of his children Nazi-inspired names, could visit with his 2-year-old son Heinrich Hons.

The New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services (NJ DYFS) said they took the boy because of previous violence in the home. An anonymous abuse claim was also made to local police.

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This article was posted: Friday, July 12, 2013 at 9:54 am

Tags: domestic news, legislation

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

It’s not just the government watching you

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
July 12, 2013

Image: Wikimedia Commons

It’s not just governments that are using cellphone location data to spy on citizens — banks are now getting in on the act too — with Barclays announcing changes to its customer agreement that will open the door to individuals being tracked in the name of preventing fraud.

Barclays’ new customer agreement terms (PDF) — set to come into force from October 9, 2013, will also permit the bank to collect social networking data as well as using private transaction information to bombard customers with unsolicited “services and products”.

“The information we use will include location data derived from any mobile device details you have given us. This helps us protect you from fraud,” states the document.

This suggests that phone companies in Britain must have given Barclays some kind of back door access to people’s private cellphones in order to track their precise location, whether in real time or after potential fraud has been reported.

All modern cellphones can be tracked down a location which is accurate within 50 meters. Police, governments and corporations already use such data to spy on individuals for both surveillance and data harvesting.

The changes also state that Barclays will track the behavior of its customers via social media. The bank will also retain “images of you or recordings of your voice” in addition to monitoring “transactions on your account, to increase our understanding of services and products that you may wish to use so we can send you information about them.”

Read the full list of changes below.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

Republished with permission from: Infowars

Mendocino County, Calif. Sheriff Tom Allman calls the decision to permit his county’s cannabis farmers (even before federal law changes) part of his “law enforcement evolution.” A local boy, he knew how eighty percent of his Emerald Triangle economy was derived. As a newly elected Sheriff, he flew over his jurisdiction and thought, “So that’s how that conservative Republican pays two Stanford tuitions.”

Allman had what he told me was a “startling revelation” following the passage of California’s 1996 ballot initiative Proposition 215 (the Compassionate Use Act of 1996), which allowed for medicinal use of the cannabis plant in the Golden State. While to this day he maintains that he is simply “required to enforce the law” and is “neither pro- nor anticannabis,” what he noticed was that, contrary to what he’d been raised and trained to believe, “the sun still rose, and there was still an America” in the days and years after the 1996 election.

Six hundred thousand dollars was raised from one hundred brave farmers who just wanted to be taxpayers in 2011. The deputy jobs were saved, cartels were hurt and patients benefited from safe, organically grown domestic cannabis. But the program’s administrator, a former drug warrior, said the real reason the program is a nationwide model is “it brought an entire swath of the community back into the law-abiding fold.” In other words, millions of Americans break no laws except exhibiting friendliness to one of humanity’s longest utilized plants.

But Sheriff Tom, as Allman is known locally, couldn’t and wouldn’t have implemented the Zip-tie program if cannabis wasn’t just widely used, but also relatively benign. The biggest problems in Mendocino County, he told me in our first, second, and third interviews, are “meth, poverty and domestic violence. Marijuana isn’t in the top ten.”

Study after study indicates that cannabis is (especially compared to alcohol and America’s real epidemic: prescription pill abuse) safe when used responsibly. It’s not meth. It’s not alcohol. It doesn’t make people violent. It’s thus not a problem to Sheriff Tom, who told me at a Fourth of July picnic that his view of cannabis is “Smoke it till your head caves in. I don’t care. I just wish I could get it off the front pages so I could have more time to deal with the real problems in this county. This is my biggest dream.”

It’s also one shared by many of Allman’s constituents: While it’s by no means unanimous, I met no shortage of local cannabis in the Emerald Triangle activists who want to be a test case. They’re ready for legitimacy.

Allman, in his words, was “simply obeying county nuisance regulations” by implementing the nation’s first cannabis permitting ordinance. The Zip-tie program cost about $8,500 per farmer for ninety-nine plants with a final cannabis dispensary value of around half a million dollars.

In its second full year following a 2010 revamping, the Zip-tie program was so successful that at least two neighboring (and similarly economically struggling) California counties were considering a similar job-creating, public safety-increasing program — that is, until the U.S. Attorney’s Office for California’s Northern District threatened the program’s farmers and administrators. This outrageous action (hopefully for a short time and for the last time) once again sent America’s number one crop underground. At one point during the federal harassment Sheriff Tom even send me an email jokingly asking if I’d bail him out if necessary.

Of other law enforcement or prosecutorial minds not open to his “the sun still rose” realization, Allman said, “Maybe it’s time for them to retire. My dad ran a liquor store. He raised me to believe the damn hippies were ruining the county. I see now that they’re helping save it. My dream is to be able to stop talking about cannabis–get it off the headlines–so I can fight the real problems in this county. I care about this even more than raising my own kids right.”

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

The strike that shuttered BART for four and a half days last week puts the Bay Area’s largest transit system once again at the center of a public debate over the region’s future. The crux of the discussion is labor and inequality.

The Bay Area Rapid Transit District spans all of the injustices of the San Francisco Bay Area megapolis. The sprawling regional revenue authority known as BART, created by the State of California in 1957 for the purpose of building and operating one of the world’s most massive urban train systems, remains a major force in reconfiguring the region’s geography and demographics, and creating and distributing immense wealth.

When it was built in the late 1960s, BART cut through and tore up entire communities, demolishing the brick-and mortar, as well as the social and spiritual existence of several neighborhoods, notably Black West Oakland. BART slid under and enriched other geographic zones, notably San Francisco’s financial district. Over the years BART has served as a link between the radically divided worlds of northern California’s urban post-industrial sacrifice zones and its prosperous suburban bedroom communities. But as much as it was a connector–train cars are often packed working class immigrants rubbing elbows with waspy city bankers–BART has also always been a vector of worsening poverty and isolation.

Recurrent, violent tragedies have haunted the train system over the years. BART spans a structurally brutal geography and economy; the carnage often spills over into the train stations, upon the platforms. Social ills play out in theatrical force before the public as the District’s police enforce the logic of law and order. This logic is captured on closed circuit security cameras and smart phone recordings, and in the Internet age shared instantly a million times. The victims most often are the displaced and bypassed humans for whom BART has no station, so to speak.

Like any social factory today, BART’s own workforce experiences the constant speeding-up of labor, and downward pressure on wages and control. In 2009 BART’s employees sacrificed and handed hundreds of millions in pay back over to the District’s board. It was a concession the unions saw as necessary to keep the trains running through the Great Recession. Four years of austerity, tight budgets, deferred maintenance, and a massive economic setback for BART’s three thousand-plus workers ensued. Fare hikes drove many of the poor away from BART’s trains, onto regional bus systems, under-funded, overloaded.

Last year BART’s financial managers began reporting rising revenues. Sales tax receipts sourced from the public in the three counties where BART operates, the second most important source of funds for the train system, were rising fast. Passenger fares, the biggest chunk of BART’s money, were growing quickly as each train was being packed with more bodies. The system, it appeared, had money again to invest in its work force, capital, and operations, and perhaps to avoid a fare hike.

BART workers have told me they expected smooth contract negotiations and a good and fair deal with the system’s management after four years of austerity. The labor agreements for BART’s workforce, represented mostly by the Amalgamated Transit Union and Service Employees International Union, expired on June 30. Workers recall in the months prior to the contract expiration BART’s General Manager telling them, “this time it will be different,” in reference to 2009 when the District demanded givebacks in the face of the worst national economic crisis since the Great Depression. BART workers thought the difference this time would mean winning back lost wages, re-establishing themselves as solidly middle class members of the Bay Area’s labor force.

“We heard from the General Manager that it was going to be different this time, not like it was in 2009,” said Grace Marsha, a BART employee and officer of the Amalgamated Transit Union involved in the current contract talks. “The General Manager told the truth. It’s not at all like it was in 2009 when we had to give up so much. It’s a hell of a lot worse.”

BART management and workers clashed over the past several weeks over the terms of a new contract. BART demanded an effective pay cut, and the system’s management wants workers to pay for more of their own health and retirement expenses. The workers walked off their jobs on July 2 and immediately the Bay Area’s highways were clogged.

Workers across the Bay Area now see the struggle of BART employees as a crucial test with implications for labor across the region and beyond. The Bay Area’s working class has been beaten down over the past five years, and even while a real estate and technology boom creates whole new vistas of wealth and affluence for a privileged class of professionals, millions of workers in northern California are seeing no gains. Instead their bosses are advancing upon them with new austere demands for wage cuts, freezes, and increased employee contributions to health and pension plans. Management says they must build financial reserves, or deploy capital toward costly construction projects, or fund expensive new branches of management, purchase new technology, and hire outside consultants, anything except re-establishing a pact with members of the working class that their grueling labor will be rewarded.

“We need decent wages and working conditions for all workers,” said Michael Parker, a resident of Richmond, a scrappy working class city northeast of San Francisco where oil corporations refine much of the state’s fuel. “Unions set the bar for everybody, and if BART workers get good wages it becomes the standard that other workers are pulled up to. When you try to force the BART workers to take what is effective wage cut you are driving down wages and working conditions of everyone.”

“You are encouraging the race to the bottom,” Parker told the BART board of directors at their most recent meeting.

Last week there was a palpable sense of shock and outrage among BART employees that the District’s management was in fact going to pursue a strategy of taking more from workers, in spite of the recovering fiscal condition of the train system. City and county employees, hospital workers, and teachers across the region, all laborers in the highly organized public sector industries of the Bay Area, fear that the BART management’s aims reflect those of the six-figure chiefs who run the public agencies and governments they work under.

SEIU 1021, the local branch of the nation’s second largest union, now see the BART strike as a make-or-break struggle for the future of not just the train system’s 3,000 employees, but for unions and the working class in California’s post-Great Recession economy. It’s a paradoxically booming and stagnating society where home prices are zipping to new heights even while even while foreclosures proceed by the thousands. A whole cohort of new Silicon Valley millionaires is being minted through IPOs and buyouts, but wages for the bottom half stagnate

When it was first proposed in the immediate aftermath of World War II BART was the brainchild of the US military, envisioned as a rapid train system to fortify national security. San Francisco had become a major Navy and Army administration post while Oakland and Richmond had been transformed into industrial arsenals. East Bay factories were rolling out ships and machines and weapons and materials for war while San Francisco was orchestrating a nascent empire of global financial and technology-driven corporate production. A well-placed bomb under the Bay Bridge would seriously dent the US war machine, dependent as it was on the West Coast. That kind of setback military planners hoped to avoid in the coming Cold War as they set their sights on Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asian neocolonies ripe for investments from US multinationals. A train system to funnel white collar workers to offices in San Francisco, and to move blue collar workers up and down the East Bay shoreline was an ideal solution for central planners in the War Department.

It was, however, the Bay Area’s multi-national corporations and commercial real estate capitalists that mustered the organizational power to build BART. Companies like Bechtel, Chevron, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America provided the initial financial, lobbying, and brain power. Real estate corporations in San Francisco, controlled mostly by a few elite families, backed them up, realizing the massive windfall profits that would accrue to them once the train system reinforced downtown and Market Street as the regional nexus of business.

From the very beginning BART’s impact was to worsen existing inequalities. The system enriched the corporations that lobbied for it and literally built it, Bechtel being the most obvious winner. But BART also played into the suburbanization of the Bay Area. White middle class families moved out of the East Bay’s cities of Oakland, Richmond, San Leandro, and Fremont, and even staged an exodus from San Francisco, relocating to the end of BART’s lines in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. Only in the 1990s and 2000s did the pattern of demographic inequality readily visible and measurable along the train line’s various stops begin to shift, with young and more affluent “yuppies” and later “hipsters” colonizing trendy neighborhoods like the Temescal in Oakland, and the Mission in San Francisco.

Even so, the unfair organization of the BART system’s geography and fare schedules remains in place today. Households living proximate to BART’s Orinda and Lafayette stops, out in the hills of the East Bay, are affluent and largely white. Households living under the tracks of the West Oakland Station, where construction in the late 1960s destroyed one of Oakland’s most vibrant Black business districts, are among the poorest families in California.

BART’s Oakland Coliseum Station is surrounded by tens of thousands of impoverished households for whom the trains provide little actual benefit. The neighborhoods adjacent to BART’s Coliseum stop have experienced some of the highest rates of foreclosure in the nation. Entire blocks have seen their housing stock half emptied, some homes turned into dump sites and fire hazards. A recent connector linking the station to the Oakland Airport was supposed to include stops along Hegenberger Road, a major thoroughfare in the city’s east inhabited largely by low-income Latinos and Blacks. The stations would have provided mobility for hotel and restaurant workers, and local residents, but the stations were scrapped in planning.

Just four stops away from the Coliseum Station is San Francisco’s Embarcadero where condos routinely sell for a million dollars. For decades BART passengers getting on in Walnut Creek, 25 miles from San Francisco, paid proportionately less for their ride than passengers boarding in downtown Oakland, where San Francisco is just spitting distance. With BART’s graduated fare structure the poor were made to pay more for each trip.

The BART system’s expansion, funded largely from sales tax revenues, put the burden of raising capital and paying back bonds on the shoulders of working families. Even today the BART District absorbs an enormous sum of regional sales tax dollars to pay off bonds, and to pledge toward stations and lines that are to be built far out into the eastern portion of Contra Costa County, and south toward San Jose. Although legally authorized to do so, and proven in other parts of the world as the best means of financing a transit system’s capital costs, BART never implemented any technique to capture the windfall profits in real estate values the system created around its stations. The train system’s original lobbyists, the same corporations at BART’s nexus of downtown San Francisco stops, saw to it that this was precluded from the start.

When Oscar Grant was summarily restrained and shot through his back on the platform of BART’s Fruitvale Station four years ago a rebellion engulfed the streets of Oakland. The subtext to the revolt was a complicated grievance against the Bay Area’s economic conditions. Grant, a butcher employed in an East Oakland market, was like countless young people, virtually abandoned in the rush toward the new tech and finance-centered economy. BART trains zip past their houses on elevated platforms, connecting the connected and privileged to their jobs, bypassing and out-pricing the poor. Too many working people simply don’t have a ticket to board the train. BART’s management speak the language of equity and justice in their daily deliberations, but it’s a focus on creating equity within a predetermined super-structure of inequity. And ironically while the BART board ponders ways to ensure that “minority communities” are not disproportionately impacted by new fare hikes, they’re also busy asking their workforce, largely women and people of color, for multi-million dollar pay cuts.

BART workers are bristling now at highly paid labor consultants hired by management to run the contract talks that broke down last week. They point to one Thomas Hock, a lawyer employed by Veolia, a French corporation that operates privatized transit systems around the world. BART workers say he’s one reason why negotiations in the Bay Area fell apart. The workers are calling him a “union buster.” BART management say he’s among the most respected labor strategist in their industry.

“I believe you maliciously hired this man and have no respect for the community and people you serve,” said one BART worker at the board’s meeting yesterday. You forced us to strike. We gave back last contract, we met for the collective good of everyone.”

“There’s been lots of talk about Tom Hock. The Bay Area’s learning about who you invited here,” said Yuri Holley, a BART worker and negotiator with ATU. Workers like Holley point to Hock’s record, and to Veolia’s record in recent labor disputes in Colorado, Arizona, and other states where strikes paralyzed transit systems, and where workers filed grievances with the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. BART workers are now calling on the board to fire their consultants.

BART’s contract paying Mr. Hock to lead them during contract talks with the unions was for $400,000.

“I make thirty dollars an hour,” said Holley. “Not the four-hundred thousands dollars of Tom Hock. We’ve had maybe twenty hours of face to face contact with your chief negotiator so far. That equates to about twenty-thousands dollars an hour he’s making.”

“That’s just mind boggling to me,” Holley said in clear frustration to the BART board.

BART workers are also pointing to the General Manager’s salary of $320,000 as an example of management’s misplaced values. All the talk about management’s over-sized pay follows a week of media reports portraying BART workers as cushioned and over-compensated. BART board member Zakhary Mallett publicly stated that workers should be paid less than their current middle class salaries. BART’s outside consultant and the Veolia corporation have a history of calling unionized workers over-paid, and stoking media campaigns to to build public resentment against anyone earning above a region’s median income.

BART workers fear being sent backward for their own sake. They fear also the wider ramifications an imposition of cuts would have in a time of rising prosperity for the wealthy few. The sisters, brothers, children, and neighbors of BART workers are employed in the Bay Area’s other modern day social factories, the hospitals, schools, cities, counties, and in the growing minimum wage service sector. Pressures to take from this bottom half of the workforce are intense, even though the economic pie has stopped shrinking. The desire of the wealthy few to maintain their riches in a political economy of inadequate and regressive taxation and welfare is bare now for all to see.

“We will be prepared for the war that you all have launched on your workforce,” Roxanne Sanchez, president of SEIU 1021 told BART’s management yesterday. “I say that with regret because we’re here to serve the public, but we will be prepared for the bloodiest longest strike since the 1970s if these tactics continue.”

Darwin Bond-Graham, a contributing editor to CounterPunch, is a sociologist and author who lives and works in Oakland, CA. His essay on economic inequality in the “new” California economy appears in the July issue of CounterPunch magazine. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

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Republished with permission from: AlterNet

MANHATTAN (CN) – Starbucks discriminates against deaf people in New York City by refusing to serve them, ejecting them and making fun of the way they speak, 12 customers claim in Federal Court.

The plaintiffs, most of whom are deaf and use sign language, claim the discrimination occurred repeatedly at more than one Starbucks in New York City.

Plaintiff Alan Roth describes an August 2012 incident in which a Starbucks employee on Park Avenue South “stated that he sounded funny,” asked him to repeat himself and laughed hysterically at his way of communicating.

He claims that when he asked to speak to a manager, the employee got angry and screamed obscenities in his face.

Then Starbucks employees asked Roth to leave and told him he was not welcome at that store, according to the complaint.

Roth claims he reported the incident to a manager, who failed to take action.

Lead plaintiff Lawrence Bitkower, who organized a monthly “Deaf Chat Coffee” meeting, claims the Starbucks store where his group met tried to kick them out before closing and refused to serve them.

“At approximately 9:00 pm, four hours before the posted closing time, a total of four Starbucks employees told the ‘Deaf Chat Coffee’ group that they had to leave the area they were occupying as it was going to be cleaned,” the complaint states, referring to a December 2012 meeting.

“Once the ‘Deaf Chat Coffee’ group moved, the Starbucks employees proceeded to allow non-deaf customers into that area and did not clean the area.

“At approximately 9:00 pm, plaintiff Sean Finnerty (‘Mr. Finnerty’) waited in line and proceeded to try to place an order with a Starbucks employee by handing his written order on a piece of paper to the Starbucks employee.

“The Starbucks employee refused to serve Mr. Finnerty.

“Confused, Mr. Finnerty demanded to know why he was not being served.

“The Starbucks employee informed Mr. Finnerty via writing that Starbucks was not serving deaf individuals.

“Shocked, humiliated and disgusted, Mr. Finnerty reported what had happened to other deaf individuals of the ‘Deaf Chat Coffee’ and the manager ‘Ziyad’.

“Plaintiffs Elvira Janturina and Miu Ng along with their two other friends who are deaf attempted to place an order with the Starbucks employee and were also refused service because they are deaf.

“Additional requests for service were made by plaintiffs Elvira Janturina and Miu Ng and were refused by the Starbucks employee as the employee continued to serve other non-deaf customers.

“Finally, plaintiff Elvira Janturina had to beg a non-deaf stranger to order for her and her deaf friends in order to receive service.

“Plaintiffs Lawrence Bitkower, Charles Kaufman, and Evan Dach spoke to Starbucks employee ‘Ziyad’ about their disgust about how the deaf were being treated by Starbucks. ‘Ziyad’ rejected their concerns and told them that ‘Ziyad’s’ manager told him to not serve deaf individuals.”

The plaintiffs claim Starbucks employees continued to discriminate against them during their next gatherings at the store.

When a Starbucks employee who knew some sign language tried to assist the deaf customers, she was reprimanded by another employee, according to the complaint.

To top it off, during a March 2013 gathering at the same Starbucks, the manager Ziyad called the police and falsely accused the plaintiffs of causing a disturbance, according to the complaint.

Police found no illegal conduct, apologized to the deaf customers and reprimanded Starbucks employees for calling them, the complaint states.

But instead of apologizing, Starbucks employees told the plaintiffs they were not welcome at the store and tried to intimidate them, according to the complaint.

After the plaintiffs sent an email to Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and other upper management, a regional vice president apologized for the “inconvenience we caused you and your friends” and offered them a preloaded Starbucks gift card, according to the complaint.

But the plaintiffs claim the company took no significant action to redress discrimination, such as launching an investigation or sanctioning employees.

The plaintiffs seek an injunction and compensatory and punitive damages for violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and state and city laws.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

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Republished with permission from: AlterNet

Daily flight logs from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation reveal that the federal department has been busy loaning Predator drones to “state, local, and non-CBP federal agencies.”

According to EFF’s summary of the documents, the number of CBP drone flights flown by other organizations has increased “eight-fold between 2010 and 2012.” EFF further reports that “CBP has failed to explain how it’s protecting our privacy from unwarranted drone surveillance.”

CBP calls its report on its Predator surveillance program the “Concept of Operations.” EFF received this report, as well as three years of flight logs, as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

An EFF blog post reports that the Concept of Operations document discloses that “CBP already appears to be flying drones well within the Southern and Northern US borders, and for a wide variety of non-border patrol reasons. What’s more – the agency is planning to increase its Predator drone fleet to 24 and its drone surveillance to 24 hours per day / 7 days per week by 2016.”

Around the clock, domestic surveillance provided by two dozen Predator drones buzzing in the skies of the United States will, as much as any other federal project, convert the “homeland” into a virtual prison with the inmates under the watchful, never-blinking eye of the wardens.

Just how will the information collected by these unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) be used? The CBP report published by EFF provides some insight:

As the Concept of Operations report notes, CBP’s goal is that its drone data will be “persistently available” (p. 21) and interoperable (p. 29) – not just within CBP, but to other agencies, and also possibly to other countries. CBP plans that its “UAS will provide assured monitoring of entities along land borders, inland seas, littorals and high seas with sufficient frequency, continuity, accuracy, spectral diversity, and data content to produce actionable information.” (p. 29)

While there was much valuable information contained in the cache of documents provided by CBP to EFF, the agency redacted most relevant data related to dates and geographical location of the drone flights. What was revealed, however, was a partial list of the agencies and departments who’ve borrowed CBP’s Predators. The roster includes the FBI, ICE, U.S. Marshals, U.S. Coast Guard, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Investigation, North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation, North Dakota Army National Guard, Texas Department of Public Safety.

Beyond the law-enforcement purposes behind the drone deployments, EFF reports that “CBP conducted extensive ‘electro-optical, thermal infrared imagery and Synthetic Aperture Radar’ surveillance of levees along the Mississippi River and river valleys across several states, along with surveillance of the massive Deep Water Horizon oil spill and other natural resources for the US Geological Survey, FEMA, the Bureau of Land Management, the US Forest Service, the Department of Natural Resources, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.”

While such activities seem, at first blush, legitimate and not subject to the same scrutiny as more overt surveillance missions, there are collateral aspects of these uses that deserve attention.

Perhaps most critical is the ultimate disposition of the images recorded by the drones deployed on these environmental missions. Photos of rivers, forests, and levees necessarily include pictures of the homes, cars, and other property of people who live in and near these areas. Such surveillance would seem to violate the Fourth Amendment, unless CBP has promulgated standard operating procedures to protect such unwarranted searches.

EFF’s summary of the information it received from CBP also revealed that the agency:

plans to make its drones and the data gathered through its drone surveillance even more widely available to outside agencies. For example, CBP plans to share data on a near real-time basis, possibly “via DOD’s Global Information Grid (GIG)/Defense Information Systems Network.” CBP also plans that “joint DHS and OGA [other government agency] combined operations will become the norm at successively lower organizational hierarchical levels,” which will, presumably, reduce the already limited oversight for CBP’s drone-loan program.

Beginning in 2006, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) began purchasing its growing fleet of (as yet) unarmed Predator drones. In testimony to Congress, CBP claimed this technology would purportedly aid in securing America’s southern border. According to a report written by the DHS inspector general, as of the end of 2012, CBP will have 12 of these aircraft in its arsenal with a total cost to taxpayers of nearly $200 million.

Inexplicably, the CBP took delivery of two drones in 2011 and 2012 despite the inspector general’s statement that “CBP had not adequately planned resources needed to support its current unmanned aircraft inventory.” So, since they weren’t using the drones they already bought, why not buy more? Although that spendthrift attitude is typical of government agency budgeting, perhaps the purchase of Predators is motivated by a goal a bit more sinister than either DHS or the Obama administration is willing to admit.

These other purposes are even hinted at in the DHS report. The tasks being performed by the CBP drones extend well beyond the patrolling of the border and into many other areas, a situation described by one reporter as “mission creep.” Here is a brief catalog of some of the ways CBP is farming out its drone fleet.

In addition to the borrowers listed in the EFF disclosure, the DHS report indicates that CBP Predators have been used to conduct missions for the following federal and state government agencies:

U.S. Secret Service, … Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); … Department of Defense; Texas Rangers; [and] U.S. Forest Service.

With regard to ICE’s use of the CBP drone, the inspector general’s report indicates that the aircraft “provided surveillance over a suspected smuggler’s tunnel, which yielded information that, according to an ICE representative, would have required many cars and agents to obtain.”

Yes, without the loan-a-drone program, the ICE surveillance mission would have required “many cars and agents,” as well as a warrant. With a drone, the government doesn’t need no stinkin’ warrant.

In a separate report issued in April 2012 by the Department of Defense, the Pentagon revealed the locations of over 100 new domestic sites that could soon serve as launch sites for military drones. 

The list of present and proposed drone bases includes 39 of the 50 states, as well as Guam and Puerto Rico.

As for congressional oversight of such serious potential threats to fundamental individual liberties, Representative Ted Poe (R-Texas) has introduced the Preserving American Privacy Act of 2013. Poe’s bill mandates that “in operating a public unmanned aircraft system or disclosing any covered information collected by such operation, a governmental entity shall minimize, to the maximum extent practicable, the collection or disclosure” of “information that is reasonably likely to enable identification of an individual; or information about an individual’s property that is not in plain view.”

On the Senate side, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is taking the lead in the fight to prevent unconstitutional surveillance.

On May 22, Paul introduced the Preserving Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act of 2013. This measure protects an individual’s right to privacy against unwarranted drone surveillance.

Paul’s Preserving Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act would reaffirm the right of Americans to be “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” as guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.

“The use of drone surveillance may work on the battlefields overseas, but it isn’t well-suited for unrestrained use on the streets in the United States. Congress must be vigilant in providing oversight to the use of this technology and protection for rights of the American people. I will continue the fight to protect and uphold our Fourth Amendment,” Senator Paul said.

Despite these laudable legislative efforts and despite surging international opposition to President Obama’s remote control warfare and death-by-drone program, one of those high-altitude, high-tech, snoop-and-snipe aircraft – owned or loaned by the federal government – may already be flying missions in the skies over the United States.

Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state. 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

Bloomberg
July 12, 2013

At an open-air flea market outside McAllen, Texas (BEESTX), near the Mexican border, shoppers can buy a goat and get their car windows tinted. Tables with handwritten signs touting Viagra (MDPSVIAG) are stocked with herbal remedies promising to burn fat and boost breast size. You can also find pills to end a pregnancy.

Bazaars like this have become home to a black market where women too poor to afford an abortion at a clinic or deterred by state mandates such as a 24-hour waiting period can buy drugs to induce a miscarriage on their own, a dozen area residents and doctors said in interviews.

Hundreds of miles north in Austin, the capital, lawmakers may inadvertently increase this illegal trade. Rules set to pass as soon as tomorrow might result in the closing of most, if not all, abortion facilities in the state. If the law – promoted as a way to improve women’s health – makes legal abortion unavailable in Texas, more women may turn to markets such as the one near McAllen and risk their lives.

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This article was posted: Friday, July 12, 2013 at 9:42 am

Tags: environment, eugenics, health

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

Cheryl K. Chumley
Washington Times
July 12, 2013

A tea party group that launched a petition drive to prosecute U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder reported on its Facebook page that nearly 1 million have signed on – and the movement is only growing by the minute.

The petition from TheTeaParty.net states, in part: “A person is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. That’s not the case, however, in Obama’s America when he needs to manipulate the people for his own political expediency. Who can he always rely on to be his hatchet man? None other than Attorney General Eric Holder. Do you stand with us in calling for Holder’s resignation and prosecution?”

Signing the online petition sends a letter directly to the signer’s congressional representatives, the site reported. And the group reports on its Facebook page that “we are almost at one million letters.”

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This article was posted: Friday, July 12, 2013 at 9:45 am

Tags: domestic news

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

Congratulations CEOs! You’ve been having a great time of it. Salaries are up, and up in a major way. The Economic Policy Institute says you brought home an average $14.1m in 2012. The New York Times, looking at slightly different numbers, claims the news is even better, saying the median number is $15.1m. That’s a 16% increase in one year.

As for the rest of us … well, about that.

The money for our bosses has to come from somewhere, doesn’t it? Here’s one place it likely originated: us.

According to the Department of Labor Statistics, hourly wages plunged by a record-breaking 3.8% in the first quarter of 2013.

These are more than just numbers. This pay disparity is having an increasingly corrosive effect, leaving us governed by and lectured to by an elite that seems out-of-touch with the lives of everyone else.

No wonder you can turn on Bloomberg Radio, like I did last week, and hear this advice: flying on a private jet was extolled as a budget-conscious option for parties of ten or more who were otherwise planning to fly first-class. According to the good folks at XOJET, if the plane is $20,000 for the trip and the average first class ticket about $2,000 … well, you do the math!

Millennials hanging around their parents’ basement, looking for a job online, can remember that “today is the golden age of private jets,” as I heard the guest say in that segment. The economics are unbeatable: students can rent a jet for the day for less than their total student debt bill, which averages about $27,000.

Besides, there are other budget benefits too. Just listen to Suze Orman who, when tough times came after the 2008 crash, told Forbes she was cutting back by only flying private planes for work purposes, using commercial airliner Jet Blue for personal travel. “I don’t care about money,” she said.

This, I admit, might be a sore point with me. I’m flying with my poodle Katiegirl to Los Angeles this week, where my husband is working for the next several weeks. I’d love a private jet, or even just a bit of leg-room where I am not risking stomping my poodle if I attempt to put my feet on the ground, but, hey, I’m paying $400, including a $100 pet fee.

What do I expect for that? A meal? That’s an additional $7 on Virgin America for our preferred plate with BumbleBee lemon pepper tuna. My idea of a budget cut: Katiegirl and I can share dinner. She’s a prodigious beggar, especially when fish, cheese or steak is involved. (OK, poodle digression over).

More examples from the files of the out-of-touch: resolutely cheerful headlines like ” Perhaps the sequester wasn’t so bad after all” or ” Sequestration was a dud.”

Well, maybe that’s true if you are an employed blogger, or a CEO. If you’re a member of Congress you could promptly pass legislation putting stop to your own inconvenience, even as the cutbacks resulted in furloughs for air traffic controllers and airport delays for all passengers including those in cattle/coach, and those flying private jets.

Progress it’s not. Those who have lost their jobs are getting by with less — 16% less, in Ohio, for example, thanks to sequestration-imposed cuts on unemployment checks. But I’m sure they don’t think it’s so bad, now that they can fly without furlough-caused delays.

Or let’s take a minute to discuss the latest in student loans. Rates on government-subsidized loans doubled on July 1 to 6.8%, as Washington pols bickered and dithered over how to get a grip on ballooning student debt, which now stands around $1tn. If you want to know one reason why our economy seems forever stuck at just above stall speed, think about the impact of that debt on the twentysomethings who need to pay it all back.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

Since 1967 Israel has maintained an unofficial policy of detaining Palestinian and Arab war victims in mass graves and cemeteries. Today at last 348 bodies are held prisoner by the Israeli government their families unable to retrieve their remains.

In a traditional conflict, the bodies of the deceased would be returned to their country of origin following peace and removal of the occupying power.  Israel refuses to return the bodies to their families, some of whom have been waiting for decades, on the basis that the conflict is temporary and withholding the remains is necessary to maintain internal security.

Yet as the occupation enters its 46^th year and with no end in sight, the Israeli government still retains nearly 350 bodies despite numerous appeals to the Israeli court and international condemnation of the practice. JLAC, The Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center, heads up the campaign to release Arab war victims and disclose the fate of those missing. In an interview on Thursday July 11^th, at the JLAC office in Ramallah Palestine, lawyer Haytham Khatib explained the motives behind Israel withholding these bodies.

“The rational behind this policy is a security condition, or a security pretext. Israeli considers all of them [deceased combatants] as terrorists, not fighter and soldiers and therefore the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of enemy dead do not apply.”

Khatib went on to say “Israel recognizes the importance of funeral and religious practices for Arab peoples, as well as the importance of Martyrs in Palestinian society.” Withholding the remains enacts a “collective punishment” against the families of fighters as well as providing a potential deterrent against future resistance.

This practice of withholding remains is consistent with Israeli attempts throughout history to present its activities in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) within the context of perpetual war. As Israeli historian Ilan Pappe wrote in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, this context presents actions “In such a manner, that all activities, including atrocities are portrayed as part of a theater of war, wherein things are judged on a moral basis in a manner very different from the ways they would be treated in non-combatant situation.” In this case the imprisonment of the remains of dead combatants is understood as a necessary wartime practice instead of a colony policy designed to exact a toll on those that have resisted the occupation.

The Numbers 

According to JLAC’s campaign coordinator Salem Khilleh, the organization has documented 442 cases of deceased combatants, including 66 that are still missing (assumed dead). 416 of the 442 cases are Palestinian, the rest Arab combatants from neighboring countries who died while fighting in Palestine.  The majority of these victims are PLO fighters who engaged in direct combat with Israeli forces but also include those that died while serving prison sentences, in direct clashes with IDF, killed or missing while crossing border and a few that died in terrorists attacks against Israeli civilians.

The deceased are held in secret cemeteries located in closed military zones. So far only four of these so-called “cemeteries of numbers” have been identified, the exact number of deceased combatants is impossible to know given that Israel has net released information on how many bodies it retains. Salem Khilleh describes these cemeteries: “there are no names just iron bars with numbers corresponding to info on the deceased, the graves are small and shallow often containing multiple bodies.” Prior to 1976 deceased were buried without any clear Israeli policy or process, the bodies left unidentified.  Many of the deceased were placed in mass graves in shallow sandy soil running the risk of exposure and animal disturbance.

JLAC Campaign

In August of 2008 JLAC began its campaign to retrieve the bodies of the dead and disclose the fate of those missing. According to Salem the idea for the campaign began when one of the parents of a deceased soldier contacted JLAC.  “He was 85 at the time; his last wish was to retrieve the body of his son, “ Salem recalled the elderly man saying.

The campaigns first success came with the release of the remains of Mashour Taleb Saleh who was killed 1976 in a PLO guerilla operation in Israel. In 2010, after a successful petition by JLAC to the Israeli Supreme Court, the Israeli Authority released Mashour’s remains to his family, some 33 years after his death.

In an interview in 2010 Mashour’s brother spoke about the Israeli policy.  “Confiscating corpses is an immoral policy, the dead are dead. This is punishment for both the living and the deceased. It’s a policy of revenge; there is no law that allows anyone to retain a corps as prisoner for decades.” Since 2010 JLAC has successfully secured the release of 92 other bodies and is petitioning for the release and disclosure of all remaining deceased combatants along with the missing.

Legality

In a report submitted to the United Nations in 2009, JLAC exposes Israel continued violation of international law and the “the inappropriate and disrespectful actions practiced on human bodies. ” Conventional and customary International Humanitarian Law has determined that contesting parties in armed conflict, whether international or domestic, must respect the dead whether killed in the battlefield or died while in detention. Bodies must be collected, evacuated, buried in properly marked graves and their families must be notified. Moreover, the return of dead bodies to the party that they belong to or upon the request of their next of kin is an international obligation duly recognized under international customary law and relevant treaties.

Israeli actions constitute a direct violation of international Law and Article 17, 120, 130 of the Geneva Convention that outline the criteria for treatment of enemy bodies.

Graves are not adequately maintained and bodies are buried in areas at high risk of exposure. Tombs are not properly marked and families are unaware of their location, bared from visiting their loved ones. Furthermore as Khilleh notes that prior to the 1^st of September 1976, “None of the cases were documented, identified or filed.  Some of the bodes were used to harvest organs and as cadavers for medical students, while the conditions of the graves have made it impossible to identify some of the returned remains.   These actions show a severe and criminal disrespect for the bodies of the deceased.”

Yet throughout the conflict Israeli has considered itself within its legal right to retain the remains of these war victims, defining all forms of resistance to the occupation as terrorism. The Israeli governments treatment of the Palestinian dead is consistent with numerous policies in the West Bank where supposed security threats supplant international law.  The expansive nature of the term security in Israeli is used to rationalize the imprisonment of the dead and the living. According to the Palestinian Prisoners rights association Addameer, more than 800,000 Palestinian have been incarcerated in Israeli jails since the onset of the occupation in 1967, thousands of which held in administrative detention without charge or trail.

Colonial Policy

The unofficial Israeli policy of withholding the bodies of Arab and Palestinian war victims, if viewed in comparison to other wartime conflicts, is consistent with international law. However it is important to contextualize this violence within the reality of the conflict itself. Israel continual retention of the Palestinian dead is not a byproduct of war but a form collective punishment for resisting colonialism. Israel’s policy to withhold the remains of enemy combatants is consistent with the State’s narrative of perpetual war. This narrative aims to present the conflict as a battle between competing powers, not the asymmetrical struggle against the ongoing occupation and Judaization of the oPt. The inability for Palestinian and Arab families to burry and honor their loved ones reflects a gross violation of their rights and an extension of Israeli control over the bodies of the living and the deceased. For these Palestinians the occupation extends to the grave.

Sam Gilbert writes about the Middle East.

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

A US judge has called for a halt to genital searches at Guantanamo because they violate detainees’ religious values. An order was also issued for detainees weak from the ongoing hunger strike to be allowed to meet with attorneys in the camp.

US District Judge Judith Royce Lamberth slammed the practice of
genital searches as it “flagrantly disregards the need for a
light touch on religious and cultural matters,” referring to
the Muslim inmates at the holding facility.

Judge Lambert released a 35-page report explaining why the
genital pat-downs for contraband were discouraging detainees from
consulting their attorneys. Guantanamo lawyers said the intrusive
practice began when detainees were told they would have to go
off-site to meet with legal counsel. Some prisoners reportedly
refused because of the searches.


“The search procedures discourage meetings with counsel and so
stand in stark contrast to the president’s insistence on judicial
review for every detainee,” Lamberth wrote. “The court, whose
duty it is to call the jailer to account, will not countenance
the jailer’s interference with detainees’ access to counsel.”

Furthermore, Lamberth demanded that detainees who were weak from
hunger striking be allowed enough space to sit upright when they
are being transported.

Lamberth noted that previously staff at Guantanamo had refrained
from touching the prisoners’ genital areas out of respect for
their religious and cultural beliefs. This policy changed with
the arrival of a new commander in May.

Army Col. Greg Julian, Guantanamo spokesperson, responded to the
judge’s words, maintaining that the chain of command “will
review the procedures to figure out how to accommodate the
ruling.”

He stressed that such checks were necessary especially following
the suicide of Yemeni inmate, Adnan Latif, who took an overdose
last year.

The latest ruling follows an appeal by Judge Gladys Kessler to
President Barack Obama to cease the force-feeding of prisoners on
hunger strike at Guantanamo. She stressed in her four-page report
that the court does not have the sufficient powers to intervene
in cases concerning detention or treatment of alleged enemy
combatants.

Currently 106 prisoners out of the 166 foreign captives at the
Guantanamo facility are participating in the hunger strike in
protest of their continued detention. According to reports 45 of
them are undergoing twice daily nasogastric feedings.

The practice of force-feeding has been branded a “gross abuse
of human rights.” Amnesty International has called on the US
government to give the detainees at Guantanamo fair trials in US
federal courts and charge them or release them immediately.

Over the last decade Amnesty has documented numerous abuses of
prisoners including sensory deprivation, prolonged isolation,
20-hour interrogations, stripping and forcible shaving.

Republished with permission from: RT

Headlines focus on Egypt. Sinai gets little attention. What’s ongoing bears close watching.

On July 7, Maan News headlined “Egypt army ‘preparing for Sinai operation,’ ” saying:

A “large-scale military operation” is planned. “Egyptian forces sealed more tunnels along Gaza’s border.”

“An Egyptian military official told Ma’an the army was preparing for a major operation in Sinai ‘to clean it up from terrorist and criminal cells.’ ”

“The army official said ‘coordination is ongoing between the Egyptians and the Israelis to bring military vehicles, troops and jets into Sinai to fight terror.’ ”

In late June, Egyptian forces “deployed heavily” along Gaza’s border.

“Islamist militants” threatened reprisal for Morsi’s ouster. On July 7, a Sinai pipeline south of el-Arish supplying Israel with gas was blown up.

Previous attacks occurred earlier. This was the first one in over a year. It followed days earlier clashes between unidenfied militants and Egyptian forces. Hamas was wrongfully blamed.

According to an IDF statement:

“The Egyptian military activity in the Sinai is coordinated with Israeli security elements and authorized at the most senior levels in Israel, in order to contend with security threats in the Sinai that pose a threat to both Israel and Egypt.”

At issue is inflicting more punishment on besieged Gazans. Rafah crossing is closed. Palestinians needing urgent medical care unavailable in Gaza can’t get it.

Hundreds stranded in Cairo’s International Airport and elsewhere outside Gaza can’t return home.

According to Max Blumenthal:

“Incitement against Palestinians peaked after the election of the Freedom and Justice Party’s Mohamed Morsi as President.”

Opposition politicians and supportive media figures “exploit(ed Morsi’s) perceived alliance with Hamas to hold him responsible for acts of terror committed in the Sinai Peninsula.”

Anti-Morsi elements wrongfully blame Palestinians. They call them Muslim Brotherhood militants.

Israeli media and Palestinian Authority officials hype the big lie. They do it for self-serving reasons.

Blumenthal quoted retired Egyptian general Sameh Seif Elyazal saying:

“Egyptian law will punish with sentences that could reach 25 years in jail the Palestinians and Syrians and Iraqis who have made calls for incitement to violence at the demonstrations at Rabaa Al-Adawiya in return for money.”

Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) massacred over 50 nonviolent protesters. They did so days earlier in Rabaa Al-Adawiya.

They wrongfully called them terrorists. They were praying peacefully outside Republican Guard headquarters.

SCAF officials circulated false stories. They claimed Hamas deployed scores of fighters in Sinai. They lied saying they want revenge for Morsi’s ouster.

Al Hayat is a London-based pro-Saudi broadsheet. It quoted an unnamed “senior Egyptian military official.” He lied about 150 Izz al-Din al-Qassam fighters allegedly entering Sinai through Gaza’s tunnels.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad were wrongfully blamed. Abbas advisor Yasser Abd Rabbo took full advantage. He accused Hamas of “helping terrorists and jihadist gangs in Sinai against the Egyptian army.”

Senior Fatah official Jamal Nazzal threw more fuel on the fire. He wants Hamas overthrown. He urged Palestinians to do it. So-called Fatah/Hamas reconciliation appears more illusory than real.

Legitimate elections are unlikely. Israel’s dirty hands manipulate events. So do Washington’s. SCAF’s a willing partner. Gaza remains isolated. Palestinian suffering continues.

No evidence whatever connects Hamas or Islamic Jihad to Sinai violence. Egypt’s coup d’etat regime issued a decree. It restricts anyone holding PA or Jordanian passports without a national number from entering Egypt.

Expect stepped up vilification of Hamas. On July 10, Press TV headlined “Gunmen attack military commander in Egypt’s Sinai,” saying:

According to a SCAF spokesman, militants attacked a senior commander and second field army chief. They “came under heavy fire, which led to clashes between security forces and the terrorist elements.”

“This is the latest in a string of attacks in Sinai targeting the army and the police in recent days with the aim of sowing chaos and harming the stability and national security of Egypt.”

The commander survived. Other attacks occurred earlier. Expect more to follow. Expect Hamas to be wrongfully blamed.

On July 11, Haaretz headlined “Egyptian army killed dozens of Hamas fighters in Sinai, report says.”

It’s false. Saudi-controlled Al-Hayat propaganda called unidentified militants Hamas fighters. It said 32 were killed. Others were arrested.

Ismail Haniyeh refuted spurious charges. Hamas doesn’t interfere in internal Egyptian affairs. He said it numerous times before. No evidence suggests otherwise.

Egypt wrongfully accused Iran of “unacceptable interference” in its domestic affairs. On Monday, Tehran called Morsi’s ouster a “cause for concern.” It suggested “foreign hands” responsibility.

Iran knows Washington was very much involved. It’s no secret. Perhaps Israel’s dirty hands partnered in what happened. It has close ties to SCAF. Morsi tried improving ties with Tehran.

In 1979, they cooled after Egypt gave Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi shelter. It did so after his ouster. In February, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Cairo. He was the first Iranian leader to come in decades.

Both countries are sharply divided on Syria. Iran strongly supports Assad. Morsi, SCAF, and new regime leaders back Washington’s war to oust him.

A Final Comment: Meet Ron Dermer

On July 9, Dermer was appointed Israel’s ambassador to Washington. He’ll replace Michael Oren. He’ll step down this fall. Reports suggest it’s not voluntary. He was removed. Dermer wants his job. He played hardball to get it.

He’s American born. He’s a Florida native. He’s returning to his roots. In 1995, he was economics minister at Israel’s Washington embassy. At the time, he gave up his US citizenship.

He’s ideologically over-the-top. He’s hardline. He’s militant. He’s pro-war. He’s bigoted. He’s dangerous. He reflects the worst of Zionist extremism. He defends the notion of making Israeli Arabs pledge allegiance to a “Jewish and democratic state.”

Foreign policy analyst MJ Rosenberg calls him “as crude as (Oren) is smooth.”

He opposes Palestinian self-determination. He supports occupation harshness. He believes “the principle of two states for two people is a childish solution to a complicated problem.”

According to Reuters and other reports, he has right-wing Republican ties. He’s linked to the neocon fringe. He supported Romney’s presidential candidacy.

An unnamed Israeli political analyst said he made sure Netanyahu stayed close to him. If elected, Dermer “would be the one you send right away,” he said.

“He’s got the right demeanor as a Republican. He has neo-conservative credentials. He has the full backing and confidence of the prime minister, which is important. But for Obama, it’s not the right fit. There’s too much baggage.”

He’s a close Netanyahu associate. For four years, he served as senior advisor and speechwriter. He was his key White House liaison.

In March, he stepped down. He had ambassadorial ideas in mind. He needed time to smooth the way. Israel’s Channel 10 said he’s been long groomed for the job.

Tablet magazine calls him “Bibi’s brain.” He’s his “most influential aide.” He’s Netanyahu’s “alter-ego.”

He’s “done more to shape Israel’s relationship with the United States, its Arab neighbors, and the Palestinians over the past few years than any man aside from the prime minister himself.”

He’s a “jack-of-all-trades — strategist, pollster and speechwriter.” He’s “chief proxy in foreign affairs.” He’s a “constant presence in Netanyahu’s meetings in Washington.”

“Bibi doesn’t move an inch without talking to him.” He’s Wharton/Oxford trained. He’s got “Machiavellian political instincts.” He’s “ferociously competitive. He wouldn’t let a three-year old beat him at ping pong.”

Announcing his appointment, Netanyahu said:

He “has all the qualities necessary to successfully fill this important post.”

“I have known him for many years, and I know that Ron will faithfully represent the State of Israel in the capital of our greatest ally — the USA.”

“On behalf of the citizens of Israel, I wish him great success.”

Dermer’s appointment didn’t surprise. In recent weeks, he spent time in Washington. He held numerous meetings. He made the rounds reassuring Obama officials he won’t disappoint.

It remains to be seen. Pro-Israeli Washington Institute for Near East Policy analyst David Makovsky said tension regarding Dermer’s Republican ties peaked last November.

Appointing him then wouldn’t have been possible. Time soothes old wounds. Today’s it’s much easier.

He’s “very influential with the prime minister. So this is also an opportunity under certain conditions.”

He’s Netanyahu’s closest advisor. No one’s closer. He has his complete confidence and trust. He has unfettered access. Host countries prefer these attributes.

Americans will know dealing with Dermer means they’re doing so directly with Netanyahu. He’s closer to him than anyone.

In America, Israel’s lobby has final say. It approves. AIPAC endorsed him, saying:

“Mr. Dermer has a deep understanding of the critical value of the US-Israel relationship and the importance of further strengthening the alliance between these two democratic allies.”

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. 

His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour 

http://www.dailycensored.com/ongoing-fighting-in-sinai/

Republished with permission from: Global Research

File photo shows foreign-backed militants in Syria.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

BBC News Europe
July 12, 2013

Lawmakers in the Republic of Ireland have voted to legalise abortion under certain conditions for the first time.

The move, approved by a 127-31 vote in the lower house (Dáil), would authorise a termination when doctors deem that a woman is at risk of taking her life. It needs upper house endorsement, too.

The vote follows the case of an Indian woman who died in hospital after she was refused an abortion.

The debate revealed deep splits in the predominantly Catholic country.

Read More

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This article was posted: Friday, July 12, 2013 at 9:24 am

Tags: environment, eugenics, foreign affairs, health, legislation

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

Last week, a couple of NSA language analysts had a very, very bad day at the University of Wisconsin.

It started out well enough. They headed to a recruiting session, hoping to entice a few bright young minds to join the agency. They showed the two dozen or so students who had assembled a brief slideshow touting the benefits of a career in snooping. It offered important work protecting the country. And it came with good benefits and a fun lifestyle!

Then came the question-and-answer period. Madiha Tahir, a journalist working toward her PhD, started asking questions about the latest revelations on NSA surveillance. Other students joined in and the session went downhill quickly.

An audio recording of the exchange made by Tahir went viral. By the end of the tape, one could almost picture the two agents drowning their sorrows in white Russians (the official cocktail of the NSA) at the Holiday Inn bar after the session.

Tahir joined us for the AlterNet Radio Hour this week. Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.

Joshua Holland: So, Madiha, you saw that they were having an NSA recruiting session, and you decided to go down and check it out. Can you set the scene for us?

Madiha Tahir: Sure. I received an email from the program a day before letting us know that this recruiting session was happening. I went there not actually to speak up but simply because I was curious to see how the NSA would sell itself at a time like this.

I went there, and it was two recruiters, a male and a female. I think at most there were probably 25-30 graduate students in the room, and additionally, there were five high school students who had been brought there by a high school teacher.

JH: Was everybody there out of curiosity like you? Do you think there were people there who were seriously considering a career at the NSA?

MT: When I went there, I thought maybe people were there actually to find out about careers with the NSA, and maybe there were. I have no way of knowing. I do know that once I started to ask questions, a couple of other students joined in. After the exchange, several students got up and left at the same time. I’m told that by the end of the session, there were maybe four people left not including the high school students.

JH: Okay. This is Madiha Tahir asking some questions of a couple of NSA recruiters. Let’s take a little listen here:

Madiha: Yeah, I just had a question. You said earlier that the two tasks that you do, one is sort of figuring out the … tracking down the sort of communications of your adversaries, and the other is protecting the communications of officials.

Recruiter1: Right.

Madiha: Do you consider Germany and the countries that the NSA has been spying on to be adversaries, or are you right now not speaking the truth? I’m just asking for clarification.

Recruiter1: I’m focusing on what our foreign policy requirements are, so, I mean, you can define adversary as enemy, and clearly Germany is not our enemy. But would we have foreign national interests from an intelligence perspective on what’s going on across the globe? Yeah, we do. I mean, our requirements that come to us as an intelligence community organization — from the policymakers, from the military, from whoever — are global.

Madiha: By “adversary,” do you actually mean anybody and everybody? There’s nobody then, by your definition, that is not an adversary, is that correct?

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

July 11, 2013
 |

The following piece first appeared in the American Prospect. 

The final rally of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign took place on symbolically charged ground: the rolling fields of Manassas, site of the first major battle of the Civil War. It was the last stop on an election eve spent entirely in the South: Jacksonville, Charlotte, and finally Northern Virginia. In the autumn chill, an estimated 90,000 people spread out across the county fairgrounds and waited for hours to cheer a new president–and a new South.

By this point, Virginians knew Obama well. In February, he had beaten Hillary Clinton 2 to 1 in the state’s Democratic primary, a blow to her floundering bid. After clinching the nomination, he’d kicked off his general-election campaign in rural Virginia and been a frequent visitor since. Bucking conventional wisdom, Obama’s team had invested heavily in three Southern states: not just perennial battleground Florida but also Virginia and North Carolina, which had not voted Democratic for president since 1964 and 1976, respectively. No Democrat–not even Bill Clinton–had made a serious attempt to win North Carolina or Virginia since Ronald Reagan claimed it in 1980. But Obama was gambling on an emerging South–one that is younger than the rest of the country, far more ethnically diverse than the old black-and-white paradigm, and more liberal-leaning than any Southern generation to precede it.

That emerging South was arrayed in the dark hills around Obama as he flashed into the spotlight. On soil where whites once fought to the death for the right to enslave blacks, this throng had gathered to hail the soon-to-be first black man to be elected president. The next day, Obama carried all three of his Southern targets–55 electoral votes for the party. For Southerners, the message was unmistakable: The future has arrived. The Solid South is dead.

When Americans talk about the South, they tend to be talking about the past. When they talk about Southern politics, they tend to be talking about the old, stereotyped “Solid South”–that uniformly conservative, racist, anti-union, snake-handling cluster of former Confederate states that voted en masse for Democrats from the pre—Civil War through civil rights, then switched their allegiance to the former “party of Lincoln” beginning in the 1970s. Once LBJ and the Democrats betrayed the cause of white supremacy and Richard Nixon cooked up the “Southern Strategy,” the region became as solidly Republican as it once was Democratic. End of story.

Southern politics has never been quite so uncomplicated as that. It took decades for Republicans to outnumber Democrats, and Republican control of the region has never matched the Democrats’ former hegemony. The South has been contested ground for 40 years, with the GOP dominating federal elections and gradually cutting into the Democrats’ hold on state and local offices–culminating in 2012, when Arkansas’s legislature became the last to go Republican. (Virginia’s Senate has a partisan split.)

Over the next two decades, it will become clear to even the most clueless Yankee that the Solid South is long gone. The politics of the region’s five most populous states–Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Texas–will be defined by the emerging majority that gave Obama his winning margins. The under-30 voters in these states are ethnically diverse, they lean heavily Democratic, and they are just beginning to vote. The white population percentage is steadily declining; in Georgia, just 52 percent of those under 18 are white, a number so low it would have been unthinkable 20 years ago.

By the 2020s, more than two-thirds of the South’s electoral votes could be up for grabs. (The South is defined here as the 11 states of the former Confederacy.) If all five big states went blue, with their 111 electoral votes, only 49 votes would be left for Republicans. (That’s based on the current electoral-vote count; after the next census, the fast-growing states will have more.) Win or lose, simply making Southern states competitive is a boon to Democrats. If Republicans are forced to spend time and resources to defend Texas and Georgia, they’ll have less for traditional battlegrounds like Ohio and Pennsylvania. Even if Democrats aren’t competitive in those states for another decade, they will benefit from connecting with millions of nonvoters who haven’t heard their message. They are building for a demographic future that Republicans dread: the time when overwhelming white support will no longer be enough to win a statewide election in Texas and Georgia.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

Isla di Elba, Italia

At the core of the drone program is the theory of signature targeting.  It is a theory based on the idea that analysts can discern “enemy combatants” from an analysis of outward indicators of patterns of behaviour.

As a practical matter, this approach requires the construction (really a primitive synthesis) of some kind of template describing the universe of behaviour indicators before the fact.  In step 2, analysts can compare the observed indicators implicit in a suspected target’s individual behaviour to that predicted by the template.  Step three is to make some kind of assessment – usually a subjective probabilistic calculation – of whether or not the target is a valid target.  The calculation is subjective because the indicator is based on an array of assumptions buried deeply in the template.

In its more sophisticated – read pseudo scientific – incarnation, the comparison can be done mathematically on a computer using artificial intelligence algorithms.  Often this effort involves statistics, including sometimes Bayesian statistics, to give the targeting “analyst” an estimate of the statistical ‘confidence’ in the result of the calculation.  The mechanistic nature of this approach raises the possibility that millions of data inputs can be analyzed on a machine without human intervention, with the results summarized in a neat powerpoint briefing, and presented to an overworked decision-maker, who does not have a clue about the deeply buried subjective assumptions underpinning seemingly objective nature of the calculations.

The operative word in this application of artificial intelligence theory is “artificial” because a real intelligence appreciation, as the American strategist John Boyd showed, resides in a decision maker’s Orientation. Boyd’s theory of Orientation involves a balanced interplay of an ever-evolving synthesis growing out of many-sided, continuing analyses, which cut into a problem from many different angles.  The objective is  insure that one’s Orientation matches the ever-changing requirements of the changing and often menacing external environment.  I worked closely with Boyd while he was developing these ideas.  For readers not familiar with his ideas, my presentation, Evolutionary Epistemology, is a personal interpretation of his basic theory of knowledge generation.  The goal is understand how one evolves an adaptable Orientation to support Observations and Decisions that work in changing conditions of the real world.  Readers interested in learning more about Boyd’s ideas can find them explicated in Coram, Fallows, Richards, and Ozinga. Boyd’s own words (beware, they are cryptic) can be found in the Boyd Compendium.

Boyd’s theory of Orientation is crucial for understanding why an algorithmic template based artificial intelligence is so stupid, and so easy to game by all sides, for all sorts of nefarious purposes.

When viewed through the lens of Orientation, the template described above is merely a hardwired (non-evolving) Orientation based on a one-sided analysis.  The fatal flaw in this conception is fundamental: Template based artificial intelligence schemes confuse analysis with synthesis. (BTW … ‘Connecting the dots’ is a popular phrase making the same mistake – which is the central reason we never seem to be able to connect the dots!)

The confusion of analysis with synthesis in template-based decision making scheme sets the decision maker up for incestuous amplification, which occurs when the preconceptions implicit in the template drive the both the analyst and decision maker to see what he/she wants to see, rather than what is.  The epistemological flaw is basic: Logically, the template requires the analyst to know every possible pattern of a target’s behaviour before the fact. The unrealistic assumption of godlike omniscience reduces the subtle problem of target identification to a simple one of comparative analysis (‘observations’ vs. those predicted by the template) and leads naturally to a mechanistic statistical analysis, together (usually) with a determination of acceptable confidence levels.

In the best of worlds, this kind of hard-wired orientation can be true only if the target is too stupid to adapt unpredictably to the changing conditions that threaten its existence – i.e., if the ‘target’ is an unthinking automaton with no incentive to survive or win.  But human beings are adaptive, thinking, creative, and therefore unpredictable creatures with a will to live:  Already, for example, there are signs some Al Qaeda wannabees are trying to evolve counter-measures to drones – some laughingly simple and sure to be effective – to neutralize what little effectiveness drones might have. (We already know drones are killing too many civilians and producing highly counterproductive grand-strategic blowback effects).

No doubt, at this point some readers may be wondering where I am going with mumbo jumbo about the mindlessness of confusing synthesis (and creativity) with analysis (and predictability).  Well, I urge you to read carefully this important McClatchy report by the inestimable Jonathan Landry. Landry explains in mind numbing detail how you and every American are now in the process of being ‘templated’ by your neighbors and coworkers.  Landry shows how your friends and colleagues are being enlisted to feed indicators into the crosshairs of unseen templates concocted by anonymous, mindless, artificial intelligence apparachiks in the Federal Government and their privatized accomplices in industry, all of whom are cashing in on the self-organizing politics of money in a cultural evolutions that depends on a compliant American citizenry, anesthetized by fear.

Welcome to the Amerikan Deep State, presided over by the most superficially attractive president since John Kennedy, where signature targeting is coming home to roost in your living room, brought to you by the not-so-creative geniuses in NSA, Microsoft, DOD, DHA, Booz-Allen, etc.

Franklin “Chuck” Spinney is a former military analyst for the Pentagon and a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. He be reached at chuck_spinney@mac.com

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

BBC News Europe
July 12, 2013

Lawmakers in the Republic of Ireland have voted to legalise abortion under certain conditions for the first time.

The move, approved by a 127-31 vote in the lower house (Dáil), would authorise a termination when doctors deem that a woman is at risk of taking her life. It needs upper house endorsement, too.

The vote follows the case of an Indian woman who died in hospital after she was refused an abortion.

The debate revealed deep splits in the predominantly Catholic country.

Read More

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This article was posted: Friday, July 12, 2013 at 9:24 am

Tags: environment, eugenics, foreign affairs, health, legislation

–>

Republished with permission from: Infowars

July 9, 2013
 |

Last week, a couple of NSA language analysts had a very, very bad day at the University of Wisconsin.

It started out well enough. They headed to a recruiting session, hoping to entice a few bright young minds to join the agency. They showed the two dozen or so students who had assembled a brief slideshow touting the benefits of a career in snooping. It offered important work protecting the country. And it came with good benefits and a fun lifestyle!

Then came the question-and-answer period. Madiha Tahir, a journalist working toward her PhD, started asking questions about the latest revelations on NSA surveillance. Other students joined in and the session went downhill quickly.

An audio recording of the exchange made by Tahir went viral. By the end of the tape, one could almost picture the two agents drowning their sorrows in white Russians (the official cocktail of the NSA) at the Holiday Inn bar after the session.

Tahir joined us for the AlterNet Radio Hour this week. Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.

Joshua Holland: So, Madiha, you saw that they were having an NSA recruiting session, and you decided to go down and check it out. Can you set the scene for us?

Madiha Tahir: Sure. I received an email from the program a day before letting us know that this recruiting session was happening. I went there not actually to speak up but simply because I was curious to see how the NSA would sell itself at a time like this.

I went there, and it was two recruiters, a male and a female. I think at most there were probably 25-30 graduate students in the room, and additionally, there were five high school students who had been brought there by a high school teacher.

JH: Was everybody there out of curiosity like you? Do you think there were people there who were seriously considering a career at the NSA?

MT: When I went there, I thought maybe people were there actually to find out about careers with the NSA, and maybe there were. I have no way of knowing. I do know that once I started to ask questions, a couple of other students joined in. After the exchange, several students got up and left at the same time. I’m told that by the end of the session, there were maybe four people left not including the high school students.

JH: Okay. This is Madiha Tahir asking some questions of a couple of NSA recruiters. Let’s take a little listen here:

Madiha: Yeah, I just had a question. You said earlier that the two tasks that you do, one is sort of figuring out the … tracking down the sort of communications of your adversaries, and the other is protecting the communications of officials.

Recruiter1: Right.

Madiha: Do you consider Germany and the countries that the NSA has been spying on to be adversaries, or are you right now not speaking the truth? I’m just asking for clarification.

Recruiter1: I’m focusing on what our foreign policy requirements are, so, I mean, you can define adversary as enemy, and clearly Germany is not our enemy. But would we have foreign national interests from an intelligence perspective on what’s going on across the globe? Yeah, we do. I mean, our requirements that come to us as an intelligence community organization — from the policymakers, from the military, from whoever — are global.

Madiha: By “adversary,” do you actually mean anybody and everybody? There’s nobody then, by your definition, that is not an adversary, is that correct?

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

July 11, 2013
 |

The following piece first appeared in the American Prospect. 

The final rally of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign took place on symbolically charged ground: the rolling fields of Manassas, site of the first major battle of the Civil War. It was the last stop on an election eve spent entirely in the South: Jacksonville, Charlotte, and finally Northern Virginia. In the autumn chill, an estimated 90,000 people spread out across the county fairgrounds and waited for hours to cheer a new president–and a new South.

By this point, Virginians knew Obama well. In February, he had beaten Hillary Clinton 2 to 1 in the state’s Democratic primary, a blow to her floundering bid. After clinching the nomination, he’d kicked off his general-election campaign in rural Virginia and been a frequent visitor since. Bucking conventional wisdom, Obama’s team had invested heavily in three Southern states: not just perennial battleground Florida but also Virginia and North Carolina, which had not voted Democratic for president since 1964 and 1976, respectively. No Democrat–not even Bill Clinton–had made a serious attempt to win North Carolina or Virginia since Ronald Reagan claimed it in 1980. But Obama was gambling on an emerging South–one that is younger than the rest of the country, far more ethnically diverse than the old black-and-white paradigm, and more liberal-leaning than any Southern generation to precede it.

That emerging South was arrayed in the dark hills around Obama as he flashed into the spotlight. On soil where whites once fought to the death for the right to enslave blacks, this throng had gathered to hail the soon-to-be first black man to be elected president. The next day, Obama carried all three of his Southern targets–55 electoral votes for the party. For Southerners, the message was unmistakable: The future has arrived. The Solid South is dead.

When Americans talk about the South, they tend to be talking about the past. When they talk about Southern politics, they tend to be talking about the old, stereotyped “Solid South”–that uniformly conservative, racist, anti-union, snake-handling cluster of former Confederate states that voted en masse for Democrats from the pre—Civil War through civil rights, then switched their allegiance to the former “party of Lincoln” beginning in the 1970s. Once LBJ and the Democrats betrayed the cause of white supremacy and Richard Nixon cooked up the “Southern Strategy,” the region became as solidly Republican as it once was Democratic. End of story.

Southern politics has never been quite so uncomplicated as that. It took decades for Republicans to outnumber Democrats, and Republican control of the region has never matched the Democrats’ former hegemony. The South has been contested ground for 40 years, with the GOP dominating federal elections and gradually cutting into the Democrats’ hold on state and local offices–culminating in 2012, when Arkansas’s legislature became the last to go Republican. (Virginia’s Senate has a partisan split.)

Over the next two decades, it will become clear to even the most clueless Yankee that the Solid South is long gone. The politics of the region’s five most populous states–Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Texas–will be defined by the emerging majority that gave Obama his winning margins. The under-30 voters in these states are ethnically diverse, they lean heavily Democratic, and they are just beginning to vote. The white population percentage is steadily declining; in Georgia, just 52 percent of those under 18 are white, a number so low it would have been unthinkable 20 years ago.

By the 2020s, more than two-thirds of the South’s electoral votes could be up for grabs. (The South is defined here as the 11 states of the former Confederacy.) If all five big states went blue, with their 111 electoral votes, only 49 votes would be left for Republicans. (That’s based on the current electoral-vote count; after the next census, the fast-growing states will have more.) Win or lose, simply making Southern states competitive is a boon to Democrats. If Republicans are forced to spend time and resources to defend Texas and Georgia, they’ll have less for traditional battlegrounds like Ohio and Pennsylvania. Even if Democrats aren’t competitive in those states for another decade, they will benefit from connecting with millions of nonvoters who haven’t heard their message. They are building for a demographic future that Republicans dread: the time when overwhelming white support will no longer be enough to win a statewide election in Texas and Georgia.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

Paul Bedard
Washington Examiner
July 12, 2013

A fight has erupted over the costs of granting amnesty to the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in America, with the White House claiming the cash benefits to the Treasury are huge and will slash the deficit, and critics showing it will cost Americans more and increase the deficit.

The White House late Thursday dispatched an email to President Obama’s campaign supporters that provided a video claiming that immigration reform will result in a 5.4 percent growth in GDP as “highly skilled” workers and “entrepreneurs” add to the country’s economic base. No mention was made of low-skilled workers, the bulk of illegal immigrants in the country.

“Here’s one of the best things about immigration reform: It’s going to make our economy a lot stronger,” said the White House. “Not enough people are talking about the economic benefits of immigration reform, but it’s exactly the conversation that will help us win the national debate on this issue.”

Read More

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This article was posted: Friday, July 12, 2013 at 9:15 am

Tags: constitution, domestic news, economics

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/corals_face_extinction_by_2100_20130712/

Posted on Jul 12, 2013

Republished with permission from: TruthDig

Republished with permission from: RT

[unable to retrieve full-text content]A rights activist says Edward Snowden has vowed not to harm Washington, as Kremlin announced the whistleblower could stay in Russia if he stops US leaks.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
July 12, 2013

Smart cities are designed by corporations like IMB and Cisco and will utilize the “Internet of Things.” Photo: Free Images Collection

Earlier this week, Microsoft announced its “CityNext,” described as a global initiative intended to develop “smart cities” around the world. “If CityNext succeeds, cities will improve efficiency by installing Microsoft products that harness the cloud and big data,” writes Michael Endler for Information Week.

Information Week heralds the prospect of “big data tools and cloud-powered enterprise apps” empowering workers with “sources ranging from vast databases to real-time data culled from environmental sensors,” technologies that “should allow workers to more quickly derive insights, collaborate with one another and come to decisions.”

So-called “smart cities,” as designed by corporations like IMB and Cisco, will utilize the “Internet of Things,” or IoT, a system of objects networked with RFID, the end result being “a world where every object – from jumbo jets to sewing needles – is linked to the Internet,” as Helen Duce, the RFID Technology Auto-ID European Center at the University of Cambridge, envisions it.

As an example of the sort of system envisioned, Information World cites the massive and unprecedented surveillance system built by Microsoft for the New York Police Department.

Known as the Domain Awareness System, New York’s surveillance apparatus “takes advantage of the 3,000 closed-circuit TV cameras currently in place in Lower and Midtown Manhattan, which will soon be installed in the outer boroughs as well,” according to Stephanie Mlot of PCMag.com. “It can tap into tools like the NYPD’s recently deployed radiation sensors and license plate readers as well as crime records, 911 calls, video tape footage, and more to connect the dots on crime. The new process will help to generate and refine leads, identify patterns, and optimally deploy manpower, said Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly.”

Mayor Bloomberg, New York’s renowned government nanny, and the NYPD exploited the attacks of September 11, 2001, to argue for the creation of their high-tech surveillance system. The NYPD, however, soon began to use the system for routine police work, a migration undoubtedly encouraged by its public-private partner, Microsoft.

“Microsoft, as you might recall, has a great and long-standing relationship with government, law enforcement, and even intelligence agencies in the form of helping to fund fusion centers as well as provide fusion center technology,” writes Network World. The technology magazine quotes Dave Mosher, Microsoft VP in charge of program management, who admits the transnational tech corporation “is looking at smaller municipalities, law enforcement agencies and companies that handle major sporting events.” In other words, the market for surveillance extends beyond police departments and government agencies.

NYPD’s Domain Awareness System.

The “multi-device ecosystem” proselytized by Microsoft and documented intelligence asset Google provides an ideal foundation for the sort of all-encompassing and artificially intelligent surveillance envisioned by the global elite. Smart cities, smart meters, smart growth – such catchy phrases pushed by sharp ad campaigns are instrumental to the lingua franca of control.

Increasingly, if we continue to use technology, millions will be pushed into the “cloud,” a “shared service” and “converged infrastructure” where we no longer control or even own our own data, but it is housed on a centralized computer behind a wall emblazoned with terms of service and contractual stipulations.

This scheme is ideal for control freaks who obsessively collect data for the sake of formulating social profiles and building mountainous electronic dossiers, primarily for the art of ferreting out potential threats to the establishment and the corporatist-fascist status quo. Nazi Germany’s Gestapo and East German’s Stasi were also obsessed with this sort of detail-driven data collection, but could at best only imagine the technological advances utilized by the modern authoritarian state.

Microsoft peddles its brave new world of gadgets and devices tapping into big data as representing the “sort of efficiency” that might “not only save lives during an emergency but also drive day-to-day savings that total millions, and perhaps even billions, of dollars over time,” while simultaneously downplaying its work on the sort of massive surveillance system that will go live in September in Bluffdale, Utah. Some reports suggest that the new NSA “data center could hold as much as 5 zetabytes, an astronomical sum equivalent to 62 billion stacked iPhone 5s,” Fox News reported last month. “According to the NSA, the Utah facility will cost $1.2B and is the Department of Defense’s largest ongoing construction project in the continental U.S.”

Microsoft has not acknowledge its role in the NSA’s massive new data center, preferring instead to push its consumer products and, of course, its lucrative effort to build surveillance systems for government and police departments.

The most recent NSA revelations have taught us that large transnational corporations like Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Facebook are not adverse to cooperating with the surveillance state and their efforts are hidden behind facile denials and slick public relations campaigns.

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This article was posted: Friday, July 12, 2013 at 9:10 am

Tags: big brother, domestic news, domestic spying, police state, technology

–>

Republished with permission from: Infowars

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Wikileaks has said US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden is planning to go to Latin America eventually, amid reports that the whistleblower is to apply for asylum in Russia.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Egyptian supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and deposed president, Mohamed Morsi, wave national flags during a rally outside Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque on July 12, 2013.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

When is a coup not a coup? When the Commander-in-Chief says it’s not. That is how it is now with the coup (or whatever the State Department calls it) in Egypt.

If they call it what it is, the Obama Administration is required by law to cut off aid to the Egyptian army. That would jeopardize what little leverage they still have in the Arab world’s most populous country, now that there are no reliably subservient autocrats holding the reins of power there.

The American taxpayer’s money has been pouring into the Egyptian army’s coffers for thirty-four years —ever since Jimmy Carter bought (“brokered”) peace between Egypt and Israel at Camp David.

No sane imperialist would risk throwing that away; only a fool, like John McCain, who lacks the sense he was born with, would even think about it.

Were the United States to sever ties with the Egyptian army, it would be bad for Israel too; that surely also weighs on Obama’s mind.

There may be no love lost between the “security services” of those two countries, but there is an understanding and therefore a modicum of stability from which Israel benefits. When Israel is happy, the Israel lobby is happy; and Obama rests easy.

Evidently, that political reality is not understood by all sectors of the Israeli Right. If it were, McCain and his co-thinkers would be singing a different tune.

Of course, for Obama, laws are there to obey or disobey as the occasion warrants.

The man is, at best, a serial violator of the spirit of the laws — especially the Fourth, but also the First and Fifth, Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Basic principles of international law — like respect for national sovereignty and for the human rights of persons seized abroad as prisoners – fare no better.

Obama is not much of a stickler for abiding by the letter of the law either. Therefore, no matter how clear it is that aid to post-coup Egypt must be cut off, don’t count on him to do it anytime soon.

The Obama way — unlike the more brazen George W. Bush way — is, wherever possible, to reinterpret or even change laws, no matter how clear they may be, in order to make his government’s lawlessness and its acquiescence in the lawlessness of others possible, whenever that suits his purpose.

This is why banksters and torturers prosper while Guantanamo prisoners on hunger strikes are force-fed, and why his drones kill non-combatants of all ages, genders and nationalities (including American).

In the days ahead, expect the Obama White House to come forth with a torrent of legalistic obfuscation and nitpicking of the “I did not have sex with that woman, ever” kind, but with the difference that Obama is more shameless and smoother than Bill Clinton ever was.

Let those who obsess over Law School rankings take note: insofar as those two Leaders of the Free World are representative specimens, Harvard beats Yale in the sleaze department by a significant margin.

There are also coups in process closer to home. One of them has been going on for decades. At first, the pace was so slow that the American public could almost be forgiven for not noticing.

But no longer: not since the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center provided the Bush and Obama Administrations with enough “get out of jail free” cards to enable our leaders to get away with more than just murder.

“Coup” is a bit of a misnomer — because a slowly unfolding coup is what logicians call a contradictio in adjecto, a contradiction in terms. The word suggests an abrupt transformation, a change that takes place in a flash.  The adjective contradicts what it modifies.

But in this case, there is no right word — not so much because the phenomenon is unprecedented as because it is has yet to be properly named.

Until it is, “coup” is as good a name as any inasmuch as what has been going on is coup-like in every other respect.

The word calls attention to the fact that the United States has undergone a regime change as profound as in any bona fide coup d’état.

And it also suggests that forces external to the political system implemented the change – as in more standard cases, including the current Egyptian one.

Regime change can be, and often is, the work of forces internal to the society undergoing transformation. It can come about through evolutionary processes or it can result from deliberate, revolutionary activity.

When there are coups, however, fundamental changes are imposed from outside — if not directly through the offices of foreign powers, then by a military that stands apart from the society it officially protects and defends.

It took the Egyptian army barely two days to change the Egyptian political scene fundamentally. Our “bipartisan” political class — a group as insulated from popular control as any army – has taken decades to do as much.

The fact that their coup has taken place in slow-motion affects how it is perceived. This is why most Americans, unlike most Egyptians, don’t quite understand what has happened. But the results are similar, and are every bit as far-reaching.

* * *

What has been overthrown and replaced is the form of government established in Philadelphia in 1787 — a concoction based upon a division of powers into independent executive, legislative and judicial branches, each of which “checks and balances” the other.

Formally, that system still exists. Substantively, however, it has been changed beyond recognition.

For one thing, the distribution of power has been reconfigured; the executive branch has assumed many of the powers originally assigned to Congress.

Congress still controls the money and is therefore still relevant. But its power is a shadow of what it used to be. Nowhere is this more evident than in matters of war and peace.

Despite all the wars the United States has waged over the past seven decades, Congress has not issued a single declaration of war since 1941, as our Constitution plainly says it must when military actions are undertaken.   

Instead, it has “authorized” the use of force.  Lately, these authorizations have been so open-ended that they give the executive branch carte blanche to do almost anything it wants. Even more than George Bush, Obama has taken full advantage.

For the diminution of Congressional power, we mainly have a succession of imperial presidents to thank. But these presidents couldn’t have gotten away with it without the active cooperation of Congress itself.

The judiciary’s power to overrule Congress and the White House — to operate as a super-legislature or executive – is not itself a Constitutional provision, but the practice is so deeply entrenched that it is almost never contested.

The Supreme Court today, the Roberts Court has been especially flagrant in its usurpation of legislative powers.

But then, in ways that have only recently become apparent, even its own powers have been impinged upon — thanks largely to its own connivance.

We know this because The New York Times has been shamed into doing its job — ever so slightly. Try as they might, they could not just continue only serving as an unofficial propaganda arm of the American government while the The Guardian actually practiced journalism by reporting on whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s revelations of National Security Agency spying.

And so, the Times reported last Sunday that, operating in secret, the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court, the so-called FISA court, comprised of eleven members – chosen by (who else?) Chief Justice John Roberts – has without public scrutiny or meaningful oversight “quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come.”

In other words, even the Supremes are no longer supreme.

They are in theory, of course; just as, in theory, only Congress can declare war. The Constitution has not been “suspended,” as it was in Egypt. It is just ignored with impunity whenever that suits the government’s purpose.

And, to make matters worse, it is not even the government that is calling the shots, so much as what is supposedly just part of its executive branch — the part that is not subject to popular control even in theory; the part that has metastasized into a security-military complex.

So long as this is the case, the fact that our Constitution has not been suspended like Egypt’s was is a distinction without a difference.

However it is also a reason for hope — a slender reed, but better than nothing at all.

Because ours is still officially a Constitutional republic, it is not yet impossible, within the existing political framework, to restore the kind of Constitutional government our founders envisioned.

Indeed, had Americans elected a President in 2008 who was anything like the President many of them thought they had voted for, he might have been able to turn things around. At least he had enough political capital in the first few months of his Administration — before he squandered it utterly.

And were Congress not full of pusillanimous, bought and paid for Democrats and Republicans who care not a wit about the public good, it could still assert the authority that is rightfully its own.

But, whatever was once the case, the Democratic Party now is probably beyond redemption. It has been that way ever since Bill Clinton had his way with it two decades ago.

Many liberals thought otherwise in 2008; but after five years of Barack Obama and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, it is hard to see how even they can sustain the illusion.

Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans live in mortal fear of constituents even more benighted than themselves. Thanks to gerrymandering, they mostly represent “safe” districts. Therefore they don’t need to appeal to Democrats or “centrists” or to sane people at all; they need only please the GOP-Tea Party lunatic fringe.

Don’t count on them, therefore, to restore Constitutional government. Because, as they see it, it never hurts to oppose Obama, they may sometimes do the right thing. But they will never do it for the right reasons. They are a risible and untrustworthy lot.

Had our decrepit Congress not established the FISA court and then turned its administration over to a crusading right-wing Chief Justice, we might now have a judicial system that is still somewhat respectful of basic rights and liberties. Instead we have an unaccountable kangaroo court surreptitiously quashing them at every opportunity.

Politicians in capitalist societies are always constrained by the exigencies of capitalist development, though the degree of constraint varies, depending on circumstances. As a general rule, though, they cannot do anything much if they do not, so to speak, get with the program.

This is why in states in capitalist societies counter-systemic policies are non-starters. They cannot be sustained or, in most circumstances, even attempted.

In America today, however, there are more than just the usual constraints at work.

From the seventies on, our government has pursued policies that have transformed capitalism in the United States and other capitalist centers. As a result, the financial sector has become the driving force of capital accumulation — to a degree that is unprecedented in the history of capitalism.

In this brave new world of finance capital, financial markets reign supreme. And increasing economic inequality has wiped out many of the progressive achievements of the preceding century.

Our capitalists, the one percent of the one percent, have become as obscenely rich as capitalists have ever been, and they always get their way. It is not just that they constrain political actors; in America today, they own them.

And they like the way things are. No Constitutional republic for them; and certainly no democracy where the popular masses, the demos, rule; from their point of view, “we, the people” are the enemy.

We are not living in a full-fledged police state; far from it. But our political class is hard at work putting the infrastructure for one in place.

It is because he made that reality so painfully apparent that Edward Snowden has become Public Enemy Number One, and a hero to people throughout the entire world.

He is the one the coup leaders want to suppress; and the one the rest of us want and need to hear.

We need to hear, beyond any shadow of a doubt, just how our Constitutional form of government has been overthrown, and how our political leaders, in service to the one percent of the percent, have brought this about.

* * *

In Latin America, they tell a joke: why has the United States never suffered a coup? Because it has no American embassy.

True enough for those who fetishize the details of paradigmatic instances of bona fide coups d’état.

But the punch line is false in the larger sense. To pull of a coup here, our capitalists didn’t need an embassy or a CIA or any of those special ops (Murder Incorporated) types our Commander-in-Chief loves to deploy.

They may need them in the future; and they are preparing the groundwork in case they do. But to get to where we now are, none of that was necessary.

In an overripe capitalist economy like ours, base and servile politicians in league with “impersonal” market forces have been more than enough.

ANDREW LEVINE is a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and POLITICAL KEY WORDS (Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. His most recent book is In Bad Faith: What’s Wrong With the Opium of the People. He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College Park.  He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

The New York Times published a front-page article Thursday (“In 2011 Murder Inquiry, Hints of Missed Chance to Avert Boston Bombing”) that raises new questions about the alleged perpetrators of the April 15 Boston Marathon bombing and adds to the evidence of a government cover-up in the explosions that killed three people and wounded more than 260 others.

Citing “senior law enforcement officials,” the article asserts that the elder of the two Tsarnaev brothers alleged to have detonated two bombs near the finish line of the marathon, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was involved in the murder of three men in Waltham, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, on September 11, 2011–the tenth anniversary of the terror attacks on New York and Washington DC.

The ostensible occasion for the article was the arraignment on Wednesday of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Tamerlan’s younger brother, on multiple terrorism charges before a federal judge in Boston. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was captured on April 19 following a shootout in which his older brother was killed. He pled not guilty to 30 counts, most of which potentially carry the death penalty. (See: “Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev arraigned in federal court”).

The Times article published Thursday asserts that Ibragim Todashev, a friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and, like Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen and martial arts fighter, was also involved in the triple slaying. The authors of the article repeat the official story that Todashev confessed to the involvement of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and himself in the gruesome killings during hours of interrogation at his Florida apartment last May 22. The questioning ended with a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) operative repeatedly shooting and killing Todashev.

The Times, which, like the rest of the US media, has remained silent for weeks on the state execution of Todashev, presents as fact the FBI claim that Todashev “flipped out” after confessing to the murders and attacked the FBI agent. The newspaper passes quickly over the murder of someone who might have shed much light on Tsarnaev and his connections to others, including US intelligence and police agencies, merely referring to “circumstances that remain unclear,” and noting “skepticism” among “some close to the victims” about the official account of Todashev’s death.

The FBI has detained and is currently preparing to deport Todashev’s roommate Tatiana Gruzdeva, a fact that has been buried by the US media, including the Times. Civil liberties groups believe Gruzdeva has valuable knowledge regarding Todashev’s interactions with the FBI. Hassan Shibly of the Counicl on American-Islamic Relations told the World Socialist Web Sitethat the moves against Gruzdeva have been made to prevent her from speaking publicly about the case. “There is a lot of mystery around the detention,” Shibly said. “There appears to be some sort of cover-up going on.”

The bulk of the Times article discusses the failure of the authorities to question Tamerlan Tsarnaev in the course of their investigation into the triple murder, which it describes as “the most brazen crime in the memory of this Boston suburb.” It quotes or cites numerous acquaintances of the three victims and Tsarnaev who either urged the police to question Tsarnaev, were bewildered over the police’s failure to do so, or felt shock and concern over Tsarnaev’s absence from the funeral of his slain friend and his callous attitude toward the murder.

The authors note that had the local authorities pursued a “more vigorous” investigation into the slayings, Tamerlan Tsarnaev might have been apprehended and “the bombings might never have happened.”

What the Times entirely leaves out, however, is the fact that federal security and intelligence agencies had already been warned of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s radical Islamist beliefs and his desire to link up with Islamist separatist and terrorist groups operating in his North Caucasus, Russian homeland. The newspaper nowhere suggests that the FBI, CIA or Homeland Security Department bears any responsibility for the unexplained failure to investigate Tsarnaev’s role in the Waltham killings.

This omission and the article’s perfunctory treatment of the Todashev killing mark the piece as an attempt at damage control, aimed at shoring up the badly discredited official cover-up of the Boston bombing.

On September 12, 2011, the bodies of three men–Brendan Mess, Erik Weissman, and Raphael Teken–were discovered in their Waltham apartment with their throats slit. It was determined that the killings had occurred the previous day.

Crime scene investigators concluded that the killings had been carried out by perpetrators who were skilled in the martial arts and known to the victims, enabling them to gain entry without a struggle. According to the Times, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was one of Mess’ “closest friends and a frequent visitor to the Harding Avenue apartment.”

Tsarnaev was strangely unmoved by the death of his close friend, according to several sources cited by the Times, including Tsarnaev’s wife.

The newspaper quotes an unidentified friend as saying: “We did mention Tamerlan again to the police after he was not there for Brendan’s services… I felt that the police were not really looking in the right places.”

John Allan, the owner of the Wai Kru martial arts gym where Mess, Tsarnaev and Todashev all worked out, said that Tsarnaev seemed totally untroubled by the death of his friend, not displaying any signs of grief. “As I said something, there was kind of a smile on Tamerlan’s face, and he laughed it off,” Allan said.

According to Times, relatives and friends of the victims believe the investigation was called off prematurely without reason, and that “basic policing work could have solved the case.” Neither the favored lunch spot of Mess nor the mixed martial arts gym frequented by Mess and Tsarnaev was visited by officers in charge of the investigation. The mother of one of the victims, Bellie Hacker, is quoted describing the stance of the investigators as “passive and waiting.”

Of Todashev, who was introduced to the gym by Tsarnaev, Allan said: “He’s got a bad temper, he clearly has anti-American sentiment, a radical-style Muslim who was training with Tamerlan at this gym, and at the end praying towards Mecca with him.”

Jamal Abu Rubieh, who owns a diner in Brookline that was frequented by Mess together with Tsarnaev and Weissman, said investigators “never called us over here at his hangout place or came to ask questions.”

Susan Zalkind, a friend of Erik Weissman who has been researching the case since 2011, told the Times she has been surprised by the absence of a real investigation, saying, “Despite being one of the most gruesome and unusual crimes of the year, I saw the least amount of public outreach.”

Mess’ girlfriend of nine months told the Times that she had informed investigators that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a regular guest at the apartment where the murders occurred. She said law enforcement authorities never attempted to follow up with her on this matter.

A host of questions arise from the account presented by the Times. Why did the government suppress the investigation of the Waltham killings? Who made the decision not to pursue the multitude of leads connecting Tamerlan Tsarnaev to the victims, as any standard criminal investigation would?

The failure to investigate Tsarnaev in connection with the murders is all the more inexplicable given what the FBI already knew about him. It had been warned by Russian intelligence in March 2011 that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a dangerous radical Islamist with possible terrorist inclinations or connections. The FBI claims, according to congressional testimony by FBI Director Robert Mueller, to have conducted a “thorough” investigation of Tsarnaev, including questioning him and other members of his family.

The FBI says it found nothing suspicious about Tsarnaev and closed the case. Even if one accepts this dubious claim, how is it to be explained that the grisly murder that September, on the anniversary of 9/11, of one of Tsarnaev’s best friends and two others, both Jewish, did not arouse the agency’s suspicions? Why was the FBI investigation not reopened and why did the agency make no effort to ensure that Tsarnaev was questioned in relation to the killings?

Four months later, in January of 2012, Tsarnaev was allowed to travel unhindered to Dagestan in Russia’s North Caucasus and remain there for six months, establishing contacts with Islamist separatist and terrorist groups. This was so despite the fact that his name had been placed on at least two terrorist watch lists.

Finally, in advance of last April’s Boston Marathon, a major international event that attracts tens of thousands of participants and spectators from around the world, the FBI failed to inform state and local officials on the Joint Terrorism Task Force of its contacts with Tsarnaev or his stay in Russia.

There has been no serious attempt to explain these staggering contradictions and anomalies. Instead, the same red herring used to cover up the role of US intelligence agencies in allowing the 9/11 attacks to take place–failure to “connect the dots” or “communicate”–has been trundled out once again before an incredulous public.

The official story–upheld by the Times–is the least likely explanation for the Boston bombing, an event that became the pretext for an unprecedented military-police lockdown of a major American city.

The most plausible explanation is that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a US intelligence asset working with the FBI and/or other agencies. He was protected because he was deemed useful, perhaps in furthering US covert operations in the North Caucasus or other criminal US imperialist operations. Chechen Islamist terrorists make up a significant contingent of the foreign forces funneled by the CIA into Syria to help wage the current US-backed war for regime-change.

Like virtually every other terrorist attack launched in the US, the Boston bombing was ultimately bound up with the global machinations of US imperialism. 9/11 and Al Qaeda had their roots in the CIA-backed mujahidin war against a pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The latest atrocity was likely linked to US efforts, mobilizing the most reactionary forces, to destabilize the Caucasus and establish American hegemony across the Middle East.

And as with 9/11, the Boston bombing has been used to intensify the assault on the democratic rights of the American people and develop the means for mass repression and dictatorial rule.

Republished with permission from: Global Research

Kirit Radia
ABC News
July 12, 2013

American spy fugitive Edward Snowden emerged from his hideout in the Moscow airport today to speak with international human rights groups about his future plans, almost three weeks after he first disappeared inside the vast Russian facility.

Citing a Human Rights Watch official apparently in the meeting, The New York Times reported Snowden plans to seek temporary asylum in Russia, which has offered it. Russia’s President Putin previously said Snowden was welcome to stay in his country, but only as long as he stops linformation that “damages our U.S. partners.”

Snowden said in the meeting that Putin’s condition should not be a problem. “No actions I take or plan are meant to harm the U.S.,” Snowden reportedly said. “I want the U.S. to succeed.”

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This article was posted: Friday, July 12, 2013 at 9:05 am

Tags: constitution, domestic spying, foreign affairs, government corruption

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

President Obama’s nominee to head the FBI told senators that he opposed the use of drones to kill Americans inside the United States unless they qualified as “imminent threats” to the security of the homeland.

At a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 9, prospective FBI director James Comey (shown in inset) testified that targeting U.S. citizens for drone assassination should be an option only when they are “imminent threats,” although he failed to define that crucial term.

Comey’s comment came in response to a question by freshman Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Cruz, a consistent defender of individual rights, asked Comey if he believed “that the Constitution allows the United States government to use a drone to target with lethal force a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, if that individual does not pose an imminent threat.” Comey responded that he did not believe it did.

There are a couple of problems with that exchange. First, Senator Cruz should have tailored that question much more narrowly, preventing Comey from theorizing a scenario where an American could be killed by a drone piloted by an agent of the federal government.

Second, Comey’s terse response (he answered a simple “no” to the question Cruz put to him) presaged the possibility not only that an American could be targeted for a drone strike, but also that the justification for a death resulting from such a strike could be hidden behind a haze of vague language and slippery standards.

Comey comes by his imprecision honestly. At a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee in June, outgoing FBI Director Robert Mueller testified that his agency has used drones to monitor American citizens within the United States. Using typically ill-defined language, Mueller qualified the admission by saying the unmanned aerial vehicles have been used in only a “very, very minimal way.”

During his testimony it seemed Mueller was almost coining words in order to dramatically downplay the use of drones in the FBI’s domestic surveillance. “And I will tell you that our footprint is very small. We have very few and of limited use and we’re exploring not only the use but also the necessary guidelines for that use,” he testified.

Mueller’s testimony was the first time that the FBI admitted deploying drones to monitor citizens. The key word in that last sentence being “admitted.”

“It’s very seldom used and generally used in a particular incident when you need the capability,” Mueller said. “It is very narrowly focused on particularized cases and particularized needs.”

Some of those “particularized needs” were described in further detail by FBI spokesman Paul Bresson. In his testimony, Bresson said that the bureau used a drone to support local law enforcement during the standoff and hostage situation in Alabama in January of this year.

As Bresson described the deployment, the drone was used then in a way typical of the “very limited circumstances” when the FBI can use them to support a “specific operational need.” The drones, he added, “allow us to learn critical information that otherwise would be difficult to obtain without introducing serious risk to law enforcement personnel.”

Neither Mueller nor Comey (nor Bresson, for that matter) was pressed at their respective hearings to commit to a specific standard for the use of drones by domestic federal law enforcement. Constitutionalists know, however, that the standard has already been set. That standard is the Fourth Amendment.

On July 9, however, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) sent a letter to Director Mueller asking him to clarify his remarks regarding the FBI’s use of drones in domestic surveillance. In the letter (the second sent by Paul to Mueller), the senator wrote:

Given that drone surveillance over American skies represents a potentially vast expansion of government surveillance powers without the constitutionally-guaranteed protection of a warrant, it is vital that the use of these drones by the FBI be fully examined in an open and transparent manner. The American people have a right to know the limits that the federal government operates under when using these drones, and whether further action by Congress is needed to protect the rights of innocent Americans.

Paul warned Mueller that should his inquiry go unanswered, he “will object to the consideration of that nomination and ask [his] colleagues to do the same.”

As Senator Paul indicated, the Fourth Amendment protects the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

Furthermore, the Fourth Amendment also protects fundamental principles of justice by requiring that the government may rely only on warrants that are based “upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

While it is new, the FBI’s admission of its use of drones to conduct unwarranted surveillance, the act of ignoring liberty and the Constitution that protects it is not novel.

As the documents released by Edward Snowden reveal, the NSA has just as little concern for constitutional limits on its power or the inalienability of certain fundamental rights.

President Obama, for his part, has embraced yet another standard for greenlighting a domestic death by drone. The White House claims that killing Americans without due process is “legal,” “necessary,” “ethical,” and “wise.”

In commenting on a white paper released by the Justice Department and obtained by NBC News, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney used these words to describe the targeted assassination of American citizens overseas. Those marked for death by drone are those believed by the president to be collaborating (in a notably undefined manner) with “al-Qaeda and its associated forces.”

In a footnote, the Justice Department explains that the “laws of war” will be used to determine whether a group is a “co-belligerent” with al-Qaeda. That is the sum of the guidance and notice given to those Americans residing overseas who might unknowingly be targets for the next Hellfire missile.

In the newly released memo, the Justice Department insists that such life or death decisions will be handled by “an informed, high-level official of the U.S. government.” That is hardly sufficient protection of the due process rights of Americans. Due process requires that the suspected terrorist “co-belligerent” be charged with a crime, allowed to answer those charges, and defend himself against those charges before an unbiased judge in court.

In the spirit of the testimonies of Comey and Mueller, the Justice Department white paper argues that such constitutional procedures must be by-passed in the name of national security, arguing that the safety of America is more important than the constitutionally protected rights of one individual. The document propounds the “imminent threat” standard, as well, claiming that only those who pose an “imminent threat of violent attack against the United States” will be targeted.

When asked later in the hearing about whether he thought that civilian-piloted drones posed “security concerns,” Comey replied, “I do, even as a private citizen reading about the increasing availability of drones. I watched what to me was a sobering video of someone who had put a firearm on a drone and fired it remotely while flying one of these cheaply acquired drones, a hundred-dollar drone. It’s certainly something that lies in our future if not in our present.”

Again, Comey demonstrates a lack of understanding of basic principles of constitutional law.

The Constitution is a compact between sovereign states wherein the parties created an agent – the federal government – and granted it a small slate of enumerated powers. The articles and amendments of that document are meant to establish the scope of the agent’s powers, not to control or criminalize civilian behavior. State laws ably serve that purpose.

Furthermore, while it may be within the FBI’s purview to investigate accusations of illegal use of drones by private citizens, it is unqualifiedly not within that organization’s authority to violate the restrictions of the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment, moreover, was included in the Bill of Rights in order to protect “the people” from attempts by the federal government to deprive them of their God-given right to be free from unwarranted watching.

At the conclusion of the hearing, lawmakers were reminded that they have one week in which to submit written questions to Comey.

Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state. 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

[unable to retrieve full-text content]US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden mulls applying for asylum in Russia, human rights officials said after meeting with the whistleblower at Moscow’s international airport.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Several people have been killed and injured by foreign-backed militants in a mortar attack on an area in the Syrian capital, Damascus.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

A Bahraini protester holding a noose around his neck reading “The government’s policies” marches with fellow demonstrators during an anti-government demonstration in the village of Karrana on July 5, 2013.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Lawyer Genry Reznik, invited by US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, speaks with journalists inside the terminal F of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on July 12, 2013.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

The Iranian Foreign Ministry has rejected allegations by the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) accusing Tehran of building a secret nuclear site.

Reacting to the allegation on Friday, the ministryâ„¢s spokesman, Seyyed Abbas Araqchi, dismissed the claim as mere lies by the Å“desperate” terrorist group.

On Thursday, the MKO claimed to have evidence of an underground nuclear site built under a mountain near the city of Damavand, 70 kilometers (43 miles) northeast of Tehran.

The terrorist group alleged that the site had existed since 2006 with the first series of underground tunnels and four external depots recently completed.

Å“This report is by no means true and is denied [by the Islamic Republic of Iran],” Araqchi said, adding, Å“The terrorist MKO has been so discredited that the publication of such stories by them is not worth a response,” he added.

The Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization – blamed for the assassination of many Iranian people and officials after the 1979 Islamic Revolution – fled to Iraq in the 1980s, where they enjoyed the support of former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, and set up a military base near the Iranian border in Diyala Province.

Members of the anti-Iranian group currently live at Camp Liberty, a former US military camp near Baghdad Airport, after their relocation from their former Camp Ashraf under growing pressure from the Iraqi government and people for the terrorist group to leave the country.

The US, Israel and some of their European allies have frequently accused Iran of pursing military goals in its nuclear energy program with the US and EU using that pretext to impose illegal unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

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.

Also, during its numerous inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities, the IAEA has never found any evidence that the Iranian nuclear energy program has been diverted toward non-civilian purposes.

MRS/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

As the NSA spying scandal ripples across the world, French human rights organizations announced Thursday they are taking legal action against US spying that they say violated civil liberties and left no French citizen safe.(Photo: FIDH)

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the Human Rights League jointly filed a suit Thursday demanding the French government investigate not only NSA’s Prism surveillance program, but also the cyber companies–including Facebook, Apple, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Skype–that were party to the unlawful snooping.

An FIDH lawyer declared the spying an unprecedented and “massive attack on individual liberties by a foreign state, because it potentially concerns every French citizen and internet user,” the Guardian reports.

A FIDH statement declares that the very basis of French civil liberties are at stake.

This blatant intrusion into individuals’ lives represents a serious threat to individual liberties and, if not stopped, may lead to the end of the rule of law.

Outrage in France continues to grow after whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed an NSA spying program that monitors email and phone data across the world, in violation of countless national privacy laws, including on French soil.

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

Republished with permission from: Common Dreams

US Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and others on Thursday introduced a new bill that revives the call to bust up the nation’s largest banks and financial institutions by once again demanding a separation between the traditional banking practices of savings and loans from the far more riskier behavior taken on by large investment, complex trading, and hedge fund operations.

The legislation, called the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act, is designed as the modern version of the Banking Act of 1933 (the original Glass-Steagall) whose repeal in 1999 many credit with ushering in the banking deregulations that spawned the housing crisis and financial collapse of 2008.

Despite repeated efforts to “break up the big banks” by public interest groups and some legislators, all of those efforts–despite the destructive recession, foreclosure crisis, and unemployment epidemic–have been thwarted by the politically powerful financial industry represented by Wall Street lobbyists and others.

“The four biggest banks are now 30% larger than they were just five years ago,” said Sen. Warren, “and they have continued to engage in dangerous, high-risk practices that could once again put our economy at risk. The 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act will reestablish a wall between commercial and investment banking, make our financial system more stable and secure, and protect American families.”

Reporting to the development, Huffington Post’s Zach Carter comments:

The legislation is unlikely to be signed into law, but underscores a deepening rift between the House and Senate over financial accountability. While bipartisan coalitions in the House have been moving legislation to deregulate swaps — the complex financial products at the heart of the 2008 banking collapse — a host of Senate bills cracking down on Wall Street risk have garnered Democratic and GOP support.

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

Republished with permission from: Common Dreams

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Russian rights officials are to meet US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden after receiving an invitation calling on them to go to Moscow international airport.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]At least two people have been killed due to a powerful explosion and ensuing gunfire near the heavily-fortified Mogadishu International Airport, Somali security officials say.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov says hundreds of militants fighting against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad come from the United States and European countries including Russia.

Å“Syrian and Russian special services are exchanging information in connection with reports that about 600 foreign militants, including from Russia, the USA and Europe, are fighting in the territory of Syria,” Bogdanov said on Thursday.

On June 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin said some 600 Russians and Europeans are fighting as militants in Syria to bring down the government of President al-Assad.

In May, the Syrian president said militants from 29 different countries are fighting against the government in different parts of the country.

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.

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

In an interview with Syrian daily Al-Thawra published on July 4, President Assad said the opposition and their foreign supporters have Å“exhausted all their tools” in a conspiracy against Syria.

Meanwhile, police in Spain said last month that they had arrested eight people in the countryâ„¢s Ceuta enclave for allegedly trying to recruit extremists and fund and facilitate their travel to Syria to fight alongside the militants.

Spain accused the arrested people of being linked to the al-Qaeda.

MAM/KA

Republished with permission from: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]At least 10 people have been killed after a car bomb exploded outside a Shia mosque in northern Iraq.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

FoxNews.com
July 12, 2013

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

Lawyers for George Zimmerman get their turn Friday morning to convince a jury of six women that the neighborhood watch volunteer shot and killed Trayvon Martin in self defense.

A Florida prosecutor closed out Thursday’s court proceedings attempting to paint Zimmerman as an angry vigilante who “tracked” Martin through a gated community and provoked the confrontation that claimed the teenager’s life.

Full article here

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This article was posted: Friday, July 12, 2013 at 6:28 am

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

Snowden has been holed up in the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport since June 23. (Photo: Reuters)Whistleblower Edward Snowden has accused his native US with waging an “unlawful” and “threatening” campaign against his attempt to seek political asylum in a foreign nation, and according to news agencies, has invited representatives from key human rights and legal groups to meet with at the Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow where he has been stranded in stateless limbo for nearly three weeks.

According to Reuters–which indicated the authenticity of a letter posted to Facebook by one of the human rights groups invited to the meeting by communicating separately with Snowden–said Amnesty International and Transparency International had been invited to meet Snowden, with at least the former confirming it would attend.

“This dangerous escalation represents a threat not just to the dignity of Latin America or my own personal security, but to the basic right shared by every living person to live free from persecution.” -from email to human rights groups attributed to Edward Snowden

In addition, according to Al-Jazeera, Human Rights Watch, the UN Representative to the Russian Federation and the Deputy Speaker of the Duma were invited to attend. There would be no press access, though indications were that Snowden may hold audience with press at a later date.

Tanya Lokshina, a Human Rights Watch employee in Moscow, posted this note to her Facebook page on Friday:

Yes, I’ll be going to Sheremetyevo this afternoon. I’m not sure this is for real but compelled to give it a try. Wouldn’t want to create an impression that HRW is not interested in what Snowden has to say.

Earlier, Lokshina posted the text of the email the group received, though she noted to reporters that she could not independently verify if it truly was from Snowden:

from: edsnowden@lavabit.com

I have been extremely fortunate to enjoy and accept many offers of support and asylum from brave countries around the world. These nations have my gratitude, and I hope to travel to each of them to extend my personal thanks to their people and leaders. By refusing to compromise their principles in the face of intimidation, they have earned the respect of the world.

Unfortunately, in recent weeks we have witnessed an unlawful campaign by officials in the U.S. Government to deny my right to seek and enjoy this asylum under Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The scale of threatening behavior is without precedent: never before in history have states conspired to force to the ground a sovereign President’s plane to effect a search for a political refugee. This dangerous escalation represents a threat not just to the dignity of Latin America or my own personal security, but to the basic right shared by every living person to live free from persecution.

I invite the Human Rights organizations and other respected individuals addressed to join me on 12 July at 5:00PM at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow for a brief statement and discussion regarding the next steps forward in my situation. Your cooperation and support will be greatly appreciated in this matter.

Sincerely, Edward Joseph Snowden

MEETING DETAILS: Please meet at 4.30pm at Sheremetyevo airport in Terminal F, in the centre of the arrival hall. Someone from airport staff will be waiting there to receive you with a sign labelled “G9”. Please bring a copy of this invite and ID to show that you work for your organization as security will likely be tight at this meeting. A maximum of three people are able to attend from each organization. For any questions please contact the airport administration on +8 916-816-4335.

And Sergei Nikitin, the head of Amnesty International Russia, told the Guardian: “Yes, I have received a brief email. It said that [Snowden] would like to meet with a representative of a human rights organisation — there was not much information there. I’m planning to go.”

___________________________________________________

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

Republished with permission from: Common Dreams

Washington’s Blog
July 12, 2013

Even now — after all of the revelations by Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers — spying apologists say that the reports are “exaggerated” or “overblown”, and that the government only spies on potential bad guys.

In reality, the government is spying on everyone’s digital and old-fashioned communications.

For example, the government is photographing the outside information on every piece of snail mail.

The government is spying on you through your phone … and may even remotely turn on your camera and microphone when your phone is off.

As one example, the NSA has inserted its code into Android’s operating system … bugging three-quarters of the world’s smartphones. Google — or the NSA — can remotely turn on your phone’s camera and recorder at any time.

Cell towers track where your phone is at any moment, and the major cell carriers, including Verizon and AT&T, responded to at least 1.3 million law enforcement requests for cell phone locations and other data in 2011. (And — given that your smartphone routinely sends your location information back to Apple or Google — it would be child’s play for the government to track your location that way.) Your iPhone, orother brand of smartphone is spying on virtually everything you do (ProPublica notes: “That’s No Phone. That’s My Tracker“).

The government might be spying on you through your computer’s webcam or microphone. The government might also be spying on you through the “smart meter” on your own home.

The FBI wants a backdoor to all software. But leading European computer publication Heise said in 1999 that the NSA had already built a backdoor into all Windows software.

And Microsoft has long worked hand-in-hand with the NSA and FBI so that encryption doesn’t block the government’s ability to spy on users of Skype, Outlook, Hotmail and other Microsoft services.

(And leading security experts say that the NSA might have put a backdoor in all encryption standards years ago. … meaning that the NSA can easily hack into encrypted communications.)

“Black boxes” are currently installed in between 90% and 96% of all new cars. And starting in 2014, all new cars will include black boxes that can track your location.

License plate readers mounted on police cars allow police to gather millions of records on drivers … including photos of them in their cars.

If you have a microphone in your car, that might also open you up to snoopers. As CNET points out:

Surreptitious activation of built-in microphones by the FBI has been done before. A 2003 lawsuit revealed that the FBI was able to surreptitiously turn on the built-in microphones in automotive systems like General Motors’ OnStar to snoop on passengers’ conversations.

When FBI agents remotely activated the system and were listening in, passengers in the vehicle could not tell that their conversations were being monitored.

A security expert and former NSA software developer says that hackers can access private surveillance cameras. Given that the NSA apparently already monitors public cameras using facial recognition software, and that the FBI is building a system which will track “public and private surveillance cameras around the country”, we can assume that government agencies might already be hacking into private surveillance cameras.

The CIA wants to spy on you through your dishwasher and other “smart” appliances. As Slate notes:

Watch out: the CIA may soon be spying on you–through your beloved, intelligent household appliances, according to Wired.

In early March, at a meeting for the CIA’s venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, CIA Director David Petraeus reportedly noted that “smart appliances” connected to the Internet could someday be used by the CIA to track individuals. If your grocery-list-generating refrigerator knows when you’re home, the CIA could, too, by using geo-location data from your wired appliances, according to SmartPlanet.

“The current ‘Internet of PCs’ will move, of course, toward an ‘Internet of Things’–of devices of all types–50 to 100 billion of which will be connected to the Internet by 2020,” Petraeus said in his speech. He continued:

Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters–all connected to the next-generation Internet using abundant, low cost, and high-power computing–the latter now going to cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing.

***

ITworld’s Kevin Fogarty thinks that J. Edgar Hoover, were he still with us, would “die of jealousy” upon hearing about the tools soon to be at Petraeus’ disposal.

And they’re probably bluffing and exaggerating, but the Department of Homeland Security claims they will soon be able to know your adrenaline level, what you ate for breakfast and what you’re thinking …from 164 feet away. (In addition, people will probably soon be swallowing tracking devices for medical purposes)

The government is allegedly scanning prisoners’ brains without their consent at Guantanamo. In the near future, brain scanners may be able to literally read our thoughts (and see this).

The government is currently testing systems for use in public spaces which can screen for “pre-crime”. As Nature reports:

Like a lie detector, FAST measures a variety of physiological indicators, ranging from heart rate to the steadiness of a person’s gaze, to judge a subject’s state of mind. But there are major differences from the polygraph. FAST relies on non-contact sensors, so it can measure indicators as someone walks through a corridor at an airport, and it does not depend on active questioning of the subject.

CBS News points out:

FAST is designed to track and monitor, among other inputs, body movements, voice pitch changes, prosody changes (alterations in the rhythm and intonation of speech), eye movements, body heat changes, and breathing patterns. Occupation and age are also considered. A government source told CNET that blink rate and pupil variation are measured too.

A field test of FAST has been conducted in at least one undisclosed location in the northeast. “It is not an airport, but it is a large venue that is a suitable substitute for an operational setting,” DHS spokesman John Verrico told Nature.com in May.

Although DHS has publicly suggested that FAST could be used at airport checkpoints—the Transportation Security Administration is part of the department, after all—the government appears to have grander ambitions. One internal DHS document (PDF) also obtained by EPIC through the Freedom of Information Act says a mobile version of FAST “could be used at security checkpoints such as border crossings or at large public events such as sporting events or conventions.”

The risk of false positives is very real. As Computer World notes:

Tom Ormerod, a psychologist in the Investigative Expertise Unit at Lancaster University, UK, told Nature, “Even having an iris scan or fingerprint read at immigration is enough to raise the heart rate of most legitimate travelers.” Other critics have been concerned about “false positives.” For example, some travelers might have some of the physical responses that are supposedly signs of mal-intent if they were about to be groped by TSA agents in airport security.

Various “pre-crime” sensing devices have already been deployed in public spaces in the U.S.

The government has also worked on artificial intelligence for “pre-crime” detection on the Web. And given that programs which can figure out your emotions are being developed using your webcam, every change in facial expression could be tracked.

According to the NSA’s former director of global digital data — William Binney — the NSA’s new data storage center in Utah will have so much storage capacity that:

“They would have plenty of space … to store at least something on the order of 100 years worth of the worldwide communications, phones and emails and stuff like that,” Binney asserts, “and then have plenty of space left over to do any kind of parallel processing to try to break codes.”

***

[But the NSA isn’t stopping there.] Despite its capacity, the Utah center does not satisfy NSA’s data demands. Last month, the agency broke ground on its next data farm at its headquarters at Ft. Meade, Md. But that facility will be only two-thirds the size of the mega-complex in Utah.

The NSA is building next-generation quantum computers to process all of the data.

NBC News reports:

NBC News has learned that under the post-9/11 Patriot Act, the government has been collecting records on every phone call made in the U.S.

This includes metadata … which can tell the government a lot about you. And it also includes content.

The documents leaked by Edward Snowden to Glenn Greenwald show:

But what we’re really talking about here is a localized system that prevents any form of electronic communication from taking place without its being stored and monitored by the National Security Agency.

It doesn’t mean that they’re listening to every call, it means they’re storing every call and have the capability to listen to them at any time, and it does mean that they’re collecting millions upon millions upon millions of our phone and email records.

In addition, a government expert told the Washington Post that the government “quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type.” A top NSA executive confirmed to Washington’s Blog that the NSA is intercepting and storing virtually all digital communications on the Internet.

McClatchy notes:

FBI Director Robert Mueller told a Senate committee on March 30, 2011, that “technological improvements” now enable the bureau “to pull together past emails and future ones as they come in so that it does not require an individualized search.”

The administration is building a facility in a valley south of Salt Lake City that will have the capacity to store massive amounts of records — a facility that former agency whistleblowers say has no logical purpose if it’s not going to be a vault holding years of phone and Internet data.

***

Thomas Drake, a former NSA senior executive who challenged the data collection for several years, said the agency’s intent seems obvious.

“One hundred million phone records?” he asked in an interview. “Why would they want that each and every day? Of course they’re storing it.”

***

Lending credence to his worries, The Guardian’s latest report quoted a document in which Alexander purportedly remarked during a 2008 visit to an NSA intercept station in Britain: “Why can’t we collect all the signals all the time?”

***

One former U.S. security consultant, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect his connections to government agencies, told McClatchy he has seen agency-installed switches across the country that draw data from the cables.

“Do I know they copied it? Yes,” said the consultant. “Do I know if they kept it? No.”

NSA whistleblower Russel Tice — a key source in the 2005 New York Times report that blew the lid off the Bush administration’s use of warrantless wiretapping — says that the content and metadata of alldigital communications are being tapped by the NSA.

The NSA not only accesses data directly from the largest internet companies, it also sucks up huge amounts of data straight from undersea cables providing telephone and Internet service to the United States.

After all, the government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act so that “everything” is deemed relevant … so the government can spy on everyone.

The NSA isn’t the only agency which is conducting massive spying.

The Wall Street Journal notes:

The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to … copy entire government databases–flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited. Data about Americans “reasonably believed to constitute terrorism information” may be permanently retained.

The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. In effect, U.S. and foreign governments would be using the information to look for clues that people might commit future crimes.

“It’s breathtaking” in its scope, said a former senior administration official familiar with the White House debate.

Reason notes:

Gazillions. That’s the number of times the federal government has spied on Americans since 9/11 through the use of drones, legal search warrants, illegal search warrants, federal agent-written search warrants and just plain government spying. This is according to Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who, when he asked the government to tell him what it was doing to violate our privacy, was given a classified briefing. The senator – one of just a few in the U.S. Senate who believes that the Constitution means what it says – was required by federal law to agree not to reveal what spies and bureaucrats told him during the briefing.

Even if the US government weren’t recording all of that data, England’s GCHQ spy agency is … and issharing it with the NSA.

Germany, Australia, Canada and New Zealand are also recording and sharing massive amounts of information with the NSA.

Private contractors can also view all of your data … and the government isn’t keeping track of which contractors see your data and which don’t. And because background checks regarding some contractors are falsified, it is hard to know the types of people that might have your information.

And top NSA and FBI experts say that the government can retroactively search all of the collected information on someone since 9/11 if they suspect someone of wrongdoing … or want to frame him.

The American government is in fact collecting and storing virtually every phone call, purchases, email, text message, internet searches, social media communications, health information, employment history, travel and student records, and virtually all other information of every American.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the NSA spies on Americans’ credit card transactions. Senators Wyden and Udall — both on the Senate Intelligence Committee, with access to all of the top-secret information about the government’s spying programs — write:

Section 215 of the Patriot Act can be used to collect any type of records whatsoever … including information on credit card purchases, medical records, library records, firearm sales records, financial information and a range of other sensitive subjects.

Many other government agencies track your credit card purchases as well.  In fact, all U.S. intelligence agencies — including the CIA and NSA — are going to spy on Americans’ finances.

The IRS will be spying on Americans’ shopping records, travel, social interactions, health records and filesfrom other government investigators.

The Consumer Financial Protection Board will also spy on the finances of millions of Americans.

As Washington Monthly noted in 2004, Congress chopped off the head of the Total Information Awareness program … but the program returned as a many-headed hydra:

A program can survive even when the media, the public, and most of Congress wants it killed. It turns out that, while the language in the bill shutting down TIA was clear, a new line had been inserted during conference–no one knew by whom–allowing “certain processing, analysis, and collaboration tools” to continue.

….Thanks to the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, which had lobbied for the provision, TIA didn’t die–it metastasized. As the AP reported in February [of 2004], the new language simply outsourced many TIA programs to other intelligence offices and buried them in the so-called “black budget.” What’s more, today, several agencies are pursuing data mining projects independent of TIA, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, the CIA, the Transportation Security Administration, and NASA….Even with TIA ostensibly shut down, many of the private contractors who worked on the program can continue their research with few controls.

The government is flying drones over the American homeland to spy on us. Indeed, the head of the FBI told Congress that drones are used for domestic surveillance … and that there are no rules in placegoverning spying on Americans with drones.

Senator Rand Paul correctly notes:

The domestic use of drones to spy on Americans clearly violates the Fourth Amendment and limits our rights to personal privacy.

Emptywheel notes in a post entitled “The OTHER Assault on the Fourth Amendment in the NDAA? Drones at Your Airport?”:

***

As the map above makes clear—taken from this 2010 report—DOD [the Department of Defense] plans to have drones all over the country by 2015.

Many police departments are also using drones to spy on us. As the Hill reported:

At least 13 state and local police agencies around the country have used drones in the field or in training, according to the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, an industry trade group. The Federal Aviation Administration has predicted that by the end of the decade, 30,000 commercial and government drones could be flying over U.S. skies.

***

“Drones should only be used if subject to a powerful framework that regulates their use in order to avoid abuse and invasions of privacy,” Chris Calabrese, a legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said during a congressional forum in Texas last month.

He argued police should only fly drones over private property if they have a warrant, information collected with drones should be promptly destroyed when it’s no longer needed and domestic drones should not carry any weapons.

He argued that drones pose a more serious threat to privacy than helicopters because they are cheaper to use and can hover in the sky for longer periods of time.

A congressional report earlier this year predicted that drones could soon be equipped with technologies to identify faces or track people based on their height, age, gender and skin color.

The military is paying for the development of drones with facial recognition software which “remember” people’s faces … and read “malintent”.

Moreover, Wired reports:

Transit authorities in cities across the country are quietly installing microphone-enabled surveillance systems on public buses that would give them the ability to record and store private conversations….

The systems are being installed in San Francisco, Baltimore, and other cities with funding from the Department of Homeland Security in some cases ….

The IP audio-video systems can be accessed remotely via a built-in web server (.pdf), and can be combined with GPS data to track the movement of buses and passengers throughout the city.

***

The systems use cables or WiFi to pair audio conversations with camera images in order to produce synchronous recordings. Audio and video can be monitored in real-time, but are also stored onboard in blackbox-like devices, generally for 30 days, for later retrieval. Four to six cameras with mics are generally installed throughout a bus, including one near the driver and one on the exterior of the bus.

***

Privacy and security expert Ashkan Soltani told the Daily that the audio could easily be coupled with facial recognition systems or audio recognition technology to identify passengers caught on the recordings.

RT notes:

Street lights that can spy installed in some American cities

America welcomes a new brand of smart street lightning systems: energy-efficient, long-lasting, complete with LED screens to show ads. They can also spy on citizens in a way George Orwell would not have imagined in his worst nightmare.

With a price tag of $3,000+ apiece, according to an ABC report, the street lights are now being rolled out in Detroit, Chicago and Pittsburgh, and may soon mushroom all across the country.

Part of the Intellistreets systems made by the company Illuminating Concepts, they havea number of “homeland security applications” attached.

Each has a microprocessor “essentially similar to an iPhone,” capable of by Text-Enhance” href=”http://rt.com/news/big-brother-street-lamps-286/#” target=”_blank”>wireless communication. Each can capture images and count people for the police through a digital camera, record conversations of passers-by and even give voice commands thanks to a built-in speaker.

Ron Harwood, president and founder of Illuminating Concepts, says he eyed the creation of such a system after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Hurricane Katrina disaster. He is“working with Homeland Security” to deliver his dream of making people “more informed and safer.”

The TSA has moved way past airports, trains and sports stadiums, and is deploying mobile scanners to spy on people all over the place. This means that traveling within the United States is no longer a private affair.

You might also have seen the news this week that the Department of Homeland Security is going tocontinue to allow searches of laptops and phones based upon “hunches”.

What’s that about?

The ACLU published a map in 2006 showing that nearly two-thirds of the American public — 197.4 million people — live within a “constitution-free zone” within 100 miles of land and coastal borders:

The ACLU explained:

• Normally under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the American people are not generally subject to random and arbitrary stops and searches.

• The border, however, has always been an exception. There, the longstanding view is that the normal rules do not apply. For example the authorities do not need a warrant or probable cause to conduct a “routine search.”

• But what is “the border”? According to the government, it is a 100-mile wide strip that wraps around the “external boundary” of the United States.

• As a result of this claimed authority, individuals who are far away from the border, American citizens traveling from one place in America to another, are being stopped and harassed in ways that our Constitution does not permit.

• Border Patrol has been setting up checkpoints inland – on highways in states such as California, Texas and Arizona, and at ferry terminals in Washington State. Typically, the agents ask drivers and passengers about their citizenship. Unfortunately, our courts so far have permitted these kinds of checkpoints — legally speaking, they are “administrative” stops that are permitted only for the specific purpose of protecting the nation’s borders. They cannot become general drug-search or other law enforcement efforts.

• However, these stops by Border Patrol agents are not remaining confined to that border security purpose. On the roads of California and elsewhere in the nation — places far removed from the actual border — agents are stopping, interrogating, and searching Americans on an everyday basis with absolutely no suspicion of wrongdoing.

• The bottom line is that the extraordinary authorities that the government possesses at the border are spilling into regular American streets.

Computer World reports:

Border agents don’t need probable cause and they don’t need a stinking warrant since they don’t need to prove any reasonable suspicion first. Nor, sadly, do two out of three people have First Amendment protection; it is as if DHS has voided those Constitutional amendments and protections they provide to nearly 200 million Americans.

***

Don’t be silly by thinking this means only if you are physically trying to cross the international border. As we saw when discussing the DEA using license plate readers and data-mining to track Americans movements, the U.S. “border” stretches out 100 miles beyond the true border. Godfather Politics added:

But wait, it gets even better! If you live anywhere in Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey or Rhode Island, DHS says the search zones encompass the entire state.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have a “longstanding constitutional and statutory authority permitting suspicionless and warrantless searches of merchandise at the border and its functional equivalent.” This applies to electronic devices, according to the recent CLCR “Border Searches of Electronic Devices” executive summary [PDF]:

Fourth Amendment

The overall authority to conduct border searches without suspicion or warrant is clear and longstanding, and courts have not treated searches of electronic devices any differently than searches of other objects. We conclude that CBP’s and ICE’s current border search policies comply with the Fourth Amendment. We also conclude that imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits. However, we do think that recording more information about why searches are performed would help managers and leadership supervise the use of border search authority, and this is what we recommended; CBP has agreed and has implemented this change beginning in FY2012.***

The ACLU said, Wait one darn minute! Hello, what happened to the Constitution? Where is the rest of CLCR report on the “policy of combing through and sometimes confiscating travelers’ laptops, cell phones, and other electronic devices–even when there is no suspicion of wrongdoing?” DHS maintains it is not violating our constitutional rights, so the ACLU said:

If it’s true that our rights are safe and that DHS is doing all the things it needs to do to safeguard them, then why won’t it show us the results of its assessment? And why would it be legitimate to keep a report about the impact of a policy on the public’s rights hidden from the very public being affected?

***

As Christian Post wrote, “Your constitutional rights have been repealed in ten states. No, this isn’t a joke. It is not exaggeration or hyperbole. If you are in ten states in the United States, your some of your rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights have been made null and void.”

The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the entire DHS report about suspicionless and warrantless “border” searches of electronic devices. ACLU attorney Catherine Crump said “We hope to establish that the Department of Homeland Security can’t simply assert that its practices are legitimate without showing us the evidence, and to make it clear that the government’s own analyses of how our fundamental rights apply to new technologies should be openly accessible to the public for review and debate.”

Meanwhile, the EFF has tips to protect yourself and your devices against border searches. If you think you know all about it, then you might try testing your knowledge with a defending privacy at the U.S. border quiz.

Wired pointed out in 2008 that the courts have routinely upheld such constitution-free zones:

Federal agents at the border do not need any reason to search through travelers’ laptops, cell phones or digital cameras for evidence of crimes, a federal appeals court ruled Monday, extending the government’s power to look through belongings like suitcases at the border to electronics.

***

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the government, finding that the so-called border exception to the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches applied not just to suitcases and papers, but also to electronics.

***

Travelers should be aware that anything on their mobile devices can be searched by government agents, who may also seize the devices and keep them for weeks or months. When in doubt, think about whether online storage or encryption might be tools you should use to prevent the feds from rummaging through your journal, your company’s confidential business plans or naked pictures of you and your-of-age partner in adult fun.

International airports are treated as “borders”, exempt for Fourth Amendment protections. As such,145 airports should be added to the map above.

Do you still believe that the government is only spying on bad guys in “targeted” searches?

Mike Adams
Natural News
July 12, 2013

Quackity quack, the quacks are back, and this time they’re targeting fish oil supplements, claiming that taking fish oils raises your risk of prostate cancer.

Hogwash. This is just another case of pure fearmongering quackery by the anti-vitamin crowd. Remember: All these people attacking vitamins are the very same people who are on the take from Big Pharma. Remember, too, that companies like GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) have already been convicted of multiple felony crimes by the U.S. Department of Justice. And today in China, GSK was caught yet again engaging in widespread bribery and criminal fraud.

See the Natural News story: GlaxoSmithKline admits to criminal pharma fraud in 3 billion dollar case

Do you honestly think these companies wouldn’t fake a bunch of studies (and pay off a bunch of researchers) in order to try to discredit vitamins, superfoods and fish oils?

So here’s how they do the quackity quack dance: Seven ways they fake vitamin studies to scare people into being afraid of lifesaving nutrition:

Quack science trick #1) Run the vitamin study on people who are already diseased

I’ve seen this numerous times, with vitamin studies being done on people who are in critical care situations with heart attacks, for example. On their death beds, they’re given things like vitamin E, so that when an alarmingly high percentage of them die, the quacksters can blame the vitamins!

If you really dig deep into many of these fearmongering studies that try to discredit vitamins, you’ll find they were conducted on people who were already about to croak. …or quack.

Quack science trick #2) Run the vitamin study using synthetic, low-quality vitamins made by pharmaceutical companies

Here’s another favorite tactic: Instead of using high-quality fish oils or vitamin E, researchers source the most low-grade, synthetic chemical crap they can find. Then they call it vitamin E, or fish oils, or whatever they want.

It turns out there are no rules whatsoever regarding the vitamin labels researchers can use to describe substances. They can literally take human sewage sludge, dry it into a powder, encapsulate it into a pill, then call it a “vitamin B-12 supplement.”

And then – OMG! – vitamin B-12 has been “scientifically” found to make people sick! See how easy it is?

Quack science trick #3) Kick everybody out of the study whose health improves

When real vitamins are used for these studies (which is rare), they tend to make people experience improved health outcomes. So what quack researchers do to make sure their study results look really scary is to kick all the healthy people out of the study, thereby “shaping the data” into whatever results they want.

How do you kick healthy people out of a study? You simply find their record in the study spreadsheet or database and then hit delete. It’s that simple. And it happens every day in the quacked-up, fraud-infested “science” being paid for by Big Pharma in order to try to discredit vitamins (and thereby make people default to prescription medications instead).

Quack science trick #4) Just fabricate all the data

Why bother even recruiting people into a study? As Big Pharma researchers have already been caught doing over and over again, all you really have to do is fabricate the entire study by inventing all the data.

Take the case of Dr. Scott Reuben as a prime example. This “superstar” Big Pharma researcher took a bundle of money from Pfizer and other drug companies ($420,000 in all), then proceeded to fabricate dozens of studies which were then published in “peer-reviewed” medical journals. The Wall Street Journal even reported on all this, along with hundreds of other media outlets.

Dr. Reuben was ultimately found to have been faking pro-pharma research data for 13 years. Quackity quack! And he’s not alone. In fact, the faking of research to discredit vitamins while downplaying the serious health risks of pharmaceuticals is routine across the industry.

And the medical journals are all in on the scam, too, because they’re all financially supported by drug company ads! Quackery has never been so profitable…

Quack science trick #5) Combine vitamins with pharmaceuticals, then blame the vitamins

Here’s another popular ploy used by researchers to discredit vitamins: In addition to giving study subjects a vitamin pill, also give ‘em something really toxic such as a statin drug.

But don’t mention the statin drug in the study; just focus on how many people were “harmed by the vitamin.” Sure, the subjects got sick, but no one is ever told the real reason why.

Are there researchers who will LIE like this in “scientific” studies? Umm… do politicians break campaign promises? Of course they do. Anything to get money or power.

Quack science trick #6) Find a source of cheap vitamins contaminated with heavy metals

Heavy metals like arsenic can also be readily found in some low-grade, cheap sources of nutritional supplements (often made by drug companies, it turns out).

For example, cheap sources of calcium are often contaminated with lead. Cheap sources of seaweeds are often contaminated with arsenic. Cadmium is also easy to find in certain low-grade supplements. Somehow, apparently as if by magic, researchers always manage to find the most heavily-contaminated made-in-China supplements to use in their quack smear studies (which are really engineered smear campaigns).

Notice, by the way, that they never disclose the actual metals content of their supplements. Rarely do they ever disclose the country of origin, either. That’s because they’re sourcing these “poison pills” from China, and actually searching for the most toxic pills they can find.

Quack science trick #7) Play mind games with study subjects

Many studies that are claimed to be “double-blind” really aren’t. The researchers secretly know exactly which study subjects are receiving the pills vs. placebo.

And in the case of these vitamin researchers – who actually set out from the start to discredit vitamins and fish oils – they can then proceed to influence the results by playing mind games with the patients.

For example, they can tell the people who receive placebo that they’re actually receiving “the good stuff” and should expect to get better. Their minds make it real, and they get better, thereby discrediting the vitamin itself which looks overshadowed by placebo.

Or they can tell the people receiving the vitamin that they are actually “receiving a placebo,” so they shouldn’t expect to get any better. Their minds make it real, downplaying the biochemical benefits of the vitamin, thereby making the vitamin look useless.

They use the same mind games all the time to show positive results from prescription medications. In fact, the placebo effect is the only thing really going for many prescription drugs such as antidepressants.

Quack science trick #8) Package the pills in a toxic capsule, or use toxic excipients or fillers

Here’s how the recent study bashing fish oils was probably pulled off: the fish oil CAPSULE can be specially formulated to contain highly-toxic hormone-disrupting cancer-causing chemicals such as BPA.

You can actually formulate fish oil capsules to contain “plasticizers” by sourcing them from a factory in China. They will be glad to manufacture fish oil capsules with 10,000 times more BPA than they might normally have, thereby slamming the prostate gland with a cancer-causing, tumor-growing hormone chemical that’s well known to cause cancer.

This will never be detected because nobody working at the medical journals (nor in the mainstream media) actually conducts any quality control tests on the substances used in the study. They just assume the researchers are acting with integrity… and that’s often not the case.

Formulating fish oil pills to cause cancer is a no-brainer, especially if you’ve got financial connections to the same global drug cartels that are running bribery schemes in countries like China – and this was just confirmed yet again by the Chinese Government.

Read more and see for yourself:

China says GSK executives have confessed to bribing doctors
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jul/11/glaxosmithkline-china-…

GlaxoSmithKline staff ‘confess’ to China bribery charges
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/pharmaceuticalsandche…

GlaxoSmithKline executives face China bribery probe
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23265958

Big Pharma criminality no longer a conspiracy theory: Bribery, fraud, price fixing now a matter of public record
http://www.naturalnews.com/036417_Glaxo_Merck_fraud.html

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This article was posted: Friday, July 12, 2013 at 6:20 am

Tags: health, natural health

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

Extremist group: “It can never be called a riot — it’s a rebellion”

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
July 12, 2013

The extremist New Black Panthers Party has predicted “unrest all over America” if George Zimmerman is acquitted, although the group denied that it was organizing riots in light of claims its leader had vowed to burn down white communities.

Image: New Black Panthers

A quote being attributed to New Black Panthers leader Samir Shabazz by numerous Internet sites states, “This time we’re doing it right… This time we’re not burning down our communities. This time we’re going out to Whitey’s suburbs and burning down HIS community. We’re going to make Whitey feel the pain.”

There appears to be no primary evidence that Shabazz actually made that statement, although he has previously made vile threats about murdering white people.

According to the group’s Twitter feed, it will “engage in no unlawful activity” in response to the verdict, but the organization also states, “We can’t and WON’T try to control the general dissatisfied population. For sure we are ORGANIZING.” The group is also planning “rallies and street maneuvers” but refuses to provide details

In another tweet, the group comments that there is “a HIGH chance of rebellion across the nation if Zimmerman is acquitted on all charges,” in addition to another message which states, “If Zimmerman is acquitted there is likely to be unrest all over America, It will be way beyond the capacity of the NBPP.”

“For the record whatever God moves Black People to do after the verdict, it can never be called a riot — it’s a rebellion,” states another tweet.

Other rumors are circulating that the Panthers are transporting busloads of agitators into the town of Sanford in order to stir up trouble, although evidence for this doesn’t seem to extend beyond unsubstantiated claims being made on the Internet.

Members of the original Black Panther party have insisted the NBPP is illegitimate and has no connection with its predecessor. The NBPP, founded in 1989, is classified by the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights as a hate group. The organization is noted for its ability to draw large numbers of people out to protest.

Thousands of Trayvon Martin supporters have vowed to riot, loot and attack white people if Zimmerman is found not guilty, prompting authorities to prepare for civil unrest.

Although nobody wants to see violence in the aftermath of the Zimmerman verdict, labeling preparation for unrest by police racist, as Time Magazine did yesterday, is clearly naive and dangerous given what happened during the 1992 LA riots.

View a selection of tweets made by the official New Black Panthers account below.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

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This article was posted: Friday, July 12, 2013 at 6:19 am

Tags: domestic news, police state

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

Mac Slavo
SHTFPlan.com
July 12, 2013

During the summer of 2011, as Ben Bernanke and his mainstream propaganda arm convinced Americans that green shoots were cropping up all over the nation, warnings of the coming destruction of America’s pension funds had begun to emerge.

Government employees may currently enjoy higher salaries and benefits than the private sector, but they have been given a false sense of security.

Whether you are a police officer, fireman, school teacher, or utility worker, you could have serious problems down the road.

Chances are that every major metropolitan area in the country is heavily in the red. This means that the jobs and retirement futures of millions of people are under threat.

[The only] option will be for ex-Federal governments to start reducing benefits and firing workers.

Just two years on we’re seeing the warnings manifest in the real world.

Once again, we focus the microscope on Detroit, which to those paying attention, is America’s canary in the coal mine signaling what’s to come for the rest of the country.

With the threat of a city bankruptcy looming, Detroit city workers and retirees are pushing back against the state-appointed emergency manager, filing lawsuits to limit his options and refusing to accept demands to keep details of their discussions secret.

One lawsuit, filed in Ingham County Circuit Court in the state capital Lansing, seeks to stop Governor Rick Snyder from allowing the emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, to file Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy. That lawsuitclaims Orr’s plan to significantly cut vested pensions would violate strong protections in the Michigan constitution for retirement benefits of public-sector workers.

…

In his June 14 proposal to creditors, Orr listed pensions as unsecured debt of the city. Payment on pensions, retiree healthcare and $641 million of general obligation bonds all would be made from the city’s proceeds from $2 billion of notes Orr plans to sell as part of his restructuring plan.

The plan, if enacted, would be expected to result in significant cuts in pension payments. Although the city currently lists $643.7 million in unfunded pension liabilities, Orr in his report said the number is closer to $3.5 billion if “more realistic assumptions” are taken into account.

…

Pensions generally are considered off limits in bankruptcies, Nicholson said. “It’s very, very rare for any entity to go after people’s pensions because it puts people in the poor house,” he said.

The push back from labor groups is a new front in a growing resistance to Orr’s efforts.

Notice that everyone assumes the unfunded liabilities are $640 million, but in reality, once you start looking at the numbers, the city owes five times as much — $3.5 billion! That’s a significant miscalculation.

It’s very simple to figure out what happens here using basic arithmetic.

Labor unions and city employees can sue the city to their heart’s content. This will not change the facts:

There’s no money.

See, this is the problem at its root.  The unions bargained in bad faith, either knowing factually or being in possession of enough information to know that what they were asking for couldn’t be provided.  It was fiscally impossible given the projected increase in cost over the retiree lifetimes.

They didn’t care and they bludgeoned the city and its people into approving these “contracts” anyway.

The problem is that the only remaining options are to take some fraction of the original amount which can actually be paid or get nothing.  And the longer they wait and the harder they push the closer to zero their recovery becomes, as the cost of litigation takes from the recovery and in addition the city continues to decay and will keep doing so until it is fiscally restored to a sound foundation with its taxes and spending brought both into balance and to a competitive level.

Kevyn Orr doesn’t have to concede anything.  He holds the whip hand in that the city is a wasting asset and the longer the unions keep screwing around and screaming the less they get.

Karl Denninger’s Market Ticker

This is a nationwide problem.

If you are a government employee, a labor union member, or even a retiree from the private sector, you had better be looking for ways to protect your current retirement portfolio or find yourself a new source of income, because that money you’ve been promised is going to be wiped out.

The pain is coming and millions of Americans will end up in the poor house as a result.

BET ON IT:

We’ve discussed the coming wave of State and local defaults, and it appears that the end game is close…

…

Eventually, the Federal government will hit its (real) debt ceiling as well. That will happen when no one else but The Federal Reserve will buy the US Treasury’s debt issues, at which point the retirement accounts, 401k’s, savings and dollar denominated assets of every American will be completely and utterly destroyed.

No worries, right? Because they told you that YOUR retirement account is perfectly safe and those investments you’ve spent your entire life acquiring are in good hands.

Do you really want to keep pretending this isn’t happening?

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This article was posted: Friday, July 12, 2013 at 6:24 am

Tags: domestic news, economics

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

As a result of nationalised oil, during the 1980’s the Government of Saddam Hussain had run literacy campaigns, which saw illiteracy drop to less than 10% of Iraq’s entire population. UNESCO applauded the fact, that Iraqis were able to access free education and come out with qualifications and employment on the other side. It was stated in 1998:

“UNESCO said that Iraq was one of the only countries in the world where, even if you were born in absolute poverty, with illiterate parents you could come out of the education system either a brain surgeon, archaeologist or whatever you wished to become.”

In a July article for news agency Al-Monitor, journalist Adnan Abu Zeed warned: “the negative effects of illegal drugs in Iraq are becoming more apparent” as Iraq “is being transformed from a country that exports drugs into a consumer of them”.

Zeed described a situation, where throughout Iraqi cities, growing numbers of young people are high on drugs, where this new generation of war’s children, are finding solace in the arms of these substances. 

Drugs are also spreading like wildfire in places that use child labour, such as car repair shops, and road junctions where cheap goods are sold. Asaad Yassin is just one example, who at the tender age of 14, is also a drug addict. 

Abu Sami, whose eldest son is addicted to drugs declared: “My fear is no longer about an explosive or a car bomb, but about the terrorism of addiction.” Ahmad al-Jubouri, a middle school teacher from Babel is unable to help his heroin-addicted brother, because the city has no drug rehabilitation centre. 

At the end of 2012, an Iraqi parliamentary committee stated, “The security, the judicial and the health services are embarrassed about the spread of drugs”, and police sources claim “Investigating [those boys] is not part of [the police’s] daily duties”.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi Ministry of Interior’s response has been to issue a statement, which simply states that drugs “cause a person to commit crime.”

Republished with permission from: Global Research

Anthony Gucciardi
Infowars.com
July 12, 2013

Disturbing and highly racist photos from a 1969 coloring book distributed to kids via the FBI’s ‘COINTEL’ program were a part of the secretive operation that sought to infiltrate groups like the Black Panthers by spreading such insane propaganda in their name.

Amazingly, the COINTEL program is an admitted staple in what makes up the secret programs that the FBI and federal government at large have and continue to run against public interest. What’s more, anyone can easily access a large amount of information on programs like COINTEL with a simple Google search. You’ll find that COINTEL has a major entry on Wikipedia, where the operation is plainly stated as historical fact that was both illegal and conducted secretly until busted in 1971. You can also see the images on the The University of Notre Dame website. 

Another disturbing excerpt from the 1969 coloring book for kids:

Another excerpt from the fake COINTEL coloring book.

From the Wikipedia article, which is linked up with albums of photos from the program as well as other items used as phony propaganda pieces to discredit movements:

“COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert, and at times illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveying, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.”

In other words, this is simply admitted history that you’ve probably never heard about until now. Especially not in the mainstream media.

You can even find the entirety of the phony 1969 Black Panther coloring book on Archive.org. And there’s no real reason to believe that the project stopped back in 1971 when the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI went and broke into the FBI offices to expose the program through stolen dossiers. Until then, it was a highly secretive shadow operation that was meant to work through CIA-style deception and slander. Today, intelligence agencies continue this war through attempting to infiltrate the alternative news, militia groups, and others.

Here are some more images, including the cover of the phony COINTEL Black Panther coloring book for kids:

This post originally appeared at Story Leak

A group of protesters against US electronic spying operations express support for protecting Edward Snowden (file photo).

Republished with permission from: Press TV

The picture shows the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) seen under an electron microscope.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

As Iran and Latin American countries are joining forces to increase south-south cooperation, growing ties between the two sides, particularly those between Iran and Argentina, have infuriated the United States, Press TV reports.

The US has fiercely reacted to the move by Argentinaâ„¢s National Prosecutor General Alejandra Gils Carbo in preventing a special prosecutor to a 1994 bombing attack on the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) from attending the US Congress to level allegations against Iran.

Alberto Nisman has collected a 500-page indictment in which he deliberately accuses the Islamic Republic of Å“infiltrating” regional countries to spread an Å“intelligence network.”

Å“The people of Iran should know that in Argentina we call things like Nisman report an absurdity which has no legal and technical grounds. Nisman underestimates Latin America and should only be interested in finding the truth about the AMIA attack,” head of the Movement of Latin American Integration for Social Expression (MILES) political party Luis Dâ„¢Elia told Press TV.

In a letter personally addressed to Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, American lawmakers expressed their disappointment over the veto of Nismanâ„¢s visit to the US Congress.

They questioned the Å“veracity” of the South American countryâ„¢s intentions to probe the 1994 AMIA attack through a memorandum of understanding recently reached between Argentina and Iran.

Tehran and Buenos Aires reached a comprehensive agreement to jointly probe the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish Community center in Argentina.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi and his Argentinean counterpart Hector Timerman signed a memorandum of understanding in late January under which the two countries agreed to shed light on the bombing attack, which killed 85 people and wounded 300 others.

Å“Although these sectors are trying to bastardize it, the agreement is bringing concrete results. Besides, the people of Iran have been historically tight to Argentina. It is a positive accord and shows Argentinaâ„¢s determination to strengthen ties with countries [that] are also fighting for their sovereignty,” Ex-Coordinator of Urban Policies Lito Borello said.

US interference in Argentinaâ„¢s affairs has received a major setback in the past days following allegations on Washingtonâ„¢s spying programs in Latin America. Argentinaâ„¢s president has called for a Å“strong” condemnation statement from the Mercosur trade bloc.

Å“Argentina has maintained a clear position in favor of the ratification of the accord with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Argentinaâ„¢s interest is to allow the AMIA case to move forward and to know the truth,” Head of the Lower House Commission on Foreign Affairs Guillermo Carmona said.

The MoU, which lays the foundation for the creation of a Truth Commission to investigate the AMIA attack, has been recently approved by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

SF/NN/HMV

Republished with permission from: Press TV

A human rights advocate has called for an end to racial profiling of Indian Muslims, Press TV reports.

Zafar Agha, member of the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions (NCMEI) said in an interview with Press TV that Indian Muslims have long been unjustly profiled as terrorists and held in prolonged detention in the name of fighting terror.

Å“Historically speaking, the primary factor and one of the reasons for which Muslims have suffered has been the partition. Itâ„¢s a tragic fact that those Muslims who stayed back in India, they were blamed for the partition in 1947. That created a sort of a mindset within the system that it started discriminating against the Muslims,” Agha stated.

The expert said Indian police forces also target Muslim youths who have been victims of widespread communal profiling, while heightening feelings of alienation, fear, insecurity and helplessness.

Å“In so many cases – when you are recording me this morning, I read a report that the nine Muslim boys who were arrested under terror charges were released by the court. The Ishrat Jahan case, everybody knows. So many innumerable – [Malaka] bomb blast, Mecca Masjid bomb blast, [Simjada] express bomb blast, itâ„¢s now on record and proved that these cases were primarily some so-called Hindu groups were involved. No Muslims were involved,” the rights advocate said.

Muslims in India continue to be economically, politically and socially oppressed, even though Islam is the second most practiced religion in the country and Muslims make up around 14 percent or about 160 million of the countryâ„¢s population of 1.1 billion.

GMA/HSN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Iranâ„¢s Minister of Industry, Mines and Trade Mehdi Ghazanfari says the Islamic Republic will deliver several vessels to Venezuela in the Å“near future.”

During a Thursday ceremony to launch the development of a loading and unloading dock at the Persian Gulf Special Economic Zone, Ghazanfari said that shipping industry could bring about economic growth for the country.

Å“So far, we have signed a deal to sell several vessels to Venezuela and we should deliver the orders in the near future,” he added.

Iran has completed the building of the first Aframax tanker for the Venezuelan national oil company, PDVSA. Iranian Vice President for International Affairs Ali Saeedlou told reporters in Moscow on July 1 that the tanker will be delivered to the Latin American country soon.

The vessel was one of the four tankers ordered by the Venezuelan company and built by Iran Marine Industrial Company (Sadra).

Ghazanfari stressed that although Iranâ„¢s shipping industry has been sanctioned by hegemonic powers, the country has made a significant progress in the industry thanks to Iranian engineers.

The minister said that colonialist countries seek to pile up different types of pressures on the Islamic Republic to inhibit the development of the countryâ„¢s shipping industry.

Despite all such pressures, Ghazanfari pointed out, Iranâ„¢s shipping industry is now among the top ones in the world and currently ranks 14th in terms of providing insurances to giant and cargo ships as well as oil tankers.

He also hailed the manufacturing of an ocean-going tanker by Iran Shipbuilding and Offshore Industries Complex Co. (ISOICO) as a sign of the countryâ„¢s high capabilities in shipbuilding industry.

AR/HMV

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Torture is now solidly installed in America’s repressive arsenal, not in the shadows where it has always lurked, but up front and central, vigorously applauded by prominent politicians. Rituals of coercion and humiliation seep through the culture, to the extent that before Christmas American travelers began to rebel at the invasive pat-down searches, conducted by the TSA’s airport security teams, groping around bosoms and crotches.

Covertly, there was always plenty of torture, just as there were assassinations, high and low.  After World War Two the CIA’s predecessor, OSS, imported Nazi experts in interrogation techniques.  But this was the era of Cold War competition: Uncle Sam the Good against the dirty Russians and Chinese. The US government would go to desperate lengths to counter accusations that its agents in the CIA or USAID practiced torture.

One famous case was that of Dan Mitrione, working for the US Agency for International Development, teaching refinements in torture techniques to Brazilian and Uruguayan interrogators. Mitrione was ultimately kidnapped by the Tupamaro guerillas and executed, becoming the subject of Costa Gavras’ movie State of Siege. The CIA mounted major cover-up operations to try to discredit the accusations against Mitrione, quoted as having said to his students: “The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect.”

The American liberal conscience began to make its accommodation with torture in June, 1977, which was the month the London Sunday Times published a major expose of torture of Palestinians by the Israeli armed forces and the security agency, Shin Bet. Suddenly American supporters of Israel were arguing that certain techniques—sensory deprivation, prolonged stress positions while hooded, incarceration in “cells” the size of packing crates, etc—somehow weren’t really torture, or were morally justifiable torture under “ticking time bomb” theory.

Ahead lay the repellent spectacle of Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School, and a supposed liberal defender of civil rights, recommending to Israel the notion of “torture warrants”, with the targets of the warrants being  “subjected to judicially monitored physical measures designed to cause excruciating pain without leaving any lasting damage.’ One form of torture recommended by the Harvard professor was “the sterilized needle being shoved under the fingernails.”

With the Great War on Terror, launched after the World Trade Center attacks of 9/11/2001, torture made its march into the full light of day.

One hands-on executive in this itinerary was George Bush’s secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, as Andrew Cockburn described here in 2007. At Guantanamo, it was Rumsfeld who gave verbal and subsequently written
approval to torture suspects, using the notorious techniques of isolation, sleep deprivation and psychic degradation, with Rumsfeld micromanaging the humiliations. (For one prisoner’s horrifying torments in Guantanamo, read Richard Neville’s account of David Hicks’  book, Guantanamo, My Journey.)

In the case of Abu Ghraib in Iraq, there is again a trail of evidence showing it was Rumsfeld who personally decreed and monitored stress positions, individual phobias, such as fear of dogs, sleep deprivation, and waterboarding. One US army officer, Janis Karpinski, described finding in Abu Ghraib a piece of paper stuck on a pole outside a little office used by the interrogators.

It was a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld, authorizing techniques such as use of dogs, stress positions, starvation. On the paper, in Rumsfeld’s handwriting, was the terse instruction, “Make sure this happens!!”

James Bovard wrote in CounterPunch that “Perhaps Bush’s most important legacy is his embrace of torture:”

“In a June 2010 speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan, he declared, ‘Yeah, we water-boarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I’d do it again to save lives.’ There is no independent evidence that Bush-era torture saved any American lives.

“The fact that a former president can stand up in public and admit that he ordered torture is a sea change for the American republic. (While he was president, Bush consistently denied that the U.S. government engaged in torture.) In reality, the Bush administration’s torture policies were simply the most vivid example of its belief that the president was entitled to do as he pleases. Assistant Attorney General Steven Bradbury declared in 2006, ‘Under the law of war, the president is always right.’”

On the home front torture as a drastic mode of social control flowered luxuriantly in the America’s prison system, whose population began to rocket up in the 1970s to its present 2.5 million total. Sanctioned male rape goes hand in hand with increasingly sadistic solitary confinement with prolonged sensory deprivation—a condition in which some 25,000 prisoners are currently being driven mad.

As the Bush years drew to a close liberals dared hope that the rule of law would return and with it respect for internationally agreed prohibitions on torture and treatment of combatants. Anticipation grew that the torturers, with the Bush high command at the apex, would face formal charges. Candidate Obama sedulously fanned that hope.

The moment of opportunity arrived on January 20, the day Obama was sworn in as president and declared that “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals,” he said. He added that the United States is “ready to lead once more.”

On January 21, 1977, on his first day in office President Jimmy Carter fulfilled his campaign pledge issuing a pardon to those who avoided serving in the Vietnam war by fleeing the U.S. or not registering. If he’d waited a month or two, the honeymoon was already turning tepid and he might well have lost his nerve.

In his second full day in office, President Obama signed a series of executive orders to close the Guantanamo detention center within a year, ban the harshest interrogation methods and review military war crimes trials.

In his first state of the Union address, a week later Obama declared to the joint session of Congress that “I can stand here tonight and say without exception or equivocation that the United States of America does not torture. We can make that commitment here tonight.” Within days of this guarantee, Obama’s Justice Department lawyers were telling U.S. judges in explicit terms that the new administration would not be moving on from Bush’s policies on the legal status of renditions and of supposed enemy combatants.

These lawyers from Obama’s Department of Justice emphasized to judges that they, like DoJ lawyers instructed by Bush’s lawyers, held that captives seized by the US government and conveyed to secret prisons to be tortured, had no standing in US courts and the Obama regime has no legal obligations to defend or even admit its actions in any US courtroom.  “Enemy combatants” would not be afforded international legal protections, whether on the field of battle in Afghanistan or, if kidnapped by US personnel, anywhere in the world.

The torture system is flourishing and the boundaries of the American empire are demarcated by overseas torture centers.

Alexander Cockburn’s memoir, A Colossal Wreck, will be published by Verso in September. 

Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature, Grand Theft Pentagon and Born Under a Bad Sky. His latest book is Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion. He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net. 

This essay originally appeared in the January 2011 print edition of CounterPunch.

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

Well, that didn’t take long, did it?

It’s been less than a month since tough-talking Ben Bernanke threatened to pull the rug out from under the stock market by scaling back on his $85 billion per-month liquidity program called QE, and now, he’s done a complete reversal without batting an eye.

On Wednesday, Chairman Flipflop announced that Central Bank monetary policy would be “Highly accommodative…for the foreseeable future.” This is a shocking about-face from his June 19 announcement it “would be appropriate to moderate the monthly pace of purchases later this year”.  There’s a world of difference between stepping on the gas and tapping on the brakes.

Naturally, traders were euphoric about Bernanke’s change of heart. In a wild and festive day of trading, the Dow Jones gained 169 points while the S&P 500 zoomed skyward to 1,675, a new record. Here’s more from Bloomberg:

“The S&P 500 gained 1.4 percent to 1,675.11 at 4 p.m. in New York. The index topped the closing record of 1,669.16 reached May 21, erasing losses since Bernanke first suggested the Fed might curb stimulus this year…

Central bank stimulus has helped fuel a rally in stocks worldwide, with the benchmark U.S. index surging 148 percent from its March 2009 low. The S&P 500 has advanced for six straight days, the longest winning streak since March 11. …

“Everybody’s hanging on the Fed’s every word,” Malcolm Polley, who manages $1.1 billion as chief investment officer at Stewart Capital Advisors LLC in Indiana, Pennsylvania, said by telephone. “Even though Bernanke’s comments after the last FOMC meeting really weren’t hawkish, the market has wanted more clarity in terms of what he meant. Bernanke was as clear as one can be, saying ‘We’re not going to step on the brakes. We’re just going to let up on the accelerator.’”

Don’t kid yourself, Fearless Ben is not going to take his foot off the accelerator until they physically remove him from the Captain’s chair at the Eccles Building and cart him off for retirement in sunny Boca Raton. He’s already been burned once, he’s not going to try it again. No way. It’s going to be pedal-to-the-metal until the bitter end, until the myriad financial bubbles start bursting one-after-the-other like a string of firecrackers tossed into an incinerator. By then, Chairman Wussman will be long-gone, ensconced on some quiet Florida beach, spritzing water on his tanning pate, and thumbing casually through his wife’s tabloids. Not with a bang, but a whimper go former Maestros.

Now a number of analysts think that Bernanke did NOT do a 180. They still cling to the idea that the notorious “taper” will begin sometime in late September. But this is ridiculous. Bernanke’s over-arching message is unambiguously clear; the Fed is going to keep flooding the financial markets with liquidity until Kingdom come. (Repeat: “Highly accommodative monetary policy for the foreseeable future”) Sure, the Fed might insert all kinds of meaningless mumbo-jumbo in the minutes to bamboozle the pointy-head nerds who parse every word like it’s holy scripture, but that doesn’t mean anything. The Fed is just trying to shore up its threadbare credibility and make it look like monetary policy is based on an objective, empirical assessment of economic data. (Righto!) The fact is, the markets know what they heard, and what they heard was what Bernanke wanted them to hear. How can there be any doubt about that? If Bernanke did not get the reaction he wanted, he would have dispatched his lieutenants to the various media – the same way he did after the June 19th fiasco —so they could “clarify” (Re: reverse) what he’d said. But that hasn’t happened nor will it because Bernanke achieved precisely what he wanted to achieve; he pushed up stock prices, stopped bond yields in their tracks, and made quite a few rich investors, even richer.

Mission Accomplished!

It’s worth noting that Bernanke’s original statement turned out to be a bigger trainwreck than any of the Fed governors had anticipated. The members of the FOMC thought they were just stating the obvious, that is, that the $85 billion per month “emergency” stimulus program would gradually be reduced if the economy got better. That sounds innocuous enough, doesn’t it?

So, they were surprised by the reaction. They were surprised that ructions in the bond market sent long-term rates up a full percentage point ravaging bank balance sheets, REITs, bond funds and the housing market. Check this out from the Wall Street Journal: 

“A swift, steep rise in long-term interest rates since early May, stoked by comments from the Fed chairman, is presenting challenges .. for the largest U.S. banks as they struggle to overcome lackluster loan demand, a weak economy and a slew of new regulations that are crimping profits…

The full percentage-point jump in long-term rates, the sharpest increase since 2010, already has eroded $31 billion in accounting gains from banks’ securities portfolios through late June, according to Federal Reserve data….

U.S. banks are highly sensitive to rate changes, since any shift can affect how much it costs them to borrow money and how much they can charge to lend that money to customers.”

Ouch! $31 Bil. That’s gonna leave a bruise! Then there’s REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) debacle. Here’s the rundown from Bloomberg:

“Since the May 2 comments, shares of the companies, which use borrowed money to make $400 billion in credit market bets, dropped about 20 percent and the value of their assets has plunged after the Federal Reserve triggered a flight from bond funds by signaling plans to slow its debt-buying program….

REITs may have needed to sell about $30 billion of government-backed mortgage securities in just one week last month to maintain the amount of borrowing relative to their net worth, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Those types of sales deepened losses in the mortgage-bond market, which had the worst quarter since 1994, accelerated the exit from fixed-income funds and fueled a jump in home-loan rates to a two-year high. …

Annaly Capital Management Inc. (NLY)’s Wellington Denahan, head of the largest mortgage real-estate investment trust, told investors less than three months ago that reports REITs could threaten U.S. financial stability were as misleading as the media frenzy over shark attacks in 2001.”

How do you like that; the bloodbath in REITs could “threaten U.S. financial stability.” And if the system does crash, who are people going to blame?

Professor B.S. Bernanke, that’s who! I’m guessing that old Ben would prefer a retirement party that doesn’t involve tar and feathers. But that’s just a guess.

And then there’s the carnage in the bond market. Once again, Bloomberg sums it up pretty well:

“Investors are finding no shelter from the worst corporate-bond losses in almost five years as debt plunges for the most creditworthy to the riskiest borrowers in every industry worldwide….

All 16 industries in the index lost during the period, from a 0.7 percent decline for the debt of automakers to a 3.5 percent drop in energy-company bonds. ….

U.S.-listed bond mutual funds and exchange-traded funds posted record monthly redemptions of $61.7 billion through June 24, surpassing the previous record of $41.8 billion in October 2008, according to an e-mailed statement last week by TrimTabs Investment Research in Sausalito, California.

The bond-market selloff accelerated after Bernanke said June 19 the Fed may start dialing down its $85 billion monthly bond purchasing program this year and end it entirely in mid-2014 if growth is in line with the central bank’s estimates.

There has been no safe haven,” said Jeroen van den Broek, head of credit strategy for ING Bank NV in Amsterdam… “We’re seeing a complete focus on rates and everything surrounding Bernanke.”

And, finally, there’s housing, a market that has become addicted to Bernanke’s low interest-crack. The recent uptick in mortgage rates —from 3.35% on the 30-year “fixed” in early May to 4.64 percent today is a big enough bump to put the kibosh on new and existing home sales while putting serious downward pressure on prices. Check this out from Marketwatch:

“Rising mortgage rates will make home-buying more expensive, and some buyers will have to scale back purchase plans. Goldman Sachs analysts estimated that recent mortgage-rate gains mean that for a median-priced single-family home, which costs about $200,000, borrowers who put down 20% face an increase of about $100 in their monthly mortgage payments.

Mortgage News Daily, which closely tracks the market, described Friday as “among the worst days in mortgage rate history,” and said some lenders’ rates rose as high as 4.875%.”

And here’s something else to mull over; it’s from a survey conducted by the folks at Urban Turf who found that “38% of Prospective Home Buyers Halt Search Due to Rate Shock”. Here’s an excerpt from the text:

“Two weeks ago, long-term interest rates spiked to 4.46 percent to reach their highest level since July 2011.

While there have been media reports that state rising rates will not deter people from looking for a new home, we have heard differently. So, UrbanTurf polled prospective homebuyers to see if the jump in rates had resulted in a delay in their housing search.

The results were revealing. Of the several hundred buyers who answered the poll, 38 percent said that they would be putting their search on hold because of rising rates, while 57 percent said that they would keep looking. (5 percent were unsure how the rate spike would influence their decision.)

While rates dropped back down last week to 4.29 percent, all signs point to them remaining above 4 percent for the foreseeable future, so it is interesting to see how many buyers have put their search for a new home on hold.”

And this is just part of the trouble Bernanke unleashed when he announced his “taper strategy” in late June. He also wiped out an estimated $2.7 trillion in global market cap. and sent the Forex (currency markets) into a catatonic seizure.

So—the truth is— Bernanke’s turnaround has less to do with monetary policy than it does with damage control.

He’s just trying to stop the bleeding.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. Whitney’s story on declining wages for working class Americans appears in the June issue of CounterPunch magazine. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

Rescue workers dig through the rubble for victims of the train disaster in Lac-Megantic, Quebec on July 8, 2013.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

If we are to regard ourselves as a grown-up nation-and anything else will henceforth be mortally dangerous-then we must, as the Biblical phrase goes, put away childish things; and among these . . . the first to go, in my opinion, should be . . .the search for absolute security. . . .

—George Kennan, The Sources of Soviet Conduct, in Foreign Affairs (1947.)

Now we know what they so badly wanted to tell us but couldn’t and what a revelation it is. I refer to the exciting and long awaited news reported in the Wall Street Journal as to what it was that Senators Mark Udall and Tom Wyden have been dying to tell the American public about the operations of the N.S.A.  but were unable to disclose because the information was of such a top-secret nature that they were not authorized to disclose it.

According to the WSJ,  the secret information that the senators had that was so confidential they could only hint at it was an interpretation of one word in the Patriot Act by the FISA Court. The super super secret word was “relevant.” To the non-lawyer this may seem like a secret that was hardly worth keeping and, indeed, it may even seem so to the legal mind. To understand the true import of this revelation a bit of history is important. The word “relevant” has become important because of two other words, “special needs.”

In legal parlance “special needs” has referred to two different things. In one context it refers to individuals who because of health and related issues are described as having “special needs.” In another context, and the one that concerns us today, it refers to situations that because of their great importance are used to justify the government obtaining court orders permitting it to conduct searches without first obtaining a warrant as would normally be required by the 4^th amendment to the Constitution.

“Special needs” finds its genesis in a 1989 case in which a court ruled that an individual’s Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search was not violated when random drug tests were conducted on railway workers. The court reasoned that running a railroad was a sufficiently dangerous operation that it was reasonable for the government to conduct random drug tests of employees without first obtaining a court order permitting the tests.  Following this line of reasoning, the FISA court greatly expanded the use of “special needs” to include warrantless collection of vast amounts of communication information that it claims pertain to “special needs” i.e. “terrorist activities.”  Once the court adopted the broad interpretation of “special needs,” the  jump to “relevant” was an easy one. Relevant, too, comes with a bit of history, however.

Until the FISA Court adopted a broader meaning for “relevant” something was considered “relevant” in criminal law if it was information pertinent to a particular investigation. If, for example, a prosecutor sought an order asking a judge to permit the prosecutor to tap the phone of Whitey Bulger so it could see if he was ordering people to be killed, a court would almost certainly have considered that “relevant” to the inquiry and permitted the tap without requiring that Whitey be given notice of the tap. If, however, the prosecutor asked the court for permission to obtain the phone records of all the residents of the  community in which the prosecutor thought Whitey lived, the court would have laughed the prosecutor out of the court while denying the request. . The FISA court, as we now know, lacks a sense of humor. Not only does it lack a sense of humor, it has quite a different idea of what is meant by the word “relevant” when used in the context of its activities. It believes that because of the special needs attendant upon terrorist investigations an order permitting the aggregation of records on millions of people would be relevant to an investigation. Put another way, it would seem that anything the government wants, the FISA court thinks the government should get.

The FISA judges do not take kindly to the suggestion that the court is simply a rubber stamp for the government’s request for secret orders. That became obvious when  Russell Tice, a former National Security Agency analyst described the FISA Court as a “kangaroo court with a rubber stamp.” Reggie Walton, the Court’s presiding judge took umbrage at the comment saying: “The perception that the court is a rubber stamp is absolutely false” he told the Guardian newspaper. He said “There is a rigorous review process of applications submitted by the executive branch. . . .” Judge Walton’s assertion of rigorous review was borne out by statistics.

According to a report in the Guardian, in 2012 the court received 1,856 requests for surveillance which was a 5% increase over the number of requests received in 2011. Although there was a slight increase in the number of requests received, there was one number that neither increased nor decreased during those two years. The unchanged number was zero-the number of requests for surveillance that the FISA court, applying the rigorous scrutiny described by Judge Walton, turned down. Zero does not help us understand the meaning of “rigorous review.” The requests for surveillance that were approved, however, help us understand the meaning of “special needs” and “relevant.”

Christopher Brauchli is a lawyer living in Boulder, Colorado. He can be emailed at brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu.

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

The US right has harboured two opposing views on immigration for decades. Either foreign workers are a threat, taking American jobs, living on social welfare and challenging public security; or they are virtuous, hard workers who will do jobs Americans now don’t want, determined entrepreneurs who arrive penniless in the US and start up their own businesses. Are they a burden on the nation or an asset to the economy? The conservatives want to protect “American values”, while the neoliberals advocate more open borders to stimulate growth.

Mitt Romney, the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in 2012, urged illegal immigrants to “self-deport” back home – if not, the authorities would do it for them. This did not endear him to the millions of Latinos in the US waiting for a relative to be made legal: he won only 27% of their votes, compared with Barack Obama’s 71% (1).

“It’s really hard to get people to listen to you on economic growth, on tax rates, on healthcare, if they think you want to deport their grandmother,” said Florida senator and Tea Party star Marco Rubio just after the election. The Republican Party needs to abandon its anti-immigrant rhetoric if it still wants to win presidential elections – not just legislative elections, where gerrymandering can ensure success.

‘Keep the best’

Leading conservatives have recently started talking about the economic benefits of freedom of movement. Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist recently wrote: “The United States is the most immigrant-friendly nation in the world and the richest country in the world. This is not a coincidence. Those voices that would make us less immigrant-friendly would make us less successful, less prosperous, and certainly less American” (2). Paul Ryan, member of Congress for Wisconsin and former vice-presidential candidate, said: “We need to make sure that we have an economy that is wired for the 21st century. And that means we need to keep the best and the brightest here in America. That means, hardworking people who want to contribute, work hard, play by the rules, and rise. That helps everybody in this country. That is what immigration is” (3).

Obama had promised during his election campaign to reform US immigration policy. In December 2012 a bipartisan group of eight senators (including Rubio) met in an unusual spirit of cooperation to draft a reform bill, and in April the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act was presented to Senate. It has attracted influential supporters ranging from the libertarian Cato Institute to the centre-left Center for American Progress, from the US Chamber of Commerce (USCC) to the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), and from the conservative Wall Street Journal to the pro-democratic television station MSNBC.

The legalisation of millions of illegal immigrants, which civil rights organisations have been demanding for many years, is the most promising element – and the most controversial. Some on the US right are opposed to an “amnesty” that rewards those who have broken the law. To appease these fringe elements of the Republican Party, whose support will be needed to get the act passed, the “path to citizenship” is designed to be long, expensive and uncertain.

The 11 million illegal immigrants who arrived in the US before 31 December 2011 would be granted “probationary status” for 10 years, provided they paid a fine, back taxes (if they had worked illegally) and administration fees totalling several hundred dollars. At the end of the 10 years, during which they would have to pay taxes but would not have access to Medicaid, health insurance or social security, they would receive a permanent residence permit (Green Card) and the right, after another three years, to apply for US citizenship. To be naturalised, they would need to pass tests (English language, civics) and have a spotless record: the slightest criminal misdemeanour would waste all their efforts. The oldest (who may die before completing the process), the poorest (who can’t afford it) and the most recent arrivals (who have entered the US since the cut-off date) would be excluded.

The eight senators have also demanded tighter border controls. The federal authorities estimate that they currently prevent 40% of attempted illegal crossings; they would have to stop 90%. That may be difficult without extensive militarisation: there are already 10 guards for every mile of the US border with Mexico. “The priorities of those politicians supporting comprehensive immigration reform appear concerned with making a pathway to citizenship more discouraging than realisable,” said leftwing magazine Counterpunch (4). Yet it still looks too easy to some on the right.

The debate over legalisation has nearly eclipsed another aspect of the reform that is just as important, and just as enlightening about the new view of immigration in the US: an overhaul of the work visa system. In 2007 President George W Bush asked the AFL-CIO and the USCC to come up with joint proposals. But while the USCC wanted to expand its reserve of immigrant labour, the AFL-CIO feared that an influx of migrant workers would lead to a fall in US wages. They were unable to agree. Since then, pressure groups have pleaded for more visas to be issued each year, including the National Association of Home Builders, farmers’ groups, the USCC and thinktanks such as the Cato Institute, the Brookings Institution and ImmigrationWorks USA. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and colleagues in Silicon Valley have formed a lobby to press for easier visa conditions for highly qualified workers.

In February USCC president Thomas Donahue and his AFL-CIO counterpart Richard Trumka announced a historic agreement directly linked to the immigration reform project. “We have created a new model, a modern visa system,” said Trumka, who sees legal immigration as a way to swell union ranks. The text of the agreement suggests that modernity also stands for flexibility and greater submission to the demands of employers, who, if the law is passed, could adjust the flow of immigrants to suit themselves.

The number of engineers, scientist and mathematicians who can be invited to work in the US each year, currently restricted to 65,000, would rise to 110,000, or even 180,000 during periods of rapid economic growth, exacerbating brain drains already costly to their home countries. Foreign scientists educated at US universities would be granted permanent residence; they currently get a one-year visa. India and China produce five to six times as many new engineers as the US every year, and the US is trying to catch up.

A new “W visa” would be created for low-skilled workers in sectors short of labour (5) such as restaurants, hotels, retail and personal services, where jobs are underpaid and non-exportable, and immigrant labour keeps prices low. In the New York Times, David Brooks wrote: “Thanks to the labor of low-skill immigrants, the cost of food, homes and child care comes down, living standards rise and more women can afford to work outside the home” (6).

The USCC asked for 400,000 of these visas; the AFL-CIO wanted only 10,000. The number of visas would be set at 20,000 in the first year, 35,000 in the second, 55,000 in the third and 75,000 in the fourth. After that, it would be determined by the Bureau of Immigration and Labor Market Research, a new agency set up to manage the system and respond to the demands of the business sector, with a cap of 200,000. This system based on just-in-time planning would defer to the private sector. The American Enterprise Institute thinktank comments: “Market forces are the best way to determine how many and which immigrants employers want to hire. Arbitrary caps set by politicians or bureaucrats cannot respond quickly enough to changes in the economy, nor can they fully incorporate hard-to-measure local economic conditions.”

No more Green Card lottery

The text of the Act does not explain how a labour shortage is defined or measured. Employers, who are required to treat immigrants and US citizens the same, could easily take advantage of its ambiguity to bring wages down, or prevent them from rising, as former labour secretary Robert Reich, who now teaches economics at Berkeley, explains: “As soon as any increase in demand might begin to push their wages higher, employers can claim a labor shortage – allowing in more guest workers, who will cause wages to drop back down again” (7).

This measure is based on a narrow vision of migration, focused on numbers. There would be restrictions on the number of visas for family members: siblings and married children over the age of 31, among others, would be excluded. Because chance has no place in a world governed by market principles, the reform would also end the Green Card lottery, in which 55,000 foreigners win permanent residence rights in the US every year. The new merit-based system would take into account the sector in which the applicant intends to work, qualifications, country of origin and command of English. It would be a filtered, selective system, involving no luck or randomness.

In the US, where everything has its price, immigrants are increasingly seen as a “long-term investment”, based on a rational calculation of costs and benefits. It has even been suggested that the federal government should auction work visas to businesses and that “the auction price of permits would signal the demand for immigrants and guide the upward and downward adjustment of the permit numbers” (8). That sounds like auctioning slaves.

Benoît Bréville is deputy editor of Le Monde diplomatique.

Notes.

(1) See Jérôme Karabel, “Obama defeats the Southern Strategy”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, December 2012.

(2) Grover Norquist, “Immigration reform is a no-brainer to help the economy”, The Guardian, London, 24 April 2013.

(3) Gerald F Seib, “Ryan Takes a Key Role on Immigration”, The Wall Street Journal, New York, 30 April 2013.

(4) Mark Vorpahl, “The Argument for Amnesty”, Counterpunch, 5 February 2013.

(5) Before employing a foreign national, US enterprises must prove that they have tried to hire a US citizen.

(6) David Brooks, “The Easy Problem”, The New York Times, 31 January 2013.

(7) Robert Reich, “What Immigration Reform Could Mean for American Workers, and Why the AFL-CIO is Embracing It”, 2 April 2013.

(8) Giovanni Peri, “The Economic Windfall of Immigration Reform”, The Wall Street Journal, 12 February 2013.

This article appears in the excellent Le Monde Diplomatique, whose English language edition can be found at mondediplo.com. This full text appears by agreement with Le Monde Diplomatique. CounterPunch features two or three articles from LMD every month.

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

One of the cornerstones of current forest policy is the assumption that western forests are outside of their “normal” density and appearance or what is termed “historic variability”. The commonly given reasons for this are a hundred years of mismanagement that included logging of old growth, fire suppression, and livestock grazing. The idea that forests are out of “balance” or “unhealthy” is the reason we are told for larger fires and insect outbreaks. Due to this past mismanagement we are told that forests are “over grown” “decadent” and ready to burn.

The solution we are told is more logging of public lands to “restore” forests to their pre-management era appearance and resiliency. However, this idea fails to recognize that large fires and insects are a natural consequence of current climatic conditions and that the forest is perfectly capable of “restoring” itself. What is missing in the discussion is that a “healthy” forest is one where natural processes like insects, disease and wildfires still operate, not some static image or preconceived notions of stand structure or appearance.

Not to dismiss the past management that largely continues unabated today, including on-going logging, grazing and fire suppression, but whether the current forest stand condition is that far from past conditions is a matter of increasing debate. This is especially important because the proposed solution to the perceived problem is to log the forest.

Deforestation is no longer done just to provide timber companies with profits or consumers with wood. Now lumber companies are involved in a much more noble enterprise–they are logging the trees to “restore” the presumed forest “health.

The scientific basis for “restoration” is dependent on fire scar studies. These studies suggest that the drier forests composed of lower elevation ponderosa pine and Douglas fir burned frequently and thus kept density low with “park-like” open stands of mostly larger trees. Keep in mind the discussion is focused on lower elevation forests since higher elevation forests like lodgepole pine, fir and spruce are characterized by much longer fire intervals and definitely were not affected to any significant degree by fire suppression.

So we often hear how such low elevation dry forests burned regularly at frequent intervals in “light, “cool” blazes that removed the litter and killed the small trees, but did little harm to the larger trees.

Like a lot of myths, there is some truth to this generalization, and no doubt in some areas this characterization is accurate. But more recent studies using different methods have started to question this well-established story-line. These alternative interpretations are finding that the intervals between fires is much longer then previously suspected, and that stand replacement blazes (where most of the trees are killed) were likely more common even among lower elevation dry forests then previously thought.

PROBLEMS WITH FIRE SCAR METHODS

The major method for determining the fire history of an area is to find trees with scars created by fires. If the tree is not killed by the blaze, it will develop a scar that can be counted in the tree rings. This record of past fires is then used to determine the “fire rotation” or the time it takes to burn a specific area one time.

There are four major flaws with many fire scar studies. These methodological flaws contribute to a shorter fire rotation bias–in other words, they tend to over state the effect of fire suppression on forests. And if the fire rotation is longer, than much of what is being characterized as unhealthy forest may be perfectly normal and healthy.

The first flaw is targeted sampling. A researcher walks through the forest looking for areas with an abundance of fire scarred trees. The trees in this area are then sampled and used to determine the fire history for the area.  In the 1930s the bank robber Willy Sutton was asked why he robbed banks. Sutton is reputed to have replied with the self evident “because that is where the money is.” In a sense that is how fire researchers have gathered their data on fires–they sample in places with a lot of fire scars.

The problem with targeted sampling is that it’s non random. It’s like going into a brewery to poll people about
whether they like beer. Places with an abundance of fire scars tend to have naturally low fuel loadings. But these sites may not be representative of the surrounding landscape such as north facing slopes or valley bottoms which may be wetter or have higher productivity–thus longer intervals between blazes.

The second flaw is composite fire scars. Most fire studies add up all the fire scars recorded into a “composite” timeline. The problem with this technique is that the more scars you find and count, the shorter the fire interval becomes. Since the majority of fires do not burn more than a single tree or a small group of trees, using these scars in the composite tends to bias the final count towards much more frequent intervals. Some fire researchers now try to counter this by only including fire scars recorded the same year on 3 or more trees. Nevertheless, even this may overstate the frequency of fire in a given study area.

In other words, your composite may suggest a fire burned within your study area once every 5 years or whatever, but most of these blazes only burned a few trees, then ecologically speaking they are insignificant. What are important are the fires that burn most or all of the study area. These larger blazes may be far less frequent and take 100 years to burn most or all of the study area. Since the critical issue for the forest is the occurrence of the occasional blaze or series of fires that burns most, if not all of the entire study area, the real fire rotation for such an area may be 100 years, not every 5 years.

The third flaw is fire distribution. If you read fire studies carefully they will usually note the longest interval without any recorded fire. Often this is a significant period of many decades. Why is this important? Because the average person hears that there were fires every 10 or 20 years and assumes that fires operate like clocks on a regular schedule. In reality fires come in episodic groups usually dictated by periodic droughts that are controlled by shifts in off shore currents like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, thus tend to be grouped together in certain drought prone decades.

Let me give a hypothetical example of how “averaging” fire intervals can skew interpretations. Let’s say a particular fire history study found a fire interval that averaged one blaze every 20 years. In a 100 years, this works out to 5 fires. However, since fires tend to burn only in drier decades, one could easily have 3 fires in the first decade, and two in the last decade and no fires for the 80 years in between.

Why is this important? Because the common assumption is that if the fire interval is 20 years, fires would keep tree density low and reduce fuel build up. However, if no fires burned in an area for 80 years or whatever the fire free interval may have been, then there may not be an “abnormal” build up of fuel or increase in tree density, when in fact, nothing is out of the ordinary at all .

Finally the fourth major flaw is assuming that stand replacement blazes are unusual in dry lower elevation forests. Because most fire scar studies are non-random, and target areas with fire scars, the other areas are not sampled. Often the reason these non-sampled areas lack significant numbers of fire scarred trees is because all trees may have been killed in a stand replacement fires–so are not there to be recorded.

Due to these flaws and errors in interpretation, many fire scar histories (but not all) may seriously misrepresent the fire rotation of an area. If the period between fires is considerably longer than previously thought, then our forests may not be far out of their historic variability and may be well within that variability. In either case, they do not require “restoration” because they are not out of balance.

The other major justification for logging is to reduce the perceived increase in fire occurrence and severity often blamed on past forest management including fire suppression. As pointed out above, most forests may not be that far outside of historic conditions.

The fact that we are seeing more and larger fires fits perfectly with the pattern that is expected under current climatic conditions. In other words, if you have drier weather conditions, with high temperatures, low humidity and high winds, you will get more fires. You will get larger fires.

The prevailing climatic conditions are driving most of the apparent change in fire frequency and severity. For instance, the Southwest is in the grips of a drought that hasn’t been seen in five hundred years. Not surprisingly, there are fires now burning across the region bigger and more intense than any seen in the past.  However, Paleo fire studies confirm that such large fires may not be abnormal when compared to the fires that burned similar severe droughts occurred in the past centuries.

This is not to suggest that all fire scar historical reconstructions are wrong–but it does raise the prospect that many of our assumptions about fire may be inaccurate or biased to some degree. Many of the logging proposals in the West are likely based on flawed assumptions about fire ecology and historic conditions. And before any “restoration” logging is accepted as necessarily, the underlying assumptions should be carefully evaluated to make sure they are not skewed towards a shorter rotation that actually does not characterize the area accurately.

George Wuerthner has published 36 books including Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy.

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

While Modernists cling to the axiom ‘ballots not bullets’ we must ask ourselves why people keep choosing to risk their lives and confront bullets. Referendums are organized and use ballots as a form of expression; an evolution of pebbles used by the Romans. Protests on the other hand are unorganized, chaotic and insecure but far more expressive. It is quite perplexing why several think-tankers and policy specialists have ignored this phenomenon.

Joel Beinin has remarked that since William Quandt left Brookings the think-tank has gone down hill. In that regard Beinin, Mersheimer and Walt and others have dedicated enough space to question Brookings’ credentials as a think tank that values research. Glenn Greenwald has also more recently tackled its weak academic credentials in the drones debate. Brookings’ Saban Centre for Middle East Policy, headed by Tamara Coffman Wittes is financed by Haim Saban, the known Israeli American Zionist businessman it additionally lacks the academic credentials for it to be taken seriously alongside several other likeminded organizations. Most notably: Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), American Enterprise Foundation, The Heritage Foundation, The Hudson Institute, The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and others. The new development is Brookings Doha, headed by none other than Shadi Hamid, a fellow at the Saban Center too.

In January 2011 Shadi Hamid published an article titled: “Arab Islamist Parties: Losing on Purpose?” in the Journal of Democracy published by John Hopkins University. This piece provides penetrating insight in that it is evidence of Brookings’ thinking pre-January 2011. The crux of the argument centered round the classic ‘moderation of Islamists in rule’ axiom followed by Hamid’s own insight that Islamists have yet to come out in full force. This is because according to Hamid they, as a social movement, are more interested in da’wa than politics. He argues:

Such deference makes it difficult to envision Islamist opposition groups taking significant risks, whether through civil disobedience or mass protest, to weaken Arab autocrats’ tight grip on power. But if not Islamists, then who? If Islamist groups are not willing to win–and liberal and leftist parties are unable to–then democracy will remain an unlikely prospect in the Arab world.

Hamid then concludes in a rather odd and deterministic way:

 As Islamists have grown comfortable losing elections–and with much of the world comfortable watching them lose–Arab democracy has drifted further out of reach.

Debating what democracy is or isn’t is a larger question; even if it is one that is constantly being ignored. It suffices to draw several smaller conclusions from this piece. First the congruency of Hamid and the MB’s view that democracy belongs firmly to the Islamists (and modern Islamists for that matter in order to utilize the Salafis as a scarecrow) affirms the MB’s exclusionary tactics to begin with. Second is the notion that Egypt is Islamist; this is drawn from the unsubstantiated statement that leftists and ‘seculars’ (without defining either category or asking whether that is a mutually exclusive category) have no currency in society and do not resonate. Third, which maybe the only point that I agree with, is the fact that Islamists are status quo and pro-regime. They are not interested in strikes, protests and changing the rules of the game. Rather they use their social arm to change the rules of the game in order to make it work for them. It is no surprise therefore when Brookings attempts to deliver ‘neutral’ analysis and ‘critique’ the MB on its civil society draft law they do so while reiterating their history as the victim. One has to ask though: throughout those years of being the victim why was it that the labor movement was hit hard while mosques were allowed to operate? Why were social services privatized using civil society? This does not make the victim argument for the MB that strong.

Another way the Brookings repeats the MB punch line is in its treatment of the protests of Taksim. This is seen in its narrative of Taksim, one that is increasingly pro-Erdogan:

The Arab uprisings were not simply about discontent. They were, and remain, revolts against despotic rulers with no democratic legitimacy, whose violent response led to thousands of deaths. That can’t be likened to Turkey, whose democratic experiment is decades old, and whose prime minister won free and fair elections, three times over — increasing his share of the vote every time while his rivals’ dwindled.

Hellyer of Brookings and Aykol, a columnist at Hurriyet, display the same logic of the MB: the sanctity of the ballot box. This is a startling picture compared to the authoritarianism of the Turkish government towards reporters and dissenters. It is interesting how the article fails to mention that the protest movement, symbolized in the protest against the decision to tear down the park and build a mall, epitomizes the AKP’s cruel neoliberal authoritarianism. Anthropologists have commented on how Turkey’s countryside continues to grapple with socioeconomic grievances while Turkish soap operas emphasis its European and developed nature. Therefore the previous statement, while dissociates the struggle from its common sister at Tahrir, also has another discursive lacuna: failure to triangulate the Tahrir movement as also against neoliberalism.

In that regard Brookings Doha is ahead of everyone else in the Academic Industry Complex and has developed its own native informant panopticon. Staffed by several natives who are willing to spew its, and the MB’s, party line it finds itself with new found legitimacy. Omar Ashour, a fellow at Brookings and a professor at Exeter university made intriguing remarks ahead of the MB’s first cabinet, though he criticized the government for being filled with regime holdovers his section that dealt with ‘pro-change forces’ was odd:

As for the pro-change forces, Minister of Information Salah Abd al-Maqsud, a leading figure in the Muslim Brothers’ media wing, will control a sector that continues to attack the group and Morsi, even after his electoral victory. The new youth minister, Osama Yassin, another leading Muslim Brother, was the de facto “security chief” in Tahrir Square during the 18 days that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak. He belongs to the so-called “iron organization,” a strong, committed faction led by Khairat al-Shater, the Brotherhood’s first deputy chairman (deputy general guide).Four other ministries went to pro-revolution and Islamist figures. Mohamed Mahsoob, a leading figure in the moderate Islamist al-Wasat Party who campaigned against the return of Mubarak-era officials, became Minister of Legal and Parliamentary Affairs. Hatem Saleh, the deputy chairman of the Civilization Party, which joined the Muslim Brotherhood’s electoral coalition in the last parliamentary election, was named Minister of Industry and Foreign Trade….Finally, Ahmed Mekki, the former deputy head of the Court of Cassation, Egypt’s highest appeals court, will lead the justice ministry, which is in need of real change. Mekki is a strong proponent of judicial independence, and was dubbed “the revolution’s representative” in Qandil’s government….Overall, only ten of the 35 ministries went to pro-change forces…

The interesting notion here is that ‘pro-change’ and ‘pro-revolution’ are synonymous with Islamists and the opposite holds. Again we see the tendency to exclude all other forces from such a definition and we see the failure to triangulate the co-optation of the judiciary. Mahsoub’s role in the Cabinet was well known: to begin maneuvers to co-opt the judiciary. When Abu el Ela Mady did not get the position of Prime Minister he quit after defending the constitutional declaration. In that regard he is a loyal Islamist who heeds the call to ‘defend Islam’ (embodied in the Brotherhood) but can still quibble over key positions. The same held for Ahmed Mekki who defended the constitutional declaration for sometime and waited for the next cabinet to exit after being tainted. As for Hatem Saleh of the Civilization party, now merged with Al Wasat, he is a businessman that is tainted with allegations of monopolization and crony capitalism. Ashour, in a different piece goes on to describe those who protest against the Brotherhood as ‘spoilers to democracy’ and fails to mention the increasing incursion then of the executive on the state in Egypt:

Finally, total spoilers are usually led by individuals who see the world in all-or-nothing terms and often suffer from pathological tendencies that prevent the pragmatism necessary for compromise settlements. For those, a coercion strategy is advised by Stedman; a strategy that relies on the use or the threat of punishment to deter or alter unacceptable spoiler behavior or reduce the capability of the spoiler to disrupt democratic transition.

Ashour is, in laymen’s terms, inciting for “coercion” after the November Constitutional Declaration and the enthusing violence by the Brotherhood. Again no mention is made either of the state sanctioned Brotherhood violence and torture backed by the police or the unilateral decision to seize the judiciary’s power. Instead he describes dissenters as “pathological”. This, while highly disturbing, provides key insight into the mode of thinking then at the time.

Staying true to its host, Brookings continues to polish the Qatari regime and the House of Al Saud, which shows how its understanding of democracy is peculiar and in reference to its patrons. In fact some researchers pay homage to Brookings for allowing it to facilitate research in these otherwise off-limits countries. It is no surprise this in turn produces policy papers that talk about the liberalization of Gulf Countries.

Its of no surprise that Brookings, along with other think tanks, chose to publish far more Op-Eds than research papers and in certain platforms where their soundbites have no space for rebuttals. This creates a certain Middle East ‘pedagogy’ where critics find themselves swimming upstream with no where to voice their opposition. It is not my intent, as Mersheimer and Walt have argued in The Israeli Lobby and US Foreign Policy, that there is a conspiracy to control key positions and all those individuals are in one way on the incumbent’s payroll (though one does wonder after wikileaks and whistleblowers’ revelations who is being hired to execute what). Nor is it my intent to turn this into a witch-hunt and round up people via guilt by association of a certain organization. But one cannot deny the unequivocal view that in the face of mounting dissent and criticism there is an organized cohort of organizations and individuals that stick to the incumbent’s logic in Egypt and propagate it like there is no tomorrow.

One of the pillars of said logic is the famed “Egypt is too big to fail” punch line that the academic Industry complex continue to repeat. Tamra Cofman Wites of Brookings made an intriguing remark before the House Committee on Foreign Relations:

Egypt has been a stalwart opponent of nuclear proliferation [original emphasis]. As the region and the world continue to confront the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program, we have a shared interest in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, and countering Iran’s efforts to undermine regional stability.

With half of these think-tankers and policy specialists having come from the USNSC and US State Department and having found themselves landed in comfortable retirement posts in NGOs (Robert Mackey, extensively critiqued by Mersheimher and Walt of ICG is a case in point) and think-tanks they continue to repeat the executive summaries of USNSC reports. It is unlikely that these think tankers and area specialists will move beyond the ‘stability’ paradigm argument. It precisely why these specialists do not engage, or to be quite frank may not have read, works such as Oliver Roy’s book ‘The Failure of Political Islam’ and Lorenzo Videno’s ‘The New Muslim-Brother-hood in the West’. It is not surprising that Tamara Wittes wrote on the 4^th of July (with a disclaimer claiming the piece was written on the 3^rd of July) utterly critiquing the military for its ‘coup’ only to backtrack and write an article in the USA Today titled: “A popular impeachment in Egypt: Column” co-authored with Michael O’Hanlon a Brookings academic as well. Both pieces, extremely divergent, neglect to mention Morsi’s November Constitutional Declaration, which would in most democracies provide good grounds for impeachment. This is hardly surprising to hear from the Saban Center ‘scholar’, Haaretz’s report titled “4 reasons Israel will miss Morsi” suggests that the biggest loser from Morsi’s ouster is Israel. To add to the confusion Wittes then signed on to the statement issued by the ‘Egypt Working Group’ a collection of “think tanks” that feature the Atlantic Council’s Michelle Dunne, Daniel Calingaert of the NGO Freedom House and Reuel Gerecht of the ‘Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’. The point is not that these individuals, who are on Capitol Hill and disjointed from the situation, are the ones that form the discourse on the region. It is that they view the events within the narrow confines of American partisanship. It is why they frequently backtrack and reverse their positions. These individuals are far from ‘non-partisan’ or ‘analytical’.

They are ideological and confined to the donors of these organizations and the United States Government and their various organs. Most of them have a USG background. Wittes’ flip-flop shows the ambivalence that the West seems to be suffering from in digesting events in Egypt. If this will be labeled a coup, is it anymore of a coup than February 11^th 2011?

Karim Malak writes about Middle East politics. He can be reached at: karimmkarim@aucegypt.edu

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

Giza, Egypt.

We are demonstrating in front of Cairo University in Giza to defend the rule of law: what we call ‘Shar’iyya’ or legitimacy. This could easily be confused by some in the Western media with ‘SharÄ«’a’ or Islamic law.

It is not news that Morsi is now held in the Republican Guard Building by Gen. Mohsin Shazly. But there was news yesterday from Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi), who reported on leaks from associates of Defense Chief and Coup leader, Gen. Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, on his Facebook page. There he shows that the latest bloodbath in front of the Republican Guard Building was planned in order to weaken Morsi’s resolve. Chief of Staff Sidqi Subhi had visited Morsi’s cell several times in vain in order to intimidate him to agreeing to either formally resign or be restored as a figurehead President with symbolic powers.

The Muslim Brotherhood is usually portrayed in the media as some kind of a Satanic organization that is keen on imposing ‘SharÄ«’a’ in Egypt, while this is in fact a Salafist agenda. There is perhaps a lack of understanding of the difference between the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis in the West. The Muslim Brotherhood is not a religious organization in the traditional sense; its main focus has been to promote democracy and political freedoms among Egypt’s citizens, as well as charitable and social programs among the country’s poor and working class.

The demonization of the Muslim Brotherhood has been the policy for over thirty-years of the Mubarak régime in order to justify its repressive rule. This corrupt régime has been the recipient of $1.5B from US taxpayers every year. But whatever one thinks of the Muslim Brotherhood, it is a small group within the Egyptian population as a whole, and yet there are Egyptians from all walks of life gathered here today in demonstrations around the country against the military régime, in support of the rule of law.

Baltagies or ‘thugs’ paid and recruited by Egypt’s corrupt security apparatus are an everyday feature of our lives. Many of these thugs are prisoners on probation who are also controlled by the police, and paid to cause mayhem and destruction, including committing rapes and murder. As of late many were gathered at Tahrir Square and committed at least 100 rapes as reported by the Health ministry. They are also seen on the edges of the anti-Morsi demonstrations ‘clashing’ with whomsoever they are ordered to ‘clash’ with. When reporters talk of ‘clashes’ between pro and anti-Morsi demonstrators, it is always the case that these thugs fight on the side of the anti-Morsi element, and their intervention usually ends up with casualties.

For news that doesn’t follow the régime’s agenda, the Al-Hiwar channel from London has replaced all the Islamic satellite channels which have been closed down by the régime. There is much discussion there about the latest bloodbath in front of the Republican Guard Building, and contradictory video footage taken by both Muslim brotherhood members and members of the military are submitted for inspection and discussed. As in the case of video footage from the conflict in Syria, it becomes impossible to tell who did what to whom. All that we are left with are the dead men, women and children and the facts that those men, women and children were actually praying at the time of death, and that they were shot in the back with army issue bullets.

For those that are confused about the bigger picture, and why all this is happening, a  recent interview between ex-British PM and ‘Middle-East Envoy’ Tony Blair and broadcaster Krishnan Guru Murthy on London’s Channel 4 News is discussed, which brings some light as to the views of some international leaders. In that interview Blair said that the military ‘intervention’ was absolutely necessary in order to rescue the economy from collapse. But was it?

Morsi’s government had faced a hidden plot from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates to undermine it, including cutting off the supply of oil products causing, among other things, massive fuel shortages and queues at the gas pumps. The military coup actually took place just as Morsi began to solve this problem through new contracts from oil products with Iraq. In fact, after the coup, we were surprised to find that shipments of oil supplies from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE have suddenly resumed.

The economy under Morsi was, given the circumstances, actually doing rather well, despite the constant attacks by the ‘baltagies’ on crucial road junctions, railway lines, hotels, and tourist destinations. In fact, the supply chain of crucial commodities to the poor has been completely revamped under Morsi, as waste and corruption were largely curtailed.

As far as we can see, the people in the streets have no intention of coming to an agreement with the military in order to provide them with a democratic cover for their tyranny. We have begun to understand Morsi’s apparent stubbornness in his desire to follow the principles of democracy absolutely, although perhaps not ‘pragmatically’. While ‘pragmatism’ is an important quality in politics, it can easily turn into actions that are corrupt and unjust, unless there is already a structure to the country’s social fabric that is democratic.

What is being built now is this very democratic structure to the nation, something which it has never had. Although majoritarianism can seem to be somewhat blinkered, Egypt is a fairly homogeneous society, unlike other Middle-Eastern nations. The quite complex AV+ voting system does give the ability for many non-party list independents to stand for Parliament, which can greatly offset any potentially unfairness in the majoritarian process.

Therefore when we say we are in the streets to defend ‘Shar’iyya’ or the rule of law, it is because this is not the time for pragmatism, it is the time for putting into place the structure of a new nation that can be strong enough in the future to allow politicians to practice their pragmatic skills without harming the nation.

Mohamed Mālik can be reached at malektex@hotmail.com.

Mohamad Omar (surgeon), can be reached at m.omar84@yahoo.com). 

Also contributed to this report: Badr Mohamad Badr (teacher), Yasser Mahran (lawyer), Ahmad Abdel-Ghafar (businessman) Hossam Elzomor (journalist), Sayed Khamis (teacher), Mohamad Gheith (pharmacist), others -whom we thank — have also helped in its redaction.

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

Too much food makes one obese, or at the very least flabby; too much revolution strips the credentials of those who want it, destroys the premises with which it is started, and undermine the cause. We have seen how rebellions cannibalise themselves. Bolshevism moved into bureaucratic stasis and murderous Stalinism; the French Revolution ended up, like Saturn, eating its children by first severing them on the guillotine after attacking the aristocrats. The finest example of this analysis remains Albert Camus’ The Rebel (1951), a searing account about how rebellion can turn on itself.

That process is largely one of the utopian dreamer who dons the uniform of combat. The society makers, the dreamers, and the utopians strike in the hope that the next order is a more just one. The prisons are opened. The unjust institutions are either reformed or abolished. But disenchantment follows. As Camus observed, the atrocities that follow by means of terror are committed on the basis of a temporary emergency. You enslave people to free them.

The key to overcome this, suggests Camus, is the careful acknowledgment of transcendental values, be it the liberty of the subject, or the sanctity of life. Be aware of those who deny history, who demand the fresh start in a vacuum of intoxicated enthusiasm.

The narrative of justification behind the deposing of Mohamed Morsi is markedly similar. It was an engineered emergency, and one that argued that the revolution had been hijacked by Islamist enthusiasts and followers of Sharia. The democratic experiment fell into the hands of the “wrong people”. (Oh, the trials and tribulations of a democratic system!)

This view is best expressed by Al Hayat’s senior diplomatic correspondent Raghida Dergham, who thanked Egypt for restoring “to the Arab uprising its insistence on reform and freedom” and repudiating “dictates and despotism, in a spirit of rebellion, pride and perseverance.” Notably, the military are but an instrument for Dergham’s vision of reform, an enlightened body, in fact “the people’s army” (Huffington Post, Jul 5). Generals, it seems, can be enlightened.

Morsi, in the words of Alon Ben-Meir of the Centre for Global Affairs at New York University, “worked tirelessly to consolidate his powers while doing next to nothing to save the economy from pending collapse” (Mindanao Examiner, Jul 9). Freedom of speech was assaulted; a constitution filled with Sharia law was implemented and “Islamic siege mentality and authoritarianism” embraced. For all that, Ben-Meir argues that “political Islam and democracy can work, but not by pushing for early elections.” The time limit? Two years.

In 2004, Reuel Marc Gerecht claimed in The Islamic Paradox that such figures as Hosni Mubarak invariably fed fundamentalism, a process that might create fundamentalist critics. Secular dictatorships were not necessarily better than Islamic ones. Islamist rule was not necessarily incompatible with democratic tenets.

The coup (yes, let’s call it that) also reveals a few foundational ideas. One is that Islam, or to be more precise, Islamic political governance, is incapable of democratic practice. “This is also a good opportunity for those who had wagered on a ‘Turkish model’,” argues Dergham, “to reconsider the application of such a model of religious rule in the Arab region.”

This is a dangerous premise, for it is exactly one that some clerics and fundamentalists would have you believe. The work, in other words, is being done for the radicals by the very people who might oppose them. The Muslim Brotherhood, is other words, is being placed outside the tent rather than being accommodated.

The other dangerous idea is that democracy, by its very nature, can be abridged by military fiat should the need arise. The generals are the perceived guardians who can step in to rescue a sinking ship. A popular vote can be nullified.

One way of undermining a revolution preaching democracy is by despising the very principle of legality, by affirming a mythological supremacy that rejects the law book as it stands. To be legal, we need to undermine it. To be functional, the constitution needs suspension in order to be redrafted. This is the logic that Nazi Germany’s most fluent and controversial jurist believed in: the law of the exception, argued Carl Schmitt, should be embraced, rather than rejected. Emergency decrees might be necessary to protect an order.

The offspring of this suspension, however, can be rather dangerous. In the case of Weimar Germany during the 1930s, democracy delivered a certain Adolf Hitler who stormed in while the democrats went to sleep. That particular “transitional” government lasted till May 1945. It proved a costly one.

Little surprise, then, that such governments as the United States have been tip-toeing around the term “coup”. Whole states in the past have been delegitimised on the basis of the term. The script in Washington since the days of the Wilson administration was that an interruption of constitutional rule demanded severe international chastisement. Military aid would also cease to such a regime. Hence the need to call it something else.

The military, according to Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is “the one stabilising influence in Egypt that I think can temper down the political feuding that you’re seeing going on now, and then help a process that will allow for multiple factions of parties and beliefs to participate.”

Egypt again teeters. The Muslim Brotherhood will be thinking of past failures when the Islamic experiment won, or threatened to win in the polls but was felled by military involvement. Algeria in 1991 is the most potent example. Pro-Morsi supporters have already been slain. Civil war may be in the offing, though what is more likely is a return to the bloody cycle that defies accommodation in favour of despotism. The optimists will be hoping for a third way, one untidily wedged between, to use Ross Douthat’s expression, “the minaret and the tank.” So far, the tank is winning.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (R) and ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Allan Tweddle wants to build a manufacturing facility.

He would prefer to build it in West Virginia – where he lives.

But he’s going to build it in Ontario, Canada – where he was born.

Why?

Well, one factor is health care costs.

Canada has a single payer system.

You go to a doctor.

You present your medical card.

No bills. No deductibles. No co-pays.

They swipe your card and that’s it.

“Health care in Canada is paid by personal income taxes,” Tweddle says. “Instead of paying premiums to a profit driven insurance company, you pay it through your personal taxes and then the government provides universal health care.”

From a businessman’s perspective, health care costs are 20 percent cheaper in Canada than in the United States.

There are many other factors that were on the checklist that Tweddle went down before deciding to locate his facility in Ontario.

Education, the corporate tax rate (18 percent in Canada compared to 35 percent in the United States), federal government incentives.

“It was a no brainer,” Tweddle said.

Tweddle is chairman of the board of a company called Composite Transport Technologies.

He says the company will be producing a new technology for aircraft that will reduce the carbon footprint of those planes and save on fuel costs.

Tweddle is disappointed that he wasn’t able to decide to build the manufacturing facility in West Virginia, where he lives with his wife Barbara.

He says he could have built the facility in the Bridgeport/Clarksburg area where there is an airplane industrial cluster – including manufacturers Pratt & Whitney, Bombardier and Lockheed. (Tweddle says fully 30 percent of Lockheed’s C-130 transport plane is built in Clarksburg.)

Health care costs were one factor weighing against West Virginia.

Another factor was the education system.

He says West Virginia has one of the worst education systems and Ontario has one of the best.

“When you try to recruit young people to come and work for you, they ask about the education system,” Tweddle said.

Again, a no brainer.

Canada’s single payer system and education system are two good reasons more automobiles are being built in Ontario than in Michigan, he says.

“Several auto company executives are now saying publicly the reasons they are building in Ontario are health care costs and education,” Tweddle reports.

Why don’t American business groups come out for single payer?

“Many are for it,” Tweddle says.

Tweddle says that earlier this year, he was speaking with Steve Roberts, president of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce.

“And he told me he was for a single payer system,” Tweddle said. “I”m not sure his board is for it, but he’s for it.”

Tweddle is not happy with the level of debate in the United States over the health care system.

“During the debate over Obamacare, the conservative Prime Minister of Canada – Stephen Harper – and the conservative prime minister of the UK – David Cameron – both said – not in these exact words – but they both said – stop lying about our system – we will never go back to the system you have in the United States for anything.”

Russell Mokhiber edits Single Payer Action.

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

On July 1, the unionized employees of BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) went out on what became a four and a half day strike. Despite the melodramatic tone of the media–practically depicting these transit workers as a group of ungrateful renegades–it was the first shutdown of BART since 1997.

Although no agreement was reached, the union (Service Employees International Union, Local 1021 and Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 1555) willingly returned to work, willingly extended the existing contract (which had expired) for 30 days, and promised to continue to bargaining in good faith.

In the absence of a “live” contract, the union was not legally required to give advance notification of a strike. But in order to ensure an orderly shutdown, they thoughtfully did so anyway. If the transit union were half as militant as suggested, they would have pulled the plug without notice, and then rejoiced in the chaos that ensued. But they didn’t do that.

When I was a union negotiator, pulling the plug without notice was exactly what we did. We’d bargained for more than four months and gotten nowhere. While our strike was not totally unexpected (after all, management was aware the contract had expired), suddenly hearing machinery being shut down and seeing workers march off the job definitely got their attention. But the transit union didn’t do that. They played it courteously.

As for the sticking points in BART negotiations, the issues are pretty much standard boilerplate agenda items (e.g., pay raises, job security, protection of medical benefits, etc.), along with some miscellaneous safety concerns (e.g., requesting thicker glass for ticket offices in high crime areas). Nothing unreasonable, nothing unexpected, nothing from out of left field.

One thing is clear during a strike: You can’t believe anything you read in the mainstream media. Not only are reporters too gullible or lazy to check out management propaganda, they seem to take perverse pride in automatically siding with the company against the union, even when they themselves belong to a labor union.

On the first day of our 57-day strike, some years ago, local TV showed up to interview our negotiators. It was a three-person crew: a photogenic woman reporter, a camera guy, and a sound guy. While the woman was interviewing our spokesman, the two guys casually asked why we struck. We told them what the issues were. They wished us luck, bumped fists, and exchanged solidarity handshakes with us. Power to the people!

But that evening, in addition to showing the interview with our spokesman, they ran footage of an interview with “Betty,” an hourly worker we weren’t aware had been interviewed. They must have caught her at the back picket line. I knew Betty. She was a smart, efficient worker. But because she had a mic and a camera jammed in her face, and an aggressive, sharp-eyed reporter peppering her with questions, she was extremely nervous. Who wouldn’t be?

Unfortunately, the reporter got Betty to say some things that made her sound not only woefully ignorant, but made her sound as if she were being held captive. When Betty was asked what the main issues were, she said she didn’t know. This after weekly updates posted by the bargaining board!! Betty said she didn’t know why we were on strike, but that she’d been told to stand picket.

My heart sank when I saw that interview. This bright, presentable woman came off as some sort of proletarian automaton. “Yes, comrade. I will do as commanded.” When our chief negotiator, an officer with the International old enough to be our dad, heard about the interview, he went absolutely ape-shit. He actually tried to blame us for it, arguing that we were responsible for educating the membership. It was a very bad scene.

The local newspapers were worse. They fell for the oldest trick in the book, allowing the company to add up every dollar in compensation (including wages, health insurance, pension, overtime pay, vacation pay, holiday pay, meetings, safety shoes, cafeteria chits, you name it), and then present it in the form of an hourly wage, making it sound like we were making $75 per hour. The media ate it up.

The same thing is happening with the BART strike. Management is purposely inflating the union’s package and poor-mouthing its own predicament, hoping to crush the union by appealing to the public’s jealousy and resentment.

The LA Times (July 6) asked a regular BART rider what she thought of the strike. Having heard the union was resisting increases in healthcare premiums, and speaking of her own job, she said, “We don’t even have healthcare benefits.” Ah, yes, another case of the media taking the whip to us, urging us on in our race to the bottom.

David Macaray, an LA playwright and author (“It’s Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor” 2^nd edition), was a former union rep.  Dmacaray@earthlink.net

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

Author and Human Rights activist, Kevin Alexander Gray, is the former President of the American Civil Liberties in South Carolina. Gray is author of “Waiting for Lightning to Strike: The Fundamentals of Black Politics” and “The Decline of Black Politics: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama.”

In the following interview with Dennis J Bernstein, Gray asserts that “We need a new movement, new leadership,  to challenge the empire.  We need to set up freedom schools and a different kind of mechanism to re-educate the people who are under the whip, so they realize it’s not them selves beating each other up — it’s coming from up top.”

In the interview, Gray reflects on the Tray von Martin Trial, Gun Control and the 2^nd Amendment, the recent roll back of the landmark 1965 civil rights legislation, Bradley Manning, Immigration reform, and Obama’s role as a war-marker and self-proclaimed hands-on player in the US Drone Assassination program.

DB:  Let’s start with your thoughts on the Trayvon Martin case.

KG: While you want to see justice for the death of Trayvon Martin, and you want the family and society to have a measure justice, you still have to remember that as much as you despise what George Zimmerman did, trials are for the accused. The justice system exists to defend the rights of the accused.  So while we grieve the death of Trayvon Martin, and are opposed to the concept of racial profiling, and we are opposed — at least I’m opposed — to the law stand your ground, which gives a lot of people what they believe is a license to kill, we still must believe in a system that protects the rights of the accused, even those we despise.  I understood why the prosecution would try to humanize George Zimmerman and keep the term racial profiling out of the courtroom.  What you want on trial is George Zimmerman, not necessarily racial profiling.

DB:  You are a very kind man.  We are going to get a broad view here.  But there wouldn’t have been a need for a fair defense of the accused if there wasn’t massive grassroots action to make sure that he was indicted.  Many people get away with this without a trial, right?

KG:  Absolutely.  The trial is George Zimmerman’s day in court.  There is also a public response beyond the reaction to the murder of this young man.  The public and civil rights response in the aftermath should have been on “Stand Your Ground.”  Beyond the marches and knowing that racial profiling exists, people killed and oppressed because of their race, and a justice system and society that looks at black boys and men in particular as villains and threats, there is a mind set that goes back to myth of the Mandingo and slave culture.  If we wanted to do something legislatively to deal with the gun law, we would have attacked stand your ground.  Nobody has done that yet — not Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton or the NAACP.  Nobody.

DB:  Would you take a shot at attacking it right now?

KG:  I believe in the second amendment.  When you look at who own guns in the country, it’s white men, yet the people they seek to disarm are usually people of color.  I don’t own a gun.  I am a man of peace.  In my mind, the second amendment is not about hunting and fishing.  When you look at when the Constitution and Bill of Rights were written, they were not talking about hunting and fishing.  They were talking about defending themselves against a tyrannical government.  To me, the second amendment, though unspoken, is about the peoples right to revolt against a tyrannical government.  Nobody wants to talk about whether to get rid of the second amendment in an open, sensible way.  I believe in the right of self-defense.  Most people who believe in the second amendment and the right to self-defense don’t believe they need stand your ground to defend the second amendment or to defend their lives.  All stand your ground does is take away the rights or abilities of the courts and police to make you explain why you shot somebody, rather than just saying I was defending myself and let it be at that.  You had to go into court and show how you were defending your life.  That’s the problem with stand your ground, and we have not tackled that.  Over the past 20 years we have seen a build up of these concealed weapon laws — now up to 15 states have open carry laws.  That’s where we are moving, and nobody is tackling that.  Everybody will get in front of the camera and say this guy shouldn’t have shot this guy.  But when the rubber meets the road, we must challenge this legislatively, and nobody is doing that.

DB:  I can remember a group of black people who wanted to express their belief in the second amendment, and that was the Black Panthers.  I don’t remember the NRA [National Rifle Association] standing up for their rights.

KG:  That is when these guns laws were tightened up — when the armed black folks were talking about their rights.  We are in a different place.  Over the last 20-30 years, there’s been a proliferation of pro-gun groups concealed carry groups — not just the NRA.  There is the Citizens for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.  Over 40 states have stand your ground laws.  The pro-gun lobby, pro-gun advocates, are not just the NRA.  There are over 350 million guns in this
country on record, the majority owned by whites. There are probably another 100 million guns not on the books.  There are a lot of guns in this country.  People want to attack the NRA, which has a large constituency base — they have members who aren’t members.  But vilifying the NRA as a way to tackle this is not the way to go.  The way to go may be the way the pro-gun lobby and advocates did it — going to the state legislatures, bit by bit, adding more gun laws at the state level,  and we have not tackled that.

DB:  Are there any major pro-gun African-American organizations?

KG:  Not that I am aware of.  Black folks own guns.  I’m in the South.  I know many people who own guns.   They go to the shooting range and get concealed carry permits. I have brothers, uncles, nephews — we were all raised with guns.  We are at war every 20 years.  I was a range officer while I was in the military.  We trained people to shoot guns.  To train people to shoot guns, send them to war to shoot guns, then all of a sudden to say guns are bad — people are not going to listen.

DB:  They are going to send 120,000 people who know guns to a new surge on the border.  Guns aren’t gong anywhere.  They are being expanded and available to the powers that be.

KG:   They will go to a southern border where there is a drug war going on.  I believe there were 50,000 people killed in Mexico in the drug war last year.  The U.S.  plans on sending 20, 30, 40 additional border troops to the southern border with Mexico and now they talk about building a wall.  The president just came back from Germany and stood at the Brandenberg gate where Ronald Reagan said “tear down this wall.”  What are we doing?   We are building a wall at the southern border, with more troops.  We’re not building a wall at the Canadian border or putting troops there.  It is blatantly racist, and nobody is talking about that.  This country is heading in a terrible direction.  Around the world people view us as Nazis.  We think we can kill, spy, and assassinate with impunity, and usually it’s aimed at  people of color, both domestically and abroad.

DB:  Coming back to the trial, do you have any doubt that Mr. Zimmerman is going to get a fair trial?

KG:  There are six women on the jury, and I don’t know how many are mothers, but they would have to feel the pain of Sabrina Fulton and Tracy Martin.  I have deep respect and admiration for those two parents when I watch them endure their loss in that courtroom scene every day, and relive or find out more information about the death of their son. I obviously have more compassion for them than I do for George Zimmerman.  I am against the death penalty.   I am glad he isn’t facing the death penalty, and I hope he can get a fair trial, but I hope he’s found guilty, serves some time and reflects on how imbecilic and monstrous what he did was, for the family, the community, and for himself.  I hope he and his family will reflect on how racist their statements sound to the rest of us -that we are animals.  Just because a kid is black, a kid is a kid, or might smoke marijuana, doesn’t make him a criminal.  Not every black male walking the earth is some punk up to no good.

DB:  Now can you talk about the Voter Rights Act?  What did the Supreme Court do?

KG:  They ruled on section 5, which is the pre-clearance section of the Voting Rights Act.  We were concerned they would declare both section 4 and 5 unconstitutional.  Section 5 means that nine southern states must go to the Justice Department if they want to make changes to any kind of voting practice or electoral process.  It doesn’t just apply to race.  I have filed several voting rights cases, and the last one I filed was when the state legislature tried to change when third parties could select their standard bearers, and whether those third parties could endorse the candidate of the major parties.  The state was trying to set the date the third parties could have their conventions.  We challenged that in court under the Voting Rights Act and won.  I had one other case involving a predominantly black county which elected a predominantly black school board, and two legislators, from both the house and senate, both democratic, both of whom went to private schools, tried to change that mechanism by writing a state law so state legislators could pick school board members.  We challenged that in court and won.  That was in advance of voter ID issue that occurred prior to the elections.  The court also blocked that because they failed the pre-clearance provisions of the Voting RIghts Act.  The court struck that down saying what Congress did in 2009 was instead of going back and looking at things as they are now, or the not so recent past, Congress failed to go back and examine those states that were covered under pre-clearance to see if they needed to be under preclearance.  They didn’t add any states to those that were covered under section 5. The Court said back in 1965 Congress did that.  What Congress did in 2009 was lazy and only looked at what happened in 1965, and didn’t go back look at the Voting Rights Act now.  The goal of the right wing is to get rid of the Voting Rights Act all together.  They know the chances of coming to an agreement about what states should be covered under the Voting Rights Act in this Congress are slim to none.  That’s why people say the Voting Rights Act is effectively dead.  I disagree.  I think we need to do what we did in the past, which was organize around the Voting Rights Act and maybe pick up Jesse Jackson Jr.’s mission of introducing a resolution to have a statue of Rosa Parks put in the Capital.  I give Jesse Jackson, Jr. a lot of credit even though he’s about to go to jail.  He also talked in his book A More Perfect Union about a constitutional amendment that calls for a protected right to vote.  Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota is picking that up.  Maybe we need to focus on a constitutional amendment that protects the right to vote.  We must look at those impediments to voting and from a progressive perspective talk about how we broaden voting rights in this country, rather than lamenting what this court has done.

DB:  Many people don’t understand the enforcement nature of that legislation.  In 1965 and 1995, even 1996, there was still the same problem.  Even if you pass legislation, you couldn’t get federal officers to enforce it, so it was meaningless unless you brought in folks from the north to go down there to enforce it, correct?

KG:  Yes.  Things are a bit more sophisticated now.  There are all these voter ID laws put in place to slow down the pace of black and minority voting in the south.

DB:  So it continues.  You live in South Carolina.  Is the Klan shop still open?

KG:  Oh yes.

DB:  And they flew the confederate flag until when?

KG:  This is the ideological home of white supremacy.  We understand that and fight all the time.  That is why preclearance and the Voting Rights Act is a handy tool.  We have to fight to use it all the time.  It’s a procedural mechanism, and it will be interesting to see moving forward what happens when we don’t have it.

DB:  We certainly want to move forward.  I think I did a story in 1996 about the Old Boys parties organized by federal agents from the AFT and FBI.  They had racist parties with signs about watermelon eating contests — these were federal officers in 1995 in the south.  When we investigated the church burnings in 1995 and 1996, the federal officers did the same thing they did in 1965- they showed up and blamed the black people for burning down their own churches.  Now they’re accusing them of voter fraud.

KG:  That’s right.  I was involved in editing a black newspaper and organizing with the Rainbow Coalition and other groups to bring attention to the church fires.  We had congressional hearings on the fires and Clinton came, many churches were rebuilt and some people were prosecuted.  We can’t ever depend on anybody else.  The victims need to lead their own way out of oppression.

DB:  The investigation in Mississippi was conducted by Jim Ingram, who was number three in Cointelpro.  He was sued for doing illegal activities — trying to disrupt organizing by black groups.  He was in charge in 1966 to find out who was burning the black churches while lots of black people were being hung in prisons.  This was not long ago.

KG:  Every 28 hours, a black person is killed by a police officer in America.  Now they want to put a surge of border agents to the southern border of the U.S.  Trayvon Martin, the Voting Rights Act, the wealth gap between whites and blacks getting ever wider — it’s sad.  We have a black president and over 10,000 black elected officials across the country, all of whom are the direct recipients of the Voting Rights Act.  Yet it seems things keep getting worse and worse and worse.  There’s obviously something else that needs to happen in the body politic in this country.  Minority communities in particular must raise the level of political consciousness and activism to defend them selves.  I’m not talking about defending ourselves by grabbing a carbine and getting behind a barricade.  How do we move a movement back into the streets, educate people at a local level?  I asked some young folks if they knew what happened today with the Voting Rights Act.  They didn’t know what happened or even what the Voting Rights Act is. They didn’t know the courts decision on the Voting Rights Act was probably as significant as the Dred Scott decision because they didn’t know what the Dred Scott decision was.

DB:  Do they know who Jimmy Lee Jackson is?

KG:  No, they don’t.  My 10 year old grand-daughter said to me last night that she didn’t think Paula Deen was racist.  Of course I taught her about that. I said, what is racism, young sister?  This is where we are now.  Many young folk don’t seem to think it matters.  Somebody must have told them institutional racism doesn’t exist.  They have no idea what white supremacy or white privilege is.  Maybe they will know about it when they are in a crowd of white folks and somebody picks them out, but something needs to happen in our community, to re-politicize our kids to what it is they are losing, and what it will mean for their future if they have one.  That’s what’s missing in black politics in this country.  Many folk think that voting for Obama was it.  They had a hope that somebody taking on the office as the head of the empire was going to change something.

DB:  I must admit I am profoundly disappointed in some folks who were on this program regularly, and for every terrible thing Barak Obama has done, they have a beautiful, endless explanation and are willing to go public with it.  The drones — we need the surveillance.  Why didn’t they go after the white presidents doing the surveillance?  There are many excuses.  Has it helped to have a black president?  Have things substantially changed because of that?

KG:  I hear a lot of people say, “White folk did it, why can’t he do it?”  I say, “What are we for, equal injustice for all?”  It comes down to whether or not you want to run or change the system.  It used to be the black movement was about changing the system.  Now we have over 10,000 elected officials across the country, so we become part of the system.  We are running the system, are the technocrats of the system.  So the goal becomes to do the job just as good or better than the white person who had the job did it.  The surveillance — I’ve had to argue people down on Snowden.  I think what Snowden did is heroic, I’m rooting for him.  People say to me he ought to go down, go to jail, he’s a traitor.  A traitor? I tell them “The government is spying on you, me and the whole wide world.  We have an assassination program going on around the world.  You think an assassination program, a secret government, secret police, drones, constant surveillance, trial without jury and no due process is a good thing?”  ”Well we have to protect ourselves from the enemy.”  Dude, who is in jail?  It’s not a bunch of Islamic fundamentalist extremists in jail. It’s [people of color] black and brown folk in jail.  Who do you think they are using the surveillance on?  Non-violent drug offenders have their phones monitored so they can be put back in jail and wreck their lives.  That’s what is going on.  You are the target here, somebody else is the target across the ocean or down below the border.  We must challenge this and right now there is no leadership to challenge this.  I watched Chris Hayes on MSNBC — I’ve even been on his show — and he criticized Snowden possibly going to Cuba — “with Castro and the Cubans.”  So now we are anti-socialist, anti-communist?  Is this where we are?   We need a new movement, new leadership,  to challenge the empire.  We need to set up freedom schools and a different kind of mechanism to re-educate the people who are under the whip, so they realize it’s not them selves beating each other up — it’s coming from up top.

DB:  The interchange between Glenn Greenwald and David Gregory demonstrates the level of ignorance we see.  Self-censorship is so deep he thinks he’s a journalist and his job, instead of monitoring the centers of power and reporting to the people, is to defend the State Department.  Black and white together — our ignorance is so deep, the educational system is so thin, people’s ability to think critically is so lacking — we are in deep trouble.

KG:  These people have been cheerleaders for empire and war mongering.  That’s where we’re at now.  It’s seeping into the heart of it all.  These communities are rooting for the war mongering and not realizing how the rest of the world is viewing us- as war mongers, as an empire that wants to exploit and bully people.  We are bullies in this country, with a bully mentality.  We must figure out a movement that connects up with the other movements that are rolling all around the world — Turkey, Brazil, France, Spain, Egypt, Tunisia.  That’s what the government fears — that it will hit here.  It needs to hit here and be led by the people who are the most affected by it — the people who are at the bottom.  We must find some mechanism to tweak their political consciousness so they know who the real enemy is.

DB:  We are closely watching a group called the Dreamers, which includes undocumented young folks and workers who do the hardest work in the fields.   They are now on a rolling hunger strike.  These dreamers and this movement are the cutting edge of civil rights, if you will, at this point.  Maybe it’s something we need to pay a lot of attention to.

KG:  When black and brown people, Latinos of America, Central and South America, blacks of African descent and Indigenous people finally realize they are better together than apart, we’ll have a movement.  Instead, a lot of black folk believe Latinos are taking jobs from them.  I always tell people they don’t call New Mexico, New Mexico for no reason.  They have to realize that workers must come together.  When that happens, we’ll have a movement.  We have black folk who say the gay rights movement has nothing to do with the civil rights movement.  Of course it does.  When all these groups get together as the gay community cheers the defeat of DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act], they need to realize in their celebration that they may have won, but yesterday was a bad day for those who believe in the rights of minorities and people of color.  If they don’t understand the significance of what happened both yesterday and today, and temper their celebration with the need to go back and rejoin with this other group, they will miss a teachable moment for themselves.

DB:  How do you think Barack Obama will be thought of in the history books?

KG:  That’s his problem.   Obviously, as the first African-American president, he will be in the history books, because that’s a big deal.  He’ll have that.  The rest of us who write history will be calling him the assassination president, a failure — somebody who expanded the empire with a black face and the face of a beautiful black family.  He did nothing more than serve as a cover for the disastrous policies of this country and take one more step to ruin for this country.  I don’t think his legacy will be good at all.  Those in the mainstream will write what they write, because they are with the empire.   But for many of us, those writers at CounterPunch, The Progressive, some at The Nation – those historians — will call him the assassination president who aided in the erosion of the international rule of law.

Dennis J Bernstein is a host of “Flashpoints” on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom. You can access the audio archives at www.flashpoints.net.

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

Indiaâ„¢s encroaching monsoon season threatens thousands of persecuted Rohingya Muslim refugees who are living in camps and poor conditions, Press TV reports.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has warned of a Å“humanitarian catastrophe” as displaced Rohingya Muslims face the threat of monsoon floods in Myanmar and India.

Å“We are living here. Thatâ„¢s the only benefit we have after fleeing Myanmar. Our condition is terrible. The weather hasnâ„¢t been kind to us. The rain lashes our plastic shelter in the middle of the night and we canâ„¢t do anything about it. Itâ„¢s our life,” a refugee told Press TV.

Experts predicted that more than 60,000 Rohingya Muslims remain in flood-prone areas and makeshift shelters in the rainy Asiatic region.

Å“We always need the UNHCR aid efforts. The Indian government has done some good jobs but thatâ„¢s not enough. We need refugee status to send our kids to school. We need jobs and subsidized food but we donâ„¢t get them because we are Muslims,” another refugee said.

Rohingya Muslims are not officially recognized as Indian citizens and are denied passports, access to health-care, education and jobs.

In Myanmar, many Rohingyas have been killed and thousands displaced in attacks by extremist Buddhists over the past year.

Å“Buddhists think we are outsiders and have no rights to live in Myanmar. We can only live in Myanmar if we become Buddhists. No Muslim country has helped us so far that much. Only Iran has supported our plight in Myanmar,” said another refugee.

GMA/HSN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Iranian Ambassador to Baku Mohsen Pak-Ayeen says relations between Azerbaijan and the Islamic Republic of Iran are on a growing trend and at a desirable level.

Å“The deep cultural, religious and historical commonalities between the two countries have led to the expansion of relations in many fields, but this trend should continue,” Pak-Ayeen said Thursday in a meeting to discuss the reopening of Aslanduz customs checkpoint located on the Iranian-Azerbaijani border.

He said Iran and Azerbaijan have more than 380 kilometers of common border, which plays an instrumental role in the development of ties between the two nations.

The Aslanduz border customs checkpoint in Parsabad district in the northwestern Iranian province of Ardabil will reopen in the near future, said the Iranian diplomat

According to Pak-Ayeen, the required infrastructure has been developed for the Aslanduz customs checkpoint to resume operations there, and there are no obstacles to its reopening.

Azerbaijan welcomes the reopening of the customs, which will improve the living conditions and increase the income of the locals living on either side of the border, he said, adding that it will also contribute to the further promotion of bilateral ties.

AR/NN/HMV

Republished with permission from: Press TV

On 28 June, the inhabitants of Kayacık village gathered to protest the ongoing construction of a kalekol (a high-tech military post with automated weapon capabilities) in the Lice district of Diyarbakir, located in Turkey’s Kurdistan. Lice district had been repeatedly burned down by “anti-terrorism” operations of the Turkish state in the 1990s–operations that claimed hundreds, if not thousands, of lives buried in undisclosed mass graves to this day. This time, the brutal military response to the protest–in the middle of a peace process currently underway between the Turkish state on the one hand and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerillas and the larger Kurdish movement on the other–left nine people wounded, and claimed the life of an eighteen-year-old protestor, Medeni Yıldırım. The news of the deadly military response spread quickly via Facebook and Twitter, and a protest march from the Galatasaray Square to Taksim Square was called at six pm the following day. This day also happened to be the sixth day of the Twenty-First LBTT Pride Week in Istanbul. In light of these calls for protest the “Alliances and Oppositions” panel, aimed at discussing the LGBTQ communities’ solidarity with other oppositional groups after Gezi, was immediately postponed.  All participants at the event were subsequently encouraged to join the ranks of the protestors at Galatasaray Square.

Photo Credit: Serra Akcan/NarPhotos

When the LBGT individuals joined the march towards Taksim Square with their rainbow flags, the slogans protestors chanted included, “everywhere is Lice, everywhere is Resistance!” and “Resist Lice, ‘same-sexers’ (eÅŸcinseller in Turkish) are with you!” Shortly after the march started to dissipate after a sit-in protest at Taksim Square, the second and biggest dance party organized under the auspices of the Pride Week got under way at Garaj Istanbul, a concert hall also located in Taksim. After deliberations about canceling it altogether in the midst of another atrocity committed by the Turkish state, the show, featuring an unplugged performance by the brilliant Kurdish vocalist, Aynur DoÄŸan, went on. Protest chants in solidarity with Lice repeatedly interrupted, or rather provided the choir to, the performance.

In the midst of overwhelming news reporting and political analyses of the “resistance” from a variety of perspectives,  the LGBTQ community’s presence at Gezi Park has at best been reduced to a quirky footnote–a footnote indexing the “liberal” and “open-minded” nature of the nascent alignment of resistance at Gezi Park. At worst, these analyses presented the LGBTQ community as the miner’s canary for the nefarious plans of the ErdoÄŸan administration: one marking the moralizing thrust behind the government’s urban renewal project of the red-light and entertainment district of BeyoÄŸlu at large, of which the demolition and “redevelopment” of the Gezi Park was only a small part. With their rainbow flags and creatively sarcastic slogans and banners, of the LGBTQ community’s strong presence at Gezi was taken as a mere visual embellishment to serious analyses of other things and communities assembled under the banner of “resistance:” From analyses of the changing cultural outlook of Marxist and socialist political formations and shifting parameters of class relations in Turkey, to those of the sustainability of the “resistance” movement in the near future, their presence without exception escaped critical scrutiny in English- and Turkish-language media alike, when it was not deliberately sidelined to the fringes of the analytical frame reserved for more “pressing” matters and more “sizeable” communities.

Contrary to this overwhelming tendency, I want to situate the LGBTQ individuals and their collective political action at and beyond Gezi at the center of my analysis. If we approach them as political subjects to be reckoned with, I suggest, we could learn a few lessons about the connections between sexuality and solidarity. Such lessons could help us rethink the allegedly modular alignment of modern state power and (homo)sexuality beyond familiar frameworks that either posit the latter as an effect of (neo)imperial cultural forms making their way into the Middle East, or present its “protection” or “toleration” as the latest litmus test of how “liberal” and “democratic” a state is.

Gezi Park was not only the biggest “cruising” spot for the community, not unlike Park-e Laleh in Tehran, the Tiergarten in Berlin, or the Rambles in New York’s Central Park. It was also the last remaining “queer” space for working-class folks denied access to the burgeoning “queer” scene of Istanbul, which was built around an increasing number of high-end bars and clubs. From sex-workers and hustlers looking for customers, to men looking to have sex with men, to the occasional romantic looking for hir lover, the marble steps of the park, themselves “converted” from the tombstones of the Armenian cemetery that once stood in its place, have seen it all: Gezi Park had been a space of seemingly “strange” encounters that cut across class, political ideology and gender identity divides long before its occupation by a variety of activists and concerned citizens. For the “LGBT Blok” with their impressive frontline struggle against police brutality, enshrined in the picture below, the struggle was squarely about the Park and more. Furthermore, the sustained presence of the “Blok” at Gezi was not peopled by seasoned activists or cruising regulars alone. On the contrary, the “LGBT Blok” in particular and other emergent factions of dissent that occupied the park pulled in previously “unaligned” or “apolitical” individuals into the protests. Not unlike pious youth at odds with the vicious capitalism of the ErdoÄŸan administration, who became increasingly politicized through their encounters with the “Anti-Capitalist Muslims,” LGBTQ individuals encountered their community anew as a politically viable one through the “Blok,” blurring the activist/regular folk distinction even more. It was precisely this process of “politicization” and the resultant comfort of self-expression as political subjects that set the stage for solidarity among diverse factions at Gezi.

For the LGBTQ community in particular, it would not be an exaggeration to suggest that the decade-long Pride slogan, “Whose Morality is Public Morality?” found its most concrete footing at Gezi. As Samuel Delany describes the remaking of midtown Manhattan, in Times Square Blue, Times Square Red, the “urban renewal” project underway in the BeyoÄŸlu aimed not only at building spaces deemed more profitable for late capitalism, but also at cleansing the district of its allegedly immoral inhabitants and practices. To paraphrase ErdoÄŸan, in order to ensure the “safety” and “well-being” of Turkey’s youth and build his “conservative generation” through increased procreation (“at least three children” per couple, he repeatedly ordered), BeyoÄŸlu had to be cleansed, and the LGBTQ spaces dismantled. In other words, ErdoÄŸan’s larger “renewal” project has always been equally interested in generating capital accumulation and heterosexual procreation.

Lambda Istanbul

With trans sex-workers’ homes on Bayram Sokak in Taksim and Avcılar recently raided by the police, sixty-nine trans individuals murdered because of their gender identity since 2002 alone, and the former Health Minister calling same-sex desire an “illness,” the LGBT community in Turkey has been under sustained attack for quite some time. The LGBT community, in other words, had all the reason to stand in solidarity with the Kurdish movement, and not only because the “Kurdish” Peace and Democracy Party (the BDP in Turkish) has been the sole supporter of including sexual orientation and gender identity in the new constitutional amendment addressing the equality of all citizens. It was because both communities, which are by no means mutually exclusive, have realized that it was the same political project that aimed at persecuting Kurds and queers alike.

This is not to say that there were no attempts made at rendering the aforementioned communities as mutually exclusive. On 15 July 2008, Ahmet Yıldız, a twenty-six-year-old physics student at Marmara University, was shot dead in his car near his apartment in Ãœsküdar, Istanbul. Five months prior to the attack, Ahmet had filed for police protection in the face of the death threats he had been receiving, yet his request was rejected on unspecified grounds. Three out of the five bullets, fired from an unidentified vehicle, ripped through Ahmet’s chest. The only son of “a wealthy and conservative Kurdish family” from Sanliurfa, who desperately tried to convince him to come back home and get himself “cured,” Ahmet’s heartbreaking murder, dubbed as the first “gay honor killing” in Turkey by The Independent, was rendered even more distressing by the fact that Ahmet’s family refused to claim his deceased body and proceed with a proper burial. Ahmet Yıldız’s body now rests in a cemetery for the nameless in Istanbul. Meanwhile, the prime suspect for the murder, Ahmet’s father, remains on the run, and the trial drags on in absentia. The protests organized and public statements released by LGBT organizations in Turkey condemned the framing of the murder as a problem of the conservative and traditional Kurds of Turkey, and instead highlighted the structural failure of the state in protecting its citizens from preventable and often deadly violence, particularly when they are women and/or LGBTQ individuals. Despite these attempts, however, Ahmet’s murder came to stand for the incommensurable divide assumed between the inspiringly (if not wholly) liberal and secular West and the conservative and pious East in Turkey.

When the LGBTQ community and their allies took over Istiklal Avenue in Taksim by the thousands again last Sunday, the slogan of “Ahmet Yıldız is here, where are his murderers?” was not forgotten. Neither were Lice and the most recent atrocity of the Turkish state that claimed the life of an eighteen-year-old, as described in the opening of this piece. The LGBTQ individuals’ political stance and concrete actions in Turkey at and beyond Gezi point to a different constellation of sexuality and solidarity that cannot be explained away by reducing them to objects of modular discourses alone. Instead, their cruising onto the political field of Turkey, and their growing solidarity with a variety of political formations, clearly demonstrate ways in which queer politics could be imagined and practiced anew. It was thanks to this practice of queer politics, and the solidarity between the “LGBT Blok” and the women’s movements that workshops on misogynist and homophobic language were organized in Taksim to encourage protestors to think twice before resorting to such language in their slogans criticizing the ErdoÄŸan administration.

Photo Credit: Eric Politzer

The history and the present of (homo)sexuality in the Middle East have produced a plethora of scholarship recently. The most controversial example of this scholarship is probably Joseph Massad’s Desiring Arabs, which came to define homosexuality as an effect of Western modernity and colonialism, rendered modular through (neo)imperialism. Massad’s aim, as he explains in his recent interview with Félix Boggio Éwanjé-Épée and Stella Magliani-Belkacem in French and republished by Jadaliyya, “is not to remind us that ‘sexuality’ is experienced differently in different historical or geographical contexts, and that it has distinct ‘cultural” interpretations that shape it. Rather, what I insist on is that ‘sexuality’ itself, as an epistemological and ontological category, is a product of specific Euro-American histories and social formations, that it is a Euro-American ‘cultural’ category that is not universal or necessarily universalizable.” By extension, anyone like Ahmet Yıldız who insists on making claims based on sexuality is “complicit” with neocolonial sexualization or sexual neocolonization of the Middle East. Massad’s analysis offers us a purist and diffusionist division of the universe into two mutually exclusive realms, whereby only one of these two holds sexuality in all its forms. For Massad, in other words, scientis sexualis only emerges once and in one place – Europe – and then gets transplanted on the Middle East (and the rest of the non-European world), a place without a history of sexuality of its own, where sexual practices are only defined negatively, as that which is not the object of scientis sexualis. Such an approach assumes, rather than demonstrates, perfect subjugation of the object (sexuality) to the regime (scientis sexualis) that aims to govern that object in the “West.” It also fails to account for the sheer complexity and the productive multiplicity of meaning that emerges against a “Middle Eastern” genealogy of sexuality: a genealogy that itself gets brutally fractured and successfully rendered “foreign” to the “natives” of the Middle East themselves in their encounters with scientis sexualis, as Afsaneh Najmabadi has skillfully demonstrated in Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity.

In other words, it is only once amrad, mukhannas, köçek, and zenne are systematically displaced from the historically sedimented grammars of sexuality in the Middle East that hamjins baz, kuni, eÅŸcinsel, as well as gay, lesbian, homosexual, and queer come to dominate the contemporary uses of a modern grammar of sexuality in the Middle East. My aim here is not to excavate an archeology of these fractured genealogies in order to redeem a sovereign field of gender and sexuality studies in the Middle East. It is rather to suggest that there is a disavowed history of sexuality, sexual practices, and, yes, sexual identities, that precedes the modularity of what Massad conceives as “sexuality and what reduces queer solidarity to “Gay International.” In other words, this disavowal itself structures the conditions of possibility for sexed subjects to articulate their sexualities, name their practices, and if they so choose, organize their politics. It is precisely due to this historical disavowal, which strips the “natives” of their “native” signs of sexuality, that these natives remain susceptible to charges of being degenerate and immoral products of Western modernity by those still armored with their intact “discursive traditions.” Therefore, it is of critical importance that we examine what people do on the ground with “signs” of sexuality, or parole of sexuality, as opposed to getting caught up in its semantico-referential grammar à la Saussure. The “LGBT Blok” in particular, and the LGBTQ community at large in Turkey more generally, might give us a few clues as to how it is done.

Emrah Yildiz is a Joint PhD Candidate in Social Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. His research interests include historiography and ethnography of borderlands, anthropology of Islam and pilgrimage, political economy and contraband commerce, as well as studies of gender and sexuality in the Middle East.

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

When I reported from South Africa in the 1960s, the Nazi admirer Johannes Vorster occupied the prime minister’s residence in Cape Town. Thirty years later, as I waited at the gates, it was as if the guards had not changed. White Afrikaners checked my ID with the confidence of men in secure work. One carried a copy of Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela’s autobiography. “It’s very eenspirational,” he said.

Mandela had just had his afternoon nap and looked sleepy; his shoelaces were untied. Wearing a bright gold shirt, he meandered into the room. “Welcome back,” said the first president of a democratic South Africa, beaming. “You must understand that to have been banned from my country is a great honor.” The sheer grace and charm of the man made you feel good. He chuckled about his elevation to sainthood. “That’s not the job I applied for,” he said drily.

Still, he was well used to deferential interviews, and I was ticked off several times – “you completely forgot what I said” and “I have already explained that matter to you.” In brooking no criticism of the African National Congress (ANC), he revealed something of why millions of South Africans will mourn his passing but not his “legacy.”

I had asked him why the pledges he and the ANC had given on his release from prison in 1990 had not been kept. The liberation government, Mandela had promised, would take over the apartheid economy, including the banks – and “a change or modification of our views in this regard is inconceivable.”  Once in power, the party’s official policy to end the impoverishment of most South Africans, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), was abandoned, with one of his ministers boasting that the ANC’s politics were Thatcherite.

“You can put any label on it if you like,” he replied. ” . . . but, for this country, privatization is the fundamental policy.”

“That’s the opposite of what you said in 1994.”

“You have to appreciate that every process incorporates a change.”

Few ordinary South Africans were aware that this “process” had begun in high secrecy more than two years before Mandela’s release, when the ANC in exile had, in effect, done a deal with prominent members of the Afrikaaner elite at meetings in a stately home, Mells Park House, near Bath. The prime movers were the corporations that had underpinned apartheid.

Around the same time, Mandela was conducting his own secret negotiations. In 1982, he had been moved from Robben Island to Pollsmoor Prison, where he could receive and entertain people. The apartheid regime’s aim was to split the ANC between the “moderates” they could “do business with” (Mandela, Thabo Mbeki and Oliver Tambo) and those in the frontline townships who led the United Democratic Front (UDF). On July 5, 1989, Mandela was spirited out of prison to meet P.W. Botha, the white minority president known as the Groot Krokodil (Big Crocodile). Mandela was delighted that Botha poured the tea.

With democratic elections in 1994, racial apartheid was ended, and economic apartheid had a new face. During the 1980s, the Botha regime had offered black businessmen generous loans, allowing them to set up companies outside the Bantustans. A new black bourgeoisie emerged quickly, along with a rampant cronyism. ANC chieftains moved into mansions in “golf and country estates.”  As disparities between white and black narrowed, they widened between black and black.

The familiar refrain that the new wealth would “trickle down” and “create jobs” was lost in dodgy merger deals and “restructuring” that cost jobs. For foreign companies, a black face on the board often ensured that nothing had changed. In 2001, George Soros told the Davos Economic Forum, “South Africa is in the hands of international capital.”  

In the townships, people felt little change and were subjected to apartheid-era evictions; some expressed nostalgia for the “order” of the old regime. The post-apartheid achievements in desegregating daily life in South Africa, including schools, were undercut by the extremes and corruption of a “neoliberalism” to which the ANC devoted itself. This led directly to state crimes such as the massacre of 34 miners at Marikana in 2012, which evoked the infamous Sharpeville massacre more than half a century earlier. Both had been protests about injustice.

Mandela, too, fostered crony relationships with wealthy whites from the corporate world, including those who had profited from apartheid.  He saw this as part of “reconciliation.” Perhaps he and his beloved ANC had been in struggle and exile for so long they were willing to accept and collude with the forces that had been the people’s enemy. There were those who genuinely wanted radical change, including a few in the South African Communist Party, but it was the powerful influence of mission Christianity that may have left the most indelible mark. White liberals at home and abroad warmed to this, often ignoring or welcoming Mandela’s reluctance to spell out a coherent vision, as Amilcar Cabral and Pandit Nehru had done.

Ironically, Mandela seemed to change in retirement, alerting the world to the post 9/11 dangers of George W. Bush and Tony Blair. His description of Blair as “Bush’s foreign minister” was mischievously timed; Thabo Mbeki, his successor, was about to arrive in London to meet Blair. I wonder what he would make of the recent “pilgrimage” to his cell on Robben Island by Barack Obama, the unrelenting jailer of Guantanamo.

Mandela seemed unfailingly gracious. When my interview with him was over, he patted me on the arm as if to say I was forgiven for contradicting him. We walked to his silver Mercedes, which consumed his small grey head among a bevy of white men with huge arms and wires in their ears. One of them gave an order in Afrikaans and he was gone.

John Pilger’s film, Apartheid Did Not Die, can be viewed at www.johnpilger.com.

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

Back in May, prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho told Portuguese citizens, “The choice is not between austerity and no austerity. Not meeting the terms would cause us to leave the euro and have catastrophic consequences for all.” But austerity’s already has catastrophic consequences for ordinary Portuguese. As one man — among the poorest of Portugal’s poor, and resident of a shantytown where inhabitants are as desperate for water — put it: “Life is bad.”

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

Watching the George Zimmerman Trial has triggered a flood of memories. I have been subject to abusive policing most of my life. To have a black male body in the world is to be an adversary of the state–the lived experience of a black boy born inside the American empire.   It began my junior of high school. My best friend, Rick was driving so we could pick up our dates. The St. Louis Police Department stopped us. Rick’s license and insurance were up to date. We had not broken any laws or traffic rules–save that we were young, black, and male.

At the time, I weighed about 120 pounds soaking and stood no more that 4 feet and 11 inches. Rick weighed about ten more pounds than I and was about 5 inches taller. The four police officers with their hands on their holstered guns ordered us out of the car. They proceeded to frisk us– searching for drugs. After coming up empty in their initial search of the car and our person, one officer stuck his hand down Rick’s pants in his underwear and fondled about to see if Rick had drugs tucked under his scrotum. 

After humiliating us, the officers let us go without apology. Rick–the epitome of high school cool– was visibly shaken but we laughed it off and went to pick up our dates. Having been recently politicized by the music of Public Enemy and the 1988 presidential campaign of Rev. Jesse Jackson, we were fully aware of our circumscribed place inside American democracy. I was angry and riotous in my soul. And this would not be the last time, I felt violated by a policing agency.   

As a student at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, I was taking a late night stroll after a studying marathon. Having grown three inches and gained about 5 pounds since my high school days, I would be surrounded by campus police and demanded that I show my student ID. I refused and noted that I did not think I was in South Africa and that I needed a pass card.  This only agitated the officers, to say the least. They became more aggressive and draw closer to me with hands on holstered guns. 

To my advantage, I was a student leader. Earlier that year I organized a march and rally in response to the acquittal of the police officers who viciously beat Rodney King. The subsequent riots shook the nation and we responded with a 10,000-person rally on campus.  Hence, the campus police chief knew me. I demanded that my assailing officers call him. They, sarcastically, obliged. The police chief ordered the campus police to stand down. The next day he came to my student organization’s office and profusely apologized.

While pastoring in South Jamaica Queens, New York, my student pastor and I were driving down Sutphin Boulevard. Detectives pulled us over in an unmarked car.  Now my student pastor was a non-gender conforming white female-bodied person. In a word, she looked like a “little white boy”.   As the police approached the vehicle–a very used luxury SUV–their hands were on their holstered weapons and demanded my license and registration.

When stopped by the police I developed a custom of explaining my reason for being. I began my spill to the police officer. “Hello, officer, my name is Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou. I am the Senior Pastor of Lemuel Haynes Congregational Church located at …” The female Latina officer, immediately, interrupts and says: “Your eyes look red. Have you been smoking weed?” 

“No ma’am, I just returned from Haiti on an interfaith mission in the aftermath of the earthquake and I am exhausted. I am coming from morning bible study”, I explained with blood shot red eyes and exasperation. 

“You can get an Oscar for your act”; the female officer quipped then ordered me out of the car. My student pastor was questioned and asked if she is ok.  

They began to search my vehicle and I tell them that they are going to find a lot of bibles and church programs with my name listed as pastor. I also shared that all the goods in the trunk area were for donations to send to the Haitian tent village. Neither officer was impressed. The male officer lets me know that my driver’s license has expired and believes that my car is stolen. “You are going to jail!”, he gloated.  I began to give my student pastor instructions on calling my lawyer and demanding that she does not let anyone at the church know that I have been arrested. The police officer goes to his car and calls his captain.  As his talking to his captain and looking at me, his eyes got big. He hung up the mobile phone. Gave me back my license without explanation.

A few years later I moved to Boston. Driving down Massachusetts Avenue, admittedly, I ran a light. A black motorcycle cop flagged me down.  He began to curse me out.

“I am going to take your little black motherfucking ass to jail”, he bragged. 

He continues to berate me: “I am sick of you fucking thugs”. I interrupted him and too explain I really do not know the city well. “Where the fuck are you from?” he demanded. 

“I just moved here from New York”, I informed him with a trembling voice. 

“What the fuck for?” continuing to belittle me. 

“To go to Harvard”, I stated with bowed head and broken spirit. 

“Oh”, he responded with consternation. His whole attitude changed. He wrote me a ticket and sent me on my way. 

Though I am a fellow with the Fellowship of Reconciliation–the nation’s oldest interfaith peace organization–and served as the leader in the United States peace movement during the second Iraq war, my soul feels riotous as I recount these instances. I was trained in the tradition of nonviolent social resistance at the Highlander Center around the age of Trayvon Martin. This week I have wanted to throw a stone at the televised Zimmerman trial. My tutoring in nonviolent civil disobedience by James Lawson–the architect of the Nashville Civil Rights campaign is bending under the burden of hurt and hate. As pastor, I have preached Jesus is the prince of peace but my spirit yearns for revenge. As father of black boys, I am afraid and angry at once.  Bob Marley’s “Burning and Looting” has become my hymn as of late. Yet my experiences as a black male-bodied person are not the most egregious and the arbitrary policing of black male bodies are not unique to the United States. 

During my self-imposed exile in Paris, I witnessed the city of lights set ablaze. 

The 2005 riots were prompted youth died as result of being chased by police. Throughout the Paris suburbs, African and Arab youth burned cars and destroyed property. Upon interviewing these young folks, they often noted that they felt persecuted by the “state” and its protectors on a daily basis.  While there, I delivered a lecture at the American University in Paris entitled, Les émeutes et Espoir (Riots and Hope). By comparing the plight of French Arabs and Africans to African Americans, I argued that riots were a result of hopelessness in a society that places black bodies in exile. Deploying Dr. Martin Luther King, Jrs’ axiom–riots are the cry of the voiceless–I posited that burning cars were the burning concerns of those who lived on the night side of a society.   

While interviewing family members and friends of Mark Duggan, this sentiment was expressed in the London Riots 2011. Duggan’s death at the hands of London Metropolitan Police caused riots throughout England. In London and Paris, I felt an eerie familiarity with their beings. The societies in which we live are prone to police, punish, and pulverize our bodies. These experiences often combined with economic deprivation and social alienation stir the kinds of riotous possibilities that visit me, now. And I am not alone. Black mothers, fathers, and friends are glued to the television and social media–hoping and praying that justice will be served. For the past year or so they have tucked in their children extra tight.  Parents will give “the talk” to their boys, ad nausem.  “Stay out of trouble”, they will admonish their shining black princes. For many, especially the young and disinherited, their hearts will burn with riotous rage. 

Riots initiated by people of color in Western societies are typified by three factors: young alienated ethnic community, a history of police brutality, and a bias criminal justice system in which othered bodies do not receive fair treatment. This powder keg sparked by unjust police or vigilante violence against a member of the ethnic community. All over the world during demonstrations and subsequent riots, congregations of resistance in the church of the public elicit a protest call and response: “What do we want !  Justice! When do we want it ! Now !” Riots are then a response to the unrequited ideals of their nation. 

From Rodney King to Mark Duggan to Trayvon Martin, the challenging relationship between police and ethnic communities has erupted in social protest, initially. Trayvon Martin killing by George Zimmerman prompted protests all of the country. Clergy preached in hoodies from their pulpits and one congressman read scripture in a hoodie on the House of Representative floor. Rallies were replete with not only hoodie-clad protesters but also many carried bags of skittles and canned ice teas. All in solidarity with Trayvon Martin’s last act of being.

At once such rally last year at Union Square in New York City, I talked to a mother who brought her young son. “I am not an activist,” she clarified. “And I ain’t never been to a protest but I want him to know that he has rights and this ain’t right”, she said pulling her son closer as though to protect him. 

For many, the case is simple: Zimmerman racially profiled Martin; hunted him down and murdered him. The national outcry created the context for Zimmerman’s arrest.  Now, the question before that nation is what will be the aftermath of the George Zimmerman trial. The trial itself offers critical insights into the riotous possibilities based on racist perception. 

The most telling element is not the gut-wrenching testimony of Trayvon Martin’s parents or the lambasting of his friend’s Rachel Jeantel. The defense called a number of witnesses to dispute Trayvon’s mother’s testimony that it was her son was calling for help in the last seconds of his life. While the attempt to discredit a mother’s ears is disgusting, it is part and parcel of a silencing of black pain in the American courts.  Equally, the presiding judge’s ruled that the word race could not be uttered in testimony or questioning. 

Perhaps, it is because race is the adjudicator of justice in American democracy. In fact, extrajudicial punishment of black male bodies has rarely been discouraged in the courts. The trail of Roy Bryant and J.W. Milan for the Emmett Till’s murder —the most infamous vigilante violence case in the nation history–was a farce.   Thus, a George Zimmerman’s acquittal is very real. 

The most telling and disturbing feature of the defense’s strategy was the call of Mr. Connelly as a witness. Connelly, a friend of Zimmerman, is former Vietnam army medic. The defense noted Connelly’s service in the Vietnam War qualified him to distinguish Zimmerman’s voice on a 911 call. Much like the United States engagement in Vietnam so is its engagement with African American men. In word the nation is at war with black male bodies. Like Vietnam is it’s a protract war.  From lynching to Jim Crow and the New Jim Crow (prison industrial complex) and continued state sanctioned vigilante violence against black male bodies is a war. 

The pain of being black and male in America is a weighty existence. The history and contemporary denigration of black-maled bodies takes an emotional toll. The toll is greater for the young who see a black man in the White House and a million black men in prison. Black male existence in America is Sisyphean. To walk down the street is to be struck in the chest with the absurdity of being black and male in America. Black boys are not boys but menace to be disciplined and punished; a cradle to prison pipeline is their way out of the ghetto.  

In New York City alone, over 600,000 black and brown young men have been “stop and frisk” by the police for just being. Hands stuck in their underwear–molesting their manhood; their civil and human liberties are non-existent. And the only national apparatus with word justice in its name has not lived up to its moniker.  Limited employment possibilities combined with the daily indecencies of living are a recipe for nihilism. 

Such systematic quietude and ontological emptiness sets the stage for riots. As rioters in Paris, L.A., and London, all told me “if we can not get justice in the court we will get it in the streets”.  After protests and prayer, testimony and trial what is left to do? What are we to do when nonviolent protest has failed and the justice system has betrayed its name? Where is the rage to go? Shall those on the end of injustice commit suicide? 

To invoke Camus, once more, the riot is the rebels’ No to indignity and injustice.  It is temporal blow against a hegemony waging omnipresent war on one’s being. After all of the ancestral and lived indignity, protests and a televised trial, and an acquittal, riots may be the only options for some. I pray that I am not a prophet.  Whether George Zimmerman is found guilty or not; if ambers light the cityscape or jubilation erupts; there will be at least one riot– in my soul. 

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

At his confirmation hearing to head the FBI, former Bush administration Deputy Attorney General James Comey refused to criticize the broad, ongoing collection of the phone records of Americans and defended the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens deemed to be enemy combatants. Comey also explained why he signed off on a memo authorizing waterboarding while serving under Attorney General John Ashcroft. We get reaction from former specialFBI agent Coleen Rowley, who served with the Bureau from 1981 to 2004. The New York Times just published her op-ed titled “Questions for the FBI Nominee.” In 2002, Time magazine named her and two other female whistleblowers as Time’s “Person of the Year,” for warning about the FBI’s failure to help prevent the 9/11 attacks.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

Amy Goodman: In our next segment, we’ll be looking at the trial of Bradley Manning. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

Nermeen Shaikh: We turn now to the confirmation hearing of James Comey, President Obama’s nominee to run the FBI for the next 10 years, replacing Robert Mueller. Comey served as deputy attorney general under John Ashcroft in the Bush administration. In this role, Comey signed off on a controversial legal memo authorizing waterboarding of prisoners and approved of the indefinite detention of José Padilla, a U.S. citizen who was held on a military brig for three years without charge. During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Comey was questioned about these issues as well as his views on domestic surveillance. This is committee chair Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

Sen. Patrick Leahy: I’ll ask you the same question I asked Attorney General Mukasey when he was before this committee for confirmation. I found–actually, I found his answer unsatisfactory, but I’ll ask you the same question. Do you agree that waterboarding is torture and is illegal?

James Comey: Yes.

Sen. Patrick Leahy: Thank you. And would you agree to answer this question the same way no matter who is president?

James Comey: Oh, certainly.

Sen. Patrick Leahy: Thank you. Now, the surveillance powers of the FBI have grown. Americans are becoming increasingly concerned the FBI is becoming more of a domestic surveillance agency than a crime-fighting, intelligence-gathering organization. ThePATRIOT Act, other authorities, they can get vast amounts of information, including the data of law-abiding Americans, something that creates concerns, I know, among my fellow Vermonters. So, do you believe the bulk collection of metadata for domestic telephone calls or emails is appropriate, even when the majority of individuals with whom the calls or emails are associated are law-abiding Americans?

James Comey: Senator, I am not familiar with the details of the current programs. Obviously, I haven’t been cleared for anything like that, and I’ve been out of government for eight years. I do know, as a general matter, that the collection of metadata and analysis of metadata is a valuable tool in counterterrorism.

Nermeen Shaikh: That was FBI nominee James Comey. While Comey described waterboarding as torture and illegal, he acknowledged signing a memo authorizing its use when he was in the Bush Justice Department. Comey did not say why his view on waterboarding had changed since 2005.

During the hearing, senators repeatedly praised Comey for refusing to reauthorize the Bush administration’s warrantless spy program while serving as acting attorney general in the place of John Ashcroft, who was recovering from surgery. Comey alerted Ashcroft after top White House aides rushed to Ashcroft’s hospital bed in a failed bid to win his approval for the spying. According to news reports, the surveillance program later resumed under a similar legal framework, and senior Bush administration officials have said Comey raised few objections to other surveillance programs.

Amy Goodman: Well, for more on the nomination of James Comey, we’re joined now by former FBIspecial agent Coleen Rowley. She was with the FBI from 1981 to 2004. She was a division legal counsel for 13 years and taught constitutional rights to FBI agents and police. In 2002, Time magazine named her and two other women whistleblowers as _Time_’s “Person of the Year” after she testified before Congress about the FBI’s failure to help prevent the 9/11 attacks. Her latest article, “Questions for the FBI Nominee,” appeared in The New York Times.

Were those questions asked yesterday, Coleen Rowley? What do you think it’s significant for us to understand about who Comey is?

Coleen Rowley: Well, to their credit, the senators did ask some of the questions, especially the ones that focused on James Comey’s authorization of waterboarding and sleep deprivation, and especially that question, I think, was asked and answered. It wasn’t answered very well, but it was–because James Comey claimed now that it’s illegal. It’s progress over Mukasey, who denied that waterboarding is torture. But he could not really explain why he had signed off on these authorities for CIA that included sleep deprivation and waterboarding. So the senators did an OK job of asking some of the questions. James Comey hedged on most of those; he did not answer those. He would claim that he did not know or the information was classified. Especially that hospital standoff question, he claimed that that is still classified, and he could not explain what changed and why he objected to the warrantless monitoring beforehand, but then went along with it afterwards.

Nermeen Shaikh: Well, during Tuesday’s confirmation hearing for the FBI director nominee, James Comey, he was asked about his approval in 2004 of a legal memo that authorized torture techniques designed to inflict pain or terror during the interrogation of detainees. Comey was deputy attorney general at the time. The memo was known as the Bradbury memo.

Sen. Al Franken: You talked about how sleep deprivation can be torture, and I think you said in combination with other methods. This is what the Bradbury memo says about a sleep deprivation: “In this method, the detainee is standing and is handcuffed, and the handcuffs are attached by a length of chain to the ceiling. The detainee’s hands are shackled in front of his body, so that the detainee has approximately a two- to three-foot diameter of movement. The detainee’s feet are shackled to a bolt in the floor,” end-quote. The memo also says that the detainee wears diapers and that sleep deprivation can cause swelling in the lower extremities. The memo goes on to say that none of this amounts to torture, and it authorized sleep deprivation for up to 180 hours. That’s seven-and-a-half days. That is torture, isn’t it?

James Comey: That was my reaction. And I remember that description vividly, Senator. That’s one of the things that led me to ask, “Who are we as Americans?” And we have to have that conversation about–even if someone says it’s effective, someone says it doesn’t violate this vague statute, there’s this third question that that description cries out for us to answer.

Sen. Al Franken: OK, I’m out of time, but I would say that was a memo that you–that you approved. Now, that was one of separate–separate methods that was talked about in that one. That was the first Bradbury.

Nermeen Shaikh: That was James Comey being questioned by Senator Al Franken. Coleen Rowley, could you respond to that?

Coleen Rowley: Well, the senators generally lauded James Comey for obeying and upholding the law, and they claimed that he had spoken truth to power. But this episode where he signed off on waterboarding and sleep deprivation–and I will just interject that I’m very proud that Minnesota Senator Al Franken gave the graphic, gruesome description of what sleep deprivation actually is, because maybe if some of these officials had understood that, they would not have signed off as this being legal. James Comey also claimed that the statute, the 1994 statute prohibiting torture in the United States, is vague. In fact, there’s a convention against torture that the United States has signed, and almost all experts claim–say that that statute is very clear. And so, there is a real strong irony here that the new–probably the new FBI director actually signed off on a completely illegal method of interrogating prisoners.

Amy Goodman: Talking to former FBI agent Coleen Rowley, named by Time magazine as “Person of the Year,” I wanted to go back to the Comey hearing and back to the questioning of Senator Al Franken, this about the case of José Padilla–José Padilla pronounces his name in that way, as opposed to José Padilla; he had changed his name–the U.S. citizen who was held as an enemy combatant by the George W. Bush administration. For over three years, Padilla was held without charge in solitary confinement on a military brig in South Carolina.

Sen. Al Franken: Do American citizens always have the right to talk to an attorney when they are entained–when they are detained by their own government on American soil?

James Comey: I suppose one of the reasons you may not have been satisfied is I’m not sure I was expert enough, or still am, to give you a really good answer to that. I think the answer is, yes, except when that person is detained as a prisoner of war in an ongoing armed conflict. That is, a prisoner of war, the person does not have a constitutional right to counsel. I think that was the position that the Justice Department took in Mr. Padilla or Padilla’s case. And so, I think that is the position.

Sen. Al Franken: And who determines whether that person is a prisoner of war, an American citizen–

James Comey: Right.

Sen. Al Franken: –on American soil, who’s arrested on American soil? Who makes that determination? And doesn’t that person have a–an American citizen now–

James Comey: Mm-hmm.

Sen. Al Franken: –have a right to an attorney to make the case that “I’m not a prisoner of war”?

James Comey: Well, they certainly have a right to access to the courts, as was done in that case, to file a habeas corpus petition to challenge the president’s decision that–and designation that person is involved in an armed conflict with United States. But that’s a different question from whether they have a constitutional right to have a lawyer. I think the district judge in that case said that as a matter of his ability to oversee habeas corpuspetitions, he thought the person ought to have a lawyer to assist him in the preparation of that petition. I don’t think the judge found he had a constitutional right to counsel.

Sen. Al Franken: OK, I’m–

James Comey: And as you said, it’s a one-off, horrific case, that was a very difficult one, so it’s–it’s obviously not a settled area, because I don’t know that it’s ever happened other than in Padilla’s case.

Amy Goodman: That’s the FBI director nominee James Comey being questioned again by Senator Al Franken of Minnesota. Coleen Rowley, you taught the FBI and police Constitution–the Constitution, and you were an agent for years. Your response to what he said, and what else you feel we should know about James Comey?

Coleen Rowley: Well, James Comey was the official that held a press conference and strongly defended the ability of the United States to use this law of war and to hold enemy combatants incommunicado. Of course, in Padilla’s case, he was held for nearly three years, and I think two years without an attorney. So–and, actually, because James Comey spoke once in Minnesota with Walter Mondale, and Walter Mondale asked him about that case, James Comey went a step further in 2009–and this was in my questions in the New York Times op-ed. He actually said that we have to have an ability to incapacitate suspects when there is not adequate evidence to use in court or a foreign government gives the United States evidence that needs to be secret. So, he’s–in 2009, which came quite a long time afterwards, he is still defending this concept of indefinite detention without the right–not only the right to attorney, but even the right to be adjudicated in a criminal court.

Nermeen Shaikh: And what exactly did he mean by “incapacitate”?

Coleen Rowley: Well, he made a reference to the way that we can hold mentally ill people through a different process rather than adjudicating criminal guilt. And he said if there’s a way to hold the mentally dangerous in–without–so that they’re not–so that we can maintain safety, there must be a way to do this with dangerous terrorist suspects.

Nermeen Shaikh: During Tuesday’s Senate confirmation hearing, FBI director nominee James Comey was also asked about domestic surveillance. He insisted that the secret Foreign Service Intelligence Act, orFISA, court provided effective congressional oversight.

James Comey: I think that folks don’t understand that the FBI operates under a wide variety of constraints, starting with the attorney general’s detailed guidelines on how it’s to conduct intelligence investigations, criminal investigations and counterintelligence investigations. I think sometimes folks also don’t understand what the FISA court is. They hear “secret court.” Sometimes they hear “rubber stamp.” In my experience, which is long, with the FISA court, folks don’t realize that it’s a group of independent federal judges who sit and operate under a statutory regime to review requests by the government to use certain authorities to gather information, and it is anything but a rubber stamp. Anyone who knows federal judges and has appeared before federal judges knows that calling them a rubber stamp is–shows you don’t have experience before them.

Nermeen Shaikh: That was FBI nominee James Comey. The FISA court issued almost 1,800 surveillance orders last year. Every single government request was approved. Coleen Rowley, your response to what Comey said?

Coleen Rowley: Yes, and this number of FISA court orders is at over double what it was before 9/11. There’s a huge difference between when a criminal court carefully analyzes probable cause for purposes of monitoring and what the FISA court does.

I will go back to that hospital room standoff, because I think there’s a piece that the public does not understand about James Comey’s famous hospital standoff. He was not objecting to the massive data collection as much as he was just objecting to the legal footing of what had–what was probably John Yoo’s theory of unbridled executive power and the ability to override the FISA statute, to override Congress. It looks like there was a period of time before the FISA court got this blanket authority under the FISAAmendments Act to give–to rubber-stamp orders for–blanket orders for everyone’s telephone and email data. It looks like there was a period of time where James Comey authorized, went along with Bush’s massive data collection under a new theory. Goldsmith’s theory was that it was pegged to the Authorization to Use Military Force. And when they used that Authorization to Use Military Force, of course, to repeal parts of the FISA, none of the Congress would have understood that when they voted back in October 2001 to authorize the United States to go to war in Afghanistan, that they were also repealing a part of solid Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act law.

Amy Goodman: FBI nominee James Comey also discussed his position on whistleblowing.

James Comey: I think whistleblowers are also a critical element of a functioning democracy. Folks have to feel free to raise their concerns and, if they’re not addressed up their chain of command, to take them to an appropriate place.

Amy Goodman: I mean, it’s interesting, Coleen Rowley. Here we are talking about this as Edward Snowden is, we believe, still in the Russian airport applying for political asylum in many different countries. The Democratic senators congratulating Comey for his questioning of the wireless wiretapping–of warrantless wiretapping, and yet you don’t see anything like their same response when it comes to questioning what President Obama has been doing with the NSA.

Coleen Rowley: That’s right. They did ask Comey some good questions about the law that allows the government to read emails after six months, and they asked some questions about pending legislation to fix the NSA. Comey kind of hedged on those questions and said he could not really offer an opinion. The key thing here is that Comey did not really oppose warrantless monitoring, and actually looks like he just wanted the legal underpinnings to be adjusted.

And as far as whistleblowers, of course, in the FBI and as well as many of these other intelligence agencies, there is no recourse in court. You never get your day in court. So, of course–Senator Grassley mentioned this–there’s no other option for people who witness true illegality, as Edward Snowden did. What do you do when you’re witnessing violations of the Constitution and there is no internal chain of command or mechanism to get that information out? And Comey, of course, I don’t think, is–is not going to answer that, because he doesn’t want to prejudice the situation right now of the government prosecuting Edward Snowden.

Amy Goodman: Do you believe she should be confirmed?

Coleen Rowley: Well, it’s a sad–

Amy Goodman: He should be confirmed?

Coleen Rowley: Yeah, you know what’s really sad here is that it looks like the next FBI director will be someone who signed off on illegal torture, can’t really explain why. But yet it’s sadder still that amongst the pool out there that they consider to be appropriate candidates for FBI director, Comey actually might be one of the better ones. I mean, this is a very sad state of affairs right now.

Amy Goodman: I want to thank you very much, Coleen Rowley, and point out that, if confirmed, he serves a 10-year term. Coleen Rowley was a special agent for the FBI from 1981 to 2004, division legal counsel for 13 years, teaching constitutional rights to FBI agents and police, also testified before Congress about the FBI’s failure to help prevent the 9/11 attacks and was named Person of the Year by Timemagazine.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, the Bradley Manning trial.

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

JAISAL NOOR, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Jaisal Noor in Baltimore.

As NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden continues to leak documents shedding light on spying conducted by the U.S. and its allies, today we’ll look at the international ramifications of his actions.

Now joining us to talk about the latest news is Annie Machon. She was an intelligence officer for the U.K.’s MI5 in the 1990s. But she left after blowing the whistle on incompetence and crimes of the British spy agencies. She’s now a writer, media commentator, political campaigner, and international public speaker on a variety of intelligence-related issues. She’s also the director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition or LEAP in Europe.

Thank you so much for joining us, Annie.

ANNIE MACHON, FMR. MI5 INTELLIGENCE OFFICER: My pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.

Noor: So, Annie, can you give us your reaction to Edward Snowden and his ongoing leaks in light of your own personal experiences as a whistleblower?

Machon: Well, obviously I’ve been riveted by what he’s had to say and the content of his disclosures. But also it brought back a number of personal memories for me, because in the 1990s I worked as an intelligence officer for MI5 and resigned with my then partner and colleague David Shayler, to blow the whistle on an awful series of crimes of the U.K. spy agencies.

And it’s interesting looking at the Snowden story, because he’s the only whistleblower I’ve ever seen, apart from us, to preemptively go on the run in order to remain at liberty to argue his corner in order to keep the stories coming out, because he feels they are important to be discussed in an intelligent manner. So for us it’s a strange thing to watch. You know, he fled to Hong Kong. He is now in Moscow. His liberty is at stake. In our case, we had to flee to the Netherlands and then on to France in the summer of 1997 with MI5 and at MI6 and the secret police of the U.K. hot on our trail. And they wanted to try and rest us and put us on trial for breach of the Official Secrets Act as if we would we were the criminal, not the people who were actually committing the crimes within the intelligence agencies.

Noor: And you’re joining us from Europe. Can you talk about what kind of reaction his revelations have had? You know, he’s revealed the U.S. relationship with spying in England, as well as countries like Germany and elsewhere.

Machon: Well, it’s been quite riveting, because, of course, and there has been a very close relationship particularly between the U.K. intelligence agencies, the spying post, the listening post called GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) and the NSA over the decades. So I think most people sort of assumed that sort of thing went on, but they didn’t know for sure. And suddenly Snowden has confirmed not only that is going on, but the sheer scale that they can now spy on us. We are looking at something with the technical capability of the internet. They can read everything that we say, everything that we write, everything that we ingest, everything we think. So what we’re looking at is quite a dystopian sort of surveillance global state, which is what the U.S. is now building.

So the indignation across Europe, particularly the fact that Snowden has revealed that E.U. partners were spied on in order for the U.S. to get advantage in trade negotiations and political negotiations have certainly produced quite a lot of anger over here. And it’s also interesting as well, because certainly companies countries like Germany and France have very strong constitutions to protect basic civil liberties and basic human rights, including the right to privacy. In Germany particularly of all countries, with its history of the Gestapo and the Stasi, the secret police and East Germany, has very, very strong Constitution to protect individual privacy and freedom to communicate privately. And suddenly we are seeing that that doesn’t exist anymore, because the NSA has produced this global surveillance state. So there’s been a lot of anger over here and a lot of pushback. And, of course, it’s now jeopardizing certain trade talks. It’s jeopardizing certain other internet sort of agreements and things like that. I mean, for example, last year we had this thing they were trying to push through called ACTA, the Anti-Copyright Trade Agreement, which was enforced on Europe by the entertainment industry in the U.S. And that got squashed because there was massive revulsion and there were sort of demonstrations trying to get rid of it in Europe. And then they tried to push it back into the European legislation. And now, of course, with issues of Tempora, which is the U.K. and the U.S. picking up all the information transatlantically, and PRISM, where they can spy on everything we’re doing on social media, what we’re looking at is a huge pushback against U.S. internet legal hegemony.

Noor: And it hasn’t been just the U.S. conducting this surveillance. Is that correct?

Machon: Absolutely. I mean, the U.K. has definitely been playing a major role in this too. The Tempora program that Edward Snowden revealed shows that GCHQ can hook into all transatlantic fiber-optic cables between the the U.S. and Europe. So they can pick up everything. And this is done illegally under U.K. law, as far as I can see, because they’re supposed to be very strict regulations about what they can intercept. And even if you’re doing a domestic phone call or domestic email, you know, U.K. to U.K. address, often these things take whatever reach is available, which can the international. So what we looking at now is the ability to spy on everybody everywhere. So this is a real problem, I think, for our democracies. And there is no meaningful oversight in the U.K.. We have a series of very archaic laws that are designed to ensure that if someone is a real threat to national security, like a terrorist or whatever, then if you want to investigate them, you get a politically approved warrant in order to invasively investigate the communications of that person. What we’re looking at now is just hoovering up everyone’s information. It’s data mining on a massive scale. So the new technology has allowed people, has allowed the spies to do this. And we are unaware of this. And they’re trying to bend the old laws to fit the modern technological capability. And this is a problem for everybody. People try and say, well, if you don’t done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide. It’s not about that. One, we have a basic right to privacy enshrined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948. And two, the idea you’ve done nothing wrong can shift. The goalposts can shift. And they have shifted over the past. So today you might be out on the streets waving a placard because you’re objecting to some political action or to some environmental issue or something. Tomorrow, if the laws change–and the governments can change the laws–suddenly tomorrow you might be deemed to be a domestic extremist or terrorist or whatever because you are objecting and protesting. So the old adage, you know, you do nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to fear is just bogus.

Noor: So some of Snowden’s critics have attacked him for releasing how the U.S. collects data internationally, saying that this jeopardizes national security. What’s your response to those claims?

Machon: I think anyone involved in things like terrorism or money laundering or organized crime or pedophilia or whatever is going to be very conscious of the fact that they can be tracked and surveilled in using electronic communications anyway. They will have already taken steps to protect themselves. So applying this sort of law as a sort of massive scoop to hoover up everybody’s information actually just gets the information of those who are innocent, who are just going about their daily lives. And of course the U.S. government is going to say, he’s a traitor, he did this for whatever reason. But I think he’s made it very plain in what he has stated publicly, which is not much, but he stated publicly that he believes in the way of life, the U.S. Constitution, such as it is now. He believes that it’s worth fighting for. In fact, he even says it’s worth dying for. So the old ideas of basic human rights, basic privacy, of the freedom to communicate with our friends, with our family, with our contacts without necessarily having Big Brother looking over our shoulders is fundamental to a free and open democracy. And that’s what he’s saying he’s trying to protect. And I certainly agree with what he’s saying. And, of course, when the mainstream media, of course the propaganda arm of the government is going to say he’s a traitor or spy or whatever. This is what happens to every whistleblower who comes out. Every time a whistleblower exposes the criminality of the state, they will be deemed to be to criminal. They will be smeared by the government. We see this time and time and time again.

Noor: Now, lawsuits have been filed in the U.S. and in England this week challenging aspects of the surveillance. Can you talk about the prospects of getting a measure of accountability from these surveillance agencies?

Machon: Well, in the U.K. I think it’s highly unlikely. Everything is [incompr.] U.K. intelligence agencies are protected behind a whole barrage of laws, not least the Official Secrets Act of 1989. And even our foreign secretary has gone of the record saying, dismissing what Snowden said, saying of course the intelligence agencies have to obey the law. And I mentioned before, the law ten, 15, 20, 25 years ago to govern a sort of activity and of course the tech has–the technology has exponentially expanded since that time, and yet it’s being–the laws are being elastically extended to cover the new technological capabilities. There is very little likelihood that we will get open justice in the U.K. In the U.S. even 10, 15 years ago, one might have had more hope that there would be open justice. However, since the Patriot Act came into force, I think it’s unlikely that we will ever get into any real meaningful oversight of the spies thereto. It’s almost like the FISA court, which covers the sort of intelligence intercepts laws, has become a sort of secret equivalent of the Supreme Court. So if the Supreme Court is trying to investigate something, there will just be complete cover-up of what the intelligence agencies do, and it will go to the FISA court.

Noor: Thank you so much for joining us.

Machon: Thank you.

Noor: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

(Photo: Sue Peacock / Flickr)Charles Koch thinks he has the solution to America’s income inequality problem, and what a large problem it is.

We have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income in this country since the 1920’s.

Right now, the wealthiest 400 Americans own more wealth than the entire bottom-half of the country, and the six heirs to the great Wal-Mart fortune own more wealth than the bottom 30 percent of Americans.

The top 1 percent of Americans own 40 percent of the entire nation’s wealth, while the bottom 60 percent owns less than 2 percent, and the bottom 40 percent of all Americans own just .3 percent of the nation’s wealth.

Since 1979, after-tax income for the top 1% of Americans is up 281%, while it’s only up 16% and 25% for the bottom-fifth and middle-fifth of Americans respectively.

And, according to the Economic Policy Institute, CEO pay spiked 725 percent between 1978 and 2011, while worker pay rose just 5.7 percent during the same time.

It’s clear that income inequality is a major problem in America, and that something needs to be done right now to fix it.

That’s where Koch comes in.

The conservative mogul who is worth over $43 billion says that eliminating the minimum wage is a solution to America’s poverty woes.

On Wednesday, the Charles Koch Foundation launched a $200,000 media blitz in Wichita, Kansas, Koch’s home state, saying that the minimum wage is THE major obstacle to economic growth in America.

There is no credible information or data that backs up Koch’s claims that the minimum wage impedes economic growth, and that doing away with it would solve any of our problems.

In fact, the data says otherwise.

In a letter released by the Chicago Federal Reserve, Economists Daniel Aaronson and Eric French show that raising the federal minimum wage by $1.75 to $9 an hour would increase household spending by around $48 billion the next year, and everybody knows that economies are driven by demand, also known as consumer spending.

The fact is that doing away with the minimum wage will do absolutely nothing to reduce the extraordinary levels of poverty and income inequality in this country. So what will?

First, contrary to what Republicans in Washington love to argue, we need to strengthen and expand social safety net programs, not do away with them.

Americans who are living on the edge need some bootstraps to pull themselves up by.

Programs like Medicaid and food stamps are essential because they provide those bootstraps and help them get back on their feet.

Next, we must invest more into education, so young people can succeed when they enter the workplace.

Right now, the United States ranks 17th in the world among developed countries when it comes to overall education, and 25th in math and science. That sucks.

We also need to take on the loopholes that make our tax system favor the rich, and roll back the Reagan tax cuts.

America’s wealthiest citizens must pay their fair share, and do their part to support the American economy, rather than just living off the backs of the working class.

We also need to take an axe to all the corporate loopholes in our tax code, put there by lobbyists and corporate shills in Congress.

To make this work, this nation’s trade policies have to change.

No more so-called free trade deals like NAFTA, CAFTA, SHAFTA and the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement. Giant transnational corporations should not have the right or the power to move our jobs overseas, and it’s insane that our tax code is encouraging them to do that.

Finally, any company whose business model depends on screwing their workers with pay that is so low that those workers qualify for food stamps and Medicaid should be put out of business.

If we just set the minimum wage to what it was in 1968, $10.25 in today’s dollars, we begin the process rebuilding our middle-class.

Charles Koch inherited much of his money from his daddy, Fred. He’s never known what it’s like to run a household budget on the minimum wage. Taking wage policy advice from Charles Koch is like taking advice on how to run a neighborhood watch program from George Zimmerman.

When it comes to the Koch brothers lecturing us about how the working poor should be paid, we all need to take Nancy Reagan’s advice and “just say no.”

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

(Photo: Lauren Gerson / Flickr)The hugely contested omnibus anti-abortion bill, House Bill 2, which threatens to impose some of the toughest abortion rights restrictions in the nation passed the Texas House Wednesday with a vote of 96-49 after more than ten hours of debate. But as the bill heads to the Senate floor, a coalition of pro-choice activists are using every tool they have to keep fighting – from keeping up with legislative schedules to taking nonviolent direct action.

The House passed the bill after the House Committee on State Affairs hosted a second hearing on HB 2 last Tuesday, approving it shortly after midnight and cutting off the more than 1,000 voices who still wished to testify on the bill. Texas Gov. Rick Perry called a second special session after Sen. Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth) and hundreds of Texans successfully thwarted Texas Republicans’ plans to pass the bill with a bold 11-hour filibuster.

Now that the bill has passed the Texas House, the earliest it can move to the Senate floor is Friday, unless it becomes “tagged” by a legislator, which would put a 48-hour hold on the bill. Democratic lawmakers have offered more than two dozen amendments to the bill, but all have been rejected by the bill’s author, Jodie Laubenberg (R-Parker).

Five people affiliated with the activist group RiseUp Texas were arrested Wednesday for disrupting the legislative proceedings just as the vote was occurring, with one woman shouting,”I’m a queer woman of color. I object to these proceedings,” as Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) troopers moved in, eventually escorting her out of the House gallery.

RiseUp Texas is a coalition of organizations and individuals working in coordinated groups through Occupy-style general assemblies.

“All of the love that we have been getting from across the nation has inspired us to stick it out through all of the atrocious things that we have seen here over the past couple of weeks,” says RiseUp Texas spokesperson Rockie Gonzalez. Gonzalez told Truthout that RiseUp has members working at the Capitol around the clock, as well as daily meetings and breakout groups, with caucuses representing people of color, immigrants and LGBTQ people.

But the coalition is fighting an uphill battle against ever-shifting legislative procedures – from the timestamp change that occurred at the end of Senator Davis’ filibuster showing that the original bill, SB5, had passed before the midnight deadline, to the cutting off of testimony without prior warning – that seem to point to a rigged legislative game.

Houston National Organization for Women (NOW) member Sarah Slamen was forcibly removed after she was recognized by the Senate Health and Human Services committee chair Monday night to testify.”My tone was just as insolent as the people who were against abortion,” she said. “They just didn’t like what I was going to say to them.”

“It’s an arbitrary censoring of citizens in public hearings. We own that capitol, we own that government, and they keep trying to kick us out,” she told Truthout.”This can only call for civil disobedience because they don’t follow their own rules.”

Slamen said she never saw legislators call decorum on anyone who testified in support of the bill, despite the fact that many gave disrespectful testimony comparing women to worms, bald eagles and leather wallets, among other things.”Texas is turning women into sexual chattel again.”

HB 2 would ban all abortions after 20 weeks, require physicians to have hospital admitting privileges within 30 miles of any abortion facility, and require all abortions to be performed in ambulatory surgical centers that require doctors to administer in person the drugs that induce abortion.

Currently, only five clinics in Texas meet the requirements of the bill. The cost of obtaining an abortion at an ambulatory surgical center is significantly higher than at other facilities.

The Senate is expected to pass the bill but opponents of the legislation are laying the groundwork for a federal lawsuit to block the bill if it becomes law.

“Those communities, immigrant communities, people-of-color communities, rural communities, oftentime, those are the people that belong to church groups, and those are the people we are trying to advocate for. We’re not trying to make the argument look black-and-white, that it’s just Republican Christians who support [the bill], because that’s actually not the truth,” Gonzalez said. “Those communities are alienated by the white feminist approach.” 

Mainstream feminist activism has been criticized for its lack of inclusiveness of people of color and other marginalized groups.

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

Prisoners in Pelican Bay State Prison’s Security Housing Unit (SHU) are isolated for at least twenty-two and a half hours a day in cramped, concrete, windowless cells. They are denied telephone calls, contact visits, any kind of programming, adequate food and, often, medical care. Nearly 750 of these men have been held under these conditions for more than a decade, dozens for over 20 years. This treatment has inflicted profound psychological suffering and caused or exacerbated debilitating physical ailments.  

Ostensibly, these men are in the SHU because they associate with gang members and isolating them is necessary to prevent gang activity and racially motivated violence. But in the summer and fall of 2011, these men, joined by other SHU prisoners throughout California, showed this claim to be the lie that it is. Organizing across racial lines, more than 6,000 SHU prisoners went on hunger strike for several weeks to protest their conditions. That’s right – men who have been isolated for over a decade and deprived of basic human rights because they are allegedly connected to racially divided gangs worked together to demand basic rights and constitutional protections for themselves and one another. Now they have resumed their hunger strike, demanding that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation meet their demands. 

Read the Series:

Pelican Bay Two Years Later: Those Still Buried Alive Vowing Hunger Strike “Till the End”

Pelican Bay Prison Hunger-Strikers’ Stories: Richard Wembe Johnson

Pelican Bay Prison Hunger-Strikers’ Stories: Gabriel Reyes

Pelican Bay Prison Hunger-Strikers’ Stories: Todd Ashker

Pelican Bay Prison Hunger-Strikers’ Stories: Luis Esquivel 

Past Truthout Coverage of Pelican Bay

Pelican Bay Prison: One Year Later, Policy Remains “Debrief or Die”

California Prison Hunger Strike Ends, Conditions of “Immense Torture” Continue

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

In today’s On the News segment: Over the last two months, activists and civil leaders have been protesting extreme Right-wing policies in North Carolina; Senate Democrats tried to restore lower student loan interest rates, but couldn’t get support for their proposal; and more.

Thom Hartmann here — on the news…

You need to know this. North Carolina citizens are protesting Republicans that they say are out of control. Over the last two months, activists and civil leaders have been protesting extreme Right-wing policies in weekly “Moral Monday” rallies. This week, more than 2,000 people gathered at the state capitol in Raleigh, to oppose anti-abortion legislation being considered by state lawmakers. The public outcry over that bill’s extreme provisions led Republican Governor Pat McCrory to threaten a veto if the bill made it to his desk. So – the measure stalled. However, GOP state lawmakers came up with a sneaky new way to put the abortion restrictions into law. Yesterday, Republicans in the North Carolina House of Representatives attached anti-choice measures to a motorcycle safety bill, without notifying the public or fellow legislators. Democratic State Representative Joe Sam Queen tweeted, “New abortion bill being heard in the committee I am on. The public didn’t know. I didn’t even know.” He then added, “I wish I had more time to look at this new bill before I had to ask questions about it or debate it.” Apparently, GOP legislators removed some of the most extreme anti-abortion provisions, in an effort to avoid another veto threat. However, Governor McCrory wasn’t fooled by the Republican’s ploy. He condemned the deceptive way the legislation was brought forward, and called the bill a “sham.” Upon learning of the Republicans’ devious tactics, North Carolina residents and activists were outraged. Melissa Reid, of Planned Parenthood, said, “It is a disgrace to North Carolina that legislators have again resorted to sneak attacks to move their anti-women’s health agenda forward. This is outrageous and [it’s] not how the people’s business should be conducted.” After this latest Republican attempt to push extreme policies in North Carolina, it’s likely that there will be an even larger crowd at the next “Moral Monday” protest.

In screwed news… On Wednesday, Senate Democrats tried to restore lower student loan interest rates, but couldn’t get support for their proposal. Republican lawmakers refuse to extend the 3.4 percent borrowing rate for another year, and would rather tie interest rates to financial markets. Both competing plans failed, as senators couldn’t reach a bipartisan majority high enough to overcome the 60 vote threshold. Democrats want to keep that rate low for another year, while Congress considers a broad overhaul of student loans. Republicans want to tie borrowing rates to financial markets, which would leave students at the mercy of an unstable and rigged banking system. Unless both parties can agree on a plan, students will be hit with a 6.8 percent interest rate on any new college loans. This will greatly increase the financial strain on students and families. Democratic Senator Tom Udall said, “Today our nation’s students once again wait in vain for relief. They expected more of us and I share their disappointment. Today, we failed. And, our nation’s students pay the cost of that failure.”

In the best of the rest of the news…

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act has passed its first hurdle in the Senate. Yesterday, the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pension Committee voted 15 to 7 in favor of the bill, which could finally put an end to LGBT discrimination the workplace. Currently, 29 states have no laws protecting gay or lesbian people from being fired, and 33 states offer no protection for transgender people. The bill got support from all of the Democrats on the committee, along with “yes” votes from Republican Senators Mark Kirk, Lisa Murkowski, and Orrin Hatch. The White House released a statement welcoming the bipartisan committee approval, and said, “We look forward to the full Senate’s consideration of [the] ENDA, and continue to urge the House to move forward on this bill that upholds American’s core values of fairness and equality.”

The Washington, D.C. city council is considering a plan to decriminalize marijuana in the district, and the measure stands a good chance of being approved. On Wednesday, Councilmen Tommy Wells and Marion Barry introduced the legislation, in hopes of changing D.C.’s drug policy, which has given the city the highest marijuana arrest rate in our nation. If the measure passes, people found with less than one ounce of pot would received a $100 ticket, instead of being hauled off to jail. Grant Smith, of the Drug Policy Alliance, explained that thousands of District residents have been bogged down with criminal records after being caught with small amounts of marijuana. He said, “That’s one of the underlying motivations for the council, to address this as a way to improve people’s lives who’ve been impacted by an arrest record needlessly.” The Metropolitan Police Department issued a statement objecting to the proposal. But, considering that 75 percent of D.C. voters support the decriminalization of marijuana, experts say that it’s only a matter of time before this change will happen.

And finally… It’s not uncommon for parents to let small children play with their smartphones, but it’s not every day that your one-year old accidentally buys a car. Portland resident Paul Stoute had recently been checking out “fixer-uppers” on an eBay app, when he let his daughter, Sorella, hold his phone. Much to his surprise, he received an email afterwords thanking him for his purchase of a 1962 Austin-Healy Sprite. The couple have since added password protection on their phones, and deleted any apps that could lead to unexpected purchases. Thankfully, the car only cost him $225, but it wasn’t exactly ready for a test drive. The girl’s mother, Christina, said that the car came with two engines – and they were both sitting in the back seat! Although he didn’t intend to purchase the car, Mr. Stoute decided to keep it, and fix it up as a 16th birthday present for his daughter. Considering the car’s shape, it may be a good thing he’s got 15 years to complete the project.

And that’s the way it is today — Thursday, July 11, 2013. I’m Thom Hartmann — on the news.

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

“The liar negates his own existence.” I researched this quote, determined to find its source after e-pal, musician, and fellow writer Jeff Costello sent it in response to something I told him. I found plenty of interesting websites, one generating a precious memory and something else, but I’ll tell you more about that later.

On another, I bumped into Jean-Paul Sartre and spent almost an hour with him–and Prof. Bob Zunjic’s analysis of Being and Nothingness. Here’s a sip to stimulate your thirst:

In contrast to the conscious intention to distort something Sartre points out that ‘a man does not lie about what he is Ignorant of; he does not lie when he spreads an error of which he himself is the dupe; he does not lie when he is mistaken.’ This is a strong indication that there is a difference between a lie and a mistake.

After that detour, I continued to excavate, substituting the words “reality” for “existence” and “deceiver” for “liar”–but was unsuccessful. So this week, I wrote Jeff and asked him. He replied that it’s an original and gave me permission to use it. I had already, many times, just not in an article.

“The liar negates his own existence.” Or hers. The importance of this truth is personal, in two realms that Venn significantly. One area is my own small life. The other is the vast, because it is the greater planetary/ecosystem-atic.

Each of us who receives a lie becomes a consumer of lies, affected by the deception of the liar, be it an individual or the decider class. In fact, those among the decider class, the Wall St. pirates and their political puppets, are affected too. They just can’t see the future, obscured as it is by the present gratification of uber-wealth.

“The liar negates his own existence.” In lying, he/she creates himself/herself, aided by the imagination and trust of the target that wants to believe. Perhaps, needs to believe.

The liar depends on this need and exploits it.

Again, the person you thought you knew is not real. That vessel is empty, nothing, POOF, gone. When something or someone spotlights the dishonesty, the liar’s exposed; the emperor has no clothes.

You can only miss what you thought was there. And wasn’t. But then you question your ability to assess character. You know if you’d been given all the information, the truth, you’d have made different decisions. You weren’t offered that choice.

Therein lies another violation.

And it’s far from over. Because despite annulment, the damage remains.

When George Bush manipulated public opinion, claiming repeatedly that Saddam Hussein had WMD and later admitted that there were no WMD, the damage of the lie persisted. Ask the displaced Iraqis or those who had no means to escape the invasion. Ask the maimed, the orphans, the war widows and widowers. Ask the troops and their families.

When Barack Obama speaks of “a commitment to peace, justice, equality, and compassion towards our fellow human beings,” his words don’t invalidate or reverse the effects of war, injustice, inequality, and indifference the world has witnessed throughout his tenure.

“The liar negates his own existence.” Understanding this is simple. Surviving the consequence isn’t.

So, back to that precious memory I mentioned. While attempting to reference the quote, I clicked a site that linked to Douglas R. Hofstadter’s book, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. It’s among my husband Charles’s collection of favorites. When I opened it, I found a love note I’d written to him on an index card. He must’ve used the note as a bookmark. I placed the book on my bedside table to begin soon. After I complete a challenge, something that poses a dilemma. Remind me to tell you about this sometime.

Missy Beattie has written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. She was an instructor of memoirs writing at Johns Hopkins’ Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Baltimore. Email: missybeat@gmail.com.

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

Open letter — Mr. President [Santos]: I would like to have you tell me to my face that I am a guerrilla. None of us are. We are workers, peasants who try to live as we can. It’s not easy to live here. Our crops produce only losses. We have to sell very cheap and can’t buy things (…) I would like to show you how we live, how the schools are, with children eating on the ground (…) All they care about here is oil…”

(signed) Margarita — on strike in Catatumbo

Peasants in Catatumbo, in Norte de Santander department, launched demonstrations and highway blockades on June 11, which have continued. Some 15,000 peasants have taken part. They were responding to a Colombian government decision to destroy coca plants they grow for the sake of economic survival. Massed soldiers and anti-riot police carried out violent repression. The government claims the peasants are associated with leftist insurgents, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Talks between government representatives and the peasant organization Ascamcat began on June 19 in Tibu municipality. They quickly ended when Ascamcat leaders and 200 Ascamcat observers walked out because Army and police generals were present. For three days, 7000 demonstrators enduring tear gas and rubber bullets tried to block troops, police, and military supplies from leaving the airport in Ocaña. Then on June 22 anti-riot police there shot and killed two peasants and wounded dozens. They killed two more on June 25.

Attempts to negotiate beginning on June 27 have moved no farther than arguments over moderators and what to do about the Ascamcat observers. Continuing military operations in Catatumbo may be the first in Colombia to be carried out under the auspices of controversial legislation about to become law. It centers on military jurisdiction and covers crimes committed by soldiers engaged in “armed conflict.”  There is concern about impunity: military courts gain jurisdiction, displacing civilian courts, and “international humanitarian law” would apply, no longer human rights law.

The vital interests of both sides relate primarily to land use. Agrarian issues were the first and presumably the most important of six agenda at peace talks underway in Cuba between the FARC and government. What happens in Catatumbo may serve as a stress test of sorts for any peace settlement.

Protesters are saying: approve a Peasant Reserve Zone (ZRC) for Catatumbo, let young coca plants grow, substitute legal crops gradually and collaboratively, provide subsidies for impoverished peasant families during a transition period, ban mining and industrial agriculture in any ZRC, and fund projects “prioritized by the Plan of Sustainable Development of the ZRC.” And honor human rights.

Support for ZRC’s has grown since they were authorized under Colombian law in 1994. Incora, the state agency responsible for ZRC’s, sees them as “an instrument of development for stabilizing the peasant economy, avoiding the expansion of the agricultural frontier, neutralizing the concentration of property, and enjoying benefits set up for peasant reserves within a framework of environmental sustainability.”

A ZRC in Norte de Santander would incorporate 925,000 acres. There are only six ZRC’s in Colombia now. FARC negotiators in Cuba propose that 59 be created. Says government critic Alfredo Molana: “The peasant reserve zones are the only way to stop land concentration in areas designated as rural.”  

The influence of Catatumbo’s geography, history, and economy is crucial to what is happening now. Norte de Santander is the third ranking coca producing department in Colombia. On the domestic market, farmers’ agricultural products are unable to compete with subsidized food products from the United States. State services like health care, nutritional support, schools, and provision for the elderly are rare. Multi-national corporations have extracted oil in the region for almost a century. Foreign and domestic partnerships have expanded African palm plantations in order to produce and export palm oil used as bio-fuel. Coal reserves in the region are larger than deposits mined at Cerrejon, the world’s largest open pit coal mine, in La Guajira department. Gold and uranium are mined and natural gas is produced. .

For paramilitaries and guerrillas, Catatumbo’s location next to Venezuela allows for coca marketing and cross — border sanctuaries. Colombian paramilitaries have carried out destabilization operations in Venezuela. Leftist insurgents operate throughout the region. Paramilitaries moved into Catatumbo in 1999 more to deal in coca and wage terror than to fight FARC insurgents.

They killed thousands of rural inhabitants. Murder and mayhem induced 100,000 peasants to abandon an estimated 2.5 million acres of land and move to cities. Aimed ostensibly at demobilizing paramilitaries, Colombia’s Justice and Peace Law took effect in 2005, and the paramilitaries’ presence diminished. So-called “criminal bands” took their place.

According to an observer, “Catatumbo is a zone of great wealth with biodiversity and big deposits of petroleum and coal. The Colombian state and the national, multinational, and transnational corporations used the paramilitary strategy to implement dynamics of violence and terror (…) all for removing peasants and indigenous people from their lands, which they appropriate.”

Irish writer Gearoid O Loingsigh notes that, “Economic plans for the region are the reasons behind the paramilitaries’ arrival. (…) National and international capital whether from multinational corporations or from capital disguised as international aid, as much from USAID as from the EU, is not going to stop. (…) But for peasants and communities, there’s no way out except for those national and international policies to end. [Without] an alternative to the paramilitary model, corporations and the regional, national, and international economic interests will return to drown social organizations in a bloodbath, like they did during these years.”

What happened during June, 2013 is a case in point. There was repression, a commentator reports, associated with “forcibly eradicating coca cultivation in order to impoverish peasants and displace them. They move as refugees to the cities or provide cheap labor for the multinational palm oil industry.”

Catatumbo’s tradition of resistance is long: eighty years ago peasants and oil workers united in a “Strike over Rice,” and El Tarra’s Coomultar cooperative, founded in 1978, undertook debt relief, economic development, and local government reorganization. In the 1980’s peasants backed an oil workers’ strike, the leftist Patriotic Union coalition elected mayors, and the Popular Civic Movement of Ocaña fought for social services and organized a strike for peasant rights. A decade later peasants marched as part of national mobilizations.  In Catatumbo, “a new concept of local power began to emerge through citizen participation in decisions shaping the destinies of communities.”    

Military repression targets such activism. According to Paula Martinez Cortes, the paramilitary onslaught in Catatumbo led to “destruction of and control over peasant, labor, and insurgent forms of social organization, which readied the territory for new projects of mining exploration and exploitation and mega projects to produce biodiesel.”

Colombia’s government, in the hands of a wealthy elite, serves U.S. interests, even as it subjugates poor, unarmed peasants. The U.S. government enjoys a system of proxy occupiers. There’s no need for U.S. war-makers or proxy ones. Funding for Colombia’s police and military must be provided, along with advisors and technical and intelligence support. But the inconvenience is minimal, and the U.S. public is generally unaware. The example of Colombia as a functioning U.S. agent in Latin America could well serve as a beacon light for U.S. interveners and accomplices similarly involved elsewhere in the world, at an earlier stage.

Additionally, peasants in Catatumbo are victims not just because they have to sell their labor cheap but because the rich and powerful see them as disposable. That requires a creative rescue strategy. Victimized peasants, of course, share the right of everyone to survival and lives of dignity. But to make good on that ideal, the existing reality of their situation must be attended to. That would be imperialist domination. The Catatumbo peasants have received declarations of solidarity from throughout Latin America, and even Europe. The ones with impact, however, are those pointing to the responsible party, who has to be named.

W. T. Whitney Jr. is a retired pediatrician and political journalist living in Maine.

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi (R) attends an international conference in the German city of Frankfurt to discuss Å“energy security” on July 11, 2013.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

In the fall of 1990 and into the early weeks of 1991 millions of people around the world protested the anticipated US-led war against Iraq. From Washington, DC to London; Berlin to Tokyo; Bangladesh to Gaza, massive protests were held in the months leading up to the January 16, 1991 attack. I myself attended one of the most emotionally powerful antiwar protests I had ever attended the day before the war began. It was in Olympia, WA. Over 3000 people (in a county with a population of around 100,000) attended a rally and then marched to the Washington State Capitol. We entered the building and took over the chambers for several hours. Some protesters spent the night and only left when they were removed by Washington State Police.

A similar scenario developed in the fall of 2002 and the early part of 2003.  While the Bush White House issued ultimatums to the Iraqi government and called them negotiations, Secretary of State Colin Powell presented a tableau of lies to the United Nations in a vain attempt to get its approval for the upcoming US invasion of Iraq.  Meanwhile, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and the generals who worked with them ferried hundreds of thousands of US military men, women and machines to Kuwait and other nations in the region. The Navy continued to move its ships into position. On February 15, 2003, over ten million people around the world protested, demanding and pleading that Washington and London back off from their invasion plans. As Brian Becker of ANSWER wrote me in an email: “The Iraq anti-war movement succeeded in doing something that was without precedent. We created a mass movement that brought millions of people into the streets — in the U.S. and around the world – prior rather than after the outbreak of a military conflict.” Like the protests in 1990 and 1991, these protests were also ignored. Becker continued, “Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld raced to invade Iraq because they knew that the only way to change the political calculus which had left them entirely isolated, in the political sense, was to change the facts on the ground in Iraq, so to speak.”

A month later the second massive US attack on Iraq began. That attack too was met with worldwide protest. Unfortunately, as the first days of the war became weeks, the protest diminished while the war forces monopolized the media and the battlefield. By May 1, 2003, George Bush was confident enough in his victory that he strode onto the USS Lincoln and told the world the military mission had been accomplished. Little did he and his advisors know that the war was actually in its infancy. Certain elements of the antiwar movement began to take notice, although most of its members and organizers had reluctantly surrendered their determination, acknowledging another victory for the US war machine.

Then, that machine got too big for its britches. It began the task of occupying the nation of Iraq, taking over the administration of its towns, villages and cities. A subservient regime of Iraqi technocrats and politicians, many of them recent exiles, joined with various clerics and tribal leaders to take over that element of power Washington was willing to share with them. Reconstruction money began to pour into the coffers of US and other non-Iraqi corporations in a cynical pretense at making it appear that Washington was truly interested in helping the Iraqis rebuild their nation after two US invasions and many years of sanctions. At first, most Iraqis kept their opinions to themselves, but when US forces rode into the town of Fallujah and fired on a protest of citizens who wanted a school returned that had been overtaken by US forces for their use. A few days later, four Blackwater (now called Academi) mercenaries were killed and hung from a bridge leading into Fallujah. This was the advent of the Iraqi resistance and the first indication to the overconfident US public that the Pentagon was not going to have as easy a time as they were used to. Fallujah became a center of resistance to the US occupation. In May 2004, the US military went crazy, going into the town, dropping white phosphorus and pretty much killing at random.

Although there were some in the antiwar movement who argued that the US military should remain in Iraq to “fix what it broke,” the growing Iraqi resistance convinced most within the antiwar camp that if they did not organize with the demand to bring the troops home immediately, the possibility of the war getting further out of hand loomed rather large. The two national networks in the US antiwar movement intensified their organizing, answering a grassroots demand for greater resistance to the war. A third group calling itself World Can’t Wait also formed and began working independently and with the other organizations. There was never unanimity amongst these groups and at times there was open enmity. The differences were political at their foundation, but were exacerbated by tactical and strategic disagreements, as well.

These differences were not new or specific to the antiwar movement of the 2000s. Like Joe Lombardo of United National Antiwar Coalition stated to me in an email, “I believe part of it dates back to the splits that existed between the National Peace Action Coalition and the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice back in the days of Vietnam and to divisions in the left since the time of the Russian revolution.” A more recent appearance of these differences can be found in the movement that developed in 1990-1991 before and during the first US invasion of Iraq. It manifested itself then between the two national networks: The Coalition to Stop U.S. Intervention in the Middle East and The National Campaign for Peace in the Middle East.  The organizers of the former included many members of the Workers World Party (WWP). The latter group represented more new left and liberal elements of the peace and anti-intervention movements; members of its leadership and rank and file were closely tied with the left side of the Democratic Party. In addition, there were non-affiliated student, anarchist and workers organizations that organized their own protests while also supporting the much larger protests organized by the national coalitions. As it turned out, the disagreements made a single antiwar protest impossible.

A similar breakdown of alliances appeared in 2002, as it became apparent the Bush White House was intent on invading Iraq. This time around the trend formerly represented by The Coalition to Stop U.S. Intervention in the Middle East was now represented by ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), a group formed by the International Action Center, which in turn was primarily composed of WWP members. The second trend was represented by United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ). The political differences between the two groups were sharper, especially since UFPJ – the group which had essentially replaced the National Campaign—was even more closely aligned with the left elements of the Democratic Party.

In 1990-1991, the Coalition to Stop U.S. Intervention in the Middle East opposed the US sanctions against Iraq. The National Campaign for Peace in the Middle East did not.  This was a crucial difference between the two organizations. In addition, the Coalition to Stop U.S. Intervention in the Middle East wished to tie the question of Palestine and the Israeli occupation to the issue of US war in the Middle East. The National Campaign for Peace in the Middle East did not. A similar set of differences appeared in the antiwar movement of the 2000s. Of course, UFPJ did not support the totally discredited idea of sanctions any longer, but there was enough opposition in the group to connecting the issue of the Israeli occupation to the antiwar position that it remained off the list of UFPJ demands for most of the decade. Despite the very real differences between these two organizations, they did manage to actually sponsor at least two national protests jointly.

The more interesting protests took place outside of either coalition and involved street blockading, sit-ins and occasional street battles. Although these protests were certainly attended by those who had organized and attended the mainstream marches and rallies, they represented an attempt to actually resist the war machine, not just oppose it. Perhaps the most militant and directed of these protests took place in Olympia and Tacoma, Washington where protesters blocked shipments of military Stryker vehicles bound for Iraq.

Another group included in the latter mix would be the antiwar groups composed of military veterans and active duty troops, Veterans for Peace (VFP) and the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). When I asked Patrick McCann, the recently elected national president of VFP about the role VFP and IVAW played in the movement against the war in Iraq, he responded, “Veterans for Peace is the riddle that the war-mongers can’t resolve.” Noting that, “when the Iraq war began, those opposing war there were in a significant minority. We were able to turn that around in a few short years.” In part, continued McCann, this occurred, because VFP helped to set a tone in the peace movement that does not blame the warrior for the war…. (Furthermore)Veterans for Peace (and groups like IVAW) helped to develop a support network for active-duty soldiers that want to resist illegal war and illegal orders.” Additionally, VFP refuses to fetishize the wearer of the uniform, unlike those that support the war and some liberal antiwar groups.

Yet, the antiwar movement did not achieve its absolute goal. The complete withdrawal of all US troops, mercenaries and agents has not happened. It is true that most US troops are out of Iraq, yet CIA, mercenaries and Special Forces still remain. In the US war in Afghanistan, the war continues to chug along, occasionally taking the lives of US soldiers and Marines and more frequently taking the lives of Afghans. In addition, US Special Forces, CIA mercenaries and drones continue to kill at will around the globe.

Why and how? How effective was the antiwar movement of the 2000s in limiting (if not ending) the US war in Iraq? Why did it fail in preventing the war itself and why did it not end it more quickly? The amount of space allowed for this article can only provide some basic insights into these questions. Yet, these insights should be the beginning of a larger effort to examine and learn from the experience of that movement.

First and foremost, the closeness of some members of the larger coalition, UFPJ, to the Democratic Party essentially insured that anti-imperialist elements within the antiwar movement would ultimately be marginalized. Although ANSWER’s analysis was (and is) more consistently anti-imperialist, it has its own problems, especially in its appeal to many in the antiwar left and its tendency to avoid talking about the excesses of authoritarian leaders like Saddam Hussein. In my opinion, it is virtually impossible to oppose the machinery of US imperialism without an anti-imperialist understanding of the US role in the world. Any other approach limits the success and the goals of any antiwar movement. This is exactly what happened. The presence of the Democratic Party in the antiwar movement and its ability to siphon off so many activists into various politician and single-issue campaigns pretty much guaranteed the election of a Democrat in 2008; a Democrat who would tone down the US wars while maintaining Washington’s quest for world domination.

Another manifestation of the drawbacks in being so closely aligned with a major political party (Democrats) is that once that party is in power, any movement associated with it is almost certain to fizzle out. As Debra Sweet of World Can’t Wait wrote in an email, “The crowning blow to the mass movement against the wars was that the Bush regime was driven out – by a mass movement created from the top to support a president whose mission was to save the system, restore US credibility internationally, speak the language of multiculturalism, while essentially carrying out the program of empire as commander in chief.” Barack Obama is the current face of this charade.

From the moment the US invaded Afghanistan, the opposition to that action has been muted. Besides the anti-imperialists of the left and right most people in the US have at the least, tacitly supported the endeavor. Once again, the fact that it was not opposed by most of the US antiwar movement until late in the game is evidence of where the lack of an anti-imperialist understanding can lead. The US presence in Afghanistan, beginning at the very latest in the 1970s with US support of the anti-Soviet mujahedin, was never about freedom for the Afghan people or about capturing Osama bin Laden. It was always about extending the US presence into the region. So is the ongoing support for the regimes in Pakistan, no matter how repressive and anti-democratic they may be.

There are those on the left who consider an overtly anti-imperialist position to be an ultra-left position. My understanding is that while it may be a radical position (as in radical means going to the root of the problem), it is not ultra-left. Indeed, given the overtly imperialist nature of US foreign policy, any other approach to opposing US military actions is certain to be piecemeal and rarely successful. If we do not understand the problem, then how can we address it correctly? A tangent of this is the quandary some who oppose the war but not the warriors face. In many cases, this position creates a situation where antiwar protesters almost fetishize the soldier, thereby removing the soldier’s own agency. To the credit of VFP and IVAW, they seem to understand this possibility and work with veterans and the non-military public in trying to address this issue. Perhaps the most public of these efforts were the 2008 Winter Soldier hearings in the Washington, DC area. Not only did these hearings reveal the atrocities that made up the Iraq and Afghan wars; they also provided the warriors with one means to deal with their involvement.

After the large protests of January 2007, the antiwar movement fragmented further. ANSWER organized a couple more marches on the Pentagon that focused on the link between war and poverty, among other things. Other groups organized locally. Thousands of regular folks opposed to the war joined US presidential campaigns, with many of them ultimately helping Barack Obama win the White House in November 2008. The pace of the US-fueled sectarian conflict and death squad murders inside Iraq slowed and fewer US troops and Marines saw the deserts of Iraq. In fact, many were being re-assigned to Afghanistan. By 2010, relatively few US troops remained in Iraq.

In June 2010, I received an email inviting me to a conference in Albany, NY. The purpose of the conference was to form a new antiwar network in the United States. While I did not attend the conference, I did write about it. Originally intended as an antidote to the lethargy and recriminations that had set in to the two primary national organizations, the United National Antiwar Conference (UNAC) was composed of pacifist, religious, political, left, and anti-imperialist organizations and individuals hoping to resolve the split. As Joe Lombardo said to me, “Many of us could not accept that, in the belly of the beast, in the heart of imperialism, there was no serious opposition to the U.S. war policies. Additionally, it was right around the time of the first Gaza flotilla and we felt that the antiwar movement could no longer take an agnostic position on Palestine. So UNAC took a strong position in support of Palestinian rights. This caused a big debate and some people left UNAC over this debate…. At the end of our conference we held a march through the streets of Albany to a local mosque that had the Imam and other members attacked through FBI dirty tricks. We saw this as a statement that the antiwar movement was coming to support the Muslims against these attacks.” The Islamophobia aspect of the wars on Islamic nations had largely been ignored by most of the United States. UNAC continues to organize and debate around these and related issues. However, according to some attendees, the occasional conferences held by the organization are often consumed with irrelevant nitpicking amongst leftist groups.

Meanwhile, the masses of people that were in the streets during the bulk of the US war in Iraq are no longer there, despite the ongoing drone war and the growing presence of US influence in the Syrian civil war. In part this is due to the economic concerns most of us have in the wake of the market crash; the subsequent bailouts and the growing trend towards austerity measures being enforced across the planet. However, some of the apparent apathy is related to the deceptively antiseptic appearance of drone warfare. The way drone attacks are presented to the US public makes it appear that there is very little damage, collateral or otherwise. As far as most people are concerned, only the “bad guys” are being killed. This perception of drone warfare alone separates the death and destruction of warfare even further from those in whose name it is being waged. Of course, as eyewitness reports from residents and eyewitnesses make clear, drone strikes are not clean and often intentionally target first responders and civilians.

When I asked World Can’t Wait’s Debra Sweet how to respond to this “new” warfare, she responded with a challenge. “There is no substitute for mass mobilization in the streets; it’s more important and mood-changing than anything else. But to get that takes getting to the youth, many of whom remember nothing at all pre-Bush; their world is one of permanent war with no borders.” Sweet’s last phrase is chilling on its own. The implications of it are even more so. For those who oppose any war involving US forces the task is clear. The means toward accomplishing the task, however, remain open for discussion.

Ron Jacobs is the author of the just released novel All the Sinners, Saints. He is also the author of The Way the Wind Blew: a History of the Weather Underground and Short Order Frame Up and The Co-Conspirator’s Tale. Jacobs’ essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch’s collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His third novel All the Sinners Saints is a companion to the previous two and is due out in April 2013.  He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. He can be reached at: ronj1955@gmail.com.

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

Republished with permission from: Stephen Lendman

Egyptian society finds itself at a crossroads. The violence unleashed in recent days appears to be just the beginning and the repercussions for the entire region are apparent to all.

To better understand what is currently happening it is important to place the political events in their proper social and economic context. Only an analysis of the class nature of this conflict will permit progressive forces both in Egypt and in other Middle Eastern societies to derive the necessary political lessons from the unfolding events.

In the face of the political vacuum created by three decades of autocratic rule under Mubarak, only the Muslim Brotherhood was capable of organizing a disciplined response to his abrupt overthrow. Various decades of organizing mutual aide societies and social service networks among the poor, at times with the tacit approval of what was otherwise a negligent regime, gave popular legitimacy to the Brotherhood. Its followers were recruited from the disaffected within the margins of society. This was the ample social base from which the Freedom and Justice Party was organized in January of 2011. The result was a narrow victory in the 2012 elections and control over the parliament.

Notwithstanding, it is important to examine the class origins of the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership to better understand its ideology as well as the crux of its conflict with the armed forces on the one hand, and with the opposition on the other. The leaders of the Brotherhood come from the Egyptian petty bourgeoisie. More specifically, their leadership is composed of elements from the liberal professions and small-scale industrialists that developed during the waning days of British domination. (In reality, the British protectorate lasted until 1952.) In the heart of the Brotherhood’s leadership one will find engineers, doctors and local capitalists with interests in manufacturing whose operations often employ hundreds of workers. In sum, the power of this group is the result of an alliance between small capital and the declassed elements of society they have been able to mobilize.

The complex character of social life in the Middle East often results in a confluence of anti-imperialist rhetoric and religious affirmation. So called “political Islam” is the logical form nationalism takes in societies in which all factions of the ruling class, along with the petty bourgeoisie, tend to see religion as the most effective ideological tool to complement the brutal repression of the working masses. Beyond all of its religious rhetoric and moralizing declamations, the economic program of the Muslim Brotherhood is nothing more than an attempt to break the stronghold of larger-scale, local capitalist interests concentrated in the Egyptian State (more specifically within the armed forces) and aligned to international capital. Like all small-scale capitalists suffocated by monopoly, they demand an opening of the market and an end to state control held by elements with which they have conflict. They perceive this state monopoly to be buttressed by foreign interests. As such, they are the representatives of reactionary small capital whose economic nationalism embraces free markets. A peculiar combination indeed!

The upper echelons of the Egyptian army have managed state power to accumulate great quantities of capital in the areas of construction, manufacturing, service industries, etc. The practice of using the neocolonial State as an instrument to accumulate capital is commonplace. The legacy of Nasser lay in developing the mechanisms by which the armed forces could serve as the institutional framework for this capital accumulation. Both Sadat and Mubarak deepened this practice. Through the Ministry of Military Production, the military directors of state enterprises have been able to exploit the labor of hundreds of thousands of workers to whom they pay abysmally low wages to ensure the maximum extraction of surplus value. The ties between the upper crust of the military and both the public sector and private enterprises are vast and well known. Indeed, the extent of wealth accumulated by this militarist clique is so great that they were recently able to function as financiers to the non-militarized sectors of the State. It is important to note, however, that its role as financier has not reached the point at which it can negate the power of regional “donors” (e.g. Qatar, Saudi Arabia) or the pernicious influence of the IMF.

As such, the upper crust of the military, buttressed by $1.3 billion in US military aid (a sum only surpassed by that received by the imperialist puppet state of Israel), represents big, native capital in the Egyptian context. It is a situation reminiscent of the corporatist state under Mussolini, which saw a complete fusion of big business and the State. The idea that the armed forces exist “above” class conflicts as the representatives of the nation is not only characteristic of petty bourgeois reaction, it forms the ideological basis of all reactionary regimes. What big, Egyptian capital has done is revive the remnants of this petty bourgeois demagogy as a distraction. Their short-term political strategy consists of recruiting a faction of the opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood capable of lulling the radicalized masses.

Let us see how and why.

The Egyptian “opposition” is composed of a heterogeneous mass. It could not be otherwise given the history of brutal repression to which the majority has been subjected. On the one hand we find a liberal faction of this opposition composed of another sector of the petty bourgeois that is “enlightened” and “very democratic.” Groups such as Tamorad, the Constitutional Party, etc. that have entered the National Salvation Front highlight their secularism and promote a vision of modernity. They are classic liberals and Mohamed ElBaradei is their best-known representative. Educated in the US and Europe, very cosmopolitan, he seems to be the preference of the West.

The tacit alliance between this liberal faction and the army is based on demagogy on the one hand and the quest to eliminate a rival on the other. It is certainly a most precarious alliance but it serves for the moment the logic and political objectives of both sides. For the militarists, the immediate political objective consists in propping up a political force sufficiently credible to calm the discontent for the moment without interfering with either its economic interests or its relations with the West. Their immediate target is small capital, which has dared to challenge its monopoly from parliament and the non-militarized apparatuses of the State. They are keenly aware, however, that the greater threat to their power comes from below. The liberals achieve an opportunity to administer the State in exchange for a pledge to not interfere with the economic interests of the military or international finance capital. Their prize consists of the crumbs that are left to them.

There is another important faction of the opposition composed of workers, only some of which are organized, and the radicalized youth. They are the true catalysts of the processes unleashed even if they may lack organizational coherence for the moment. The mobilization of this progressive force is a popular and spontaneous response to the perpetual crisis that afflicts the Egyptian economy; an economy that is oriented towards exports in which the recent and abrupt changes in trade relations (It is interesting to note that since the ascension of the Muslim Brotherhood agricultural imports e.g. wheat, corn, from the United States to Egypt have been reduced to zero.) have aggravated an already precarious problem of unemployment and high consumer prices. They have joined the National Salvation Front to spread their vision of the future, which combines political freedom and a call to end extreme social and economic inequity. Some form part of the trade union movement, which has a long history of arduous battles, often under conditions of illegality. Others form part of radicalized student circles with a degree of socialist consciousness.

The challenge that this progressive faction of the opposition has is how to assert its ideological and organizational independence. The tensions between the different factions within the National Salvation Front are evident. It would seem that at the moment, the balance of forces favors the liberal faction as the hegemonic group within the opposition. Progressive groups run the risk of ending up consumed by the liberal rhetoric intended to disarm them both ideologically and organizationally, or breaking with the liberal opposition before being able to take their message of radical transformation to the whole society sufficiently deep enough to penetrate its collective conscience. Isolating themselves completely could leave them vulnerable to the tanks and helicopters of the US-backed militarists without even the slightest politico-military preparation.

It seems that the true progressives in Egypt will have to be content playing second fiddle in the current political contest. Their struggle for the moment will be to conquer the political space necessary to reinforce their organizational structures and carry out a campaign of systematic and coherent agitation among the millions of discontents. If they are able to seize this moment to conquer a true opening of the political space as well as to articular a clear and coherent program it will be a step forward.

For the moment the blood running in the streets is that of the poor that the Brotherhood has mobilized in its interests. While this remains the case, the liberals will continue to be content with “monitoring” the situation. Tomorrow, just as yesterday, those same cannons will be pointed at the workers and the progressive youth. The question remains: Will they be prepared?

Carlos Borrero is a New York based writer.

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

Republished with permission from: Stephen Lendman

July 10, 2013
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Congratulations CEOs! You’ve been having a great time of it. Salaries are up, and up in a major way. The Economic Policy Institute says you brought home an average $14.1m in 2012. The New York Times, looking at slightly different numbers, claims the news is even better, saying the median number is $15.1m. That’s a 16% increase in one year.

As for the rest of us … well, about that.

The money for our bosses has to come from somewhere, doesn’t it? Here’s one place it likely originated: us.

According to the Department of Labor Statistics, hourly wages plunged by a record-breaking 3.8% in the first quarter of 2013.

These are more than just numbers. This pay disparity is having an increasingly corrosive effect, leaving us governed by and lectured to by an elite that seems out-of-touch with the lives of everyone else.

No wonder you can turn on Bloomberg Radio, like I did last week, and hear this advice: flying on a private jet was extolled as a budget-conscious option for parties of ten or more who were otherwise planning to fly first-class. According to the good folks at XOJET, if the plane is $20,000 for the trip and the average first class ticket about $2,000 … well, you do the math!

Millennials hanging around their parents’ basement, looking for a job online, can remember that “today is the golden age of private jets,” as I heard the guest say in that segment. The economics are unbeatable: students can rent a jet for the day for less than their total student debt bill, which averages about $27,000.

Besides, there are other budget benefits too. Just listen to Suze Orman who, when tough times came after the 2008 crash, told Forbes she was cutting back by only flying private planes for work purposes, using commercial airliner Jet Blue for personal travel. “I don’t care about money,” she said.

This, I admit, might be a sore point with me. I’m flying with my poodle Katiegirl to Los Angeles this week, where my husband is working for the next several weeks. I’d love a private jet, or even just a bit of leg-room where I am not risking stomping my poodle if I attempt to put my feet on the ground, but, hey, I’m paying $400, including a $100 pet fee.

What do I expect for that? A meal? That’s an additional $7 on Virgin America for our preferred plate with BumbleBee lemon pepper tuna. My idea of a budget cut: Katiegirl and I can share dinner. She’s a prodigious beggar, especially when fish, cheese or steak is involved. (OK, poodle digression over).

More examples from the files of the out-of-touch: resolutely cheerful headlines like ” Perhaps the sequester wasn’t so bad after all” or ” Sequestration was a dud.”

Well, maybe that’s true if you are an employed blogger, or a CEO. If you’re a member of Congress you could promptly pass legislation putting stop to your own inconvenience, even as the cutbacks resulted in furloughs for air traffic controllers and airport delays for all passengers including those in cattle/coach, and those flying private jets.

Progress it’s not. Those who have lost their jobs are getting by with less — 16% less, in Ohio, for example, thanks to sequestration-imposed cuts on unemployment checks. But I’m sure they don’t think it’s so bad, now that they can fly without furlough-caused delays.

Or let’s take a minute to discuss the latest in student loans. Rates on government-subsidized loans doubled on July 1 to 6.8%, as Washington pols bickered and dithered over how to get a grip on ballooning student debt, which now stands around $1tn. If you want to know one reason why our economy seems forever stuck at just above stall speed, think about the impact of that debt on the twentysomethings who need to pay it all back.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

July 11, 2013
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With the rising number of people in America– now nearly one in five–who have no religious affiliation at all, more people are asking questions about who exactly these unbelievers are. Not all of them identify as atheist or agnostic or a non-believer, but plenty do, and while there are many people offering to defend this particular community, few are willing to speak for them.

After all, unlike religious believers, non-believers have no authorities, no hierarchies, no theology, nothing for us to look at to determine exactly who these people are. In addition, the public image of atheists, who are a diverse group in reality, is being shaped by a handful of vocal white men–Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens being the most famous–who, while well-respected in the atheist community, are not really representative.

Because of this, researchers at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga decided to poll and interview non-believers to find out what kind of people abandon religious faith and why. Based on this research, the project authors were able to divide non-believers into six basic categories, some of which may surprise you.

First things first: While atheists have a public image of being dogmatic and belligerent–an image that famous atheists like Bill Maher only end up reinforcing–researchers found that to absolutely not be true. Only 15 percent of non-believers even fit in the category of those who actively seek out religious people to argue with, and the subset that are dogmatic about it are probably even smaller than that. But that doesn’t mean that the majority of non-believers are just sitting around, twiddling their thumbs and not letting atheism affect their worldview. On the contrary, researchers found that the majority of non-believers take some kind of action in the world to promote humanism, atheism or secularism. Here is a breakdown of the types.

1. Intellectual Atheist/Agnostic. By far, the most common kind of non-believer, at nearly 38 percent. This group enjoys intellectual discourse, and while they’re often very certain about their beliefs, they’re not belligerent about it. These types often get mistaken for dogmatic atheists, however, because they have a tendency to join skeptic’s groups or otherwise find avenues to discuss non-belief with others. However, as researchers note, these non-believers “associate with fellow intellectuals regardless of the other’s ontological position,” so long as their friends “versed and educated on various issues of science, philosophy, ‘rational’ theology, and common socio-political religious dialog.” They like debating religion, but aren’t particularly interested in chasing down believers to give them a hard time.

2. Activist. This group also gets commonly accused of being dogmatic, but like the intellectual atheist, while they’re firm in their beliefs, they’re intellectually flexible and don’t prioritize attacking believers. Instead, they are motivated by a strong sense of humanist values to make change in the world, often making related issues–such as feminism, gay rights, or the environment–a priority over simply advocating atheism. This group also advocates for a better, more egalitarian atheist community, according to researchers: “They seek to be both vocal and proactive regarding current issues in the atheist and/or agnostic socio-political sphere.” Because of this, they unfortunately attract a lot of abuse from a small but vocal minority of atheists who disapprove of linking secularism with larger social justice issues, but they do have the numbers on their side. They are the second biggest sub-category of non-believers, making up 23 percent of non-believers.

3. Seeker-Agnostic. This group, which makes up 7.6 percent of non-believers, are unlikely to be as critical of religion as most other groups. They prioritize not-knowingness. If you ever come across people saying, “I don’t know, but neither do you!” regarding religious belief, you’re dealing with a seeker-agnostic. They don’t really believe in anything, but they are uncomfortable committing to non-belief completely. They routinely get accused of intellectual cowardice by atheists, but researchers defend them, saying, “For the Seeker-Agnostic, uncertainty is embraced.”

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

July 11, 2013
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If your friends ever give you a hard time because of your peculiar eating, just point them to Nicolas Cage. In 2010 the actor revealed that he choses his noms in a unique way. From the Guardian:

“I actually choose the way I eat according to the way animals have sex. I think fish are very dignified with sex. So are birds. But pigs, not so much. So I don’t eat pig meat or things like that. I eat fish and fowl.”

It’s an odd criteria. At any rate, none of the animals below will ever have to worry about ending up in Mr. Cage’s crockpot because they have some seriously strange nookie. Enjoy this glimpse into some of the weirdest sex in the animal kingdom.

1. I’ll Melt With You

Some anglerfish live in the deepest, darkest depths of the ocean and if you looked like this, you might want to hide out down there too. They lure prey by means of a rod that juts out of their heads and attracts other fish, like a fishing lure. In some species, says Animal Planet, that lure contains luminescent bacteria, a light that tempts gullible creatures to their doom. What a stunning feat of evolution. And yet the mating ritual of the deep sea angler fish makes that look like a card trick.

The male anglerfish is tiny compared to the female. He’s born with only the most elemental of body systems, but he can find a female anywhere because she emits a pheromone trail that his keen olfactory organ is able to track. He latches onto her with his teeth which fuse to her body and then he begins to melt into her–disintegrating and integrating with her body, absorbing into her until all that’s left of him are his reproductive organs, which she can use to fertilize her eggs when she’s ready. It’s a codependent’s wet dream. In fact, in this Animal Planet animation of the process they say scientists used to think the little nubbins jutting out of the side of the deep sea anglerfish female were extra fins. Actually, they are male anglerfish, fused into her skin.

2. Urine like Flynn

You’d think the quills– up to 30,000 of them–would make every act of porcupine sex like an Evel Knievel stunt. The weird thing is that the quills aren’t the weird thing.

First of all, the female is only sexually receptive 8-12 hours a year. Hours. A year. Tiny window. Like the one Luke Skywalker had to blow up the Death Star. And yet female porcupines have a 90% reproductive success rate, reports  Slate’s Jason Bittel. Hard to believe, considering how it all begins. Both Bittel and Cecil Adams of the Straight Dope refer to porcupine expert Uldiz Roze, and Adams quotes directly from Roze’s book North American Porcupine: 

“The male approaches on his hind legs and tail, grunting in a low tone. His penis springs erect. He then becomes a urine cannon, squirting high-pressure jets of urine at the female. Everything suggests the urine is fired by ejaculation, not released by normal bladder pressure….In less than a minute, a female may be thoroughly wetted from nose to tail.”

Bittel says this jet can shoot about 6 feet. Sometimes it just pisses her off to get pissed on. Sometimes, though, she evidently finds it sexy (women!). If she’s ready to accept the male, she lifts her tail and the male rests his hands on the un-quilled underside of said tail and gets down to one to five minutes of porcupette-producing business.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

July 11, 2013
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On March 17, 2011, four Hellfire missiles, fired from a U.S. drone, slammed into a bus depot in the town of Datta Khel in Pakistan’s Waziristan border region. An estimated 42 peoplewere killed. It was just another day in America’s so-called war on terror. To most Americans the strike was likely only a one-line blip on the evening news, if they even heard about it at all.

But what really happened that day? Who were those 42 people who were killed, and what were they doing? And what effect did the strike have? Did it make us safer? These are the questions raised, and answered, in a must-watch new video just released by Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Foundation.

The attack was what has come to be called a “signature strike.” This is when the CIA or the military makes the decision to fire based not on who the targets are but on whether they are exhibiting suspicious patterns of behavior thought to be “signatures” of terrorists (as seen on video from the drone). Given that the CIA is killing people it’s never identified based on their behavior, one would assume a certain rigor has gone into defining the criteria for the kinds of behavior that get one killed.

So what’s a signature behavior? “The definition is a male between the ages of 20 and 40,” former ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter told the Daily Beast’s Tara McKelvey. “My feeling is one man’s combatant is another man’s — well, a chump who went to a meeting.” The New York Times quoted a senior State Department official as saying that when the CIA sees “three guys doing jumping jacks,” the agency thinks it is a terrorist training camp.

That day in Datta Khel, the signature behavior was a meeting, or “jirga,” which is an assembly of tribal elders who convene to settle a local dispute. In this case, a conflict over a chromite mine was being resolved. And, in fact, the elders had informed the Pakistani army about the meeting 10 days in advance. “So this was an open, public event that pretty much everyone in the community and surrounding area knew about,” says Stanford law professor James Cavallaro in the video.

Pretty much everyone in the community and surrounding area. But not U.S. intelligence. Or the head of the CIA. Or the president. Or the guy in Virginia or Nevada or some other undisclosed location pressing the button on the drone controller.

And so, almost all the tribal elders of the area were killed by the drone missiles. Akbar Ahmed is a retired Pakistani ambassador to the UK and now a professor at American University. “It’s feeding into the sense that no one is safe, nowhere is safe, nothing is safe,” he says in the video. “Even a jirga, the most cherished, the most treasured institution of the tribal areas. So we cannot even sit down and resolve an issue — that is not safe anymore.” As professor Cavallaro put it, “the loss of 40 leaders on a single day is devastating for that community.”

And far from building stability in places like Pakistan, something the administration talks a lot about, in fact the strike actually removed, in one fell swoop, the most stabilizing forces in an entire community.

Jalal Manzar Khail was at his nearby home that day and remembers the attack, which also claimed four of his cousins. Khail’s six-year-old son was later afraid — not unreasonably — to sleep in their house. “We cannot go home,” Khail recounts his son saying. “We have to spend the night in the tree.” Khail adds, “Convey my message to Americans: The CIA and America have to stop … they’re just creating more enemies and this will last for hundreds of years.”

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

July 11, 2013
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After-school specials and made-for-TV movies about the dangers of drug use originated in the early ’70s, but these message-driven flicks hit their peak in the ’80s, during the “Just Say No” era of President Reagan. Basic cable networks churned out these movies designed to teach kids valuable lessons about drugs and sex, while networks launched a series of after-school specials centered around the theme. While the results were high on anti-drug propaganda, they were notably low on production values and acting quality. Still, the franchise did launch the careers of several prominent names–while providing a final big payday for some fading stars.

Stoned (1980)

In the first several of anti-drug movies featuring Scott Baio, he plays the role of awkward high school freshman Jack Melon. He initially refuses a joint offer from the school’s reputed pothead and dealer Teddy (Jeffrey Frichner), but eventually tries it and the two strike up a friendship. Jack’s pot use quickly leads to a deteriorating relationship with his brother older Mike (Vincent Bufano), his new classmate Felicity (Largo Woodruff) rejecting his advances and his Spanish teacher Mr. David (John Herzfeld) calling him out during a lecture for being stoned. Jack smokes a joint prior to a lake outing with Mike and accidentally whacks his older brother with an oar while rowing, leading to Mike waking up in the hospital with a broken nose and no memory of what happened. When their father demands to know the details, Mike tells him that he smacked into a tree trunk after swimming ahead of the boat and that Jack saved his life. The incident turns Jack off smoking pot and (of course!) he ends up winning back Felicity as soon as his habit is kicked.

One Too Many (1985)

Unlike many after-school drug specials which featured Hollywood stars before they made it big, this one starred Val Kilmer post- Top Secret and Michelle Pfeiffer post- Grease 2 and Scarface. Unfortunately, the plot was hardly A-list worthy. In a flashback montage, Pfeiffer plays the role of Annie, a nerdy high school student whose boyfriend Eric (Kilmer) is a major drinker. Eric starts a fight with Annie’s best friend Beth (Mare Winningham) one night while drinking and the couple leave. Although both have been booze, Annie has drunk somewhat less, and insists that Eric give her his keys so that she can drive them home. When Beth runs out into the road to stop them, Annie accidentally smashes into her with his car and kills her. Because she was legally drunk at the time, Annie is sent to juvenile hall, facing a potential vehicular manslaughter charge.

The Boy Who Drank Too Much (1980)

Based on a novel of the same name by Shep Greene, Scott Baio continued his anti-drug propaganda career by playing the role of a likable high school hockey player, Buff Saunders, who drinks excessively to escape his damaged home life. His father (Don Murray) is also an alcoholic and absent when Buff is eventually rushed to the hospital for alcohol poisoning. Buff eventually enters rehab in order not to lose his position on the team, and his straight-laced hockey teammate Billy Carpenter (Lance Kerwin) commits to helping him stay clean and sober. Billy’s grades start to drop due to his efforts in helping Buff, who leaves the hospital when his friend misses one meeting because it’s his birthday, but the hockey star  ultimately manages to stay on the wagon.

The Fourth Man (1990) (7 minutes in)

Playing up the statistic at the time that seven percent or more of all high school students are on steroids, the film features Joey (Peter Billingsley), a non-athletic bookworm whose father (Tim Rossovich) is a former football hero. Joey’s father raves over the athletic accomplishments of his best friend Steve (Vince Vaughn), so he tries out for the high school track team in an effort to win his father’s approval. When diet and exercise don’t yield quick results, a sports equipment store employee recommends steroids for Joey. Although his track results begin to improve drastically, Joey begins to exhibit episodes of roid rage and his grades fall drastically. Eventually, a near-fatal collapse reveals Joey’s addiction to steroids and his family intervenes to help him.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

July 11, 2013
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When audiences see actor Michael B. Jordan get pulled off the BART train in “ Fruitvale Station,” they’ll see the dramatized last moments of Oscar Grant’s life, filmed at the actual station where BART police officer Johannes Mehserle killed him on New Year’s Eve 2009. The feature film premieres nationally on July 12 to plenty of early buzz and rave reviews for director Ryan Coogler’s debut effort, and for performances from actors like Jordan and Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer, who plays Grant’s mother. But for many in the Bay Area who lived through Grant’s death and the national outrage that followed, the real-life sets will be just as arresting.

Fruitvale Station became a landmark in the community almost immediately after Mehserle gunned Grant down there. Situated in the middle of a bustling Latino immigrant neighborhood, Fruitvale is a popular starting point for protests and marches for a range of issues. But it will forever be tied to Grant’s death. “Anyone in our community can point to other locations where somebody was killed or brutalized by the police,” says Dereca Blackmon, an organizer and co-founder of the Coalition Against Police Executions, which was formed after Grant’s death. “What Fruitvale actually memorializes is, ‘Here is where a cop was actually caught and held accountable.’ “

The film opens with the cell phone footage that lit up the Internet in the days after Grant was killed. Fruitvale’s cement walls and faded beams are there in the grainy cell phone vidoes. So are the glass windows looking out onto the street below, turned into mirrors in the night; the staggered brown tile floors; the fluorescent lighting and cream interior walls of the BART train. Today many people wait for their trains exactly in the spot where Grant was killed. And that same cement wall and those same dark windows are there in the movie, when Grant and his friends and Mehserle are replaced by actors.

It was New Year’s Eve 2009 and Grant and his friends were on their way back to the East Bay from San Francisco. They’d taken public transit on his mom’s suggestion, for safety. Along the ride a fight broke out on the train. At Fruitvale BART, transit police officers pulled Grant and his friends off the car while the train, packed with New Year’s Eve revelers, idled with its doors open. Mehserle and other transit police officers were responsible for calming down the situation, but did exactly the opposite. After an officer named Tony Pirone kneed Grant and called him “a bitch ass n––-,” Pirone and Mehserle moved to handcuff him–Pirone by pushing his knee down on top of Grant’s neck. Mehserle stood, pulled his Sig Sauer P226 from its holster, and shot Grant in the back. Grant was lying face down on the platform. He was just 22 years old.

All of this was caught on video and uploaded to YouTube. It shook up the country. Police violence is nothing new for black and brown communities, but something was different this time. Mehserle shot an unarmed Grant at point blank range, while he was laying on his stomach. The cell phone videos provided unequivocal proof of the kind of police brutality that is an all too regular part of life for many young men of color.

In the days following Grant’s death Davey D, host of Hard Knock Radio on KPFA in the Bay Area says he remembered seeing people in Oakland crying openly. “People were so angry and so frustrated and so in disbelief that this was happening,” says Davey D. “You could see the look of pain in people’s faces.” Grant was killed three weeks before President Obama was first inaugurated, and the nation’s glee over electing its first black president was still palpable. There was a sense that justice would be swift, the radio journalist recalls. So after the shooting happened and Obama never addressed it, and the Department of Justice’s inquiry ultimately went nowhere, the letdown was especially bitter.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

July 11, 2013
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More than 200 workers at the Zhongji Pile factory in Huizhou, Guangdong Province, surrounded the company’s office building June 30. They demanded that the five executives inside pay them.

The workers said Zhongji, which makes concrete pilings for bridges, at first promised to pay them at least RMB 4500 per month (about $734 in U.S. dollars). But later their work hours were cut back because of the recession, and for the last three months they have not been paid.

What’s worse, the administrators declared they would sell the factory without the workers’ permission. This drove them to take action.

The workers blocked the main entrance to the building with desks and guarded the building in groups. They said they would not let the executives go unless they paid them.

The five executives were trapped in an office on the fifth floor. They tried many methods to escape, none of them successful. They even tried to attack the government officials who came to investigate, in order to provoke the police to take them away.

They viciously told the officials and journalists that the workers had ill-treated them, cut the water and electricity, and denied them food. In reality, the supplies of water, electricity, meals, and cold air were all right. The bosses were just not free to leave.

The government sent more officials to placate the workers and try to get both sides to an agreement, and the bosses were set free July 3 while the two sides negotiated.

It is not the first “kidnapping” this year. At almost the same time, on June 21 in Beijing, workers from SMS Medical Apparatus used the same strategy on their American boss.

The boss, named Stanis, owed all the workers two months’ salary and tried to move the factory to Bangladesh. So the workers trapped him for four days until he gave up. He promised to pay them and said he would not move the factory away.

In recent years more and more workers in China are choosing to fight. Some strikes are large in scale and well-organized, even though workers don’t have a union. But most are small like those described here, where the workers try to use as many “strange” tactics as they can–very different from strikes in other nations.

Han Tang works with a worker center in Guangdong Province. He adds, “I’d like to tell our friends all over the world that the Chinese workers are always with them, though they may not have many words.”

– See more at: http://www.labornotes.org/2013/07/chinese-workers-kidnap-factory-executi…

More than 200 workers at the Zhongji Pile factory in Huizhou, Guangdong Province, surrounded the company’s office building June 30. They demanded that the five executives inside pay them.

The workers said Zhongji, which makes concrete pilings for bridges, at first promised to pay them at least RMB 4500 per month (about $734 in U.S. dollars). But later their work hours were cut back because of the recession, and for the last three months they have not been paid.

What’s worse, the administrators declared they would sell the factory without the workers’ permission. This drove them to take action.

The workers blocked the main entrance to the building with desks and guarded the building in groups. They said they would not let the executives go unless they paid them.

The five executives were trapped in an office on the fifth floor. They tried many methods to escape, none of them successful. They even tried to attack the government officials who came to investigate, in order to provoke the police to take them away.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

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John Kiriakou, the former CIA officer who blew the whistle on Bush’s torture program and is now in prison, sent an open letter to Edward Snowden last week warning him not to trust the FBI.

“DO NOT,” Kiriakou wrote, “under any circumstances, cooperate with the FBI. FBI agents will lie, trick, and deceive you. They will twist your words and play on your patriotism to entrap you. They will pretend to be people they are not — supporters, well-wishers, and friends — all the while wearing wires to record your out-of-context statements to use against you. The FBI is the enemy; it’s part of the problem, not the solution.”

These are the words of a registered Republican who voted for Gary Johnson, whom the Rosenberg Fund for Children denied a grant, informing him that he wasn’t “liberal enough,” Kiriakou says, for the award – and who last year received a birthday card from Jerry Falwell Jr.

Kiriakou is the first CIA veteran to be imprisoned. It was after he blew the whistle on Bush’s torture program that the CIA, FBI and Justice Department came down on him, at first charging him with aiding the enemy and later convicting him of disclosing the identities of undercover colleagues at the CIA.

The FBI raided his house in the process. They took his computers. They also took his family photos because, they said, he could have embedded secret messages in them.

“I did not start this thing with the idea that I was going to be a whistle-blower,” Kiriakou told Salon in December, two months before being sent off to a low-security prison in Loretto, Pa., with a 30-month sentence.

I interviewed Kiriakou for about an hour and half at that time, a couple of months before he went to prison, waiting to publish it until he was well into serving his sentence. The idea was to outline the slope of his descent — his journey from the powerful to the powerless.

“In this weird, roundabout way,” he told me then, “the Justice Department, the FBI and the CIA made me the anti-torture guy, which I never set out to be … But over the years,” despite the initial intentions, “my feelings have grown stronger and stronger” against torture, “that torture is not right under any circumstances.”

Recruited by the CIA while in graduate school, Kiriakou spent most of his life on the side of the establishment, leading raids against top al-Qaida officials in Pakistan as the chief of counterterrorism operations, including the one in which Abu Zubaydah was captured.

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Republished with permission from: AlterNet

If you read The Economist, no doubt you have read J. M. Ledgard’s unsigned reports from East Africa. He’s the newspaper’s correspondent in Nairobi, but he’s also a skilled novelist. His earlier novel, Giraffe, was about the slaughter of forty-nine giraffes in a Communist Czechoslovikia Zoo. Before East Africa, Ledgard was a correspondent in Eastern Europe. No surprise, then, that much of his second novel, Submergence, is set in East Africa, specifically Somalia, where the author has spent meaningful time, talking to clandestine operatives from the West as well as jihadists who play a major part in his story. There’s also a parallel story set in Europe (significantly near Greenland) involving an oceanographist.

The novel’s two threads are drawn together by an earlier love affair of the main characters (James More, a descendant of Sir Thomas More, in East Africa; and Danny Flinders, a biomathematician, in Europe, preparing for a dive in a submersible to one of the remotest areas of the ocean’s floor.) If this sounds like a bit of a stretch, forget that immediately. Ledgard’s novel is an erudite exploration of going down in space–not only into the watery depths of the unknown but also into equally fraught human relationships on land and man’s longing and capacity for sustaining love. As Danny muses at the beginning of her affair with James, “Life is never neat, it is made up of doors and trapdoors. You move down baroque corridors, and even when you think you know which door to open, you still need to have the courage to choose.”

James’s situation in Somalia involves plenty of courage but no choice at all. He’s an English intelligence operative, who’s been using water for his cover, that is, sustainable water for developing areas. As the novel begins, he’s locked in a tiny, fetid cell which appears to have once been a shower, though no water comes through the pipe. He’s been taken by jihadists who assume he’s a spy, though they have no precise evidence, so he’s dragged along with them as they move from camp to remote camp. The jihadists (or, perhaps more accurately wannabe jihadists) are a motley group–high or rhetoric and low on expertise. Still, they scare him with a mock execution, soon after they capture him, staged in the sea–an ironic counterpoint to Danny’s own work in the depths of the oceans.

Ledgard is wont to pontificate but in an ironic way, capturing the jihidists’ naïve worldview: “The strategy of the jihadists allied to al-Qaeda in Somalia is to create chaos in order to establish a supreme Islamic nation pure in its religion: a caliphate of Greater Somalia at the forefront of the global jihad. Local and foreign fighters will strike at Christian Ethiopia and Kenya, seeking to liberate the Muslims in those countries, thereby dragging America, Europe and the other Crusaders into the fray. The goal of the global jihad is to replicate itself through force of arms, creating a Muslim superstate: intercontinental, without borders, adjudged by the same laws and united by prayer.”

Good luck. At one camp, Yusuf, the leader of the group, who excoriates American movies, makes an exception for classic Disney films, especially Bambi. He stands up and tells the others that they should identify with the fawn. “The Crusaders were man. The forest was the mangrove in which the believers were safe. It did not trouble Yusuf that they were watching an American narrative. To him, it was pure. It had religious worth.” There are also uplifting video games, “including one where you got to fight Christians in the sixth-century Holy Land.” Somewhat later, after months at a remote camp without enough food, James will observe, “They had ambitions of dominion, but they could not feed themselves. They were like the hyenas in an African story who stack themselves up into the sky, one atop another, because they had been told the moon was a sweetmeat they could reach up and eat.”

Danny’s world is equally fraught with danger, “concentrated on the estimation of microbial life in the deepest layer” of the ocean. “She was bound for the largest uncharted hydrothermal vent field in the world, far below the plunging icebergs and the blue-black top, in a part of the Hadal deep whose unlit clock ticked at an incalculably slower speed.”  The depths are oozing with microbial life, most of it unidentified, of great potential for future medicine. But the risks of the descent are overwhelming, enough to make the most hearty scientist think twice.

Ledgard his done his homework, consulted authorities at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution at Columbia University and in Europe. The passages describing Danny’s descent are lyrical, detailed with beauty and apprehension. Moreover, the parallel stories are linked by recurring images–especially of water–and, of course, the passion that James and Danny share for one another. The result? A strangely haunting love story, leaping across geographical distances, careers, geopolitics–replete with interesting factoids and details of each character’s idiosyncrasies and fears, a rare work of beauty in the face of such risk and terror.

J. M. Ledgard: Submergence

Coffee House Press, 218 pp., $15.95

Charles R. Larson is Emeritus Professor of Literature at American University in Washington, D.C. Email: clearson@american.edu.

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

Palestinians fleeing the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus are seen at a Lebanese border crossing with Syria, December 2012.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

The Lone Ranger. I had to see it. I’ve been reading a lot of critiques over the lame Native stereotyping and yes, there is validity to the complaint. But, I’ve also been talking with friends who went to see it and liked it – Native friends, as well as non-Natives. Some see it as a spoof of the way old Westerns always demeaned Natives. Some see it as the Native Django — “Tonto gets to kill evil white guys.”

When I was a kid watching the original TV show, Jimmy Johnson and I would always root for Tonto. Then again, we always rooted for the “Indians.”

I went and saw it with a buddy — a Native guy from Wyoming — a Vietnam sniper. He liked it. He’s one who saw it as a spoof. “Funny, but way too long …mediocre plot…even the music was bad, other than they finally got William Tell in there near that long ending” was his final assessment.

Well, it is a spoof. A bad one. A long leap from Blazing Saddles or Paint Your Wagon, though you could span the huge gap with the exploding mine shaft of Western cliches it contains.

It’s more like Will Smith’s Wild, Wild West. You can’t watch it without getting in some laughs — many for the telegraphed jokes and sight gags sheer stupidity, than for their cleverness. It’s a lame story, but maybe a bit better than Wild, Wild West, however.

The original Tonto was an Amos & Andy caricature of a lone Potawatomi warrior. (Plausible only because many of his nation were force-relocated to the southwest (Oklahoma) from the Great Lakes region. This Tonto is Comanche, driven crazy and is an outcast because of his childhood part in saving two evil white men who then massacre his people for silver.

Somehow Monument Valley, Promontory Point, Canyonlands and Sierra forests are all in Texas/Indian Country. Buffalo roam Monument Valley. And Tonto is a Wendigo hunter — a cannibalistic creature from Algonquin (read: Eastern seacoast) lore. Historical and Geographical accuracy never enter the picture.

It is racist – in the way that gives us sidekicks like Jar Jar Binks or Mr. Yunioshi (or any number of Bruce Willis or Eddie Murphy flicks) …and there are tons of Magical Indian cliches and Tonto slips from using words like “fatigued” to pidgin and stilted nonsense like “Greetings, noble spirit horse” unaccountably. The “sacred fool” (Tonto means “idiot” in the Spanish spoken in the Southwest) and the “wendigo hunter” tropes are repeated throughout. And the dead bird he wears on his head and keeps feeding just comes off as bizarre — though some say that Crazy Horse went to battle with a dead red tail hawk on his head.

Would it be problematic stereotyping if Tonto was played by a Native, not Johnny Depp? Yes, for the same reasons…even though Tonto is the central character and at least interesting; while, Armie Hammer is just awful as the Lone Ranger who is a bumbling tenderfoot in this remake. Then again, the Comanche are presented heroically and there are Native actors employed — the great Native actor Saginaw Grant is superb as the erudite Chief Big Bear. It’s no Django, either. Tonto never shoots anyone, but the bad guys do end up dead…in the looong run.

There are only two women characters: one plays — the plucky, widow in distress; the other — the plucky, brothel owner…they don’t even share a word of dialogue together. Woeful dialogue throughout. Somehow it got a PG-13 rating despite cannibalism, scalpings, skull crushing, and, of course, genocide. (Keep the kids at home!) It’s just a bad movie.

Best line: when the Lone Ranger tries to stop the Comanche from going to war after they were unjustly attacked. Chief Big Bear demurs and says, “We are already ghosts.”

When at the end, a railroad magnate tries to buy off the Lone Ranger with a gold watch, tells him: “There’s plenty more where that came from. Always nice to have a lawman on the side of progress and industry.” (The LR refuses to take off the mask, gives back the watch box and walks away. You find out later that the watch wasn’t in the box, as Tonto had taken it and traded some birdseed for it.)

So, it had quite the obvious set up for a sequel at the end…but, with 5 people at a 500-seat matinee, I don’t think so. Thank Gaia! Heads are gonna roll at Disney.

MICHAEL DONNELLY is a long-time supporter of the American Indian Movement (AIM). He can be reached at pahtoo@aol.com 

Republished with permission from: Counterpunch

A report says a variety of missiles have been mobilized in North Korea in preparation for a huge military parade to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of the Korean War.

According to a Friday report by South Koreaâ„¢s Yonhap news agency, recent satellite imagery has showed that over 10,000 North Korean soldiers are practicing for the parade at Mirim Airport close to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

The parade will be held on July 27, which is celebrated by North Koreans as the Day of Victory.

The report also quoted an unnamed south Korean military source as saying that Å“Satellite imagery showed Scud, Nodong and Musudan missiles installed on mobile launchers,” referring to North Koreaâ„¢s short-, medium- and long-range ballistic missiles.

Å“Considering the fact that nearly all ground force equipment was present, there is a possibility that its long-range KN-08 missiles could appear at the end of the parade,” the source said.

South Korean military officials are paying great attention to whether Pyongyang would present its newest missiles, which can carry nuclear warheads, in the parade, the report said.

North Koreaâ„¢s ruling communist party announced plans in February for holding a military parade as well as mass rallies and a show of fireworks for 2013 celebrations.

On July 11, North Koreaâ„¢s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visited a war museum built anew to mark the anniversary.

During the 2012 military parade to celebrate the 100th birthday of late North Korean founder Kim Il-sung, Pyongyang presented more than 850 pieces of its military equipment. North Korea also unveiled its KN-08 missiles.

The two Koreas are still technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.

MR/HSN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton is to meet top officials from the P5+1 group of six major powers to discuss the blocâ„¢s future talks with Iran.

Ashton is to host the meeting – to be attended by senior officials from the US, Britain, China, Russia, France and Germany – in Brussels next Tuesday to discuss “how to move forward in the Iran nuclear file,” said her spokesman Michael Mann.

Å“We are keen to make concrete progress in the talks (with Iran),” Reuters quoted him as saying.

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 also been held in the Kazakh city of Almaty on April 5-6 and February 26-27.

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 (NPT) 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.

AR/NN/HMV

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Dozens of protesters in Portugal have disrupted an open session of the countryâ„¢s parliament, calling on the government to step down amid a persisting crisis over the institution of austerity measures.

The protesters were removed by police on Thursday from the legislatureâ„¢s public gallery as the parliament speaker hinted that regulations on access to the galleries may be reconsidered.

The development comes as the financially troubled country was cast into panic on Thursday when Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva called for early elections next year, rejecting a plan to mend a reported split within the government on austerity measures required for the eurozone country to exit its bailout imposed by the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The decision reportedly served as a warning to all major political parties, demonstrating that the conservative president does not regard any of them capable of ruling successfully until the EU-IMF bailout expires next June.

Silvaâ„¢s announcement prompted pointed criticism in the eurozone nation that has slumped into its worst economic downturn since the 1970s as the result of the austerity imposed by the bailout, which include massive tax hikes in addition to spending cuts.

Portuguese markets, meanwhile, plunged in reaction to the presidentâ„¢s call for early elections. Its stocks fell 1.7 percent.

The Portuguese are growing increasingly hostile to the austerity measures as the nationâ„¢s unemployment rate has climbed to near record levels of about 18 percent.

MFB/MFB

Republished with permission from: Press TV

The supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi hold his pictures during a demonstration on July 10, 2013.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

China and the United States have agreed to restart negotiations regarding a ËœBilateral Investment Treatyâ„¢, with Beijing opening previously protected sectors of its economy, a US official says.

Å“The commitment made today stands to be a significant breakthrough and marks the first time China has agreed to negotiate a Bilateral Investment Treaty, to include all sectors and stages of investment, with another country,” said US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Thursday.

Beijing agreed to drop previous efforts to exempt certain sectors of its economy, opening more sectors to foreign trade and ownership.

Å“All these technical discussions have paved the way for the substantial negotiation,” said Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng, adding that Å“There is a common purpose, which is to try to find ways to reduce and mitigate differences and barriers that both sides place in our trade and investment relations.”

China and the US began negotiations under former US President George W. Bush in 2008, but discussions were stalled after President Barack Obama took office in 2009.

Beijing and Washington have held four rounds of Strategic and Economic Dialogue in the past several years. The fifth round of the talks opened in Washington on July 8 and will wrap up on Friday.

Meanwhile, any possible deal would need the approval of the US Senate.

Investors seeking to spend in either nation would still face certain limits, particularly fear of political repercussions in Congress, which has recently struggled with national security regarding China.

Beijing has consistently criticized Washingtonâ„¢s cooperation both with treaty partners, including Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, as well as other countries such as Vietnam, which are not traditional allies.

GMA/HSN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Indian protesters shout slogans during a demonstration calling for better safety for women following the rape of a young woman in New Delhi. (File photo)

Republished with permission from: Press TV

File photo shows Takfiri militants near the city of Aleppo, northwest Syria.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Iranâ„¢s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has expressed concern over the expulsion of Iranian nationals from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), urging Abu Dhabi to reconsider the move.

The top Iranian diplomat made the remarks in a telephone conversation with his Emirati counterpart Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed al-Nahyan.

During the telephone conversation, the two ministers also discussed key regional and international developments as well as issues of mutual concern, including the situation in Egypt.

They also underlined the need to further consolidate and expand bilateral ties.

According to a report published by ISNA on July 6, over the recent months the UAE has revoked the residency permits of dozens of Iranians, some of whom had lived in the country for as long as 25 years, and forced them to leave the Arab country without providing any reason.

Iranâ„¢s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Araqchi said a day after the report was published that the Ministry and the Iranian Embassy in Abu Dhabi were seriously following up on the case.

He said a number of foreign nationals had been expelled from the UAE following a decision by the Emirati Interior Ministry to apply some changes to the Persian Gulf stateâ„¢s population of foreign nationals.

Araqchi added that the situation of Iranian nationals living in the Arab state would be discussed during the Iran-UAE Joint Consular Committee meeting scheduled to be held after the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Vahid Ahmadi, a senior Iranian legislator, has also criticized Abu Dhabi over the move, saying the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of Iranâ„¢s Majlis would carry out an investigation into the matter.

In a meeting with UAE Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid in April, Iranâ„¢s Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar had also criticized the UAEâ„¢s expulsion of Iranians from Dubai.

He said that the move would not have a good impact on bilateral relations between the two countries.

AR/NN/HMV

Republished with permission from: Press TV

An Egyptian farmer harvests wheat on his farm.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Supporters of ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi hold portraits of him during a demonstration in Cairo. (File photo)

Republished with permission from: Press TV

As US broadband giants betray customer privacy in the name of profit, the owner of a Utah-based internet company has stood up for his customers’ privacy, refusing to compromise his personal or professional integrity for warrantless wiretapping.

Pete Ashdown is the founder of XMission, an independent internet
service provider (ISP) based in Utah. The company has built a
stellar reputation among users concerned with protecting their
privacy.

His profile has been on the rise as of late because of his
company’s refusal to turn over customer data that is
requested by an administrative subpoena instead of a warrant.
Ashdown refuses to honor subpoena requests because they prove
that the government agency seeking the data did not, or was
unable, to provide “probable cause” mandated by the
Constitution.  

Verizon, AT&T, Google, Facebook, and other tech giants have
tried to maintain the public’s trust by blaming the government
for forcing them to turn over personal information. However, a
recent report indicated that some of the companies profited from
the turnover.  

“When I started XMission in 1993, I was mainly trying to get a
stable Internet connection at home,” Ashdown told RT. “I
had one where I worked, at [computer graphics company] Evans and
Sutherland, and where I was going to school at the University of
Utah, but home was sporadic. I figured if I needed one, there
were other techies like me who needed one too.”

When he founded XMission 20 years ago, Ashdown could never have
predicted how people would come to rely on technology in their
daily lives.

“I honestly had no idea the Internet would become as
ubiquitous and essential as it is today,” he said. “I
thought my server would live in a closest and I’d collect a tidy
check each month, and that would be the end of it.”

Frustrated by the lack of technology literate lawmakers in
Washington, Ashdown ran for Senate in 2006 and 2012 against
Republican Orrin Hatch, who has represented Utah since 1977.

“As time went on, it became apparent to me that there was
nobody on the technology front in office in Washington,” he
said. “There still isn’t anyone.”  

Ashdown’s consecutive losses came
as little surprise — Utah is consistently ranked among the most
conservative US states. But Ashdown still found himself
frustrated over the amount of money pervading politics. A
candidate running on their conscience is forced to run against a
machine that dominates both parties, he said.

“I would need overwhelming outside financial support to
convince me to run for Congress again,” Ashdown said. “I
ran against PAC money and for a constitutional amendment to
overturn Citizen’s United in 2012, and interests in the
Democratic Party campaigned against me for that reason. With a
number of disappointments from the Obama administration on civil
liberties, I find the modern Democratic Party quite distant from
my ideals.”

That disappointment is especially disheartening because of
Ashdown’s support for Obama in 2008, when much of the country was
hopeful that the first African-American president would lead the
nation away from post-September 11 paranoia.

“I owned a building that the Utah for Obama office worked out
of in 2008. I walked door to door for President Obama with my
wife Robin, who also campaigned for him in Colorado. He has been
beyond disappointing for me. America needs another FDR more than
ever right now, someone who doesn’t cower to military and
financial interests and will stand for fundamental human
rights.”

Perhaps the only way for an individual to fight back against
invasive government tactics is by voting with dollars. The
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital-rights group, has
praised XMission, while the company’s transparency report proves
it is a model for start-ups looking to avoid the profit-first
attitude that pervades Google and the like. However, XMission
only offers email, web hosting, and cloud services for customers
outside Utah.

“If they don’t or can’t use XMission, I encourage them to
question the companies they do use, and if they don’t get an
answer they respect, look into a small local provider who may
take their concerns more seriously,” Ashworth said.

The shift in public opinion is a direct result of the disclosures
made by former National Security Agency contractor Edward
Snowden, who revealed widespread government surveillance
targeting American citizens and visitors from abroad. Snowden,
who 55 per cent of Americans regard as a conscientious
whistleblower, has been demonized by lawmakers on both sides of
the aisle.

“To hear some of the rhetoric about Snowden being a traitor
angers me,” Ashdown said. “Snowden isn’t the one who
committed the crime. He reported the constitutional crimes of the
people who are running the agencies monitoring Americans. “

“If the government really wants to keep secret information
secret, they should follow the law and the Constitution in their
actions, not only here, but abroad. Don’t get me started on
Guantanamo.”

Republished with permission from: RT

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Republished with permission from: World Socialist Web Site

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Republished with permission from: World Socialist Web Site

Iranâ„¢s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi will travel to Turkey to hold talks with senior Turkish authorities on the latest developments in Egypt.

Salehi will set off for Turkey on Friday for an hours-long visit, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Araqchi told IRNA on Thursday.

Å“During the visit, the foreign minister will hold talks and consultations with Turkish officials on regional issues, particularly developments in Egypt,” Araqchi said.

Egypt plunged into violence after the countryâ„¢s powerful military ousted President Mohamed Morsi, suspended the constitution, and dissolved the parliament on July 3. The military overthrow followed days of mass protests against Morsi.

The army also declared Chief Justice of Egyptâ„¢s Supreme Constitutional Court, Adly Mansour, as interim president.

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood condemned the move as a military coup and called mass protests, demanding the reinstatement of the deposed president.

On Thursday, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed concern over the detention of political activists in Egypt, saying, Å“There is no place for retribution or for the exclusion of any major party or community in Egypt.”

SF/NN/HMV

Republished with permission from: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Obama administration’s shipping of F-16 warplanes to Egypt is a clear signal of support to last week’s military coup.

Republished with permission from: World Socialist Web Site

[unable to retrieve full-text content]US senators say they have reached a deal that would increase the interest rates of federally subsidized student loans

Republished with permission from: World Socialist Web Site

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Luxembourg government resigned Wednesday evening due to a scandal involving the country’s secret services.

Republished with permission from: World Socialist Web Site

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The New York Times published a front-page article Thursday that raises new questions about the alleged perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing and adds to the evidence of a government cover-up.

Republished with permission from: World Socialist Web Site

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Tamil Nadu government’s offer to buy a stake in the company will only lead to further restructuring as the prelude to further “disinvestment.”

Republished with permission from: World Socialist Web Site

[unable to retrieve full-text content]A recent television documentary has shown how far Angela Merkel’s government has gone to introduce brutal conditions into the German labour market.

Republished with permission from: World Socialist Web Site

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The majority of Americans, including the vast majority of young people, support Edward Snowden despite his universal denunciation of the political establishment and the mass media.

Republished with permission from: World Socialist Web Site

[unable to retrieve full-text content]On Wednesday, the defense rested its case in the court-martial of Bradley Manning, a trial that reveals the anti-democratic character of the US government.

Republished with permission from: World Socialist Web Site

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Workers at the Teys/Cargill meat plant at Beenleigh rejected the company’s “final offer” despite its threat to shut the plant.

Republished with permission from: World Socialist Web Site

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The speech, a pro-business manifesto, marked the first elaboration of Rudd’s economic program since he returned as prime minister late last month.

Republished with permission from: World Socialist Web Site

Laborers work at the construction site of a housing project at an illegal Israeli settlement in East al-Quds (Jerusalem), December 2012.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Five months after he was arrested and imprisoned for a sarcastic Facebook post, Justin Carter has been bailed out of jail by an “anonymous good Samaritan” who put up half a million dollars to help send the teenager home.

Carter has been locked up ever since, at times held in solitary
confinement and struggling to fend off attacks from other
inmates. His attorney confirmed Thursday that he had been freed
by an unknown donor. Carter’s next court date is unknown. 

The Texas sheriff who had Carter arrested said the young man’s
future is up to the local prosecutor to decide. 

Justin’s mother, Jennifer, started a petition on Change.org
pleading with the public to help her free her son. The open
letter has attracted more than 125,000 signatures, although she
noted the support is still more important than ever with Justin
free on bail. 

Republished with permission from: RT

North Carolina has voted to enact a spate of new standards on women’s health clinics that provide abortions – attached to a motorcycle safety bill. The new restrictions could well lead to the closure of all but one of the state’s abortion providers.

Republican lawmakers say they believe that the new legislation
will make abortion safer for women, by directing state regulators
to enact standards for abortion clinics that will bring them in
line with outpatient surgical centers, reports the AP.

Among the new regulations included in the bill, known as HB 695,
are requirements for doctors to be present during the entire
surgical abortion procedure, as well as when a patient is
administered the first dose of a chemically induced abortion.

The legislation also prohibits government-provided insurance
plans to pay for abortions, and grants North Carolina’s health
department to enact temporary new rules over the state’s 31
women’s health clinics that provide abortion services at will.

Republican governor Pat McCrory, who had campaigned under a
pledge not to restrict access to abortion, threatened to veto the
first draft of the bill, which was modified to include a
stipulation that rules over abortion providers should not
“unduly” restrict
access. Though the governor could still veto the bill, McCrory
noted that major portions of the first draft were “of sound principle and value.”

The first draft of the new abortion laws was introduced when a
bill meant to combat “Sharia
law,” HB 695, was transformed into an anti-abortion
omnibus bill. After McCrory announced on Wednesday that HB 695
would require significant changes, the legislation was then
reintroduced as a part of SB 353, a motorcycle safety act.

Some committee members only became aware that the motorcycle
safety act had been altered to include the new abortion
legislation after a hearing began on Wednesday morning.

“New abortion bill being heard
in the committee I am on,” tweeted state Representative
Joe Sam Queen. “The public
didn’t know. I didn’t even know,” he added.

The governor’s legislative director informed the state committee
on Wednesday that he was “fine with the changes being made” to
the motorcycle safety bill, reports The Carolina Mercury.

Only one of North Carolina’s 16 clinics currently providing
abortions is a licensed ambulatory surgical center, meaning that
the remainder are almost certain not to comply with new state
regulations due to the cost of upgrading their facilities.

Similar legislation in states such as South Carolina and Virginia
has led to clinic closures, according to women’s health advocacy
groups who spoke with the AP.

The legislative process for North Carolina’s new abortion
legislation is similar to that passed by 17 states which have
implemented 43 new abortion restrictions so far in 2013,
according to RH Reality Check.

North Carolina’s House voted 74-41 to approve the new rules as
part of the motorcycle safety act following what was described by
the AP as a “highly
charged” three-hour debate.

The bill will now head to the state Senate for consideration.
Support among conservative lawmakers in both the House and Senate
indicates that the new legislation would override the governor’s
veto.

Republished with permission from: RT

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua says US whistleblower Edward Snowden has yet to reply to the Latin American country’s offer of asylum and there has been no contact with the former CIA employee.

On July 5, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro offered to grant Å“humanitarian asylum” to Snowden, who has been holed up at a Moscow airport since June 23 when he travelled from Hong Kong to avoid US extradition.

“As head of state, the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela decided to offer humanitarian asylum to the young American Edward Snowden so that he can live (without) … persecution from the empire,” Maduro said, referring to the United States.

On Thursday, the Venezuelan foreign minister was asked if Caracas had received a response to President Maduroâ„¢s asylum offer. “Not yet,” Jaua said.

Foreign ministers of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela were in the Uruguayan capital Montevideo to attend the meeting of the South American trade bloc Mercosur. Presidents of the group will meet on Friday in Montevideo.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Mercosur conference, Jaua stated that Venezuelan government could not contact Snowden.

Russian MP Alexei Pushkov created confusion on July 9 when he tweeted that the American fugitive had accepted the Venezuelan asylum offer, but the MP deleted his post a half an hour later.

Wikileaks, the online whistleblower, said after Pushkovâ„¢s tweet that Snowden had “not yet formally accepted asylum in Venezuela.”

The US has revoked the 30-year-oldâ„¢s passport, with State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki saying the fugitive Å“should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him to the US.”

Snowden leaked two top secret US government spying programs under which the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are eavesdropping on millions of American and European phone records and the Internet data from major Internet companies such as Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Apple, and Microsoft.

On June 9, Snowden admitted his role in the leaks in a 12-minute video recorded interview published by The Guardian.

In the interview, he denounced what he described as systematic surveillance of innocent US citizens, saying his “sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.”

The NSA scandal took even broader dimensions when Snowden revealed information about its espionage activities targeting friendly countries.

GJH/HN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

The European Commission launched surprise investigations of several telecoms companies on July 11, 2013.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

About 22 percent of Syrian schools have been destroyed or badly damaged in over two years of unrest, jeopardizing the education of 2.5 million children, Save the Children aid agency has said.

Over the past year, the Syrian crisis contributed to a dramatic rise in the number of violent incidents affecting children’s education worldwide, the UK-based aid agency said in a report issued on Friday.

The agency said that over 70 percent of 3,600 such incidents in 2012 took place in Syria.

It added that school buildings were bombed, teachers came under violent attacks and children were recruited by armed groups.

The agency stated that the violence destroyed or rendered unusable some 3,900 schools across Syria by January 2013.

“But more recent estimates in April show a very rapid increase in this number, with 22 percent of the country’s 22,000 schools rendered unusable,” it said.

“The combined effects of conflict have jeopardized the education of 2.5 million school-age children and young people.”

Save the Children Chief Executive Jasmine Whitbread said in a statement attached with the report, “The classroom should be a place of safety and security, not battlegrounds where children suffer the most appalling crimes. Children who are targeted in this way will be paying the price for the rest of their lives.”

On June 30, Syriaâ„¢s Local Administration Minister Omar Al Ibrahim Ghalaounji said that more than two years of foreign-sponsored terrorism in the country has damaged about 9,000 state buildings and cost $15 billion in losses to the public sector.

Ghalaounji said in comments published in Syrian newspapers that the damage worth of $15 billion to the public sector was caused between March 2011 and March 2013.

He added that the damage was the result of “terrorist attacks on government buildings and infrastructure.”

Former Syrian Planning Minister Abdullah al-Dardari has recently said that the Syrian crisis has cost $60-$80 billion in damages to the countryâ„¢s economy.

He stated that the Syrian economy has contracted by about 35 percent, compared to the 6 percent annual growth the country enjoyed in the five years before 2011.

According to Dardari, Syriaâ„¢s economy has lost about 40 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), and there are some 2.5 million unemployed people in the country today.

Syria has been gripped by deadly unrest since 2011. According to the United Nations, 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.

GJH/MHB

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Almost two years after three men were found murdered in a Boston apartment, the case remains unsolved. As more evidence emerges, though, people close to the victims now say that police should have identified Tamerlan Tsarneav as a likely killer.

The bodies were discovered on September 11, 2011 in a small
apartment in Waltham, Massachusetts just outside the city. Each
was positioned with his stomach down, head turned, and with
marijuana sprinkled over his back. The bodies were identified as
the apartment’s owner, Brendan Mess, 25, along with Erik
Weissman, 31, and Raphael Teken, 37. 

Mess was known to be a close friend of Tsarnaev, who — along with
his younger brother Dzhokhar — has emerged as the prime suspect
in the April 15 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people
and injured nearly 270 others. Tamerlan, 26, was killed in the
early morning hours of April 19, 2013 as he fled police. 

The FBI is now comparing DNA extracted from Tsanaev’s corpse to
samples taken from the crime scene in 2011, according to The New
York Times. 

In 2011 Mess often invited the elder Tsarnaev to his apartment
and trained him in martial arts. Mess is thought to have earned
money as a low-level drug dealer, an occupation police had
initially believed to have been behind his demise. Tsarnaev
reportedly sold marijuana and may have done business with Mess.

Despite the care given to how the victims were positioned after
their deaths and no signs of a struggle, police told the Times
the murders were the result of a “drug rip-off.” 

Ibragim Todashev, a friend of Tsarnaev, told FBI agents after the
bombing that he and Tamerlan had killed the three men in
September 2011. The two men, both of Chechen descent, are thought
to have targeted Mess, Weissman, and Teken for a drug-related
robbery. 

Todashev, who was killed by FBI agents at the same meeting after
a mysterious scuffle with one of the interrogators, said Tsarnaev
“was more of a wannabe drug dealer than a big one.”  

Those close to Mess, Weissman and Teken now believe that had
police spoken to enough suspects, the Boston bombing may have
been prevented. Speaking to the Times, law enforcement sources
are adamant the case was “professionally done.” 

“We did mention Tamerlan again to the police after he was not
there from Brendan’s services,” said a close friend of Mess
on the condition of anonymity. “I felt that the police were
not really looking into the right places.” 

A former girlfriend of Mess said she overheard him discussing
plans with Tsarnaev in hushed tones and, when pressing Mess,
“he told me not to worry about it.” 

John Allan, who owned a gym Tsarnaev frequented, said he spoke to
him not long after Mess was found dead in the triple
homicide. 

“As I said something, there was kind of a smile on Tamerlan’s
face, and he laughed it off,” Allan told the Times. “He
laughed off the fact that he was murdered, like: ‘Aw, man. It’s
crazy right? Huh huh. It’s crazy right? I guess if you [sell
drugs], that’s what’s going to happen.’” 

Those affected by the murders have reiterated that the perception
police could have done more has left them frustrated almost two
years later. 

“Despite being one of the most gruesome and unusual crimes of
the year, I saw the least amount of public outreach,” said
Susan Zalkin, a friend of Weissman. 

While the lack of surviving suspects makes it unlikely the
murders will be resolved in the near future, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
pleaded not guilty to 30 counts in connection with the Boston
Marathon bombing this week. Seventeen of the charges make him
eligible for execution. 

In his first public appearance since the attack, Tsarnaev
appeared disheveled and wide-eyed as he was led into the crowded
Boston courtroom. When his publicly appointed attorney tried to
speak for Tsarnaev, the judge cut him off and demanded that the
19-year-old suspect say “not guilty” by his own volition.

Republished with permission from: RT

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said this week that inflation in the United States needs to be higher. Yes, he actually came right out and said that. It almost seems as if Bernanke is trying to purposely hurt the middle class. On Wednesday, Bernanke told the press that “both sides of our mandate are saying we need to be more accommodative“. Of course he was referring to the Fed’s dual mandate to keep unemployment and inflation low, but Bernanke has a very unique interpretation of that mandate. According to Bernanke, inflation in the U.S. is now “too low“. The official inflation rate is currently sitting at about 1 percent, and Bernanke insists that such a low rate of inflation is not good for the economy. He would prefer that the rate of inflation be up around 2 percent, and he is hoping that more “monetary accommodation” will help push inflation up and the unemployment rate down.

But what Bernanke will never admit is that the official inflation rate is a total sham. The way that inflation is calculated has changed more than 20 times since 1978, and each time it has been changed the goal has been to make it appear to be lower than it actually is.

If the rate of inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, it would be about 8 percent right now and everyone would be screaming about the fact that inflation is way too high.

But instead, Bernanke can get away with claiming that inflation is “too low” because the official government numbers back him up.

Of course many of us already know that inflation is out of control without even looking at any numbers. We are spending a lot more on the things that we buy on a regular basis than we used to.

For example, when Barack Obama first entered the White House, the average price of a gallon of gasoline was $1.84. Today, the average price of a gallon of gasoline has nearly doubled. It is currently sitting at $3.49, but when I filled up my vehicle yesterday I paid nearly $4.00 a gallon.

And of course the price of gasoline influences the price of almost every product in the entire country, since almost everything that we buy has to be transported in some manner.

But that is just one example.

Our monthly bills also seem to keep growing at a very brisk pace.

Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row, and according to USA Today water bills have actually tripled over the past 12 years in some areas of the country.

No inflation there, eh?

Well, what about health insurance?

Yup, that has been going up rapidly as well. Since 2010, employee health insurance premiums have been rising an average of between 8 and 9 percent a year.

So where is this low inflation that everyone has been talking about?

It certainly cannot be found in college tuition costs. Since 1986, the cost of college tuition in the United States has risen by 498 percent.

What about at the supermarket?

We all have to buy food. It sure would be nice if inflation was low there.

Unfortunately, anyone that shops for groceries on a regular basis knows exactly how painful food prices are becoming.

And over time, those increases really add up. An article by Benny Johnson details how the prices of many of the things that we buy on a regular basis absolutely soared between 2002 and 2012. Just check out these price increases…

Eggs: 73%

Coffee: 90%

Peanut Butter: 40%

Milk: 26%

A Loaf Of White Bread: 39%

Spaghetti And Macaroni: 44%

Orange Juice: 46%

Red Delicious Apples: 43%

Beer: 25%

Wine: 60%

Electricity: 42%

Margarine: 143%

Tomatoes: 22%

Turkey: 56%

Ground Beef: 61%

Chocolate Chip Cookies: 39%

So how in the world can Bernanke possibly come to the conclusion that inflation is too low?

Is he insane?

If you want to see a really good example of the impact that inflation has had on our economy in recent years, just check out this amazing chart which shows what Bernanke’s reckless policies have done to the prices of commodities during his tenure.

Meanwhile, paychecks are not rising at the same pace that inflation is. In fact, median household income in the United States has fallen for four years in a row. Overall, it has declined by over $4000 during that time span.

So the cost of living just keeps rising, but the middle class is making less money than before.

That certainly is not good news.

Of course a big reason for this is because the quality of jobs in America continues to steadily decline. Only 47 percent of adults have a full-time job at this point, and 53 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year.

Most families are just barely scraping by from month to month, and Bernanke has the gall to say that he needs to try to get prices to rise even faster.

Is Bernanke also going to increase all of our paychecks in order to make up for the “inflation tax” that is being imposed on all of us?

Of course not.

And sadly, it appears that the number of Americans that are losing their jobs is starting to move upward again. We just learned that initial claims for unemployment benefits rose to 360,000 last week.

That is getting dangerously close to the 400,000 number that I keep talking about.

The middle class in the United States is shrinking with each passing day, and Bernanke seems absolutely clueless.

His answer to every economic problem always seems to involve printing more money. Thankfully, about 1.8 trillion dollars of that money is being stashed away at the Fed and has not gotten out into the real economy yet.

But someday that money will be unleashed on the real economy, and it will create crippling inflation.

Unfortunately, Bernanke doesn’t seem to really be too concerned about the mountains of cash that the big banks have parked at the Fed. He is just happy that his reckless money printing has pumped up the stock market to new all-time highs.

He should enjoy this little period of euphoria while he can, because this bubble will burst like all false financial bubbles eventually do.

And when this bubble bursts, the foolishness of Bernanke and the Federal Reserve will be glaringly apparent to everyone.

Republished with permission from: The Economic Collapse

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Militants have attacked a security checkpoint in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing a policeman.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Tens of thousands of mourners have convened in Bosnia to rebury 409 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre whose remains have been newly identified.

The ceremony was held on Thursday, on the 18th anniversary of the massacre.

There were 44 boys, aged between 14 and 18, and a baby girl among the victims identified. Reports say as many as 2,306 victims are still missing.

“I feel like I’m losing them again today,” said Ramiza Siljkovic, mother of two sons, whose bones were recovered from two mass graves.

About one hundred thousand people were killed by Serb troops during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.

In July 1995, Serb forces attacked Srebrenica, a town located near the border with Serbia, and a designated “safe area” protected by UN peacekeeping troops. The forces killed more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys.

“Innocent and helpless victims were faced with the cold and merciless hatred of criminals akin to those in the Nazi camps of Hitler’s Germany,” said Bakir Izetbegovic, the Muslim member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency.

Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic were reportedly behind the massacre.

They are on trial before the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. They are charged with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In June, 2012, judges refused to dismiss Karadzicâ„¢s charge of genocide about his involvement in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

The 67-year-old was arrested on a bus in Belgrade in 2008, more than a decade after he was first indicted for ordering atrocities during the Bosnian war in the 1990s.

He is also accused of involvement in the forcible removal and murder of thousands of Croatian civilians during Dalj massacre, Erdut massacre, and Lovas massacre between 1991 and 1993.

IA/HN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Did you know that scientists all over the globe are creating extremely bizarre human-animal chimeras? Over the past decade, there have been some absolutely stunning advances in the field of genetic modification. Today, it is literally possible for college students to create new lifeforms in their basements. Unfortunately, laws have not kept pace with these advancements, and in many countries there are very few limits on what scientists are allowed to do. As you will read about below, extremely creepy human-animal hybrids are now being created in laboratories all over the planet. And this is just the stuff that is publicly admitted. Can you imagine what kind of sick and twisted experiments are taking place in the dark corners of secret labs that nobody knows about? And what happens if these creatures get out into the wild and starting mating? At that point, it would be nearly impossible to “put the genie back into the bottle”. Scientists seem very eager to test the limits of what is possible, but what they are unleashing may have consequences that none of us ever dreamed possible.

Just the other day, we learned that scientists have created mice that have an artificial human chromosome “in every cell of their bodies”.

So what should we call such creatures? They are definitely not fully mice anymore.

Scientists are hailing this as a “breakthrough” which could lead to all sorts of new treatments for disease. The following is from an article entitled “Mice with human chromosomes — the genetic breakthrough that could revolutionise medicine“…

Scientists have created genetically-engineered mice with artificial human chromosomes in every cell of their bodies, as part of a series of studies showing that it may be possible to treat genetic diseases with a radically new form of gene therapy.

In one of the unpublished studies, researchers made a human artificial chromosome in the laboratory from chemical building blocks rather than chipping away at an existing human chromosome, indicating the increasingly powerful technology behind the new field of synthetic biology.

This is quite bizarre.

But creating mice with artificial human chromosomes is one thing.

Creating mice with partly human brains is a whole different ball of wax.

According to LifeNews.com, researchers at the University of Wisconsin have successfully transferred cells from human embryos into the brains of mice. Those cells began to grow and develop, and they actually made the mice smarter…

Yet experiments like these are going forward just the same. In just the past few months, scientists at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Rochester have published data on their human-animal neural chimeras. For the Wisconsin study, researchers injected mice with an immunotoxin to destroy a part of their brains—the hippocampus—that’s associated with learning, memory, and spatial reasoning. Then the researchers replaced those damaged cells with cells derived from human embryos. The cells proliferated and the lab chimeras recovered their ability to navigate a water maze.

For the Rochester study, researchers implanted newborn mice with nascent human glial cells, which help support and nourish neurons in the brain. Six months later, the human parts had elbowed out the mouse equivalents, and the animals had enhanced ability to solve a simple maze and learn conditioned cues. These protocols might run afoul of the anti-hybrid laws, and perhaps they should arouse some questions. These chimeric mice may not be human, or even really human, but they’re certainly one step further down the path to Algernon. It may not be so long before we’re faced with some hairy bioethics: What rights should we assign to mice with human brains?

Is this really a good idea?

Do we really want to start creating entities that are part-human?

Apparently, it is now even possible to grow entire human organs inside animals. In fact, scientists in Japan plan to start systematically growing human organs inside of pigs within 12 months. The goal is to increase the number of organs available for medical transplants as a recent Infowars.com article explained…

A panel of scientists and legal experts appointed by the Japanese government will be gathering together to begin drafting guidelines governing Japan’s historic embryonic research. If all goes according to plan, scientists hope to begin growing human organs in animals within the next 12 months.

The research sounds like something out of a science fiction novel. Scientists place a human stem cell into the embryo of an animal to create a “chimeric embryo” that can be implanted into the animal’s womb. According to the Telegraph, the animal in question will most likely be a pig.

Once the embryo is implanted it will grow into a perfect human organ — a heart, a kidney, a pancreas, and so on. Then, when the adult pig is slaughtered, the organ will be harvested and transplanted into someone who needs a new one.

But once a human organ is grown inside a pig, that pig is no longer fully a pig.

And without a doubt, that organ will no longer be a fully human organ after it is grown inside the pig. Those receiving those organs will be allowing human-animal hybrid organs to be implanted into them.

One can only imagine what the consequences of doing such a thing would be.

You would think that there should be strict limits on this kind of a thing. And in a few areas around the globe, there are some limits. But most of the time the ethical decisions are left up to the scientists…

Two years ago, the UK Academy of Medical Sciences released a groundbreaking report on “animals containing human material”. It concluded that most research on chimeras is permitted by existing UK laws. But it also identified some experiments that should not (yet) be done because of strong ethical objections. One is to breed an animal that has human sperm or eggs. Another is to create a non-human primate with a humanised brain.

Most people would be absolutely shocked to learn some of the things that are currently being done in the name of science.

For example, did you know that rice that contains actual human genes is being grown right now in Kansas?…

Unless the rice you buy is certified organic, or comes specifically from a farm that tests its rice crops for genetically modified (GM) traits, you could be eating rice tainted with actual human genes. The only known GMO with inbred human traits in cultivation today, a GM rice product made by biotechnology company Ventria Bioscience is currently being grown on 3,200 acres in Junction City, Kansas – and possibly elsewhere – and most people have no idea about it.

Since about 2006,Ventria has been quietly cultivating rice that has been genetically modified (GM) with genes from the human liver for the purpose of taking the artificial proteins produced by this “Frankenrice” and using them in pharmaceuticals.

We are corrupting nature, and yet very few people seem alarmed. When the Daily Mail reported back in 2011 that scientists in the UK had created “more than 150″ human-animal hybrid embryos, hardly anyone got upset about it…

Last night a campaigner against the excesses of medical research said he was disgusted that scientists were ‘dabbling in the grotesque’.

Figures seen by the Daily Mail show that 155 ‘admixed’ embryos, containing both human and animal genetic material, have been created since the introduction of the 2008 Human Fertilisation Embryology Act.

This legalised the creation of a variety of hybrids, including an animal egg fertilised by a human sperm; ‘cybrids’, in which a human nucleus is implanted into an animal cell; and ‘chimeras’, in which human cells are mixed with animal embryos.

Sadly, this kind of thing is being done all over the planet. Just check out some of the truly bizarre human-animal hybrid experiments that have been taking place all over the globe according to a recent Slate article…

Not long ago, Chinese scientists embedded genes for human milk proteins into a mouse’s genome and have since created herds of humanized-milk-producing goats. Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Michigan have a method for putting a human anal sphincter into a mouse as a means of finding better treatments for fecal incontinence, and doctors are building animals with humanized immune systems to serve as subjects for new HIV vaccines.

Are you disgusted by those examples?

You should be.

Here are some other ways that humans and animals are being combined…

–Rabbit Eggs with Human Cells

–Pigs with Human Blood

–Sheep with Human Livers

–Cow Eggs with Human Cells

–Cat-Human Hybrid Proteins

And these are just the things that we know about.

What kind of sick and twisted experiments are going on around the globe that we don’t know about?

Like I mentioned at the top, we live at a time when the possibilities in the field of genetic modification seem endless.

But just because we can do something does not mean that we should actually do it.

The movie “Splice” demonstrated the danger of creating an entirely new lifeform that is only partially human. When we create something that is neither fully human or fully animal, what kind of spirit enters that being? What would the consequences be if such beings started mating with other animals? Could we end up creating creatures that are far beyond our capacity to control?

Unfortunately, Pandora’s box has already been opened and it is going to be extremely difficult to control the creation of human-animal hybrids. This technology is racing ahead all over the planet, and at this point even college students can create new lifeforms in their own basements.

We are entering a strange new world, and nobody is quite sure what comes next.

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

Brazilian workers stage a demonstration in Brasilia on July 11, 2013.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has expressed concern over the detention of political activists in Egypt.

In a phone conversation with Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr on Thursday, Ban said Å“there is no place for retribution or for the exclusion of any major party or community in Egypt.”

The UN secretary general Å“reiterated his support for the aspirations of the Egyptian people, and called for a peaceful dialogue that includes all parts of Egypt’s political spectrum to find a way forward.”

On Wednesday, Egyptâ„¢s prosecutor general ordered the arrest of 10 Muslim Brotherhood leaders, including supreme leader Mohammed Badie, on charges of inciting violence outside the Republican Guard headquarters in Cairo on July 8.

The Egyptian Medical Syndicate said on Tuesday that 84 people had killed in clashes between supporters of Egyptâ„¢s ousted President Mohamed Morsi and security forces outside the Republican Guard barracks.

On July 3, Egyptian army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced that Morsi was no longer in office and declared that the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court, Adly Mansour, had been appointed as the new interim president.

Egypt has been the scene of rival rallies and clashes between thousands of the supporters and opponents of Morsi in the wake of his ouster.

Morsi is reportedly being held Å“preventively” by the military.

MAM/MHB

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Pakistani Security forces examine the scene of a bomb blast in the town of Chaman (file photo).

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Celeste
Planet Infowars
July 11, 2013

The Department of Defense (DOD) and DARPA have invested in research on natural and synthetic pathogens to give war-fighters the cutting-edge health-care so that they can operate at peak performance.

7-Day Biodefense

The research is known as 7-Day Biodefense which focuses on novel technologies to prevent emerging pathogen infection, and once infected to sustain survival, and to build future immunity.

Global surveillance networks have noticed an uptick in frequency and diversity of new infectious micro-organisms. This increase is predominately due to nefarious biological experimentation and release from bio-weapons facilities such as Plum Island and National Bio and Agro Defense Facility in Kansas, owned and operated by Homeland Security.

Natural Pathogens

Potential biological exposure threats come from two categories:

Natural pathogens that manifest due to the narrowing of genetic diversity due to genetic modification; migration causing a spread of vectors; climate change; increased density of vulnerable populations with pathogen reservoirs; and the perceived increase between humans and animals. For instance Dr. Eldridge the Washington State Veterinarian bragged with glee at a regulatory hearing that he had quarantined some horses that acquired Piroplasmosis through ticks. He successfully quarantined the horses but not the ticks putting Eastern Washington residents and their animals at-risk for tick-acquired illnesses.

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This article was posted: Thursday, July 11, 2013 at 5:50 pm

Tags: activism, health

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

Planet Infowars
July 11, 2013

Organizing North and central Seattle! Meet others in the area just as ardent about Liberty as you. Formulate emergency action plans, legal strategies, and street teams to unlock minds. Plan events and share ideas to crush the plan of despotism that is (agenda 21). Utilize your first amendment right. Speak out! Speak often; and speak well against the publics programed responses to tyranny. Enlighten, enrich and empower the mind of humanity with the sustenance of Liberty and truth!

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This article was posted: Thursday, July 11, 2013 at 5:40 pm

Tags: activism, domestic news

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

Johnnyboy1111777
Planet Infowars
July 11, 2013

We had a beautiful lightning storm over here in my area tonight, and I was looking at the lightning and just taking in its breathtaking beauty. It was awesome, I could see God every time the sky lit up from the Lightning, I could see His masterpiece there.

So I walk into the gas station to get a pack of smokes, and this guy behind the counter is just sitting there staring down at his paper work or whatever he’s doing, and so I thought I’d say a little something, and I told him that, “If people can’t see God in a beautiful lightning storm like that, then I can’t help them, You know what I mean?” And without changing his facial expression he says, “It’s just a discharge, dude.”

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This article was posted: Thursday, July 11, 2013 at 5:41 pm

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

The first thing to know about the danger from the radioactive mass remaining on site in the three reactors that melted down at Fukushima is that nobody knows how much radioactive material there is, nobody knows how much uranium and plutonium it contains, and nobody knows how to make it safe – so no one knows how great the continuing danger is.

In order to prevent nuclear material from being diverted to use in weapons, the International Atomic Energy Agency of the U.N. requires each country to report regularly on the volume of nuclear materials in its nuclear power plants. At Fukushima, this is currently impossible with the cores of the three reactors that melted down.

Diversion of this material to weapons use is not a problem at the moment, since the level of radioactivity is high enough to kill anyone who comes close to it, which is why it hasn’t been moved. On the other hand, it is necessary to move it in order to measure it, and even if it was movable now, the technology to measure it does not yet exist.

 Cooling the Cores Keeps Them from Burning, but Creates Radioactive Water

The Japanese Atomic Energy Agency has joined with the U.S. to develop the necessary new technology, which it hopes to begin using within a decade. The Japanese agency calls this collaboration the “world’s first” attempt at such technology, since a similar U.S. initiative to measure the melted core from the 1979 Three Mile Island accident failed.

 As long as Fukushima’s owner, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), keeps the three melted cores and the fuel rods in three other storage pools sufficiently submerged in cooling water, the radioactive material will not overheat, burn, and spew radioactive debris as far as wind or water might take it.

Watertight fuel pools are used effectively at nuclear power plants around the world, including Fukushima before the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Now the reactor structures are no longer watertight and TEPCO has pumped millions of gallons of fresh and “least contaminated” into the structures since then, and continues to do so.

Radioactive Water Is Dangerous, And It Has To Go Somewhere

Water used to cool nuclear fuel and waste becomes radioactive itself, as does the groundwater that infiltrates the structures. This radioactive water continues to reach the Pacific Ocean in varying quantities, as TEPCO attempts to keep it in check.

As of May 7, the Japan Times reported that TEPCO had installed 290 huge storage talks at Fukushima to hold more than 78 million gallons (290,000 tons) of radioactive water, with another 25 million gallons still uncollected. Fukushima is generating an estimated 100,000-plus gallons (400 tons) of radioactive water every day

 TEPCO estimates that groundwater is entering the complex at a rate of at least 54,000 gallons per day. In May 2012, the Japanese government ordered TEPCO to build a wall deep into the ground around the plant to keep groundwater out, a plan that might become operational by early 2015.

TEPCO is expanding its storage capacity to about 1.9 billion gallons by clearing forest and other areas around the compound. While this would probably suffice for another three years, the site is running out of storage space. Additionally, some of the storage tanks have begun to leak and contaminated water is leaking into the soil.

In the Nuclear Business, Truth Has a Limited Half-Life

To address these difficulties, TEPCO is proposing to treat its radioactive water to remove some of the radioactivity, and then release the rest into the Pacific Ocean. There is local opposition to this plan, especially from fishermen.

 In July 2012, as some officials were assuring the public that fish from the Pacific were safe to eat, the Japan Fisheries Agency compiled statistics showing the opposite. As reported by a Canadian website, Vancouver’s straight.com:

“The numbers show that far from dissipating with time, as government officials and scientists in Canada and elsewhere claimed they would, levels of radiation from Fukushima have stayed stubbornly high in fish.

“In June 2012, the average contaminated fish catch had 65 becquerels of cesium per kilo. That’s much higher than the average of five Bq/kg found in the days after the accident back in March 2011, before cesium from Fukushima had spread widely through the region’s food chain. In some species, radiation levels are actually higher this year than last.”

What We Know is Dwarfed by What We Don’t Know About Radioactivity

In March 2013, researchers from the Stanford University Hopkins Marine Station issued a report on Bluefin tuna caught off the California coast and tested for radioactive cesium. The report found that Bluefin tuna were 100 per cent contaminated, that not one was cesium-free. The report did not address such questions as whether cesium would continue to accumulate in tuna or whether it was appearing in other fish species.

The important aspect of this research, according to the Stanford News, was that:

“The work supports the idea that the Fukushima radioisotopes can be used to reliably determine the previously unknown trans-oceanic movements of juvenile Pacific bluefin tuna. This information could be used to prevent tuna from being overfished.”

Would You Like a Side of Hot Seaweed With Your Hot Tuna? 

Reporting on the same information, the Two Rivers Tribune in northern California noted:

“On the coast of California, there is a deep sea kelp forest at Corona del Mar that now contains concentrations of radiation that are 250 times higher than levels found in kelp prior to the Japanese nuclear accidents. A research article published in Scientific American reports that radiation accumulated in fish that ate near the kelp…. Presently, there is no research as to what is the exact effect on fish and their offspring will be from the increased levels of radiation that are being found….

“The Japanese government has banned both the domestic sale and international export of most fish that are caught off the Fukushima coast. Radiation levels are still rising two years after the nuclear accidents. In January of 2013 the tested levels of cesium were about 2,540 times what is considered safe for human consumption. Strontium levels are 240 times the legal limit.”

It’s Not a Cover-up If Governments Gather No Useful Information, Is It?   

Apparently there is no comprehensive, Fukushima-related radiation testing being carried on by the U.S. Canadian, or other governments whose people are directly affected. Nor is there any international body publicly performing this work.