TSA Conducted Pat Downs On Family Members of Plane Crash Victims

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Federal agency made life “more difficult” for both victims and loved ones

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
July 8, 2013

Instead of helping both victims and their loved ones who were involved in the tragic Asiana Airlines plane crash at San Francisco International Airport, the TSA made life “more difficult” for both by delaying victims for hours and conducting pat downs on grief-stricken family members who were still unaware of whether their loved ones were dead or alive.

Image: NTSB

The L.A. Times reports:

“Some passengers were found wandering, dazed, near the wreckage. Others made a beeline for the international terminal, where they waited for as long as five hours to be reunited with panicked friends and family.”

The process was made more difficult, and slower, by a series of screenings conducted by the Transportation Security Administration, police said. Officials spent hours interviewing passengers inside the international departure gates.

To get into the boarding area to meet up with them, loved ones were interviewed, searched and vetted by TSA officials. The vetting included checking that family names matched up and that the passengers knew the people trying to get through the security area.

One by one, relatives walked through the glass doors that separate the terminal from the gates, hoping the children or spouses they had not heard from would be waiting inside.”

In many ways this represents the worst example of TSA abuse ever recorded, underscoring the depth to which the federal agency’s regulations are mindlessly enforced with no consideration for circumstances whatsoever.

Even the incredibly rare event of a plane crashing at an airport is not enough for the TSA to employ some semblence of common sense and basic human compassion.

Hundreds of family members in the throes of emotional trauma unlike anything they have ever experienced before rush to the airport not knowing whether their loved ones are dead, alive or critically injured, and the TSA’s first thought is to carry out grope downs on all of them, despite the fact that they are not even boarding a plane.

“Imagine your spouse, parent, child or sibling was on that plane but you had no idea whether your beloved was dead or alive, in one piece or several. And the TSA’s always tenderhearted, sensitive goons are standing between you and finding out,” writes Becky Akers.

Why not just let the passengers who were on the plane back through to the other side of the security area? This would have negated the need to screen anyone and saved hours of pointless harassment for those already laboring under emotional turmoil. It would also have eliminated any security concerns.

Unfortunately, the TSA has proven itself to be an agency that is immune to common sense, even under such extreme circumstances as a Boeing 777 crash landing at a major airport.

*********************

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

Iran achieves high speed cloning tech

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Researchers in Iranâ„¢s Royan Institute for Biotechnology Research have developed a new technique that speeds up cloning protocols, ISNA has reported.

The method was designed to stimulate the speed and improve the efficiency of the former cloning procedures to facilitate the production of recombinant proteins and organs for xenotransplantation, said Dr. Mohammad Hossein Nasr Esfahani, principle investigator of the project at Royan Institute.

Å“Xenotransplantation is the transplantation of living cells, tissues or organs from one species to another.”

The research team examined the newly designed technique through cloning and transfer of 50 embryos at the Royan Institute.

According to the achieved results, nine pregnancies were positive, which is the highest reported rate in the world.

Å“In March 2013, of nine positive pregnancies in sample goats, eight transgenic animals were born and they are all in perfect health,” Dr. Esfahani explained.

Established in 2004, Royan Institute for Animal Biotechnology was launched with the purpose of improving research in reproduction, development, cell and molecular biology.

Well known for its cloned animals, the Institute also covers many researches in the fields of bioengineering and reproductive technology.

FGP/FGP

Republished with permission from: Press TV

'US backed Morsi and his ouster'

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A political analyst says the US sanctioned the Egyptian Armyâ„¢s coup d’état against the countryâ„¢s former President Mohamed Morsi, who, paradoxically, also enjoyed Washingtonâ„¢s support during his presidency, Press TV reports.

Å“We should be under no illusions, the Egyptian military may have differences within its ranks, but ultimately it tows the line, it takes its orders from Washington DC,” said Michel Chossudovsky, with the Center for Research on Globalization.

Describing the Egyptian Army as the Å“largest recipient of US military aid after Israel” and a Å“strong ally” of Washington, Chossudovsky said the coup d’état was orchestrated with the green light from the Pentagon.

Å“US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel as well as the US Chief of Staff General Martin Dempsey were in permanent liaison with the architects of the coup in the two weeks preceding the military takeover,” Chossudovsky added.

Meanwhile, Chossudovsky said the Egyptian protesters consider Morsi as the US proxy and blame his government for pursuing massive austerity measures that resulted in rising food prices, unemployment and the collapse in the standard of living.

Although the US strategy was to control the coup d™état in order to manipulate the protest movement and Å“prevent the accession of a real peopleâ„¢s government,” the political analyst said, Washingtonâ„¢s actions are causing internal conflict Å“which could lead to a process of destabilization on a much broader scale.”

Å“This crisis has a bearing not only on Egypt, but on the broader region because Egypt is very strategic for America; itâ„¢s a gateway for North Africa and is also a gateway for sub-Saharan Africa,” Chossudovsky warned.

Egyptâ„¢s Health Ministry said on Monday that at least 40 people had been killed during the clashes between the army and Morsi supporters outside the Republican Guard barracks in the capital, Cairo.

Egypt has been the scene of rallies and clashes between thousands of supporters and opponents of the ousted president as political turmoil escalates in the North African country.

Morsi was unseated on July 3, and the Chief Justice of Egyptâ„¢s Supreme Constitutional Court, Adli Mansour, was sworn in as interim president of Egypt on July 4.

Morsi is reportedly being held Å“preventively” by the military. Senior army officials say he might face formal charges over accusations made by his opponents.

MYA/NN/HMV

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Russia to built floating nucelar plant

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Russia plans to build the worldâ„¢s first floating nuclear power plant that will be capable of providing energy and heat to remote areas and drinking water to barren regions, a report says.

Speaking to reporters at the 6th Internatinal Naval Show in St. Petersburg, Aleksandr Voznesensky, general director of Russiaâ„¢s biggest shipbuilders, the Baltic Plant, is cited as saying that Å“the unique vessel should be operational by 2016,” RT reported Sunday.

Named Akademik Lomonosov, after Russian academician Mikhail Lomonosov, the ship is to become the first in a series of floating nuclear power plants, which Moscow plans to mass-produce.

The floating power-generating unit, according to the report, is intended to provide energy to large industrial projects, port cities and offshore gas and oil-extracting platforms and was designed based on nuclear reactors that are equipped on the icebreakers ships.

Å“The technology has proved itself for over 50 years of successful operation in extreme Arctic conditions,” the report adds.

The floating power plant is a large ship with a displacement of 21,500 tons and a crew of 69 people. It is reportedly non-self-propelled and thus has to be towed to the desired destination.

Each vessel will have two Å“modified KLT-40 naval propulsion reactors” that will provide up to 70 MW of electricity or 300 MW of heat, which is sufficient for a city with a population of 200,000 people.

The floating nuclear power plants are expected to be used in remote regions of Russiaâ„¢s high north and Far East, which currently see economic growth suffering from a lack of energy.

For export purposes, the floating power plant can also be modified as a desalination plant able to produce 240,000 cubic meters of fresh water per day.

According to the report, 15 countries, including China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Algeria, Namibia, Cape Verde and Argentina, have already expressed interest in acquiring such power stations.

The builder of the ship reportedly emphasizes that the process of fuel enrichment on the vessels complies with the regulations of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) dealing with nonproliferation of nuclear arms.

The floating power plant, the report adds, is designed with a safety margin, exceeding any possible threats, Å“which makes the reactors invulnerable to tsunami waves or crashes with other ships or on-land structures.”

The construction of the maiden floating nuclear power station began in 2007 at the Sevmash Submarine-Building Plant in Severodvinsk.

MFB/MFB

Republished with permission from: Press TV

‘Train wreck’ Obamacare begins to unravel; massive government boondoggle set to self-destruct by 2015

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Mike Adams
Natural News
Jul 8, 2013

Even before it is fully implemented, Obamacare is already starting to self-destruct. The White House announced last week it will simply invent its own interpretation of the law and “delay the enforcement” of the employer Obamacare mandate for another year, to 2015. This, we are told, is to allow businesses more time to “smooth” compliance with the law, but that’s only the cover story. In reality, the entire private sector economy was preparing to fire tens of millions of workers, cut their hours and radically downsize companies in order to avoid going bankrupt under Obamacare mandates that no one can afford.

Described as a “train wreck” by one of its original authors (Sen. Baucus), and called a “fiasco for the ages” by the Wall Street Journal, Obamacare is a massive government boondoggle that’s headed for complete disaster.

In a desperate effort to get out of the way of that oncoming train, insurance companies are scrambling to flee the market entirely. America’s largest health insurer, UnitedHealth, has just announced it’s closing shop in California and walking away from all health insurance customers there.

That’s how bad Obamacare really is, even for the insurance companies: it’s better to close up shop than even attempt to serve customers under the government’s onerous rules.

U.S. businesses, meanwhile, are engaged in a new wave of job offshoring to India, Pakistan and the Philippines, where Obamacare doesn’t exist and an entire workers’ salary can be less than the cost of health insurance in the U.S. all by itself. The realization has hit everyone who owns or runs a business: Obamacare will bankrupt America’s private sector unless businesses take proactive measures to minimize the hiring U.S. workers.

This is especially true in low-wage jobs – such as the food service industry – where an employee’s contribution to a business simply isn’t that valuable to begin with.

When will the Obamacare train wreck completely derail?

All these are yet more signs that Obamacare’s socialist-inspired health care utopia is turning out to be a total nightmare. As we’ve predicted here on Natural News, much of the system will eventually have to be scrapped or sharply scaled back. Why? Because almost no one can afford the scheme.

Employers have already begun slashing workforce hours in order to avoid the employer mandates, and individuals who need health insurance are starting to freak out over the reality that their rates are going to double or triple once Obamacare fully kicks in.

Remember: This is a law that was advertised as providing either “free” or “affordable” care to everyone, including people with pre-existing conditions. What it actually turned out to be, however, was a monopoly handout to the sick-care industry and the health insurance giants. Instead of promoting health, it kept Americans trapped in a system that profits from chronic disease. Instead of being “affordable,” it’s making health insurance costs double or triple for many people.

Obamacare actually designed to destroy the private sector and make everyone dependent on government

There is one benefit to democrats in all this, however: the fact that employers are already firing workers and downsizing operations in anticipation of Obamacare mandates has results in millions of new people subsisting on welfare and food stamps… and that’s the ultimate goal of the socialist progressive state.

The idea is to destroy the private sector economy and make everyone completely dependent on the government for their food, incomes, housing, education and health care. Only then will the collectivist utopia be fully realized, complete with a domineering spy state, tyrannical police, suffocating tax rates and selective persecution of political enemies by the IRS.

Since Obama took office, food stamp rolls have exploded. From 2007 to 2011, the number of Americans on food stamps grew by 70% to 45 million, and as of 2012, food stamp expenditures have reached $75 billion a year.

Over four million Americans are now on welfare, and another 5.6 million are living on unemployment insurance. In most U.S. states, welfare pays more than having an $8 / hour job! So as Obamacare kicks in, employers will start tossing people out of their jobs, forcing many of them onto precisely the spiral-of-dependence government programs the Obama administration has been desperately seeking to expand. As the number of Americans who depend on the government expands, so does voter support for whichever party happens to promise the biggest handouts… the democrats, of course.

This is how democrats believe you create a perfect society: destroy all private-sector businesses and put the government in charge of everything. This is being done by design, and Obamacare is the lynchpin that will make the hiring of employees all but unaffordable for many businesses.

Obamacare delay a strategy to protect the 2014 elections

The one-year delay of Obamacare is timed, no doubt, to make sure employers don’t feel the full punishment of Obamacare mandates until after the 2014 election. The White House wants to make sure voters and employers don’t fully realize just how tragic Obamacare really is when they go to the polls next year. After all, if democrats can achieve a majority in the House, they can ram through their full package of socialist, fascist policies without resistance. Right now, the House of Representatives is the only thing blocking a full-on socialist agenda that would criminalize the Second Amendment and legalize 11+ million illegal aliens so they can vote. (It’s every Democrat’s deepest fantasy!)

Because once Obamacare really kicks in, all bets are off. All over America, tens of millions of workers will be getting pink slips. While those workers probably voted for Obama in the hope that their employer would be forced to provide them full health care coverage, the sobering reality is that no political mandate can alter the laws of economics. If federal law makes hiring employees prohibitively expensive, employers have little choice but to cut jobs and fire workers.

No mandate from Washington can change the laws of economics

Democrats, of course, tend to think that money appears as if by magic and that businesses can be forced to pay for things they can’t afford. But what they fail to recognize is that businesses always have the choice to simply go out of business or radically downsize, firing workers all the way down as they shrink below Obamacare mandate thresholds. Hence the term “49ers” which isn’t a sports franchise. It’s the nickname given to all the medium-sized businesses across America that are shedding workers to get below the 50-employee threshold where Obamacare mandates put you out of business. If you just happen to be employee number 50, 51 or 52, expect to be fired even though you’ve done nothing wrong. Thank Obama for forcing your employer to shrink to 49 employees.

So all those Americans who suddenly find themselves jobless can thank Obama, Pelosi and all the other nincompoops in Washington for yet more socialist incompetence. What they all fail to realize is that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Not even if it’s mandated by the White House. The laws of economics do not bow down to any president.

Thanks to Obama’s delay of Obamacare until 2015, however, you may get to hold on to your job for another year. But unless you’re in a high-level position where your employer can’t live without you, be prepared to hit the street in late 2014 as companies start slashing jobs in a desperate bid to meet the “49er” requirement. You’ll be joined by a wave of other recently-jobless who were also let go because of Obamacare mandates. Good luck finding employment anywhere, since you’ll have loads of competition at precisely the same time no company wants to cross the 50-employee threshold.

Thanks, Obama, for causing even more Americans to lose their jobs. It’s one more score for the same President that has expanded Gitmo, kept marijuana criminalized, refused to label GMOs and scaled up a massive domestic surveillance infrastructure run by the NSA. Is there anything Obama promised that hasn’t ended in complete betrayal?

New Gun Show Exposes Joe Biden as a Fraud

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Infowars.com
Jul 8, 2013

Using our first amendment right to support our second amendment right, Brothers in Arms returns as it premiers on Prisonplanet.tv.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oGYE_u1bW1Y

Republished with permission from: Infowars

MASSACRE IN EGYPT: Dozens Of Morsi Supporters Killed

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JOE WEISENTHAL
Business Insider
Jul 8, 2013

Dozens of supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi are reported to have been killed at a demonstration in Egypt.

The latest death toll, according to Reuters, citing state TV, is 42. In addition to that, over 300 have been injured, according to AFP.

Accounts vary of what exactly happened.

This video (posted by Al-Jazeera) purports to show teargas being fired at Morsi supporters.

Full article here

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This article was posted: Monday, July 8, 2013 at 5:12 am

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

71% Agree Founding Fathers Would Be Ashamed of Country Today, And They’re Right

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Anthony Gucciardi

From Orwellian spying tactics employed by the NSA to warrantless searches and a police force turned militaristic, a new Gallup poll finds that 71% of Americans agree that the nation’s Founding Fathers would be truly ashamed of what the country has become. And they’re right.

In 2013 the United States represents virtually everything that those who framed the nation’s doctrine attempted to protect against – and it’s all thanks to a small group of corrupt politicians who are devastating the home of 313 million US citizens. Whether we’re talking about the utterly hated NDAA which allows for the indefinite (and unconstitutional) detention of Americans as if they were combatant terrorists or the bloated presence of the Federal Reserve banking system, the signers of the Declaration of Independence would not even recognize this country at this point in time.

But it’s not just the founders who would be rightfully upset. Thankfully, this Gallup poll indicates that an overwhelming majority of citizens are aware of the rampant downfall that this nation has taken during the fight against ‘terrorism’ and rise of ‘safety regulations’ that are hitting our struggling nation like a recurring avalanche. One unconstitutional law or regulation after another is pushed through using the guise of ‘safety’ while ignoring not only the consequences but the blatant disregard for our rights.

founders-ashamed-america

71% of those polled believed the Founding Fathers would be ashamed of our country today.

One topic in particular comes to mind, which is the national ‘Constitution-free zone‘ I covered back in Feburary of this year that literally stretches 100 miles from any US border (including water) under DHS regulation. Under this 100 mile zone that covers 197 million citizens in major cities like Houston and Philadelphia, the DHS has granted itself the ‘right’ to search all of your electronic belongings for no reason whatsoever. And if you refuse then you will be sent to jail, where they will then search your stuff any way.

But God help you if you have anything slightly inappropriate on your laptop, as they will charge you as a terrorist for simply having internet photos of Islamic groups saved on your hard drive.

Around 85% of Americans still report being extremely or very ‘proud’ to be American citizens, with 71% saying they believe the founders would be ashamed of where we stand today. I don’t know how the other 27% who believe the founders would be proud of the country rationalize this outside of regurgitating the ‘safety’ propaganda as given to us by the scripted mainstream media, but I do see how a large percentage of the population can still be proud to be citizens of the US.

After all, the nation was founded on a Constitution that protects the fundamental rights we seek to protect today, with the founders intending to stop any infiltration of such rights. Today, we must reclaim these rights and reclaim what the founders called home.

This post originally appeared at Story Leak

12-Year Old Explains Egyptian Revolution in Under 3 Minutes

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Infowars.com
Jul 8, 2013

Ali Ahmed, an opposition protestor in the streets of Egypt, explains [very eloquently] why over 20 million Egyptians have taken to the streets to protest Mohammed Morsi’s government.

Republished with permission from: Infowars

Morsi loyalists seize two Egypt soldiers

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President Mohamed Morsi supporters and Muslim Brotherhood members in Cairo hold a large portrait of him as they demonstrate against his toppling at Rabia al-Adawiya mosque on July 7, 2013.

An Egyptian military official says supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi have seized two army soldiers in the capital, Cairo.

State news agency MENA quoted the official as saying that armed supporters of Morsi put the Egyptian soldiers, identified as Samir Abdallah Ali and Azzam Hazem Ali, in a car on Monday and forced them Å“to make pro-Morsi and anti-army statements on a loudspeaker.”

Dozens of Morsi supporters were killed and hundreds more wounded in an attack on a sit-in outside the Republican Guard headquarters in the capital on Monday.

Muslim Brotherhood says over 50 people, including five children, died in the attack.

Meanwhile, Egyptâ„¢s judicial authorities have ordered the closure of Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in Cairo after security forces allegedly found arms inside the building.

Police found Å“flammable liquid, knives and arms to be used against the June 30 protests,” an Egyptian security official said on condition of anonymity.

Muslim Brotherhood political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, has called for Å“an uprising by the great people of Egypt against those trying to steal their revolution with tanks.”

Egyptâ„¢s Nour Party has withdrawn from talks over the new government in response to the Ëœmassacreâ„¢ of the protesters.

The Strong Egypt Party has also condemned the killings, saying General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the head of Egyptâ„¢s army, is responsible for the deadly incident.

Leading opposition figure Mohammad ElBaradei has censured the killings and urged for an independent investigation into the incident.

Å“Violence is not the approach no matter what its source, and it must be strongly condemned. I call for an immediate independent and transparent investigation. Egypt is in dire need of reconciliation,” ElBaradei posted on Twitter.

The violence has also prompted condemnation by the Turkish government and the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas.

On July 3, General Sisi announced that President Morsi was no longer in office.

The chief justice of Egyptâ„¢s Supreme Constitutional Court, Adli Mansour, was sworn in as interim president of Egypt on July 4.

Strong Egypt Party leader Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh has called on the interim president to step down.

DB/HSN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

EDL key online Islamophobic abuser in UK

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A new anti-fascist study has blamed the far-right English Defence League (EDL) for a third of online hate attacks that have targeted the UKâ„¢s Muslim community.

The report by the Centre for Fascist, Anti-Fascist and Post-Fascist Studies at Teesside University quoted that “online expressions of anti-Muslim sentiment have reached significant proportions”.

The study titled, Anti-Muslim Hate Crime and the Far Right is based on the figures of the yearly report issued by Tell Mama, the hotline which records Islamophobic incidents in the UK.

The report said that 74 percent of online racist incidents were reported to Tell Mama, compared to 26 percent occurring in the Å“physical world”.

Out of the 434 incidents of online abuse, 300 were linked to a far-right movement, while 147 of those were linked to the EDL, which is a third of all online anti-Muslim incidents.

The information was based on 2012-2013 figures gathered prior to the killing of British Soldier Lee Rigby in south-east London.

According to Tell Mama, 212 Å“anti-Muslim incidents” have been reported after Rigbyâ„¢s killing.

The incidents included 11 attacks on mosques across the UK in a series of far-right expressions with swastikas and the letters EDL, KKK (Ku Klux Klan) and NF (National Front) being sprayed on walls of mosques.

BGH/AMR/HE

Republished with permission from: Press TV

German exports post sharp fall in May

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German exports sharply declined by 2.4 percent in May compared to previous month.

Official figures show that Germanyâ„¢s export volume experienced a surprise decline in May, amid a sharp fall in demand in the recession-hit eurozone.

Germanyâ„¢s Federal Statistics Office revealed on Monday that the countryâ„¢s seasonally-adjusted exports plummeted 2.4 percent in comparison to previous month, falling more than the forecasted 0.1-percent gain.

Å“German exports dropped sharply in May, illustrating that the economy still has difficulties to shift into a higher gear,” said senior economist Carsten Brzeski.

It was the biggest decline in exports since late 2009 and analysts say the reasons for the decline are the eurozone crisis, where Germany sends 40 percent of its shipments and a weaker demand from China, which many German manufacturers had looked to as an alternative.

A recent purchasing managersâ„¢ survey suggested that the export situation would not improve in June since bookings from abroad dropped in the manufacturing sector for a fourth straight month.

The German government expects the countryâ„¢s exports to negatively affect gross domestic product (GDP) this year and is instead relying on private consumption, helped by higher wages, to support economic growth.

Germanyâ„¢s economy weakened in 2012 and is now struggling as it just avoided recession after posting a mere growth of 0.1 percent in first quarter of this year, following a 0.5 percent contraction in final quarter of 2012.

CAH/HSN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Syria army makes progress near capital

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Syrian forces have made advances in some areas on the outskirts of Damascus during operations against foreign-backed Takfiri militants, Press TV reports.

The Syrian forces drove out militants from Ghouta, Zamalka and Irbin neighborhoods, inflicting heavy losses on the armed groups on Monday.

In the town of Hijra, which is located near the capital, the army has regained control of a number of neighborhoods after heavy fighting with the militants.

Military sources say most of the militants in these areas were killed and their positions and equipment destroyed.

During the past 48 hours, the Syrian army has managed to gain more ground in Damascus and some other important regions.

The army on July 6 restored security to the industrial area of al-Qaboun, east of the capital.

Syrian troops also retook control of the northwestern part of the Sayyida Zeinab camp near Damascus.

The army has also inflicted heavy losses on Takfiris in the northwestern city of Aleppo, as well as the cities of Hama and Idlib.

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

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

YH/HSN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

'Iran to unveil mobile S-200 system'

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Iran to unveil mobile version of S-200 air defense system: Cmdr.

Commander of Iranâ„¢s Khatam al-Anbia Air Defense Base Brigadier General Farzad Esmaili

The mobile version of Iranâ„¢s indigenous S-200 missile defense system will be unveiled in upcoming military drills by Iranian air defense units, a senior commander says.

The move follows Leader of the Islamic Revolution and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khameneiâ„¢s emphasizing that a mobile version of the system be developed, said Brigadier General Farzad Esmaili, the commander of Khatam al-Anbia Air Defense Base.

In addition to the S-200 system, said the senior commander, plans are in the pipeline to build mobile versions of all artillery and missile defense systems in the nationâ„¢s air defense sector.

In the new version of the S-200 system, he noted, its fire power and precision targeting have also been improved and tested successfully.

The Iranian commander said the mobile version of the air defense system would be unveiled in military exercises code-named Å“Modafeâ„¢an-e Aseman-e Velayat 5” (Guardians of the Velayat Skies 5), due to be held in six monthsâ„¢ time.

He first announced the upcoming military exercises last Wednesday during a ceremony to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the downing of Iran Air passenger flight 655 by US naval forces in the Persian Gulf on July 3, 1988.

Esmaili had described the drills as more extensive than a similar military exercise staged in eastern Iran last year, saying that the Hazem 3 drone would also be unveiled during the maneuvers.

The Islamic Republic has repeatedly assured other nations, especially its neighbors, that its military might poses no threat to other countries, insisting that its defense doctrine is based on deterrence.

MFB/NN/HMV

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Iran ‘Parviz’ to vie in Yerevan Filmfest

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Iranian feature length movie Parviz directed by Majid Barzegar is set to compete at the 10th Golden Apricot International Film Festival in Armenia.

The movie has been selected to contend for award at the competition section of the festival held in the capital city of Yerevan.

Centered on family relationships, the film depicts the story of a man at his fifties, Parviz, who has spent life in his fatherâ„¢s home and has never had a job. His quiet routine suddenly comes apart when his father decides to remarry and tells him to move out.

Barzegarâ„¢s screen production competed at the New Directors section of the 2012 San Sebastian international film festival in Spain.

The movie was also presented at the 2012 edition of Thessaloniki International Film Festival in Greece.

Iranian director Salem Salavatiâ„¢s documentary The Last Winter is the countryâ„¢s other screen representative at the 2013 Golden Apricot festival.

This yearâ„¢s Yerevan film festival is to host 200 films, from which 90 movies will be screened in the four competition sections of Feature, Documentary, Armenian Panorama and the Apricot Stone (short films).

Established in 2004, Golden Apricot Yerevan Film Festival is annually held and dedicated to the theme of Crossroads of Cultures and Civilizations.

Academy Award winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadiâ„¢s A Separation was the festivalâ„¢s top winner in 2011.

The 2013 Golden Apricot Yerevan Film Festival kicked off on July 7 and will run until July 14, 2013.

FGP/FGP

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Japan plants urge restart of reactors

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This picture taken on April 12, 2012 shows the Ohi nuclear power plant of Kansai Electric Power Co (KEPCO) in Ohi town, Fukui prefecture, western Japan.

Japanese nuclear operators have asked regulators for permission to restart reactors after new rules came into effect following disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Four Japanese power companies on Monday submitted applications to the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) for safety inspections on a total of 10 nuclear reactors idled since a tsunami swept through the Fukushima Daiichi plant in March 2011.

Three reactors are at one site on Japanâ„¢s northernmost main island of Hokkaido, while the remaining seven are in four plants in the west of the country.

The nuclear reactors are unlikely to be brought back online soon since the NRA said it may take around six months for each safety-screening process to finish.

The NRA has drawn up tough strict new standards that require utilities to prepare measures against severe accidents or terrorist attacks before they will be given permission to restart idled reactors.

In case the regulator gives the go-ahead, the firms must then get the nod from national and regional politicians.

Å“It is important that assessment will be done in a strict manner by the Nuclear Regulation Authority based on the new standards,” said Katsunobu Kato, the deputy chief of Japanâ„¢s cabinet secretary.

Å“It is a precondition that host communities agree on the re-firing, so we hope utilities give detailed explanations to local residents,” Kato added.

On March 11, 2011, a nine-magnitude earthquake triggered a tsunami that inflicted heavy damage on the six-reactor Fukushima plant. Cooling systems of the plantâ„¢s reactors were knocked out, leading to meltdowns and the release of radioactivity.

Before the disaster, the nuclear reactors provided 30 percent of the countryâ„¢s electricity and the government had planned to increase the share to more than 50 percent by 2030.

Japanâ„¢s 50 nuclear reactors were shut down after the accident. Most of the reactors have been off-lined for regularly scheduled maintenance, with no specific restart plans.

Most people do not want the reactors to be restarted, saying reactivating the reactors before the completion of the probe into the Fukushima triple-meltdown disaster would pose too much of a risk.

Having been badly hit by soaring gas and oil costs, Japanese utility companies are eager to get their reactors back online.

YH/HSN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Morsi loyalists seize two army soldiers

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]An Egyptian military official says supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi have seized two army soldiers in the capital, Cairo.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Rohani hails Iran, Indonesia ties

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Iranâ„¢s President-elect Hassan Rohani has hailed bilateral relations between the Islamic Republic and Indonesia as friendly and brotherly.

Responding to the congratulatory message of Speaker of Indonesia’s House of Representatives Marzuki Alie on Monday, Rohani said bilateral relations were based on Å“friendship, brotherhood and shared religious beliefs.”

Iranâ„¢s president-elect called for further strengthening of good ties between the two countries.

In a separate message to Bangladeshi President Mohammed Abdul Hamid, Rohani called for the promotion of reciprocal ties based on mutual trust and common interests of the two countries.

Iranâ„¢s president-elect also welcomed the enhancement of relations with Montenegro in a message to the countryâ„¢s President Filip Vujanovic.

Rohani emerged victorious in the presidential election of June 14, which was marked by a high voter turnout. He won 50.7 percent of a total of 36, 704, 156 ballots counted.

The Interior Ministry put voter turnout at 72.7 percent.

Iranâ„¢s President-elect currently represents Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei in the Supreme National Security Council and is also a member of the Expediency Council and the Assembly of Experts. He is the director of the Expediency Council’s Center for Strategic Research as well.

MYA/NN/HMV

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Athens mayor assaulted over job cuts

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Greek staff unionists have physically assaulted Athens Mayor Giorgos Kaminis amid protests against job cuts tied to Greeceâ„¢s bailout, officials say.

The mayorâ„¢s office said Kaminis was Å“physically attacked” on Sunday while he was leaving a Confederation of Greek Municipalities (KEDE) meeting, where he held discussions about the austerity measures and their affects on thousands of municipal employees.

Kaminis was checked into hospital where he was treated for minor injuries.

After leaving hospital, a statement was issued by the mayorâ„¢s office, who blamed the attack on the Panhellenic Federation of Employees in Municipalities (POE-OTA) union and its president, Themis Balasopoulos, and accused Balasopoulos of leading its members Å“down a dangerous road.”

In response, POE-OTA has condemned the assault, blaming provocateurs for the attack and saying it was Å“damaging for the just fight of local authority workers.”

The latest protests come as Greece is close to reaching a deal with its international lenders in hope to draw 8.1 billion euros (about $10.4 billion) in promised funding from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Greece agreed last week to transfer some 4,000 municipal officers to the police force, a cost-cutting move which unionists fear will lead to many layoffs.

Eurozone finance ministers are meeting in Brussels on Monday to decide whether Athens has applied enough reforms to get the new tranche of loans.

By the end of this year, some 25,000 civil servants overall must be redeployed and an additional 4,000 fired in order for the country to receive access to further payouts of its bailout rescue loans.

Greece was granted a 110 billion euro ($145 billion) bailout by the so-called troika of international lenders in May 2010.

Another 130 billion euro ($170 billion) rescue package was approved in February 2012.

The country has been at the epicenter of the eurozone debt crisis and is experiencing its fifth year of recession, while harsh austerity measures have left about half a million people without jobs.

CAH/HSN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Muslim Brotherhood calls for ‘uprising’

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Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and ousted President Morsi clash with Egypt police outside the elite Republican Guards base in Cairo, on July 8, 2013.

Egyptâ„¢s Muslim Brotherhood has called for Ëœuprisingâ„¢ after dozens of its supporters were killed by the security forces in the capital, Cairo.

In a statement on Monday, the groupâ„¢s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, appealed for Å“an uprising by the great people of Egypt against those trying to steal their revolution with tanks.”

It also urged the Å“international community and international groups and all the free people of the world to intervene to stop further massacres… and prevent a new Syria in the Arab world.”

The party was reacting to killing of over 40 supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi in a sit-in in Cairo on Monday.

The Muslim Brotherhood said that snipers targeted protesters attending the sit-in outside the Republican Guard building.

Å“Morsi supporters were praying while the police and army fired live rounds and tear gas at them,” the Brotherhood said.

Egyptâ„¢s Nour Party has withdrawn from talks over the new government in response to the Ëœmassacreâ„¢ of the protesters.

The Strong Egypt Party also condemned the killings, saying General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the head of Egyptâ„¢s army, is responsible for the deadly incident.

On July 3, General Sisi announced that President Morsi was no longer in office.

The chief justice of Egyptâ„¢s Supreme Constitutional Court, Adli Mansour, was sworn in as interim president of Egypt on July 4.

Growing differences among political parties have delayed the nomination of a new interim prime minister in the North African country.

DB/HSN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Tehran exhibits ‘Nane Hassan’ paintings

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A collection of paintings created by the Iranian female artist Monavvar Ramezani has been showcased in a gallery in Tehran, Press TV has reported.

Well-known as ËœNane Hassanâ„¢, Ramezani is an Iranian self-taught painter with no formal art training, who has been involved in the art of weaving rugs and drawing rug patterns from her childhood.

Born in 1937 in Zanjan Province, the artistâ„¢s style is primitive though deeply meaningful that have been inspired from Persian tales, myths, stories, poems, traditions and legends.

The heuristic painter ËœNane Hassanâ„¢ has experienced painting professionally since six years ago. Her life was granted much learning and ancient traditions inherited from her ancestors.

Depicting lots of untold stories, Ramezaniâ„¢s carpet making and designing represent her own visual language.

Her works are full of rhythms and repeated motifs with various colors that liken her paintings to carpet.

Died in 2005, Mokarrameh Qanbari was another Iranian heuristic woman painter whose works were displayed in many international galleries.

Qanbari was chosen as the woman of the year by the Iranian Women’s Studies Foundation (IWSF) and the University of Stockholm in 2001.

FGP/FGP

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Cairo clashes death toll rises to 42

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Egyptian state TV says the death toll from an army attack on supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi in the capital, Cairo has risen to 42.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

‘Egyptian crisis detrimental to region’

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A file photo of a fire burning inside an anti-riot vehicle during a protest in Cairo

A senior Iranian lawmaker says the continuation of the current situation in Egypt will be to the detriment of the African country and the whole region, expressing hope that Cairo could resolve the crisis as soon as possible.

Arresting the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood could provoke their supporters to take to the streets, said Alaeddin Boroujerdi, chairman of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of Iranâ„¢s Majlis.

The MP said the Muslim Brotherhood should also accept early elections because the only way to tackle the situation is through mutual understanding.

Å“Itâ„¢s a difficult job, but the only solution is [to come to an] understanding,” the legislator emphasized.

Reiterating Iranâ„¢s policy of non-interference in other countriesâ„¢ internal affairs, Boroujerdi expressed hope that Egypt, as an important Muslim country, would overcome the current crisis as soon as possible.

Å“Iran will definitely not meddle in Egyptâ„¢s internal crisis, but we are prepared to use our potential to help establish tranquility [in Egypt],” the MP stated.

If the leaders of the Egyptian Army and the Muslim Brotherhood seek to fuel tensions, Boroujerdi underlined, Egypt could witness ensuing domestic crisis, violence and even underground armed movements, which would be catastrophic for the Egyptian society.

Boroujerdi said extremists must not be allowed to cash in on the situation to push Egypt towards unfortunate events such as those gripping Iraq and Syria.

Egyptâ„¢s Health Ministry said on Monday that at least 34 supporters of Egyptâ„¢s ousted President Mohamed Morsi were killed by the security forces during protests outside the Republican Guard barracks in the capital, Cairo.

Egypt has been the scene of rallies and clashes between thousands of the supporters and opponents of ousted president as political turmoil escalates in the North African country.

Morsi was unseated on July 3, and the chief justice of Egyptâ„¢s Supreme Constitutional Court, Adli Mansour, was sworn in as interim president of Egypt on July 4.

Morsi is reportedly being held Å“preventively” by the military. Senior army officials say he might face formal charges over accusations made by his opponents.

MYA/NN/HMV

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Croatia joined an EU at war — class war!

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Photo by Council of the EU

When Croatia joined the European Union on 1 July, the country joined an EU at war. It is a class war in which capitalist forces, the Troika (the EU Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund), national governments and the new European oligarchy have gone on the offensive to dismantle the welfare state and defeat the trade union movement. Croatia’s accession to the EU will, in other words, serve some Croatians’ economic, social and political interests while it will undermine and weaken others’ — mainly those of workers and trade unions. In this guest post, Asbjørn Wahl analyses from a labour perspective the dynamics underlying the current state of European integration.

The background is a Europe in crisis, an economic crisis which in reality is a deep systemic crisis of capitalism. The current phase of this crisis was triggered off by the financial crisis of 2007-8, which particularly in Europe was turned into a sovereign debt crisis. This crisis is now being used as an excuse to destroy social Europe and to shift the balance of power further in favour of capital. This is the aim, or at least the effect, of the harsh unemployment and austerity policies which are now being pursued across Europe. The crisis has also clearly revealed that the EU institutionally consists of a core of powerful states and a periphery of more powerless ones. Croatia will obviously find its place among the latter.

Photo by European Council
Over the last few years we have experienced enormous attacks on workers and trade union rights in the EU. Firstly, we had the so-called Laval quartet (the Viking, Laval, Rütter and Luxemburg cases in the EU Court of Justice in 2007-8) which all restricted the right to strike. Secondly, a number of the latest pacts, legislation and policy recommendations in the EU have strongly contributed to weakening the right of workers and trade unions. Thirdly, encouraged by the EU Commission, collective agreements in the public sector have been set aside by governments in at least ten EU member countries, while wages have been cut without negotiations with trade unions. Legislation has also been introduced at national level in a number of EU member states in order to limit further the right to strike and to be able to use more extreme measures to curb strikes by military and police forces (cf. Greece).
The institutional development of the EU has been remarkable over the last few years and has contributed to carving in stone neoliberalism as the one and only economic model of the EU. New pacts and institutions have thus been adopted at a speed which is unprecedented in the history of the EU, and with little democratic legitimacy. The Euro-Plus Pact, the six pieces of legislation on economic governance (the so-called six-pack), the Fiscal Pact and the Competitiveness Pact under negotiation are all parts of this development of an ever more authoritarian, neoliberal EU.

General Strike, Photo by Sheesh Wo
Structural reforms of the labour market have been central elements of this legislation. In the neoliberal EU language this means lower minimum wages, reduced coverage of collective agreements, decentralisation of wage formation, more flexible working hours, reduced overtime pay, more temporary work, etc. In effect, lower social protection and reduced trade union power. Furthermore, unemployment benefits are cut, retirement age increased and pensions reduced. As if this is not enough, the Member States have been instructed to implement austerity policy in national legislation, preferably in their constitution. Austerity forever or, in other words, the end of social Europe.
So far, the European trade union movement has not been able to curb this reactionary policy of liberalisation, privatisation and austerity. It still clings strongly to the social partnership ideology of the post-World War II period, despite the fact that the class compromise, on which this policy was based, has broken down. Right up to the last few years, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) has, therefore, (like their closely related Social Democratic Parties) actually supported most of the neoliberal legislative and institutional development of the EU. Only recently have we seen the beginning of a change of this policy — under pressure from some national trade union confederations, particularly from the South of Europe.
General Strike, Photo by Sheesh Wo

The all-European trade union actions, which took place on 14 November 2012, were in this regard promising. At least, nothing like it has ever happened in the history of the European trade union movement. General strikes were organised in six EU Member States on that day (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Malta). In addition, more limited strikes were carried out in France and Belgium — and huge demonstrations and solidarity actions were organised in a number of other countries, including in Central and Eastern Europe. This is the tendency in which Croatian trade unions will have to find their place in order to defend the interests of their members — and thus start the construction of another Europe, a peoples’ Europe.

Asbjørn Wahl is the Director of the Campaign for the Welfare State and Adviser of the NorwegianUnion of Municipal and General Employees. This post was first published in the Croatian version of Le Monde Diplomatique, June 2013.

Fake Border-Crossing Amusement Park Mocks Immigrant Experience

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Photo Credit: Photo Credit: Photo by Irina Zhorov/Fronteras

July 3, 2013
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During a time when immigration is one of the most contested political issues and when migrants are dying in increasingly high numbers along the war-zone-like border (which is currently planned to reach a state of security overkill in 2014), it is rather shocking that in the Mexican state of Hidalgo there is an amusement park with a simulated U.S.-Mexico border crossing. The attraction, which is complete with fake border patrol officers, sirens, chases, smugglers, dogs and an 8-mile hike to the finish line, claims to offer participants “the events of a typical border crossing as realistically as possible.”

Recently there’s been a lot of media coverage on the attraction, where headlines read, “ Crossing the U.S.-Mexico Border Illegally for Fun?” and “ Weird Award of the Week: Mexican Theme Park with Simulated Border Crossing.” PBS even called special attention to the attraction when it describes it as offering visitors, “the thrills and chills of an illegal border crossing.”

But what “thrills” is PBS talking about? And “chills” is a huge understatement when it comes to the hypothermia-inducing temperatures and near-death encounters with snakes, border patrol and deceptive smugglers.

The founders of the park, though, had a good motive for creating the mock border crossing: to deter would-be border crossers by providing a taste of the difficult and exhausting experience of crossing the border.

But the media coverage on PBS and Time magazine tends to make a mockery of a problematic and dangerous situation.

First off, there is a major issue when PBS describes the “ideal” visitor as: “Those who want to simulate the experience of fleeing across the border, without the real danger.”

However, a key point is that crossing the border is very dangerous, and potentially deadly. Migrants who attempt, succeed and fail in crossing the border make the difficult decision of risking their lives. They take the ultimate risk all for the possibility of providing for loved ones or reuniting with them in the U.S.

But it is obviously very difficult to simulate that. In fact, it’s nearly impossible.

And, quite frankly, I’m sorry, but I just can’t have any empathy for some visitor who wants to cross the border “without the real danger.” In fact, it’s quite troubling that someone would even play at crossing the border.

That’s what’s most upsetting: making border-crossing not only into some sort of spectacle for bored or curious visitors to indulge in, but making it into some kind of sport. And reports from PBS and Time only exacerbate this kind of understanding.

In Time’s report, for example, the reporters wrote of the event in a rather sporty fashion, making it sound like an avatar action-packed video game:

Every weekend, dozens of participants pay about $20 apiece to scramble up hills, slide down ravines and run through tunnels pursued by siren-blaring pickup trucks and pumped-up border-patrol agents shouting in accented English.

And, according to participants and organizers in the report, the attraction “is a great deal of fun.”

If this attraction is indeed fun, then there is no way it simulates an actual border crossing. In fact, there’s no way a “fun” border crossing effectively deters participants from potentially crossing the border, even if it is supposedly “difficult.” (“Difficult” here mean that participants will experience blisters, cuts, sprains, bruises, bug bites, dust attacks, near-blinded spotlights and stubbed toes–which all sound like potential risks of playing on a playground at night.)

What’s more, at the end of the attraction when participants arrive at the fakefrontera they are rewarded with sweet breads and tea. Now how far from reality is that?

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

Despite Claims to the Contrary, Pepsi Is Still Using Caramel Coloring Linked to Cancer

The caramel coloring used in PepsiCo Inc. drinks contains high levels of a probable carcinogen, according to a new study by the watchdog group The Center for Environmental Health (CEH). Pepsi had claimed to have removed the chemical, but the CEH reports otherwise.

In order to avoid a cancer warning label in California, Pepsi and Coca-Cola Co.–which together account for almost 90 percent of the soda market according to industry tracker Beverage Digest–both reportedly adjusted their formulas across the U.S. in March in order to disclude the chemical called 4-methylimidazole or 4-Mel. The chemical was linked to cancer in mice and rats.

CEH commissioned Eurofins Analystical laboratory in Metairie, Louisiana to test Coke and Pepsi products from California in May and from across the country in June. The result, ccording to CEH, was that Coke products no longer test positive for 4-Mel but Pepsi products outside of California still do.

According to Huffington Post, Pepsi says its suppliers are still transitioning the manufacturing process to cut the amount of 4-Mel in its caramel, but the process won’t be complete until Feb. 2014 outside of California. Pepsi also said it will remove 4-Mel worldwide, but did not provide a timeline.

Pepsi claims that the 4-Mel chemical is safe, noting that the FDA and other regulatory agencies have not deemed the chemical unsafe.

According to USA Today, the Food and Drug Administration says a consumer would have to drink more than 1,000 cans of soda a day to reach the doses administered that have shown links to cancer in rodents. But, after a study on mice and rats linked the coloring chemical to cancer, California added 4-Mel to its list of carcinogens.

April M. Short is a Bay Area journalist focusing on social justice reporting.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

4 Shady Ways Police Bust People For Drugs

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On Wednesday, the city of Berkeley filed a claim against the federal government’s move to file asset forfeiture against the landlord of Berkeley’s largest medical marijuana dispensary. The tactic, which threatens landlords with the state’s ability to seize their property, has been used many times in the federal government’s war on state-sanctioned medical marijuana.

“It is time for the federal government to wake up and stop these asset forfeiture actions,” Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates wrote in a press release. “Berkeley Patients Group has complied with the rules and caused no problems in the City. The federal government should not use its scarce resources to harass local law-abiding businesses.”

Needless to say, the tactic has drawn criticism from activists and locals alike. Last month, the US Conference of Mayors unanimously passed a resolution asking the federal government to butt out of local marijuana policy.

Drug policy reformers, including retired police officers with the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition ( LEAP), point to asset forfeiture as one of the more oppressive tactics in the drug war. Because it allows the state to claim ownership of property, and police departments receive federal grants for prioritizing drug arrests, it puts a big price tag on a drug bust.

The monetary value of a drug bust and the use of quotas create a by-any-means-necessary incentive for drug arrests.

“Civil asset forfeiture laws allow police to take property from anyone by merely alleging that the property was used in the commission of a drug violation. No one has to be charged with a crime–they often charge the property directly because property doesn’t have constitutional protections. Then they will sell the property, and keep the proceeds within the department. This creates an incentive to government to perpetuate the drug war, despite undeniable evidence of its many failures,” retired police captain and LEAP speaker Peter Christ told AlterNet.

Here are four recent examples of the ridiculous lengths to which some cops will go to procure drug arrests.

1. Fake Checkpoints

The Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that establishing traffic checkpoints to search for illegal drugs violates the 4th Amendment. Nonetheless, police in the Cleveland, Ohio suburb of Mayfield Heights erected big yellow signs on the Interstate, warning drivers that a drug checkpoint ahead would include drug-sniffing dogs.

As the AP reported, “There was no such checkpoint, just police officers waiting to see if any drivers would react suspiciously after seeing the signs.” They reportedly stopped four people, made some arrests and seized some drugs, but “declined to be more specific,” the AP said. It is unclear whether establishing a fake checkpoint violates the case law, which holds that traffic check points may exist only to look for drunk drivers and prevent undocumented immigrants and illegal contraband from entering the country. Dominic Vitantonio, a Mayfield Heights assistant prosecutor, said of the tricky maneuver, “We should be applauded for doing this,” adding, “It’s a good thing.”

Others aren’t so sure. The Cleveland ACLU is reportedly investigating the situation. “I  don’t think it accomplishes any public safety goals,” said Terry Gilbert, a prominent Cleveland civil rights attorney. “I don’t think it’s good to mislead the population for any reason if you’re a government agency.”

2. Teaching Cops Legal Loopholes

Meanwhile, in California, the CA Narcotics Officers’ Association (CNOA) recently hosted a class (closed to the public) teaching officers how to undermine California’s voter-approved, decade-old medical marijuana program. That’s because, despite research to the contrary and the will of the voters, “There is no justification for using marijuana as a medicine,” CNOA claims.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

Global Outrage: More Than 1/3 of World's Women Suffer Physical or Sexual Violence

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July 5, 2013
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Violence against women is certainly not a new phenomenon. We are constantly flooded with stories in the media of heinous acts of violence perpetrated against women across the globe. This is subsequently followed by extensive dialogue on women’s rights by activists and political bodies alike attempting to find solutions to address the problem, most commonly resulting in the adoption of legislation as a quick fix to satisfy public outrage.

While such legislative actions are commendable, necessary and timely, to date these measures have not led to a world free from violence–women continue to be subject to it, the media continues to report it, activists continue to fight against it and we end up in a perpetuating cycle of institutional inertia where recapping the problem seems like the only practical solution.

The question that remains unanswered is not what we can do to address it, but how such measures can be effectively implemented in order to change a climate of rape culture and impunity that is so heavily entrenched in our society.

According to a report released by the United Nations World Heath Organization (WHO), 35 percent of women around the world experience some form of physical or sexual violence, whether by an intimate partner or stranger, and the problem is so widespread that it is now considered a global public health problem.

The report is the first systematic study of global data on the prevalence of violence against women. The study found that violence committed by an intimate partner is the most common form of violence, affecting 30 percent of women worldwide. In addition, 38 percent of all women murdered globally are killed by their intimate partner; women who face physical and/or sexual partner violence are 1.5 times more likely to acquire a sexually transmitted infection and twice as likely to develop depression and alcohol-use problems.

The report comes amidst increasing international pressure in recent months for action to prevent violence against women. Last week the Security Council adopted a resolution to end impunity for perpetrators of sexual violence in armed conflict zones. In a compelling speech, Angelina Jolie, Special Envoy of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, stressed that victims were not only suffering at the hands of their rapists but also from a culture of impunity:

“These crimes happen not because they are inherent to war. It is because the global climate allows it. That young Syrian rape victim is here because you represent her. That five-year-old child in the Congo must count because you represent her. And in her eyes, if her attacker gets away with his crimes, it is because you have allowed it.”

Following its adoption, the UN Security Council said the resolution sent a strong signal to perpetrators that they will be held accountable for their actions and that rape by armed groups and in conflict will not be tolerated. However, while such dialogue is welcome, without political will by state governments to implement such measures or a judiciary willing to apply such laws, the current climate of physical and sexual violence against women is unlikely to change. Moreover, the Security Council lacks any sort of police powers to enforce such global action.

There is no one-size-fits-all bandage that can be plastered over the issue in its entirety without addressing the underlying social and cultural factors, which underpin the problem. Certain violent acts committed against women are country specific and/or conflict specific and while solutions in one situation may be appropriate, they may not be applicable in another.

Likewise, here on American soil, we are not immune from such violence either as we continue to battle rhetoric which blames the victim and sympathizes with perpetrators. It was only in March this year that CNN, in its coverage of an Ohio high-school rape case, lamented about the promising future of the Steubenville rapists whose lives were now ruined because of their decision to rape a 16-year-old girl. There was no mention of the ramifications of the rape on the young woman.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

The Pentagon Is Spending Your Tax Dollars to Keep You in the Dark About Its Sprawling Empire

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There are hundreds, possibly thousands of U.S. personnel — the military refuses to say how many — stationed in the ochre-tinted country of Qatar. Out in the searing heat of the desert, they fly fighter jets or fix them. They equip and arm troops headed to war. Some work in a high-tech command-and-control center overseeing U.S. air operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere in the Greater Middle East. Yet I found myself sitting in a hotel room in Doha, Qatar’s capital, about 30 miles east of al-Udeid Air Base, the main U.S. installation in the country, unable to see, let alone talk, to any of them.

In mid-May, weeks before my arrival in Qatar, I sent a request to the public affairs office at the base to arrange a visit with the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing, the unit that, according to the military, carries out a “criti­cal combat mission that spans nearly 6,000 miles from the Horn of Africa to Northern Afghanistan.” Or at least I tried to. Day or night, weekday or weekend, the website refused to deliver my message. Finally, I dug up an alternate email address and sent in my request. Days passed with no word, without even an acknowledgement. I followed up yet again and finally received a reply — and then it began.

The initial response came on May 28th from the Media Operations Chief at Air Forces Central Command Public Affairs. She told me that I needed to contact the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing’s Public Affairs liaison, Captain Angela Webb, directly. So I repeatedly wrote to Captain Webb. No response. On June 10th, I received an email from Susan Harrington. She was, she told me, “taking over” for Captain Webb. Unfortunately, she added, it was now far too close to my arrival in Qatar to arrange a visit. “Due to time constraints,” she wrote me, “I do not think it will be possible to support this request since we are likely already within that 30 day window.”

Don’t think I was surprised. By now, I’m used to it. Whether I’m trying to figure out what the U.S. military is doing in Latin America or Africa, Afghanistan or Qatar, the response is remarkably uniform  — obstruction and obfuscation, hurdles and hindrances. In short, the good old-fashioned military runaround. I had hoped to take a walk around al-Udeid Air Base, perhaps get a glimpse of the jumbotron-sized screens and rows of computers in its Combined Air and Space Operations Center. I wanted to learn how the drawdown in Afghanistan was affecting life on the base.

Instead, I ended up sitting in the climate-controlled comfort of my hotel room, staring at a cloudless sky, typing these words behind double-paned glass that shielded me from the 106 degree heat outside. For my trouble, on my return to the United States, I was detained at Kennedy Airport in New York by agents of the Department of Homeland Security. Their question for me: Was I planning to fight against U.S. forces in Afghanistan?

Base Desires in Africa

If you are an American citizen, you’re really not supposed to know about operations at al-Udeid Air Base. The men and women there on your dime can’t even “mention the base name or host nation name in any unsecured communications.” Instead, they’re instructed to say that they are at an “undisclosed location in Southwest Asia” instead of “the Deid,” as they call it.

It isn’t the only base that the Pentagon wants to keep in the shadows. You’re also not supposed to know how many bases the U.S. military currently has in Africa. I learned that the hard way. As a start, let me say that, officially speaking, there is only a single U.S. facility on the entire continent that the military formally calls a “base”: Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, a tiny nation in the Horn of Africa. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) is adamant about this and takes great pains to emphasize it. Internally, however, they do admit that they also have forward operating sites (aka “enduring locations”), contingency security locations (which troops periodically rotate in and out of), and contingency locations (which are used only during ongoing operations). But don’t try to get an official list of these or even a simple count — unless you’re ready for the old-fashioned runaround.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

Why Do Stories of Female Sexual Predators Shock Us?

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July 7, 2013
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It may be the summer’s best beach read – that is, if you ditch the disconcertingly woolly black velour dust jacket, and make sure your kids aren’t peeking over your shoulder.

“Tampa,” by Alissa Nutting, is a tale of lust that draws out the dynamic between a predatory teacher and her lascivious students. The twist – if indeed it is a twist – is that the predator here is a woman, and that her crime is hardly one of opportunity. Celeste Price, the novel’s protagonist, takes a job as a teacher specifically to seduce young boys, those untouched by incipient manhood. She’s calculating in a manner that’s utterly compelling, because she explains every step of her reasoning – and every pulse of her body – to the transfixed reader. Nutting has described the book, in other interviews, as inspired in part by studying in high school with a woman who went on to teach and to have sex with her students.

And so she shows us every detail of a richly imagined routine built around transgressive, morally appalling sex. Celeste, throughout the novel, slathers herself with lotions so that she appears closer in age to her students; she drugs herself to mute the pain of sex with her unsuspecting husband and drugs her husband so that she can escape his advances when they’re unbearable; she evades her colleagues and the parents of her students with a perceptive criminal mind. The reader hardly roots for Celeste to escape punishment, but watching the machinations of her mind, the degree to which she can defend any of her actions and ensure that she’s always one step away from society, is completely entertaining.

Beyond mere titillation, “Tampa” gets at fundamental questions: What are the limits of reader empathy? If an individual we’d view as an unrepentant criminal explains her twisted thought process, are we complicit if we keep reading? And is an adult woman seducing a young male student – with its air of “hot for teacher” fantasy – meaningfully different from male pedophilia? We spoke to Nutting, a teacher of creative writing at Ohio’s John Carroll University, about her explosive book, whether she expects to join the “serious novelist” crowd, why “Lolita” conforms to sexual stereotypes, and what she learned from her own anxiety.

I’ve seen this book compared to “Fifty Shades of Grey” on its GoodReads page. Given that E.L. James’ novel is about two adults, does that bother you? 

[laughs at some length] Yeah … I understand the comparison based on extremity. I think that “Fifty Shades of Grey” is probably one of the first contemporary mainstream infusions of literature with a great deal of sexuality included in it. And I understand the fact that that’s a female author writing a sexually explicit book, which also isn’t awfully common – that’s kind of where my understanding of the comparison leaves off. In this book Celeste is a predator. The relationship by law cannot be consensual.

But it also suggests that “Tampa” is being kind of marginalized into the pile of books for women exclusively, rather than “important” novels – which are usually by men.

Absolutely. I think that that does happen. Realistically, unfortunately, I think that really blatant sexuality and works that feature humor or comedy, all of these things are traditionally written off as being lowbrow. There’s a notion that really grand novels, the novels that are going to win the big awards, need to be dark, dramatic, serious, sweeping and tasteful. There are these rigid boundaries, and when you cross over them – if you get too sexually explicit, if it’s too humorous or satirical – you fall out of the mainstream literary sweet spot. There are some people who dismiss every work that does fall out of it, who don’t take that work as seriously.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

The Parents of Trayvon Martin Are Experiencing the Worst Fear of Every Black Family

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The parents of slain Florida teen Trayvon Martin, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton.

July 7, 2013
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The Trayvon Martin case has been nothing short of heartbreak from the very beginning. Regardless of what anyone believes about Trayvon’s past, his innocence or George Zimmerman‘s, the fact remains that a teenager is dead. I honestly didn’t think I would get emotionally broken up more than I was over the story that Rachel Jeantel’s friendship with Martin stemmed from the fact he was one of the only people who never picked on her. The story painted such a tragic picture of friendship and two people whose lives will never be the same.

Then came this week’s testimonies and reactions from Trayvon Martin’s parents to leave me — and so much of America — floored. On Friday morning, Sybrina Fulton took the stand to talk about her son. As part of her testimony she had to identify her child’s screams in his finals seconds of life. Later in the day, Tracy Martin had to sit in court as the medical examiner, Dr Bao, explained how Trayvon died in severe pain and was alive for minutes after getting shot in the chest.

Essentially, Friday — almost as much as the day Trayvon was shot — was any parent’s nightmare. Trayvon’s parents had to come face to face with their son’s murder while Fulton got questioned over whether or not her son actually deserved to get killed. Tracy had to sit in the same room as the man who shot his son in the chest, unable to retaliate or let the rage he has to be feeling out.

Yes, this is the worst imaginable day for a parent. But it’s one the parents of an African-American child has been conditioned to accept as a possibility.

I have a son who was born in October, a couple of weeks before the prosecutor and defense met in court to argue if Martin’s school records should be admitted so the case was in the news again. As I watched more details about the case emerge and the argument that a child’s prior school record may be used to justify his death, I would feel a sense of hopelessness.

There are always fears about being a parent, but raising a black male in America brings about its own unique set of panic. Growing up, my parents and older siblings made sure to warn me about places where I’d be profiled and could face danger as often as they warned me about neighborhoods known for crime. But in the end, no planning or words of advice can save me or my son from getting wrongfully gunned down while trying to buy a bag of candy.

While most parents are up at night wondering how to protect their children from the uncontrollable like drunk drivers or muggings, Trayvon’s parents, my parents and parents of black males across the country are also living in fear that their children won’t come home because someone thought they were dangers to the community.

So there they were, two parents of a black male, sitting in court living out the culmination of that fear. And the realization that the man who shot their child could get off for killing him. To make things worse, they had to hear the defense question their parenting, whether or not Fulton actually knows what her son sounds like and field online reports that Tracy may not have been the best parent.

Since Martin’s death, the boy these two people raised, loved and saw for his beauty as a young male has been portrayed as a thug. A violent kid. A pothead who couldn’t behave in school. Someone who, according to the defense, caused his own death.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

Will Texas Try to Pass "Erectile Dysfunction" Laws Next? It Would Be Only Fair

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July 7, 2013
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Texas men need protection: When will Governor Perry and the state legislature enact TRED laws for Erectile Dysfunction sufferers?

Surely Texas males need TRED (Targeted Regulations for Erectile Dysfunction) laws as much as Governor Perry and Republican legislators think women need TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws. Actually the TRAP laws cut off access to women’s reproductive health care so let there be no mistake about their intent. It is not just abortion that the proposed Texas law wants to gut, but access to contraceptive and reproductive health care as well.

The vasectomized governor shows little regard for the reproductive health of Texas men and this is a growing concern among observers of state-legislated reproductive health laws from Texas to Ohio.

Should a Texas male develop Erectile Dysfunction (known as ED in medicalese) he can go to any physician and ask for “the blue pill.” This is sold under the trade name Viagra, but there are five drugs approved by the FDA (Federal Drug Administration) to treat ED through oral drugs: Cialis, Levitra, Staxyn, Stendra and Viagra.

All these drugs work by increasing the flow of blood into the penis so that when a man is sexually stimulated, he can get an erection. But the drugs are not without risk and there have been deaths reported by combining ED drugs with blood pressure medications.

There are additional problems with dispensing these drugs in that there are no standards that must be followed before a physician prescribes this fix.

Clearly something must be done–first in Texas. Let them lead the way.

The legislature must enact laws for doctors and clinics that prior to prescribing ED drugs, a transanal ultrasound be preformed in a surgical clinic to match the standards legislated through SB-537 for women’s health clinics. Of course this legislative action would sharply decrease male access to clinics, particularly in rural areas but so-be-it; the crown jewels of Texas men must be protected.

Perhaps neither Governor Perry nor Texas State Legislators understand the risks presented to their male population by allowing men to get their preferred genital/reproductive health fix through their local doctor or the Internet.

Should the transanal ultrasound show that the prostate gland is enlarged, then the legislature should clearly mandate that a prostate biopsy be performed immediately. Men, by legislative decree, may not refuse this procedure. It is for this reason that prescribing ED drugs and transanal ultrasound procedure be performed only in approved surgical clinics. This should decrease male access to health care to approximately that of Texas women’s access.

Lest Governor Perry and the Republican legislature think that ED and enlarged prostates are not a problem in Texas, let me review the statistics:

  • Approximately 8.4 million men over the age of 50 in the United States are candidates for treatment of enlarge prostate glands. Both erectile dysfunction and inability to void are potential outcomes of prostate enlargement.
  • According to Johns Hopkins Medicine “almost all men are affected by ED at sometime in their lives, including 30 to 50% of the men between the ages of 40 and 70.”
  • Texas does not provide ED or enlarged prostate statistics for their state but it can be assumed to be on par with national statistics. In fact, it may be much higher because of the high animal protein diet of many Texans.

Clearly in this second special session called by Governor Perry, the Republican-dominated legislature can craft a bill (perhaps SB-538) to show the males of Texas that they also care for their well-being.

Perhaps Governor Perry can get former South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint to state that Texas men would welcome a mandated anal ultrasound, similar to the one he proclaimed on Meet the Press about women welcoming their mandated transvaginal ultrasound procedures.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

'34 pro-Morsi protesters killed in Cairo'

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Security forces kill 34 pro-Morsi protesters in Egyptian capital: Health Ministry

Supporters of ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and Muslim Brotherhood members gather during a demonstration at Raba al-Adwyia Mosque in Nasr City, Cairo, on July 7, 2013.

At least 34 supporters of Egyptâ„¢s ousted President Mohamed Morsi have been killed by the security forces during protests in the capital, Cairo, the country’s Health Ministry says.

Egyptâ„¢s Muslim Brotherhood has also confirmed that its supporters were killed on Monday when the army attacked a sit-in outside the Republican Guard barracks.

Muslim Brotherhood said that snipers targeted protesters attending the sit-in.

Dozens of people were wounded and taken to nearby hospitals.

Meanwhile, Egyptâ„¢s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) estimates that more than 50 people were killed in violence.

Witnesses say Egyptian troops used live ammunition to disperse the protesters in Nasr City District, eastern Cairo.

The Strong Egypt Party has condemned the killings, saying General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the head of Egyptâ„¢s army, is responsible for the deadly incident.

The Egyptian military, however, put the death toll at 16 and said that one officer was killed and 40 wounded after the military compound was attacked by a Å“terrorist group.”

According to Egyptâ„¢s television, protesters are continuing with the sit-in outside the Republican Guard building despite the attack.

Supporters and opponents of Mohamed Morsi remain on the streets as tensions continue to rise across the country.

On Sunday, Morsiâ„¢s supporters held demonstrations on Rabia al-Adawiya Square and Al-Nahda Square close to Cairo University, demanding his return to power.

They also erected barricades and set up checkpoints across Cairo, blocking the main road leading to Cairo International Airport.

Anti-Morsi demonstrators gathered in Cairoâ„¢s iconic Liberation Square and around the presidential palace.

Opponents of the ousted president also took to the streets in Alexandria on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and in other major cities across the country.

On July 3, General Sisi announced that President Morsi was no longer in office.

The chief justice of Egyptâ„¢s Supreme Constitutional Court, Adli Mansour, was sworn in as interim president of Egypt on July 4.

DB/HSN/HMV

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Unrest Continues in Egypt

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Unrest Continues in Egypt
by Stephen Lendman
Washington’s dirty hands are involved. Controlling what’s ongoing continues. Doing so reflects iron fist imperialism. A White House statement claims otherwise. It’s typical US-style disinformation. In full it states:
“Readout of the President’s Meeting with the National Security Council Regarding the Situation in Egypt”
“President Obama convened a secure conference call with the National Security Council today to review the very fluid situation in Egypt.” 
“The President condemned the ongoing violence across Egypt and expressed concern over the continued political polarization.”  
“He reiterated that the United States is not aligned with, and does not support, any particular Egyptian political party or group. 
In line with that position, the United States categorically rejects the false claims propagated by some in Egypt that we are working with specific political parties or movements to dictate how Egypt’s transition should proceed.”  
“We remain committed to the Egyptian people and their aspirations for democracy, economy opportunity, and dignity. But the future path of Egypt can only be determined by the Egyptian people.” 
“During this transitional period, we call on all Egyptians to come together in an inclusive process that allows for the participation of all groups and political parties.”  
“Throughout that process, the United States will continue to engage the Egyptian people in a spirit of partnership, consistent with our longstanding friendship and shared interests – including our interest in a transition to sustainable democracy.”  
“We urge all Egyptian leaders to condemn the use of force and to prevent further violence among their supporters, just as we urge all those demonstrating to do so peacefully.”  
“As Egyptians look forward, we call on all sides to bridge Egypt’s divisions, reject reprisals, and join together to restore stability and Egypt’s democracy.”
Fact check
America deplores democracy. It tolerates none at home or abroad. A coup is a coup is a coup. It’s illegitimate, brutal and disruptive.
Violence and instability serve US interests. Peace and stability defeat them. 
So do the “aspirations” of the Egyptian people “for democracy, economy opportunity, and dignity.” 
Washington systematically denies them. Don’t expect Obama to explain. Straight talk’s not his style. Lies, damn lies, and ObamaSpeak substitute. He’s a con man. He reflects the worst of rogue leadership. Humanity’s threatened on his watch.
During Egypt’s coup, John Kerry was AWOL. The Washington Post, CBS, and other news reports said he was on his yacht in Nantucket. A CBS producer photographed him there. 
The Boston Herald tracked his whereabouts. On July 4, it photographed him walking down Nantucket’s Federal Street. It took pictures of him aboard his yacht.
During blood on Egypt’s streets, he was enjoying the holiday weekend. He was relaxing. Affairs of state could wait.
America’s Senate is a millionaires club. Kerry’s its richest member. Including his wife’s wealth, their net worth exceeds $1 billion. She’s heir to the Heinz fortune. They own five homes. They’re all valued well over $1 million.
On Friday, State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki called reports about him on his yacht “completely inaccurate.” Evidence to the contrary forced a retraction.
While he was “briefly” on board “Wednesday,” Psaki said, he “worked around the clock all day, including participating in the president’s meeting with his National Security Council and calls with Norwegian Foreign Minister Eade, Qatari Foreign Minister al-Attiyah, Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoglu, Egyptian Constitution Party President ElBaradei and five calls to Ambassador Patterson on that day alone.”
One lie makes follow-up comments suspect. On Wednesday afternoon, a White House situation room national security meeting photo excluded Kerry. He was elsewhere. He was nowhere in sight.
Conditions in Egypt remain fluid. They’re unsettled. They’re unsafe. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) took control of state media. It shut down three Islamist-run TV stations.
It raided Al Jazeera’s offices. Five staff members were detained. Four were later released. Controlling the message is prioritized. Televising pro-Morsi rallies is prohibited.
Muslim Brotherhood Egypt25 channel was targeted. Its managers were arrested. Junta power usurped full control. On Saturday, Mohamed ElBaradei was named interim prime minister. State television announced it.
On Sunday, it reported otherwise. Political transition hit a speed bump. Egypt’s Salafist Nour party rejected ElBaradei’s appointment. It’s against interim president Adly Mansour’s decree.
On Friday, he dissolved Egypt’s upper house Shura Council. He sacked Morsi’s intelligence chief Mohammed Raafat Shehata. Mohammed Ahmed Farid al-Tohami replaced him.
On Saturday, the Nour party said “the activities and stances of our party, which was against pro-Mursi demonstrations and called for early presidential elections, were aimed at sparing Egyptians from bloodshed and preserving national unity.”
“But in the follow-up of what was happening on the ground in the past two days, we totally reject many things taking place in Egypt now.”
Following Morsi’s ouster, SCAF arrested Salafist presidential candidate Hazem Salah Abu Ismail. He’s imprisoned. Reports interim political transition completion depends on resolving Nour party’s concerns.
According to Infowars Kurt Nimmo, Morsi’s ouster “set the stage for the (Nour party’s) ascension.” It’s “an Islamic sect more radical than the Muslim Brotherhood.”
It’s “ultraconservative.” Islamic Heritage Research Foundation executive director Irfan Al-Alawi said it “embodies Wahhabism, the fanatical interpretation of Islam that is the sole official religious doctrine in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
“The media have tiptoed around the authentic character of the Nour Party, with leading sources noting only that the Nour Party’s program is derived from or influenced by Saudi Wahhabism.” 
“But the Nour Party reproduces Wahhabism – the ideology that inspired Osama Bin Laden – in its entirety.”
It follows strict Sharia law. “It is fanatically and murderously opposed to Shia Muslims and Christians.”
It’s comfortable with Western-style business dealings. In April, its representatives met with an IMF delegation.
On Saturday, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) headlined “Scores injured in fresh wave of clashes in Egypt,” saying:
Incidents occurred in al-Bahira province. Others erupted “near al-Tawba Mosque in Damanhour city.” Locals clashed with Muslim Brotherhood members.
Alexandria had the most deadly violence. Fourteen deaths and 263 injuries were reported. Dozens were arrested. Seventeen policemen were hurt.
On Saturday, Coptic Christian priest Min Aboud Sharween was killed in northern Sinai. The community’s spiritual leader Pope Tawadros approved Morsi’s ouster.
Egypt has eight million Copts. Killing Sharween may spark more violence. Morsi supporters vow to remain on streets. They’ll do so, they say, until he’s reinstated.
They called for more mass rallies. Tension remains high. Things are far from resolved. Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader/Freedom and Justice party general secretary Mohamed Beltagy was reported arrested. It was premature.
On Friday, he addressed a Cairo rally. He told Morsi supporters to remain on the streets. He expected arrest any time. Asked who’d succeed him, a Muslim Brotherhood guidance officer said “whoever remains in the Guidance Office.”
Perhaps none will. They’re all targeted. Beltagy said whatever happens, MB will survive. “Attempts to destroy (us) have been going on for 80 years and have never succeeded.”
According to senior MB official Salah Sultan, “(w)e will go underground if we have to.” Most MB officials did so. Warrants for their arrests were issued. Expect turmoil to affect Egypt for some time. Things are far from resolved.
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/unrest-continues-in-egypt/

Republished with permission from: Stephen Lendman

When Is a Coup not One?

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When Is a Coup not One?
by Stephen Lendman
“What’s in a name,” asked Shakespeare? A coup by any other name doesn’t change things.
It isn’t one when it’s “our coup, a ‘good cause’ coup,” said Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins. Western diplomats are scrambling to characterize it otherwise. 
Coups are called “military interventions with good intent.” Saying they reflect good v. evil struggles doesn’t wash.
Merriam-Webster calls them “a violent decisive exercise of force in politics; especially the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group.”
The Oxford Dictionaries defines them as “sudden, violent, and illegal seizure(s) of power from a government.
According to Wikipedia:
A coup or putsch “is the sudden deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment – typically the military – to depose the extant government and replace it with another body, civil or military.” 
A coup “is considered successful when the usurpers establish their dominance.”
A coup is a coup is a coup. Claiming otherwise doesn’t wash. Diktat power rules Egypt. Tanks patrol streets. Demonstrators were shot and killed. Many others were injured. Numerous arrests were made.
Martial law was declared. Egypt’s constitution was suspended. Morsi’s stripped of power. He and his presidential team are under house arrest. They’re held at a military intelligence facility. Warrants were issued for hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members. 
Some are in custody. Freedom and Justice Party head Saad el-Katatni was arrested. So was Muslim Brotherhood deputy head Khairet el-Shater.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Kamel Amr called John Kerry. He claimed Morsi wasn’t toppled by military coup. Definitions are important. They matter. More on that below.
“The American side is a strategic partner for Egypt and the welfare of the Egypt is important to them,” said Amr. 
He’s a career diplomat. On Tuesday, he resigned. He’ll stay on until a interim technocratic government is named.
“I hope that they read the situation in the right way, that this is not a military coup in any way,” he added. “This was actually the overwhelming will of the people.” 
Kerry said Egypt remains a strategic ally. Saying so assures business as usual. 
Amr briefed other foreign ministers. He spoke to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
“Definitely what happened was not a military coup,” he claimed. “I know that last night and today some people are saying this. Of course, I can understand. But what happened, definitely, definitely, was not a military coup.”
“There is no role, no political role whatsoever, for the military. This is the total opposite of a military coup.”
He stressed transitioning to new leadership. He lied claiming coup authority doesn’t rule. Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) holds total power. Political leaders serve at their pleasure. Generals have final say.
Robert Fisk asked “When is a military coup not a military coup? When it happens in Egypt, apparently.”
Quelle surprise. “For the first time in the history of the world, a coup is not a coup.” 
“The army take over, deposes and imprisons the democratically elected president, suspends the constitution, arrests the usual suspects, closes down television stations and masses their armor in the streets of the capital.”  
“But the word ‘coup’ does not – and cannot – cross the lips of the Blessed Barack Obama. Nor does the hopeless UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon dare to utter such an offensive word.”
Is it because Egyptians demanded one? Maybe it’s because Obama fears acknowledgment “force(s) the US to impose sanctions” on a strategically important ally. 
Around a $1.5 billion in annual aid’s at stake. US law prohibits funding coup d’etat governments. More on that below.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice once called democracy “messy.” Obama claims Egypt’s on track for democracy. Maybe he means US-style. It’s fake. It’s in name only. It’s illusory, not real.
Paul Craig Roberts calls lawlessness “the new normal.” It reflects how America and key allies are governed. Diktat power rules. Laws are made to be broken. Freedom’s a four-letter word. It’s fast disappearing. Tyranny’s the law of the land.
Puppet leaders serve US interests. Sovereignty’s quaint and out of date. Neocolonialism replaced it. What Washington says goes. Imperial priorities alone matter.
“Stand by then for the first US delegation to visit the country which has suffered the coup-that-wasn’t,” said Fisk. 
“And you’ll know whether they believe there was a coup or not by the chaps they visit on their arrival in Cairo: the army, of course.”
Financial Times chief foreign affairs commentator Gideon Rachman asked “When is a coup not a coup?”
Obama can’t summon the “C” word. His lips move. He won’t say what he knows is so. If it looks like one, it is. Egypt isn’t ready for prime time. Good v. evil doesn’t explain what’s ongoing.
Events there show “that complexity, confusion and moral compromise cannot, unfortunately, be avoided in international affairs,” said Rachman. Sweeping reality under the rug can’t hide it.
The New York Times headlined “A Coup? Or Something Else? $1.5 Billion in US Aid Is on the Line.”
“By all accounts, the generals removed the democratically elected president, put him in detention, arrested his allies and suspended the Constitution,” said The Times. 
“Army vehicles and soldiers in riot gear roamed the streets, while jet fighters roared overhead.”
“But was it a military coup d’etat? For the White House and the new Egyptian government, that is the $1.5 billion question.”
Obama lied saying:
“I have directed the relevant departments and agencies to review the implications under US law for our assistance to the government of Egypt.”
US law requires doing so. According to the 2006 Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs Appropriations Act, “none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available pursuant to this Act shall be obligated or expended to finance directly any assistance to the government of any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree.”
Other US laws are relevant. The 1961 Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) prohibits aiding governments engaged:
“in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, including torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, prolonged detention without charges, causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction and clandestine detention of those persons, or other flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty, and the security of person, unless such assistance will directly benefit the needy people in such country.”
The Leahy Law provision of the 2001 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act (FOAA) (Sec. 8092 of PL 106-259) states:
“None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to support any training program involving a unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of Defense has received credible information from the Department of State that a member of such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights, unless all necessary corrective steps have been taken.”
FOAA prohibits funding foreign security forces involved in gross human rights violations. It’s proscribed unless “effective measures (are taken) to bring the responsible members of the security forces unit to justice.”
Egypt’s record is longstanding. It’s consistent. It commits appalling human rights abuses. Washington rewards its crimes. Geopolitical priorities matter more. 
They’re more important than international, constitutional and US statute laws. They exist in name only. They’re willfully violated. Aid goes to nations deserving none.
Israel has an appalling human rights record. It gets more aid than most other nations combined. It gets state-of-the-art weapons, munitions and technology. It gets more on request. 
It gets benefits afforded no other countries. It killing machine benefits. The same goes for Egypt. Its record is hugely repressive. It’s a police state. 
Junta power rules. Democracy’s verboten. Elections are manipulated and controlled. People have no say. Elected officials know who’s boss. Go along or be replaced is policy.
On Friday, Egypt’s interim president Adly Mansour dissolved the Shura Council. It’s Egypt’s upper house of parliament. Events continue fast moving. 
Troops used live fire against nonviolent demonstrators. Four deaths were reported. Muslim Brotherhood official Issam al-Aryani called on Freedom and Justice Party supporters to “stay in the squares” and protest.
He urged noncooperation with Egypt’s “raped” government. Muslim Brotherhood members aren’t going gentle into that good night. 
They’re not going quietly. They aren’t vanishing without a fight. They’re outnumbered and outgunned. It remains to be seen what follows.
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/when-is-a-coup-not-one/

Republished with permission from: Stephen Lendman

Muslim Brotherhood calls for 'uprising'

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has called for ‘uprising’ after over 30 of its supporters were killed by the security forces in the capital, Cairo on Monday.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

‘Vatican Bank tied to money laundering’

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The headquarters of the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), also known as the Vatican Bank

Italian investigators have said the Vatican Bank operated in a way that facilitated money laundering, according to a leaked inquiry.

The disclosed report followed a three-year inquiry into the bank, officially known as the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), and was recently quoted by two Italian newspapers, Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica.

According to the report, IOR did not carry out enough checks on its clients and the bank allowed account holders to transfer large sums on behalf of others.

Å“There is a high risk that the way the IOR operates, without specifying its real clients, can be used as a screen to hide illegal operations,” the report read.

Prosecutors behind the inquiry also faulted Italian banks that accepted transfers from the IOR for not investigating the origin of the money, which could later be moved into other banks.

Å“The IOR can easily become a channel for the laundering of money with a criminal origin,” said the prosecutors.

The report also denied IOR statement that its account holders are all religious congregations or clergy.

Å“There are also private individuals who, because they enjoy a particular relationship with the Holy See, can deposit money and open accounts,” the report read.

The inquiry focused on a 23-million-euro ($30-million) transfer made from IOR to Italian lender Credito Artigiano in 2010.

The transfer was signed off by at that time IOR Director General Paolo Cipriani and his deputy Massimo Tulli.

The two resigned on July 1 from their posts and prosecutors are set to file charges against them for their involvement in the money transfer.

An additional official working at the Vatican Bank, senior priest Nunzio Scarano was arrested earlier by Italian police on June 28 on suspicion of money laundering, fraud and corruption.

CAH/HSN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Russia train derailment injures 80

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A passenger train derailment in southern Russia has injured nearly 80 people with only 15 riders, including five children transferred to a hospital for treatment.

The 19-car train was carrying 618 passengers and was en route to the Black Sea resort of Adler when the conductor reportedly applied emergency brakes after observing that the track had deformed due to heat, causing the derailment of 11 cars, RT reported Sunday.

Citing police sources, the report added that five of the 11 derailed cars overturned during the incident, which took place in the Kuschevsky district of southern Krasnodar region.

Moreover, the incident caused no fatalities and most of the injured walked away with minor wounds, Russian Emergencies Ministry authorities are cited as stating.

No official reason has yet been announced for the derailment.

The report, however, cites witness accounts as reporting that the train was running behind schedule and appeared to be experiencing troubles with the brake system before the accident.

The witnesses further alleged that due to its brake problem the train had to make a stop for repairs.

Investigators, however, believe the application of the emergency brake may have caused the derailment, adding that there is no sign of a potential terrorist move.

Meanwhile, according to the report, the traffic on the rail line has been halted for the time being, while more than 1000 people and over 120 specialized vehicles are involved in clearing the area around the derailment site.

MFB/MFB

Republished with permission from: Press TV

UK blocks EU-US espionage talks

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Britain has blocked talks between the US and the European Union on the US spying on the EU saying the bloc has no authority to discuss Americansâ„¢ methods to safeguard their national security.

The EU and the US were to form two working groups on intelligence and espionage and on data privacy and the US National Security Agencyâ„¢s Prism program and sit down for talks in Washington on Monday for talks.

However, only the latter part will be on the agenda and one working group is formed after Britain and Sweden vetoed the EU attempts to demand explanations from the American officials on revelations of espionage.

The disclosures on the British-American coalition to spy on the formerâ„¢s EU allies has led to a crisis of confidence over the past months with Germany and France, among other EU nations, calling for US explanations on the matter.

France even threatened Washington to end crucial trade talks between the EU and the US over the spying scandal.

However, the two sides will now only discuss Prism and data privacy and even these round of talks are designed to help German and French leaders save face in the public after their criticism of the US.

“Intelligence matters and those of national security are not the competence of the EU,” European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said, echoing Britainâ„¢s objection.

Based on the new decision, any talks on espionage matters will be held between the US and European governments separately if the two sides agree to do so.

AMR/HE

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Ex-UK PM hired ex-Israeli spy at office

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Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has kept an ex-Israeli army intelligence officer as his aide in his private office between October 2012 and April this year, despite his role as a Middle East peace envoy.

The revelations that the Israeli regimeâ„¢s former officer Lianne Pollak has been working for Blair come as he is involved in sensitive negotiations between the Israeli regime and the Palestinian Authority.

Å“If you have got someone close to the so-called negotiator who is so partial in these matters [the Palestinians] are going to look even more skeptically at Mr Blair than they do currently,” said former Labour minister Peter Kilfoyle, who was Blairâ„¢s leadership campaign manager.

Pollakâ„¢s previous activities before working with Blair included leading intelligence teams in the regimeâ„¢s Defence Forces, acting as a policy advisor to the Israeli regimeâ„¢s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and working with other senior figures.

Since stepping down as Prime Minister, Blair positioned himself as the so-called peace envoy to the Middle East for the Quartet that includes the United Nations, US, Russia and the European Union.

The anti-war movement Stop the War Coalition and many critics consider Blair as a war criminal ever since he took Britain into the illegal US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

BGH/AMR/HE

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Egypt Nour Party quits government talks

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People run for cover as security forces fire tear gas to disperse supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi outside the Egyptian Republican Guard headquarters in Cairo, early hours of July 8, 2013.

Egyptâ„¢s Nour Party says it has withdrawn from talks over the new government in response to the Ëœmassacreâ„¢ of protesters at the Republican Guard barracks in the capital, Cairo.

Å“We have decided to withdraw immediately from all negotiations in response to the massacre outside the Republican Guard” headquarters, the Salafist partyâ„¢s spokesman Nadder Bakkar said Monday.

The decision was made after at least 34 supporters of Egyptâ„¢s ousted President Mohamed Morsi were killed and dozens more wounded by the security forces during protests in Cairo on Monday.

Egyptâ„¢s Muslim Brotherhood said that snipers targeted protesters attending a sit-in outside the Republican Guard building.

Meanwhile, Egyptâ„¢s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) estimates that more than 50 people were killed in violence.

Witnesses say Egyptian troops used live ammunition to disperse the protesters in Nasr City District, eastern Cairo.

The Strong Egypt Party has condemned the killings, saying General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the head of Egyptâ„¢s army, is responsible for the deadly incident.

The Egyptian military also said that one officer was killed and 40 wounded after the military compound was attacked by a Å“terrorist group.”

According to Egyptâ„¢s television, protesters are continuing with the sit-in outside the Republican Guard building despite the attack.

Supporters and opponents of Mohamed Morsi remain on the streets as tensions continue to rise across the country.

On Sunday, Morsiâ„¢s supporters held demonstrations on Rabia al-Adawiya Square and Al-Nahda Square close to Cairo University, demanding his return to power.

They also erected barricades and set up checkpoints across Cairo, blocking the main road leading to Cairo International Airport.

Anti-Morsi demonstrators gathered in Cairoâ„¢s iconic Liberation Square and around the presidential palace.

Opponents of the ousted president also took to the streets in Alexandria on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and in other major cities across the country.

On July 3, General Sisi announced that President Morsi was no longer in office.

The chief justice of Egyptâ„¢s Supreme Constitutional Court, Adli Mansour, was sworn in as interim president of Egypt on July 4.

DB/HSN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

We Are All Aboard the Pequod

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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/we_are_all_aboard_the_pequod_20130707/

Posted on Jul 7, 2013

Republished with permission from: TruthDig

Egypt's Nour party quits new govt. talks

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Egypt’s Nour party says it has withdrawn from talks over the new government in response to the ‘massacre’ of protesters at Republican Guard barracks in the capital, Cairo.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Israeli F-16 warplane crashes into sea

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An Israeli F-16 warplane has crashed into the Mediterranean Sea following an engine malfunction, the military says.

Å“An F-16 combat aircraft crashed earlier today in the sea after the engine malfunctioned,” an Israeli military spokesman said on Sunday.

The US-made F-16, which is Israelâ„¢s latest and most advanced warplane, crashed approximately 50 kilometers west of the Gaza Strip during a training flight.

The Israeli official said that the planeâ„¢s two crew members, the pilot and the navigator, parachuted into the sea and were rescued.

The official added that the Israeli military subsequently grounded Å“all its F-15 and F-16 combat aircraft until circumstances of the incident are reviewed.”

In October 2012, Israel military grounded its entire fleet of aircraft for a day in the wake of a number of near-miss incidents during training flights.

In 2010, an Israeli F-16I crashed, killing the two pilots.

The Israeli regime has purchased 102 F-16I warplanes from the United States to renovate its fleet.

YH/HSN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

N Ireland warns against UK exit from EU

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Northern Ireland leaders have warned that a UK exit from the EU would be a Å“huge mistake”.

Political leaders of Northern Ireland have warned that a UK exit from the European Union (EU) would be a Å“huge mistake” and could damage the regionâ„¢s weak economy.

Northern Irish Deputy first minister Martin McGuiness said that Britainâ„¢s exit from the EU would have a massive impact and would be a Å“huge mistake from our point of view, given our proximity to the south (Republic of Ireland) and the trading links we have with the south”.

McGuiness told the Financial Times that holding an in/out vote on membership in the EU is like asking Northern Ireland to jump into Å“uncharted waters”.

The deputy first minister also warned that the senior British coalition partners, the Conservative party, are in danger of Å“sleepwalking” into a referendum that could bring Britain out of the union.

Northern Irish first minister Peter Robinson also told the paper that he is Eurosceptic but highlighted that a vote to leave Europe would likely damage the local economy.

Furthermore, the biggest nationalist party in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin, has usually been Eurosceptic but in the recent years, it has taken a softer approach towards the EU due to the province enjoying the benefits of the bloc™s financial aid.

BGH/AMR/HE

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Cuba backs asylum offers to Snowden

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Cubaâ„¢s President Raul Castro holds a speech in front of the National Assembly in Havana on July 7, 2013.

Cuban President Raul Castro has backed offers of asylum by Latin American countries to former CIA contractor Edward Snowden, slamming the United States for bullying other nations.

Castro said on Sunday in front of Cubaâ„¢s National Assembly that Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua have the right to grant asylum to Å“those persecuted for their ideals or struggles for democracy, according to our tradition.”

The Cuban president also condemned US threats of economic sanctions against any country that shelters the American whistleblower and criticized the incident on July 3, in which some European countries banned the plane transporting Bolivian President Evo Morales from their airspace on rumors that Snowden was on board.

Å“These actions demonstrate we live in a world in which the powerful feel they can violate international law, violate the national sovereignty of other states and trample on the rights of citizens,” said Castro.

The Cuban president added that his country was aware of the kind of secretive NSA programs Snowden revealed and said as a longtime enemy of Washington, Cuba has been Å“one of the most harassed and spied-upon nations on the planet.”

Snowden has been holed up at Moscowâ„¢s Sheremetyevo Airport since June 23, when he traveled from Hong Kong to avoid extradition to the United States.

After arriving in Russia, US authorities revoked his passport to stop him from traveling further.

Snowden admitted on June 9 his role in leaking two top-secret US government spying programs, under which the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have been eavesdropping on millions of American and European phone records and the Internet data.

CAH/HSN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Passengers Recount Frightening Moments Before Fatal San Franscisco Jet Crash

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US officials were combing through the wreckage of an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 passenger jet in San Francisco Sunday, as they tried to determine why it crashed onto the runway, killing two people and injuring 182 others.

The crash sheared off the plane’s landing gear and tore the tail off the fuselage. Large portions of the plane’s body were burned out in the fire that then erupted.

But National Transportation Safety Board chief Deborah Hersman said much of the destruction isn’t visible in the pictures and footage shown in the news.

“What you can’t see is the damage internally. And that is really striking. I think when we look at this accident, we’re thankful that we didn’t have more fatalities and serious injuries and we have so many survivors,” Hersman told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Flight 214 originated in Shanghai, and had 307 people on board — 291 passengers and 16 crew — after it stopped to pick up passengers in Seoul. The aircraft apparently struck a rocky area at the water’s edge short of the airport runway.

Hersman said on ABC her investigation team arrived overnight and “have obtained the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, and they have been sent back to our labs in Washington. We hope that there is good data, good information on those,”

They also plan to talk to the pilot “in the coming days,” to understand what went wrong, she said, on ABC’s “This Week.”

Part of the landing assistance equipment at the airport was out of service for that runway, but Hersman said that should not have created a dangerous situation.

“There are a number of other tools available to the pilots, some less sophisticated, like the lights, precision approach lights,” she told CNN, as well as “some things that are more technologically advanced, (like) things on the airplane that can give you GPS information.”

But she said, with or without the instruments, the pilot’s expertise is crucial.

“So for them to be able to assess what’s happening and make the right inputs to make sure they’re in a safe situation — that’s what we expect from pilots,” she told CNN.

Yoon Young-Doo, the CEO of the Seoul-based Asiana Airlines, had said earlier his company bought the plane in 2006, and that “currently we understand that there are no engine or mechanical problems.”

The plane was flown by experienced pilots, and there was no emergency warning ahead of the crash. “Our pilots strictly comply with aviation rules,” Yoon said.

He was remorseful as he spoke at a press conference in Seoul. “Please accept my deepest apology,” the CEO said, bowing in front of TV cameras.

A four-member South Korean government team was also heading to inspect the site of the accident, officials in Seoul said.

Aboard the flight were 141 Chinese nationals, 77 South Koreans, 61 Americans, one Japanese, three Indians, three Canadians, one French, one Vietnamese, three others of unidentified nationality. There were also 16 crew members, according to Asiana.

Anxious relatives swarmed the airline’s headquarters in Seoul, seeking details of the crash and information on the victims.

The two people killed were Chinese passengers sitting in back seats, Asiana’s CEO said.

South Korea’s transport ministry said separately they were both teenage girls, born in 1996 and 1997.

San Francisco International Airport was closed after the crash but operating normally Sunday.

San Francisco General Hospital said it was treating 34 patients, five of them in critical condition. Other patients were rushed to different area hospitals.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

Iran Qur’an reciter wins in Malaysia

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Iranian reciter Mohammad Mashmoul has scooped the second prize at the 55th International Tilawah Al-Quran (Quran Recital Assembly) in Malaysia.

While the first prize went to the Indonesian competitor Dasrizal Marah Nainin, the third award in the male category was given to Malaysian reciter Anuar Hasin.

In the female category, Hajar Boussaq from Morocco took the first award of the competition.

The winners received their prizes during an award ceremony held at the Putra World Trade Center (PWTC) in Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur on July 6.

Malaysiaâ„¢s King Abdul Halim Mu’adzam Shah Ibni Almarhum along with other Malaysian officials and envoys from Muslim countries attended the ceremony.

Malaysiaâ„¢s king presented the winners with cash prizes as well as certificates of honor.

Winners of the first three titles were honored with 45000, 30000, and 20000 Malaysian ringgits.

Iran was also the winner of last yearâ„¢s edition as the second prize went to the countryâ„¢s reciter Amin Pouya.

This yearâ„¢s competition hosted 59 representatives including 37 male and 22 female reciters from 48 countries such as Egypt, Maldives, Iran, Sri Lanka, Belgium, Sudan and Morocco.

Malaysiaâ„¢s 55th International Holy Qurâ„¢an Competition kicked off on June 29 and warps up on July 6, 2013.

FGP/FGP

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Germany cautions EU over US spying

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that Europe should push ahead with free-trade negotiations with the United States while it must not forget concerns about the US secret surveillance on Europe.

The remarks came ahead of the new round of talks to begin on Monday in Washington aimed at creating the worldâ„¢s largest free-trade zone between the European Union and the United States.

Å“We must press ahead with this in a determined way, without sweeping the other issue under the carpet,” said Merkel.

Her decision came despite demands from German opposition to halt the free-trade negotiations until Washington provides answers over its spying operations revealed by former CIA contractor Edward Snowden.

The European Commission said on July 4 that the 28-member bloc had agreed that trade talks could start as planned on Monday.

However, Brussels warned that it would put an end to its data-sharing deals with the US – the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) and Passenger Name Records (PNR) – if Washington fails to reveal the extent of its electronic spying operations in Europe.

The negotiations on EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) began on June 17. If a deal is made it would create the worldâ„¢s largest Free Trade Agreement (FTA).

The European Union says an FTA would add some 119 billion euros every year to the EU economy, and 95 billion euros to the US economy.

CAH/HSN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Yemen seizes Turkish-made weapons

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Yemen security forces have seized a ship carrying Turkish-made weapons near Bab al-Mandab. (File photo)

Yemen says its security forces have seized a ship carrying Turkish-made weapons near the strait of Bab al-Mandab in the south.

An official at Yemenâ„¢s Supreme Security Committee said on Saturday that the ship was intercepted after entering the Yemeni territorial waters near Zoqar Island in the Red Sea, according to Yemenâ„¢s official news agency Saba.

The Supreme Security Committee official said that the seized weapons, among them colt pistols, were bound for a Yemeni port.

Å“Investigation is still ongoing with the shipâ„¢s crew,” the official said, adding that the findings of the investigation will be made public.

Over the past months, at least four illegal shipments of Turkish-made arms have been seized by Yemeni authorities.

In May, Yemenâ„¢s Defense Ministry announced that the army had captured a boat carrying 20,000 Turkish-made guns in the coastal regions of the country.

Also in June, Yemenâ„¢s authorities seized a boat filled with Turkish-made weaponry, including 15,000 colt pistols, near the strait of Bab al-Mandab.

YH/HSN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Workers Party and pseudo-left work to dissipate protest movement in Brazil

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By
Dorian Griscom

8 July 2013

The wave of protests that swept Brazil beginning in mid-June has begun to substantially recede. The ruling Workers Party (PT) and various pseudo-left groups within its orbit, though initially taken aback by the mass eruption of discontent over Brazil’s crumbling infrastructure, inadequate schools and hospitals and profound social inequality, have set to work containing and dissipating the protest movement.

The eruption of protests across Brazil has thrown the PT into crisis. Brazil’s PT President Dilma Rousseff’s approval rating has plummeted by 27 points since the onset of demonstrations just a few weeks ago. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, Rousseff didn’t attend the finals of the Confederations Cup soccer tournament last Sunday, after having been roundly booed in appearances at earlier games in the tournament.

Over the past two weeks, Rousseff’s administration has proposed a flurry of measures that will supposedly increase spending on transportation, healthcare and education, in an effort to stem the rising tide of discontent. Pieces of legislation with broad public support but that had long languished in Congress have suddenly come up for discussion and are scheduled to be voted on this week.

Last Tuesday Rousseff submitted a request to Congress for a plebiscite on various political reforms. The plebiscite, which Brazil’s Supreme Court has said must be held within the next 70 days, will focus on campaign finance, the electoral system, senators’ use of unelected substitutes, and secret votes in Congress. Rousseff had initially floated the idea of a popular referendum on political reform, but this was shouted down by lawmakers and the toothless proposal for a non-binding plebiscite took its place.

Alongside these measures, Rousseff has proposed a “pact for fiscal responsibility” on the federal, state and local levels, which will translate into accelerated privatizations and attacks on the jobs and wages of public sector workers.

Representatives of the trade union bureaucracy and a number of pseudo-left groups gathered in São Paulo on June 21 to work out a strategy for containing and co-opting the mass protests. The 76 organizations participating included the CUT, the notoriously corrupt PT-aligned trade union federation; the PT itself; the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL), which consists of elements expelled from the PT; and the United Socialist Workers’ Party (PSTU), part of the Morenoite revisionist organization which split from the Fourth International in the 1960s and long ago abandoned genuinely socialist politics. It had entered the PT at its founding and was expelled in the early 1990s.

A statement posted by the PSTU on its web site last Tuesday makes clear the reactionary and anti-working class orientation of its politics and its role in sowing political confusion with the aim of disorienting and derailing a protest movement that emerged outside of and in opposition to the Brazilian political establishment.

The PSTU begins by claiming the mass protests have “achieved… important victories.” The PT’s throwing up of a number of conciliatory measures is not in any sense a “victory,” but a desperate attempt by the political establishment to tamp down popular discontent and stave off the emergence of a broader movement of the working class against Brazilian capitalism. To palm off measures that are transparently part of the ruling class’ political strategy as victories is to encourage illusions that the PT can be pressured into playing a progressive role.

The statement hails the creation of the Assembleia Popular Horizontal (APH) in Belo Horizonte as an instance of the formation of “new types of organs of struggle.” There is nothing new about this “horizontalism,” which insists on a political practice devoid of parties, principles, or perspective, and reduces all questions to the lowest common denominator of middle-class activism and protest politics. It has been an indispensable tool for the pseudo-left over the past decade in maintaining political confusion in the course of a number of protest movements, most notably the Indignados movement in Spain in 2011-2012 and the Occupy Wall Street protests in the United States last year.

The protests initially emerged in Brazil in opposition to transit fare hikes several weeks ago and rapidly developed into mass demonstrations decrying inadequate social spending alongside the billions being lavished upon new soccer stadiums for the Confederations Cup this year and next year’s World Cup. At their height on June 20, the protests drew a million and a half people into the streets of all the major cities in Brazil, with various other demonstrations of tens and hundreds of thousands continuing over the following week.

As it seeks to defuse popular anger through the passage of limited concessions and the deployment of its pseudo-left political satellites, the PT’s real attitude toward the Brazilian working class and its aspirations has been on display in the use of massive police violence against peaceful demonstrators. Acts of vandalism perpetrated by far-right groups, likely with the assistance of police provocateurs, were seized on in a number of cities as a pretext for attacking mass demonstrations at large and forcing their dispersal. Police have also acknowledged infiltrating and spying on organizations involved in the protests.

The PSTU’s celebration of “important victories” and “new types of organs of struggle” comes just as mass participation in demonstrations has markedly declined and has been replaced by smaller protest actions by middle class radicals very much along the lines of last year’s Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States. Small protest encampments have sprung up in several cities, and protesters have occupied the chamber of the municipal legislature in Belo Horizonte.

The CUT, which played a minimal role in last month’s mass protests, has teamed up with the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) to call joint strikes and demonstrations on July 11. The real purpose of such actions, called by two organizations that work hand in glove with the PT, is to establish firm control over future protests so as to be in a position to safely divert any new outpouring of popular anger into harmless political channels.

The central question posed by the protests in Brazil is the crisis of the revolutionary leadership of the working class. It is necessary to wage an intransigent political struggle for the political independence of the Brazilian working class, to rearm it with a socialist perspective and to build within it a new revolutionary leadership.



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Republished with permission from: World Socialist Web Site

US escalates threats against governments considering asylum for Snowden

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By
Thomas Gaist

8 July 2013

Top US officials escalated their threats over the weekend against any government that grants asylum to Edward Snowden, the source of leaks detailing illegal government surveillance programs directed at the population of the United States and the entire world.

On Friday, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said that the country would offer Snowden “humanitarian asylum,” and the leaders of Nicaragua and Bolivia both indicated that Snowden could receive asylum in those countries as well. The statements came in the wake of the forced grounding of Bolivian president Evo Morales’s plan last week under suspicions that Snowden may have been on board.

An anonymous State Department official said over the weekend: “There is not a country in the hemisphere whose government does not understand our position at this point.” The official asserted that granting Snowden asylum “would put relations in a very bad place for a long time to come.” The official continued, “If someone thinks things would go away, it won’t be the case.”

Representatives of both Democrats and Republicans jumped in with threats. “Clearly such acceptance of Snowden to any country…is going to put them directly against the United States, and they need to know that,” Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, declared on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday.

Congressman Mike Rogers, the Republican head of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN that the US should consider responding to asylum-granting governments with economic sanctions, so as “to send a very clear message that we won’t put up with this kind of behavior.”

These threats are in line with the international campaign of thuggery and intimidation launched by the Obama administration in response to the revelations of secret programs that involve the collection of communications on hundreds of millions of people all over the world.

Regarding the downing of Morales’s plane, more information has emerged making clear that the US was behind the action. Latin American media have reported that a US diplomat spread rumors that Snowden was on board the flight, prompting the efforts to force a landing. The Austrian newspaper Die Presse reported that US Ambassador to Austria William Eacho “claimed with great certainty that Edward Snowden was onboard.”

Maduro reported that he was personally informed by a European minister that “it was the CIA that gave the order to the air traffic authorities, which gave the alert that Snowden was going in the plane.” While the details surrounding the forced landing remain unclear, it is in blatant violation of international law.

The downing of Morales’s plan makes clear that Snowden will face enormous obstacles as he attempts to travel to any asylum-granting country, even if he receives approval from its government.

If he accepts asylum in Venezuela, Snowden would still need to get there from his current location in the Russian airport. The commercial flight from Moscow to Venezuela stops in Cuba and passes through European airspace. It would thus be in danger of being forced to land by European governments acting at the behest of the United States.

For its part, Russia is pushing for Snowden to leave quickly. Prominent Russian parliamentarian Alexei Pushkov, who is very close to the Kremlin, tweeted Sunday: “Venezuela is waiting for an answer from Snowden. This, perhaps, is his last chance to receive political asylum.”

“He needs to choose a place to go,” said Russian deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov.

Maduro said late Saturday night that Snowden has until today to contact the Venezuelan government in response to the asylum offer.

Russia has made clear that it is unwilling to sour relations with Washington over the issue, and that Snowden would have to accept censorship–an end to his exposures of mass spying–as a condition for staying in Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin offered asylum to the whistleblower, but Snowden declined after Putin demanded that he cease “harming our American partners.”

Moreover, any asylum granted from Venezuela or any other Latin American country must be seen highly conditional. Latin American heads of state are using the occasion to burnish their images as opponents of US imperialism. However, all these countries are heavily susceptible to US pressure and dependent on the US economy.

In spite of his tough talk, Maduro has made clear that he wants to improve relations with the United States. At the same time, the leader of the main opposition party in Venezuela, Henrique Capriles, has denounced the offer of asylum.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has offered asylum, but it was qualified with the phrase “if circumstances permit.” Political analyst Carlos Fernando Chamorro told the Wall Street Journal, “It is an ambiguous statement, that is consistent with his rhetoric of provoking the US and in practice doing everything to maintain good relations.”

A former Nicaraguan official close to Ortega expressed similar views, saying, “It’s his way of telling the Americans, I was asked to do this, but I’m not going to do it. I know him; it is a way that he can show off his revolutionary credentials, but he won’t do anything in the end.”

Ecuador too has indicated that it would consider asylum, but the country carried out an abrupt about-face after pressure from the US. The Ecuadorian government initially granted Snowden a travel document from Hong Kong to Moscow, but this was later rescinded and declared a “mistake.” It has since said that Snowden would have to travel to Ecuador first before any asylum request was considered.

For their part, every European government has refused Snowden’s petitions for asylum. The same European regimes that collaborated with the US in the illegal downing of Morales’s flight have, on countless occasions, allowed the CIA to use their airspace for “extraordinary rendition” of prisoners to black sites to be tortured. These governments have established their own mass spying programs and function, along with the US government, as political machines in defense of the ultra-wealthy and dominant banks and corporations.



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Two dead, 181 injured in San Francisco plane crash

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By
Gabriel Black

8 July 2013

On Saturday, Asiana Airlines flight 213 crash landed at San Francisco International Airport, killing 2 and injuring 181, including 49 critically injured. Details regarding this tragic incident are still emerging.

According to what is known so far, at 11:47 a.m. the plane was close to landing when the pilot realized the aircraft was approaching too slowly and could potentially miss the tarmac. The pilot decided to abort the descent. However, he was too late. The most recent report indicates that a split second later, the plane landed on an emergency extension of the tarmac. The aircraft landed too short and the tail of the plane hit the seawall which protects the runway from the San Francisco Bay. After this the plane bounced back up in the air, fell down again, and then proceeded to skid on its belly across the runway.

By the time the plane came to rest, its wings had broken off and its remaining jet fuel had burst into flames. Most were able to make it to safety before the fire engulfed the aircraft. Fortunately, the airplane only had 90 minutes of fuel left. According to witnesses, the scene was orderly as people slid down the emergency exit slides. According to one report, the seatbelts of some passengers had to be cut with a knife.

Of the 307 people on board, many were injured, including 49 critically. Two of the critically injured are reported to be paralyzed due to spinal injuries. Photographs of the crashed plane show much of the interior gutted completely by fire. Many of the injuries resulted from the top of the plane crashing down on passengers. Those in the back of the plane suffered worst.

The deceased were two teenage girls, Ye Mengyuan and Wang Linjia. Both were with a larger group of Chinese students coming to a summer camp outside of Los Angeles in West Hills, California. The girls had been sitting at the back of the airplane and could have been hurt when the plane’s tail snapped off.

One of the two girls is believed to have been killed when she was ejected from the plane as it crashed. A San Francisco medical examiner indicated that the death of the other girl might have been caused by an emergency vehicle running her over while it rushed to the scene. An autopsy was being done late Sunday to investigate this possibility.

The flight, run by Asiana, a South Korean airline, was an overnighter that went from Shanghai to Seoul before coming to San Francisco. Aboard were 141 Chinese nationals, 77 South Koreans, 61 Americans, and 28 people from several other countries. In a press conference, the president of the airline, Yoon Young-doo announced that “there were no problems caused by the 777-200 plane or engines.” He described the pilots as “veterans” and “skilled,” with tens of thousands of hours logged flying.

According to the New York Times, the South Korean Transport Ministry has indicated that the co-pilot, Lee Kang-guk, was at the controls at the time of the crash. Lee Kang-guk had only 43 hours of experience flying the Boeing 777.

Glide Path, an automatic instrument landing system, had been turned off for several weeks at San Francisco International Airport. According to a Reuters report, Glide Path “is meant to help planes land in bad weather.”

“Aircraft safety experts said Glide Path was far from essential for routine landings, and it was not unusual for airports to take such landing systems off line for maintenance or other reasons,” the report indicated. However, the news agency reported that many pilots have grown accustomed to the technology and relied on it during landings. At this time, the relationship between the switch-off of the Glide Path technology (due to construction) and the crash is not known.

The crash caused widespread delay. Flights taking off and landing at San Francisco International were diverted to Oakland International Airport and San Jose International Airport. Local reporters found passengers still waiting for their flights after 8 or 9 hour delays. Many were delayed longer and had to take shelter at the airport or pay for hotels.

According to an NBC report, local hotels are taking advantage of stranded passengers with rates of up to $1,200 per night for hotel rooms with normal rates of $100 to $200 per night. A Los Angeles International Airport executive said it would take two days before flights between Los Angeles and San Francisco returned to normal.

The “black boxes” of the aircraft have been recovered and are being processed. The pilots, who survived, have not yet made any public statements. There has been no official determination as to whether the crash was a result of pilot error or a mechanical problem. Nor has it been determined whether there were any safety violations or other system failures that could have contributed to the crash.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which is overseeing the investigation, indicated that it could take months until the causes and reasons behind the crash are fully understood.



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Secret laws, secret government

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The FISA court in operation

8 July 2013

The secret court that hears applications for wiretapping and other forms of electronic surveillance, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, has issued secret rulings that vastly expand the spy powers of the National Security Agency, according to a report Sunday in the New York Times .

The Times report gives a glimpse of the police-state infrastructure that underlies the threadbare trappings of democracy in the United States. The article begins:

“In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation’s surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks, officials say.”

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has been mainly known as a rubber stamp for requests from the executive branch for spying authorization. Of the 33,949 requests filed by the government since the FISA court was established in 1978, only 11 have been denied.

The Times reports that in its secret rulings, however, “the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny…” The FISA court has “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, the officials said.”

This report confirms that under the Obama administration the tendencies towards police-state rule that emerged in the Bush administration–with its post-9/11 plans for a secret government that would rule the United States from Richard Cheney’s notorious “undisclosed secure location”–are not only continuing, but accelerating.

The Times article comes a month after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked to the British newspaper the Guardian a classified order from the FISA court authorizing the collection of all telephone metadata from customers of Verizon Business Services. It was widely reported at the time that similar orders were in effect for all customers of all US-based telecommunications firms.

Additional revelations have followed from Snowden, and more are promised. It is likely that the report in the Times is the result of an authorized “leak” from US military-intelligence sources, aimed at preempting an even more devastating exposure of US government spying on the American people and the population of the world.

What is described in the Times article, however, is extraordinary. Under FISA, the targets of government spying–that is, the population of the United States and the entire world–confront a Star Chamber proceeding: a secret court, using secret interpretations of the law, hearing secret evidence from the government, and issuing secret rulings. If the target of such unconstitutional spying becomes aware of the surveillance, the government may issue a gag order forbidding the victim to reveal the ongoing spying to anyone else.

In the FISA court’s proceedings, only one side, the government, is represented. The proposed targets of spying are neither informed of the requests nor permitted to oppose them. Such methods amount to shredding the Bill of Rights, particularly the Fourth Amendment, which requires a warrant for searches, and the Sixth Amendment, which provides defendants the right to a “speedy and public trial,” to be represented by counsel and to be able to confront the witnesses against them.

For three decades, the FISA court was actually housed in a secure facility inside the headquarters of the US Department of Justice, making it physically, as well as practically, part of the executive branch. Six years ago, after the court’s existence became more widely publicized, its office was moved to a federal courthouse in Washington DC. But it still remains effectively an arm of the intelligence apparatus, with 11 judges, all named by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, serving on-call on a rotating basis to ratify whatever spying the NSA or other agencies wish to carry out.

It is an irony of history that the 1978 law establishing the FISA court was drafted in response to the exposure of illegal CIA spying and assassination plots in the mid-1970s. The claim was that judicial oversight would prevent any future “excesses.” The actual role of the FISA court has been the direct opposite: the court has simply enlisted the judiciary in the buildup of a police-state apparatus in America, just as “oversight” by congressional leaders has made the legislative branch a partner with the executive in trampling on democratic rights.

There is no institutional reform based on the principle of “checks and balances” that can reverse the decay of American democracy. This process is an inexorable byproduct of two interrelated processes: the deepening social polarization in America between a super-rich aristocracy of wealth and the vast majority of the population struggling to survive; and the growth of US militarism, with the American military-intelligence complex becoming the major repressive force around the world. It is impossible for the financial oligarchy either to defend their wealth and power at home or maintain their domination of the world while observing democratic and constitutional norms.

There is no significant opposition to police-state methods within any section of the capitalist ruling elite. The revelations in the Times –and a similar exposé in the Washington Post Sunday on US government tapping of undersea fiber optic cables–sparked no protests in either the Democratic or the Republican parties. None of the Sunday interview programs on the main television networks made any reference to these reports.

There is only one constituency for the defense of democratic rights, in the United States and throughout the world, and that is the international working class. American workers can and will be mobilized to defend the Bill of Rights and all the democratic principles that the American ruling class has betrayed and abandoned.

Democracy is increasingly incompatible with capitalism and the social inequality and militarism fostered by the profit system. The defense of democratic rights must become a central focus of the independent political mobilization of the working class in the struggle for socialism.

Patrick Martin



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Portuguese government continues austerity following ministerial resignations

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By
Paul Mitchell

8 July 2013

Portugal’s prime minister and Social Democratic Party leader Pedro Passos Coelho claimed to have found a “formula” with his Popular Party (CDS-PP) coalition partners to “ensure all conditions of stability for the government and for the country.”

This follows the resignation of two key CDS-PP ministers last week–Finance Minister Vítor Gaspar and Foreign Minister Paulo Portas, who is also CDS-PP leader. Passos Coelho stated that he had no intention of resigning himself, declaring, “I will not quit or abandon my country. I am confident that we will be able to surpass this difficulty … I hope this internal crisis can be overcome very quickly.”

The prime minister has already warned the Portuguese people to “prepare for new sacrifices” in order to avoid a second bailout. In May 2011, shortly before it lost power, the previous Socialist Party (PS) government negotiated a three-year €78 billion ($101 billion) bailout package with the “troika” comprising the European Union (EU), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Central Bank (ECB), in return for severe austerity measures.

Spokesman Steffen Seibert said the German government was “confident” that the Portuguese government will continue with the structural reforms agreed with the troika, adding what it had achieved so far was “impressive”. European Commission Economics Minister Olli Rehn said the country had to continue with the “difficult but necessary measures to restore confidence in the sustainability of public finances”–a demand that will be drummed home when troika officials begin their next review of the economy on July 15.

On July 1, Gaspar said in his resignation letter that he was stepping down because of increasing public opposition to austerity and a lack of political backing in the government. Gaspar added that he had also lost some of his credibility because economic targets had been missed as a result of lower than expected tax revenues and domestic demand. Gaspar had won the applause of EU leaders for his imposition of budget cuts, with Rehn praising him for his “valuable work” and “unwavering commitment.”

Within hours, as a sign he would press ahead with the troika’s demands, Passos Coelho appointed Treasury Secretary Maria Luís Albuquerque as Gaspar’s successor. ECB chief Mario Draghi said that with Albuquerque at the helm Portugal’s economy was “in safe hands.” German Finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble explained that she was a “key figure” who would ensure a “seamless transition.”

Shortly before Luís Albuquerque’s investiture on July 2, Portas also resigned, saying he disagreed with her appointment. Portas has been lobbying for more emphasis on “growth” rather than austerity–meaning measures to pump money to the banks and corporations–explaining, “There are known political differences I had with the Minister of Finance. His personal decision to leave allowed the opportunity for a different economic and political cycle. A choice made by the prime minister would therefore be especially careful and consensual.”

“The prime minister intended to follow the path of mere continuity in the Ministry of Finance. I respected it but disagreed,” Portas added.

The political crisis sent the Lisbon stock market down by 5 percent and bank shares slumped by 10 percent on July 3. The stock-market regulator had to intervene to stop a run on four companies by temporarily banning sales of their stock.

Interest rates on Portuguese government debt soared past the 7 percent level–generally regarded as unsustainable–to touch 8.1 percent. Back in May, the government was able to borrow €3 billion by issuing a ten-year bond at 5.7 percent interest, encouraging the belief that the country would be able exit the bailout programme and begin borrowing again in the private markets next year.

The crisis has reawakened speculation that Portugal will have to apply for a third extension of the time needed to pay back its bailout loan. But failing that, and if high interest rates continue, the country might need a further bailout and “haircuts” for those holding its debt similarly to what occurred in Greece and Cyprus.

There were also fears of the Portuguese crisis spreading across the EU. The head of the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, said, “the situation is worrying. So I’m calling on Portugal to take responsibility.”

Schäuble tried to brush the fears aside, declaring with ringing insincerity, “I think the euro is now viewed on the world’s financial markets as so stable that domestic political situations in individual countries… don’t mean a crisis for the stability of the euro as a whole.”

European commission president and former Portuguese Prime Minister José Manuel Barroso warned Portugal’s elite that the “financial credibility built up by Portugal could be jeopardised by the current political instability… This delicate situation requires a great sense of responsibility from all political forces and leaders.”

President Anibal Cavaco Silva is due to begin talks with the parties today. Under the constitution, the president can dissolve parliament and invite opposition parties to form a government.

The opposition Socialist Party (PS) is demanding a snap election two years ahead of schedule, with PS leader António José Seguro declaring, “The country needs a new government with democratic legitimacy.”

Cavaco Silva has consistently argued that this would be a disaster for the country. According to opinion polls, although the PS has about 36 percent of the vote compared to the PSD’s 26 percent, it does not have a majority and would have to form a coalition–probably with the Communist Party (PCE) and/or the Left Bloc (BE).

Not only did the PS negotiate the bailout package, but it has supported the PSD’s austerity measures–arguing only that they should be carried out more slowly. The PCE and BE limit their opposition to the deep crisis with calls for the terms of the bailout to be renegotiated.

Two years of brutal cuts have caused a recessionary spiral that shows no sign of ending. Government spending, investment and domestic demand are declining sharply. The economy contracted 3.3 percent last year and will probably contract by 2.3 percent this year. Even in the years that follow, Portugal’s potential growth rate is less than 0.5 percent a year, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), because the export growth needed to stimulate the economy is so uncertain. A quarter of all Portugal’s trade, for example, is with Spain, which is experiencing similar problems.

For the working class, the austerity programme has been a disaster. Unemployment is nearly 18 percent, with nearly one million workers without jobs. Only an estimated 44 percent of the jobless receive unemployment benefits. Unemployment among youth is 43 percent, with thousands forced to emigrate. Since 2008, according to the OECD, small, generally family-run businesses have suffered a “massive decline,” with more than half of cafés and restaurants closing.

Charities are warning that the welfare safety net is on the verge of collapse, with many children and elderly living in poverty. State pensions over €250 a month have been frozen since 2011 and those above €660 a month have been cut by up to 10 percent.



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Mass protests, clashes continue as Egyptian army fails to name government

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By
Alex Lantier

8 July 2013

Mass protests continue across Egypt in the wake of Wednesday’s US-backed military coup against Islamist President Mohamed Mursi. While it persists in the crackdown on Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB), the military junta has failed to assemble a civilian puppet government amid conflicts over posts with those Islamist parties that back the coup.

Weekend protests followed on from the violent clashes that took place throughout Egypt on Friday, in which at least 36 people were killed and over 1,400 wounded. On Sunday, hundreds of thousands of anti-Mursi protesters poured into downtown Cairo’s Tahrir Square, while several thousand MB supporters blocked the Salah Salem Road in Heliopolis, a Cairo suburb, to protest the coup.

Protests and clashes also continued in Alexandria, Egypt’s second-largest city. A widely circulated YouTube video posted on Saturday showed what were believed to be Islamist supporters throwing two young men off a building in Alexandria. Clashes also occurred in Mansoura and Tanta, Egypt’s eighth and tenth largest cities, between pro-and anti-Mursi protesters.

There were mounting signs of armed resistance to the coup by Islamist forces, threatening to tip Egypt into civil war. Gama’a Islamiyah, a far-right Islamist party that has carried out terrorist attacks inside Egypt, yesterday called for the removal of newly-installed President Adly Mansour.

Egyptian Islamists are reportedly founding a domestic branch of Ansar al-Sharia, a militia in neighboring Libya, to organize armed resistance to the Egyptian junta. Ansar al-Sharia fought against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in the 2011 NATO-led war in Libya; it subsequently was suspected of organizing the September 2012 attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi.

Fighting also continued in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, a center of Islamist support. Four army checkpoints were attacked and a pipeline carrying gas to Jordan was bombed on Saturday, and fears of sectarian bloodshed intensified after Coptic Christian priest Mina Aboud Sharween was shot dead.

Yesterday the Sinai-based Salafi Jihadi group issued a statement saying that the Sinai was affected by “current events ravaging the country.” It threatened attacks on “repressive practices” by Egyptian army and police forces.

The ongoing protests and the toppling of Mursi are the outcome in large measure of a powerful wave of working class struggles that has grown and shaken Egypt over the last year, reprising the powerful strike wave that led to the ouster of US-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.

Last year saw 3,817 labor strikes and protests over economic demands, the vast majority (71 percent) of which occurred after Mursi’s election at the end of June 2012, according to recent studies by Egypt’s International Development Center.

The trend accelerated this year: in the first five months of 2013 alone Egypt experienced 5,544 strikes and related demonstrations. While some were briefly noted in major Western media–like the February Sokhna port workers’ strike for permanent jobs, or the April railway strike–the vast majority of these struggles go completely unreported.

As opposition to Mursi built up in the working class, powerful sections of the US foreign policy establishment and the Egyptian ruling class concluded that the Islamist president had to go. The Egyptian army–working in close coordination with the Pentagon, which funds the country’s military to the tune of $1.3 billion per year–ousted Mursi, placing him under house arrest and issuing arrest warrants for hundreds of MB leaders.

While the ouster of Mursi was broadly popular in Egypt, the junta that has taken its place is an army-run regime aligned with US foreign policy and the interest of the banks. While the coup organizers’ initial target is the MB, their aim is to end the ferment in the working class, slash state subsidies that keep fuel and grain prices affordable for Egypt’s impoverished population, and crush popular opposition to Washington’s Middle East wars.

The goals that drove the population into struggle against Mursi cannot be achieved by supporting this regime, but only by unifying workers in struggle against US imperialism and its capitalist allies in the Middle East.

The clearest sign of the reactionary character of the army coup is that it has Washington’s support. The Obama administration has refrained from labeling it a coup, which might trigger a cut-off in US financial aid to the Egyptian military. On Saturday, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel spoke to Egyptian Defense Minister General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, the leader of the junta, calling for al-Sisi to arrange a peaceful political “transition” in Egypt.

This appeal was echoed by Sen. Robert Menendez, Democrat from New Jersey and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who called for the junta to organize elections: “We have to make sure the military gets a very clear message that we want to see a transition to civilian government as quickly as possible. I think we have to get a process in which we urge all the parties to participate together, that we come to an election as soon as possible.”

After repeated announcements that the army would name National Salvation Front (NSF) leader Mohamed ElBaradei prime minister, Egypt’s state-run daily Al Ahram reported that there had been no successful conclusion to talks on forming a government. Instead, General Authority for Investment official Ziad Bahaa El Din had been offered the position. ElBaradei is now being considered for the vice presidency instead.

El Din, a founding member of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, said the decision was “neither final nor official.”

ElBaradei’s decision to seek a position with the junta itself has exposed the cynicism of his political maneuvers. During last year’s Egyptian presidential election, ElBaradei declared he would not run after seeing his poor projected poll results and criticized the army for not carrying out the election under better conditions: “My conscience does not permit me to run for the presidency or any other official position unless it is within a democratic framework.”

Now, ElBaradei’s “conscience” is encouraging him to seek various positions in a government assembled on the basis of a naked military coup. His role would be to draw on his experience as a former UN official to secure recognition for the army regime and loans from the International Monetary Fund, which would be used to boost investment in Egypt in exchange for deep cuts to social spending to balance that nation’s budget.

Israeli daily Ha’aretz noted that “his [ElBaradei’s] high international profile and diplomatic experience will be very helpful to the new regime in its attempts to convince the world that deposing President Mohamed Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood was a popular revolution and not a coup. This recognition is crucial if Egypt wants to maintain American military assistance and re-apply for loans from the International Monetary Fund.”

Resistance to ElBaradei’s nomination came primarily from the Salafist Nour Party, which the army has sought to maintain as part of its coalition in order to prevent Salafist groups from moving into armed struggle against the junta. The party’s presence in the army coalition is further evidence of the reactionary character of the coup.

Nour Party vice-chairman Bassem El Zaraka announced his party’s opposition to ElBaradei on Al-Hayat TV: “ElBaradei has a vision of a secular state that does not go along with the Nour Party.”



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Judge claims US and Israel pressed for release of Yugoslav war criminals

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By
Paul Mitchell

8 July 2013

A top Danish judge sitting on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Frederik Harhoff, claims that the US and Israel pressed for the release of top-ranking Croatian and Serbian officers accused of war crimes.

Harhoff alleges that ICTY President Theodor Meron, a former legal counsel to the Israeli Foreign Ministry and former Counsellor on International Law in the US State Department, exerted “persistent” and “intense” pressure on other judges to recently acquit Croatian general Ante Gotovina and Assistant Interior Minister Mladen Markac, Yugoslav general Momcilo Perisic and Serbian intelligence officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic. Harhoff said their release was contrary to the tribunal’s standard practice of holding military commanders responsible for crimes committed by their subordinates.

Western powers are concerned that if the standard became enshrined in international law, future military operations would be put in jeopardy and commanders would run the risk of being hauled in front of human rights courts accused of war crimes.

In a private memo addressed to 56 people, published in the Danish newspaper BT last month, Harhoff explained that the ICTY had created a “fairly firm legal practice” in relation to the responsibilities of top military chiefs.

“Right up until autumn 2012, it has been a more or less set practice at the court that military commanders were held responsible for war crimes that their subordinates committed during the war in the former Yugoslavia from 1992-95, when the Dayton Agreement brought an end to the war in December 1995.”

“Now apparently the commanders must have had a direct intention to commit crimes–and not just knowledge or suspicion that the crimes were or would be committed,” he continued.

“It would seem that the military establishment” in leading states such as Israel and the US “felt that the tribunal was getting too close to top-ranking military commands.”

Harhoff pondered, “Has an Israeli or American official influenced the American President of the tribunal to effect a change of course?”

“I am left with the distinctly unpleasant impression that the tribunal has shifted course as a result of the pressure from ‘the military establishment’ of certain powerful countries.”

By authorising the release of convicted criminals it would “in future and in the majority of cases allow the top-ranking person to go free. This means that American (and Israeli) commanders in chief can breathe a sigh of relief…”

Harhoff concluded, “The latest judgements here have brought me before a deep professional and moral dilemma, not previously faced. The worst of it is the suspicion that some of my colleagues have been behind a short-sighted political pressure that completely changes the premises of my work in my service to wisdom and the law.

US diplomatic cables from 2003 published by WikiLeaks appear to support Harhoff’s claims. They show that Meron was in constant contact with Pierre-Richard Prosper, who served as Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, discussing in depth the work of the ICTY and handing over confidential tribunal documents.

One describes Meron as “the tribunal’s pre-eminent supporter of United States government efforts,” and how he “responded positively to Prosper’s detailed explanation of US policy”. Meron was particularly critical of Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte, who had condemned recent statements made by US officials as “a direct interference in the work of the Tribunal and unacceptable,” and was asking US help in preventing her reappointment.

In another cable, the US was concerned that del Ponte was intending to indict 30 individuals, “all at the highest levels,” meaning that “that the indictees will be at the general or ministerial level or their equivalents (i.e. with respect to the KLA).” The CIA and European intelligence agencies backed the KLA and used it as a proxy to facilitate the plans of the US, using NATO as its military umbrella, to complete the dismemberment of Yugoslavia.

The publication of Harhoff’s email has created a crisis in the ICTY.

Last week, current ICTY chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz declared, “I understand the disappointment felt by many, especially survivor communities following the series of recent acquittals mentioned in Judge Harhoff’s letter. My office shares that disappointment.” Brammertz announced that his office is to appeal against the acquittal of Stanisic and Simatovic, and may also request a review of the Gotovina and Markac cases. He refused to comment on Harhoff’s email, saying he was “concerned about the destructive elements in the debate that has followed the letter’s publication” and that “it is not appropriate or helpful for this office to enter into the debate.”

Harhoff’s revelations have also led lawyers for the deceased Bosnian army commander Rasim Delic to request that his three-year jail sentence for the cruel treatment of Serb prisoners be “revised”. They said, “The publication of Judge Harhoff’s letter has unilaterally brought the reputation of the tribunal into significant disrepute and risks losing public confidence in the tribunal’s work…It is therefore the responsibility of the appeal’s chamber to rectify the fallout committed as a result of Judge Harhoff’s appearance of bias.”

A number of Balkan human rights organisations have also written to United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-moon calling for an investigation into Harhoff’s claims, declaring, “Without such an enquiry… doubts about the fairness of ICTY judgments will permanently mar the work of this important institution of international law.”

Back in 2001, the WSWS warned, “The attempt to present the ICTY as a ‘first step’ towards a permanent court to punish the perpetrators of war crimes and human rights abuses does not stand up to examination.” It explained that the main instigator of the ICTY was the US, which consistently opposed the universal application of human rights laws, refusing to recognise the creation of the International Criminal Court unless its military forces were exempted from the jurisdiction of the proposed body.

It explained how US and European policy of dismembering Yugoslavia set the stage for a series of bloody civil wars, whose legacy was the creation of a series of mini-states, in which the Western powers exercise untrammelled economic and political control. The function of the ICTY was to provide a legal veneer for this predatory imperialist policy.

The author also recommends:

Croatian war criminals released after appeal by Western military chiefs
[11 December 2012]



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Indian Stalinist party refuses to defend Snowden

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By
Deepal Jayasekera

8 July 2013

The Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM, has refused to defend Edward Snowden, the American whistleblower who is being persecuted by the Obama administration for exposing the National Security Agency’s (NSA) massive illegal spying operations.

Snowden is currently trapped in the transit area in Moscow airport. The Congress-led government in India is among the countries that have turned down his request for asylum.

The CPM, which at times claims to be “left” and “socialist,” is thoroughly integrated into the Indian political establishment and parliamentary system as a defender of the interests of the Indian bourgeoisie. The party issued two brief Political Bureau statements on the implications of Snowden’s revelations but failed to say a word about the fate of Snowden himself.

The first statement on July 2 criticised Indian External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid for justifying US spying operations. “The government should have strongly protested against such surveillance and bugging” and should “immediately lodge a strong protest against the US snooping activities and demand its halt forthwith,” it stated.

However, apart from acknowledging that Snowden exposed the NSA’s spying, the statement did not call for the defence of this courageous young man, who faces prosecution on espionage charges that will lead to heavy prison terms or the death penalty. The CPM has been completely silent on the Indian government’s refusal to grant asylum to him.

The purpose of the CPM’s criticisms of US spying operations is not to warn the working class about the implications of the buildup of such police-state measures in the US and around the world, including India. Rather the CPM is giving voice to the concerns of sections of the Indian ruling class that its national security interests are being compromised. Its statement criticised the Indian foreign minister “who is not worried that the Indian embassy in Washington is bugged by the US intelligence agency.”

In a second statement on July 4, the CPM denounced the US and European governments for forcing down the plane of the Bolivian President Evo Morales last week on suspicion that Snowden was on board, saying it was “flagrant violation of international law.” But again, the CPM made no comment on Snowden himself and did not call for his defence.

The CPM is also silent on the Indian government’s own vast electronic spying operations, known as the Central Monitoring System. This gives the Indian intelligence agencies unchecked access to all the country’s landline, mobile telephone and Internet traffic.

Like the Obama administration, the Indian government justifies its surveillance system under the pretext of “war on terror.” Following the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai that killed 166 people, the government introduced legislation to “intercept, monitor or decrypt” any information “generated, transmitted, received, or stored in any computer resource,” on vague and sweeping grounds of national security and public order.

The CPM’s limited criticism of US spying operations and its tacit support for India’s electronic surveillance both flow from its full commitment to defend the Indian state apparatus. A CPM-led coalition formed the state governments in West Bengal for 34 consecutive years and Kerala for several terms until defeated in 201l. These state administrations were notorious for ruthlessly suppressing opposition from workers, youth and peasants to their pro-market policies.

The CPM supported the central government’s military crackdown on Maoist guerrillas in late 2009, codenamed “Operation Green Hunt.” The aim of the operation was to open up the land and resources of oppressed and highly marginalised tribal people, who form the social base of the guerrilla movement, to big business. The CPM-led government in West Bengal deployed large numbers of armed police to support Indian troops involved in the operation.

In an article in its English-language weekly, People’s Democracy, on June 23, the CPM also criticised the Indian government’s strategic partnership with the US. The article did not condemn the anti-democratic character of the NSA’s surveillance activities, but rather the fact that India had no access to the US intelligence.

The CPM noted: “The US shares this data with some its partners–the UK and Israel being the obvious examples… For the rest, such as India, the US asks for court orders and strict adherence to the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT). So much for India cosying up to the US and becoming its strategic partner.”

CPM’s reservations about the strategic partnership reflect the concerns of sections of the Indian ruling class that India gains little from the arrangement, but risks being drawn into the US confrontation with China, to the detriment of India’s economic and strategic interests. It advocates a more “balanced” line in foreign policies, including better relations with countries such as Russia and China, while maintaining ties with the US.

The People’s Democracy article argued that the Internet had to be governed in “a truly multilateral way in which peoples’ rights are protected” as opposed to a system “under a license from the US Department of Commerce.” This is simply an appeal for the Indian ruling class to have a greater stake in the global monitoring and restriction of the operations of the Internet.

The CPM’s refusal to defend Snowden is entirely in line with its support for the Indian state apparatus and its police-state mechanisms. It would undoubtedly react with deep hostility to any whistleblower who exposed the anti-democratic operations of the Indian intelligence services. Its defence of Indian “national interests” is matched by its total contempt for the basic democratic rights of the working class and oppressed masses.



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Death toll rises in Quebec train derailment and explosion

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By
Jeff Lusanne

8 July 2013

A rail accident and explosion in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec is proving to be one of the deadliest railway derailments in Canada in decades. Five people are confirmed dead, and officials warn the death toll is likely to rise much higher.

According to authorities, 40 people remain unaccounted for. Due to the intensity of the fire that was triggered by the derailment and subsequent explosions, the remains of the dead may prove very difficult to identify.

Residents are in shock, awaiting word on the whereabouts of family members and friends. At the height of the fire as many as 2,000 of the 6,000 residents of Lac-Mégantic, a town located in the Eastern Townships near the border with Maine, were told to evacuate their homes.

A 72-car train of crude oil, operated by Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway (MMA), was stopped Friday night 6.8 miles (11 km) away from Lac-Mégantic in Nantes, Quebec, where it was to switch crews. For reasons that are pending investigation the train began to move after the crew left. It then rolled downhill to Lac-Mégantic, where it derailed at excess speed on a curve in the center of town.

A series of massive explosions followed involving several of the railcars of crude oil. The explosions that resulted from the derailment in Lac-Mégantic have destroyed thirty buildings and homes, including the town’s library, a grocery store, and a restaurant, the Musi-Café. Pictures show a scene similar to a warzone, with charred trees and only chimneys where buildings used to stand.

Hundreds fled the intense heat and towering flames of the explosions, but at least 40 people remain missing. Some of the missing were patrons and employees of the Musi-Café, which was very close to the derailment and busy with nightlife at the time of the first explosion, which occurred around 1:15 a.m. Saturday.

One hundred and fifty firefighters were called in to respond Saturday, coming from as far away as Maine. They only managed to extinguish the fire Sunday evening.

The derailment may have significant environmental impact. In addition to air quality concerns from the burning oil that prompted evacuations, an undetermined amount of crude oil has spilled into the Chaudiere River and begun to travel downriver to other towns.

A team of investigators and MMA personnel were on site over the weekend to probe the reasons for the runaway train. According to a press release issued by MMA management on Saturday, the train’s engineer had “tied down” the train at Nantes, which requires applying brakes on both the locomotive and several of the railcars.

Before the crew left, one of the five locomotives on the train caught fire, prompting the local fire department to respond and extinguish the fire. MMA maintains that the train’s brakes and safety system were functional and did not impact further events.

On Sunday evening, MMA provided an update that did not mention this first fire, but stated that the locomotive of the train may have only been shut down after the engineer left, “which may have resulted in the release of air brakes on the locomotive that was holding the train in place.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper held a press release in Lac-Mégantic on Sunday afternoon after a brief visit to the disaster-site. He said that “it is hard to explain what happened here,” but promised steps would be taken to “make sure this can’t happen again.”

In reality, the Harper government has a record of defending aggressive cuts to personnel, maintenance, and service in the railway industry, while supporting the rapid expansion of the shipment of oil by rail–actions that can only lead to further such tragedies. In May 2012 Harper’s Conservative government passed back-to-work legislation ending an eight-day strike by workers of Canadian Pacific Railway (CP).

CP Rail workers were striking against the company’s plans to drastically restructure the railroad to boost shareholder profits. With the strike defeated, CP has proceeded to lay off 3,000 of its 19,500 personnel, and CEO Hunter Harrison has said the layoffs might ultimately rise to 6,000, or 30 percent of the workforce. CP workers now have longer hours at more irregular times, and their pensions have been cut. CP has combined trains to run them longer and save on crews, closed down railroad yards, and avoided significant investment towards upgrading its trackage.

Railroads in Canada are largely self-regulated, carrying out their own inspections of infrastructure. Profititability pressures meanwhile cause the railways to press for “lean” operations with reduced staffing and to skimp on the upkeep of physical infrastructure.

MMA is an example of this situation. It operates over 500 miles of railroad in Maine, Vermont, Quebec and New Brunswick that were sold by larger railroads (like CP) when the lumber, paper, and other local industries began to decline. MMA has sold some of its own trackage to the state of Maine, using the threat of abandonment to get the state’s investment in maintenance while retaining the right to operate over it. MMA owner Ed Burkhardt has pushed for one-man remote control operations to reduce labor costs by making engineers control trains while doing work on the ground.

Over the past decade several small derailments at low speed on poor trackage have caused chemical leaks. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, since 2000 MMA trains have spilled hazardous chemicals seven times.

The transport of crude oil is part of a new booming business for MMA and other railroads in the US and Canada, since rail is the most cost-effective and flexible option for getting vastly expanded crude production from fracking to oil refineries . While the exact reasons for the accident in Lac-Mégantic are unclear, rising hazardous material transport combined with market pressure to cut labor and infrastructure costs pose the risk of further such catastrophes.

The author also recommends:

Canadian government rams through anti-strike law against railway workers
[31 May 2012]



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Australia: State government privatises key port operations

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By
Terry Cook

8 July 2013

The New South Wales (NSW) state government is pushing ahead with its plan to privatise the Port of Newcastle, about 170 kilometres north of Sydney. The largest coal port in the world, it will be offered to private investors under a 99-year lease arrangement that is expected to raise $700 million.

Premier Barry O’Farrell’s Liberal-National government announced the sale in last month’s state budget. Enabling legislation was rushed through parliament and rubberstamped in the upper house on June 25.

Since taking office in 2011, the O’Farrell government has been under pressure from big business to privatise what remains of basic infrastructure, as well as to slash spending, axe public sector jobs and gut social programs. The unraveling of the mining boom is hitting the economy and government revenues. Coal royalties in NSW plunged by $235 million in 2012—13 and, altogether, tax revenues were downgraded by $1.9 billion over four years.

Privatisation is being pushed as a means to provide the billions of dollars needed to fund infrastructure projects that have long been demanded by investors. As part of this agenda, in April the government awarded a 99-year lease of Port Botany in Sydney and Port Kembla on the state’s south coast to Industry Funds Management (IFM), a consortium of 30 retirement funds, for $5 billion.

Under that deal, the government agreed to retain the cost of providing a range of expensive services required for the proper functioning of the two ports, including pilotage, vessel tracking and monitoring, emergency response and overseeing dangerous goods.

Part of the proceeds from port sales will go toward funding new infrastructure, such as a WestConnex toll road to connect arterial roads around Port Botany and Sydney Airport, a Northern Sydney Freight Corridor and a pedestrian path between Sydney city and Barangaroo, the site of the city’s next casino.

While the exact terms of the Newcastle port sale are not known, an Australian Maritime Officers Union (AMOU) spokesman said it was sure to contain similar cost alleviation arrangements as those in the Port Botany and Port Kembla package. These would include the government retaining responsibility for operating a dedicated dredger to ensure navigable channels and berths.

Well aware that previous privatisations have provoked widespread opposition, the government has allocated $340 million of the proceeds from the Newcastle port sale to infrastructure in Newcastle, including the construction of a light rail network to replace the heavy rail line into the city.

However, this project could also be the source of profits for private investors, with state Treasurer Mike Baird indicating it could be a public-private partnership. Moreover, the closure of the heavy rail line, long demanded by business interests, will open up tracts of waterfront land for property developers.

Big business hailed the NSW privatisations as a new benchmark. Speaking to a business conference last month, Australian Logistics Council managing director Michael Kilgariff, declared that his organisation, which represents transport and logistics corporations “encourages federal and state governments to follow the lead set by the NSW government.”

O’Farrell knows he can proceed with the full backing of the federal Labor government, which has been pushing state governments to more rapidly sell off public assets, such as energy, water, transport and plantation forestry.

In fact, the Liberal-National state government is pursuing a privatisation model devised by the federal government itself. The Australian Financial Review reported in June last year: “A blueprint under consideration by Infrastructure and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese recommends the sale of national ports, water and roads to raise cash for investment in new infrastructure.”

The article added that the Labor government’s Infrastructure Finance Working Group, which included Treasury officials and experts from ANZ, KPMG, Royal Bank of Scotland, Alinta Energy and industry associations, recommended that the federal and state governments begin “recycling capital” by selling assets to superannuation funds and using the proceeds for new roads, rail and ports. According to the Review: “The plan is seen as more politically palatable than straight privatisations to retire public debt.”

Moreover, the previous state Labor government created the conditions for the O’Farrell government to push ahead with the privatisation agenda. With the support of the trade unions, Labor rode roughshod over widespread working-class opposition to drive through the sale of the state’s electricity retail assets just before being swept from office in March 2011.

The Liberal-National government has continued where Labor left off, securing legislation last year to enable the sale of the state’s power generators. The first, Eraring Energy, was sold to private provider Origin Energy last month for just $50 million.

The trade unions have again stepped in to head off opposition by workers to the Newcastle port sale, lining up with the fraudulent claim of IFM CEO Brett Himbury that the involvement of superannuation funds constituted “social privatisation.”

AMOU national industrial officer Robert Coombs told the media the union would prefer that the port stay in public ownership, but that if it were sold, it was better “bought by union-backed superannuation funds.” NSW Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) northern branch secretary Dennis Outram claimed that industry superannuation funds were “workers’ capital.”

Superannuation funds have accumulated around $1.6 trillion. While they contain billions of dollars of workers’ savings, this capital is in no way socially-owned or democratically controlled by workers. Instead, it is made available to investors and corporations for buyouts, mergers, takeovers and stock market speculation.

Significantly, the unions sit on the boards of some of the major industry super-funds, such as the $20 billion CBUS construction industry fund, and therefore have a vested interest in promoting the use of these funds to buy up state-owned assets.

The maritime unions have also claimed that government assurances the port privatisations will not result in so-called forced redundancies was “good news.” Such “assurances” are worthless. The unions have been instrumental in driving through the continuous restructuring of the ports over the past two decades that has driven up productivity at the expense of the working conditions and jobs of port workers across the country.

Privatisations have inevitably resulted in redundancies, both “voluntary” and “forced.” The Queensland state Labor government, for example, gave similar phony assurances in 2010 when it sold off the state’s rail freight business QR National. By 2012, the new operators had axed over 1,000 jobs through so-called “voluntary” redundancies.



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34 pro-Morsi protesters killed in Cairo

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Egypt’s medical sources say at least 34 supporters of the country’s ousted President Mohamed Morsi have been killed by the security forces during protests in the capital Cairo.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

34 pro-Morsi protesters killed in Cairo

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Egypt’s medical sources say at least 34 supporters of the country’s ousted President Mohamed Morsi have been killed by the security forces during protests in the capital Cairo.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Iran marks Golestan Palace inscription

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Iran has celebrated the recent inscription of Golestan Palace on UNESCO list during an official ceremony held in the palace in the capital city of Tehran.

Organized by Iranâ„¢s Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization (ICHTO), the ceremony took place on July 7, 2013.

Iranâ„¢s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the deputy head of ICHTO Mohammad Malekzadeh along with several other Iranian officials attended the celebration.

Iranâ„¢s Golestan Palace was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, during the recent summit held in June.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization made the decision during its World Heritage Committeeâ„¢s 37th annual session in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

The palace was built in Tehran in the 16th century when the Safavid Dynasty was ruling Iran.

The site received its most characteristic features following extensions in the 19th century, when the ruling Qajar family selected the palace as the royal residence and seat of power. Golestan Palace currently consists of eight key palace structures mainly used as museums.

Å“The Golestan Palace is considered of Outstanding Universal Value because it is presented as the most complete and only remaining example of a royal palace which is an architectural masterpiece of the Qajar era,” the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) had earlier said in a statement.

The committee also assessed Iranâ„¢s Meymand Cave Village along with 32 other submitted sites from around the world for a possible inscription on the World Heritage list.

World Heritage site is a title that is given to the locations, which have “outstanding universal value” to all of humanity, according to the UNESCO description.

FGP/FGP

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Has The Era Of Genetically Pure “Gattaca Babies” Now Begun?

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Aborted Baby - Photo by drsuparna

Should selective breeding be used to improve the human race? Should we genetically screen embryos shortly after conception and choose only those that are the most genetically pure? This may sound like science fiction, but as you will read about below, the technology for this is already operational. On the 18th of May, a couple in Philadelphia gave birth to a baby that came from an embryo that was selected thanks to a cutting edge procedure known as “next-generation sequencing”. This procedure allows scientists to read every letter of the human genome very rapidly and very cheaply. So will millions of parents soon be lining up to check their potential offspring for “genetic abnormalities”? Has the era of genetically pure “Gattaca babies” now begun?

This new technology is being heralded as a great “breakthrough” in the field of human fertility. According to the Guardian, the scientists that helped develop this new procedure are promoting it as a way to help couples produce a much higher percentage of “healthy” babies…

The first IVF baby to be screened using a procedure that can read every letter of the human genome has been born in the US.

Connor Levy was born on 18 May after a Philadelphia couple had cells from their IVF embryos sent to specialists in Oxford, who checked them for genetic abnormalities. The process helped doctors at the couple’s fertility clinic in the US select embryos with the right number of chromosomes. These have a much higher chance of leading to a healthy baby.

The birth demonstrates how next-generation sequencing (NGS), which was developed to read whole genomes quickly and cheaply, is poised to transform the selection of embryos in IVF clinics.

And aren’t healthy babies a good thing?

Of course they are.

But what about all of the babies that are “discarded” in the process?

Dagan Wells, a fertility specialist at Oxford University, screened 13 different embryos for the couple from Philadelphia. His testing helped them select the “best” one…

After standard treatment at the US clinic, the couple had 13 IVF embryos to choose from. The doctors cultured the embryos for five days, took a few cells from each and sent them to Wells in Oxford for genetic screening. Tests showed that while most of the embryos looked healthy, only three had the right number of chromosomes.

“It can’t make embryos better than they were in the beginning, but it can guide us to the best ones,” said Wells.

So what happened to the less desirable embryos?

That is a very good question.

Unfortunately, this is just the beginning. A second baby that came from an embryo that went through the same kind of screening process will be born in the United States next month.

Of course fertility clinics have been helping parents select the “best embryo” for years. But now this new screening process is being hailed as a much more “scientific” way of improving the chances of producing a “desirable” baby…

Embryo screening involves separating embryos with the best chance of producing a pregnancy from those with chromosomal abnormalities.

Traditionally it has involved a “beauty contest” in which technicians pick out the best-looking embryos for transfer to the womb.

But this technique is highly unreliable, since even an embryo that appears “textbook perfect” under a microscope can harbour hidden defects.

And parents certainly don’t want any “hidden defects”, do they?

A lot of scientists involved in this field of research truly believe that they are doing a wonderful thing for parents. They are fully convinced that helping parents transform the process of fertility from “a game of craps” into a process that they can control is a worthwhile endeavor…

Lee Silver, a professor of molecular biology and public policy at Princeton University, urged the audience members to look at someone sitting next to them.

“That person and you differ at over 1 million locations in your DNA [deoxyribonucleic acid]. Most [of these variations] don’t do anything,” Silver said. “[But] even if you are a healthy adult, 100 [of these] can cause deadly childhood disease in your children or grandchildren.”

“Mother Nature is a metaphor,” he continued. “And it is a bad metaphor, because in reality inheritance is a game of craps … It won’t have to be that way in the future.”

But where does this end?

At first, they may just weed out babies that have a high chance of getting sick or being deformed.

Next, parents may start selecting babies based on hair color, eye color, etc.

And eventually, “defective” embryos may be banned entirely because they would be “too much of a burden on society”.

Can you see where this is going?

Back in 1997, a movie entitled “Gattaca” came out that envisioned a world where those that are not “genetically pure” are greatly discriminated against. The following is a summary of the plot for the movie…

Vincent is one of the last “natural” babies born into a sterile, genetically-enhanced world, where life expectancy and disease likelihood are ascertained at birth. Myopic and due to die at 30, he has no chance of a career in a society that now discriminates against your genes, instead of your gender, race or religion. Going underground, he assumes the identity of Jerome, crippled in an accident, and achieves prominence in the Gattaca Corporation, where he is selected for his lifelong desire: a manned mission to Saturn’s 14th moon (titan). Constantly passing gene tests by diligently using samples of Jerome’s hair, skin, blood and urine, his now-perfect world is thrown into increasing desperation, his dream within reach, when the mission director is killed — and he carelessly loses an eyelash at the scene! Certain that they know the murderer’s ID, but unable to track down the former Vincent, the police start to close in, with extra searches, and new gene tests. With the once-in-a-lifetime launch only days away, Vincent must avoid arousing suspicion, while passing the tests, evading the police, and not knowing whom he can trust…

At the time, nobody ever dreamed that we would actually see such a thing in the real world.

But these days technology is moving at a pace that is absolutely mind blowing.

And now, it is reportedly even possible to create babies that have DNA from more than two parents. In fact, scientists in the UK have just been given the okay to start creating embryos with DNA from three parents…

A technique to implant donor DNA from a third party into in vitro embryos has been approved by the British Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). The technique is a form of “germline” alteration that involves modification of the person’s mitochondrial DNA (MDNA) to create genetic changes that will be carried on throughout subsequent generations.

The recommendation to allow the technique follows a public consultation ordered by the government in which the HFEA said they found “broad support”. The report said that the potential benefits outweighed the risks and that there is no evidence that the procedure is unsafe.

The HFEA report said that it should only be used to avoid “serious diseases” and that clinics offering the technique must be licensed. It also recommended that the children created using this genetic alteration technique be monitored.

As technology continues to advance, will their be any limits on what is possible?

One Harvard professor is even trying to recruit someone to give birth to a Neanderthal baby.

Seriously.

The following is how the Daily Mail described this very strange story…

Professor George Church of Harvard Medical School believes he can reconstruct Neanderthal DNA and resurrect the species which became extinct 33,000 years ago.

His scheme is reminiscent of Jurassic Park but, while in the film dinosaurs were created in a laboratory, Professor Church’s ambitious plan requires a human volunteer.

He said his analysis of Neanderthal genetic code using samples from bones is complete enough to reconstruct their DNA.

He said: ‘Now I need an adventurous female human.

‘It depends on a hell of a lot of things, but I think it can be done.’

We are moving into a time when genetic manipulation of the human race is going to become commonplace.

Scientists are assuring us that there is absolutely nothing to be concerned about.

Unfortunately, they have no idea what they are messing around with.

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

US Ambassador to Austria Responsible for False Claim Snowden Was on Bolivian Leader’s Plane: Report

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The Austrian daily newspaper, Die Presse, has reported that the United States ambassador to Austria was responsible for making false claims that National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden was on board Bolivian President Evo Morales’ plane.

In a story published on July 3, the newspaper reported shortly after Morales’ plane landed the “Vienna foreign department received a phone call.” The caller was the US  ambassador to Austria, William Eacho.

According to Die Presse, Eacho “claimed with great certainty that Edward Snowden was onboard.” He also made reference to a “diplomatic note requesting Snowden’s extradition.”

The Associated Press reported on July 2 that Morales’ plane had been rerouted to Austria after European countries would not allow it to fly over their airspace because they suspected Snowden might be on board. The countries included Spain, France, Portugal and Italy.

Morales’ plane ended up landing in Austria to refuel, and, according to Morales, “While the plane was parked in Vienna, the Spanish ambassador to Austria arrived with two embassy personnel and they asked to search the plane. He said he denied them permission.” But, Austrian officials apparentlysearched the plane. (The Guardian‘s Glenn Greenwald reported Austrian police walked through the plane but did not search it.)

The Guardian reported, as of July 5:

Spain says it and other European countries were told that the NSAwhistleblower Edward Snowden was on board the Bolivian presidential plane that was diverted to Austria this week, causing a diplomatic row.

The foreign minister, José Manuel García-Margallo, said on Spanish National Television on Friday that “they told us that the information was clear, that he was inside”.

The minister did not say who supplied the information and declined to say whether he had been in contact with the United States. But he said European countries’ reactions were based on this information.

Ministers of the European countries appear to have their instructions from the United States government, if the report in Die Presse is accurate, to be silent and participate in covering up what really happened.

Bolivian Defense Minister Ruben Saavedra declared hours after the incident, in an interview with CNN, “The US government was behind the rumors that Snowden was on board.” And, “This is a lie, a falsehood. It was generated by the US government.”

“It is an outrage. It is an abuse. It is a violation of the conventions and agreements of international air transportation,” Saavedra said. Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia went so far as to say Morales had been “kidnapped by imperialism.”

Spokeswoman Jen Psaki stated at a briefing, “We have been in contact with a range of countries that had a chance of having Snowden land or travel through their country but I am not going to outline what those countries were or when this [contact] happened.”

The report in Die Presse is the only report to name Eacho as responsible for the false claim. It, however, has not been denied in any news reports either.

President Barack Obama nominated Eacho to be ambassador in June 2009. Prior to that, he had not served in any diplomatic position. He had a background in real estate investment as CEO of Carlton Capital Group, LLC, and food service distribution as Vice President of Alliant Foodservice Inc. He was one of Obama’s biggest campaign fundraisers. His contribution to Obama’s election was rewarded with an ambassadorship.

Eacho apparently did an interview with Die Presse where he minimized the revelations on the NSA saying something to the effect that European Union member states are all involved in efforts to address security threats.

He said something to the effect that people voluntarily give more information about themselves to Facebook than the NSA collects data about them. Police are able to access the data they need and care is taken to protect civil rights and privacy. He also said that Americans residing in the US do not have to worry about someone reading their emails.

What makes the incident even more remarkable is that Morales was never at the Moscow airport where Snowden has been stuck for over a week now. He departed from Vnukovo Airport, which is twenty-seven miles away.

This suggests the lengths the Obama administration is willing to go to ensure Snowden does not end up anywhere that will grant him asylum. As a result, Latin American countries are furious and Bolivia is threatening to close the United States’ embassy in Bolivia over an act he considers a violation of international law.

Republished with permission from: Global Research

‘6.8-magnitude quake jolts PNG’

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A strong earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale has hit Papua New Guinea, the US Geological Survey (USGS) says.

The quake took place at 6:30 a.m. (2030 GMT Sunday), near the town of Kandrian, on the island of New Britain, striking 30 kilometers (19 miles) northeast of the town, at a depth of 62 kilometers (38 miles).

The quake came after a 7.2-magnitude temblor jolted northeast of Papua New Guinea.

The quake struck 110 kilometers (68 miles) northeast off the town of Taron on the island of New Ireland at 4.35 a.m. local time (1835 GMT Sunday) at a depth of 379 kilometers (235 miles).

However, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center did not issue any warning related to the quake. There were also no immediate reports of damage or casualties.

Å“Damage is unlikely although it would have been felt,” Jonathan Bathgate, a seismologist at GeoScience Australia said, adding that tsunami warnings were seldom issued for any quake over 100 kilometers in depth.

He further said that the 6.8-magnitude quake was likely an aftershock that would have woken people up Å“but these areas are very remote and the potential is only for minor damage.”

Earthquake activity is common in the island country, but only few of them prove destructive.

Papua New Guinea sits on the so-called Pacific Å“Ring of Fire,” where continental plates collide and create frequent seismic and volcanic activity.

In 1998, a giant tsunami triggered by a 7.1-magnitude earthquake killed more than 2,000 people near Aitape, on the country’s northwest coast.

MR/HN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Istanbul witnesses protest festival

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Turks participate in an anti-government festival called Å“Man Made of Tear Gas” held on the shores of the Kadıkoy district on the Asian side of Istanbul on July 7, 2013.

Hundreds of thousands of people have staged a festival in Turkeyâ„¢s largest city of Istanbul to protest against the police crackdown on anti-government demonstrations across the country.

On Sunday, Turkish citizens from all walks of life including a group of artists participated in the festival called Man Made of Tear Gas, Xinhua reported.

The weekend festival was held in Kadikoy district of the coastal city’s Asian side.

“This is just a beginning. (We will) keep up the struggle,” the protesters shouted during the festival, waving a large banner reading “For an independent and democratic Turkey.”

Organizers of the event said that the resistance movement against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has now taken the form of festivals.

Istanbul has been the epicenter of anti-government demonstrations since May 31, when the police broke up a sit-in staged in Istanbulâ„¢s Taksim Square to protest against the plan to demolish Gezi Park.

Several people have been killed in the violent crackdown on peaceful protesters, who Erdogan has described as foreign-backed extremists and terrorists.

On June 24, Erdogan praised the Å“legendary heroism” of police forces in quelling anti-government protests.

“Our police have responded to attacks, provocations without violating the law … and have written a saga of heroism,” he said.

GJH/HN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Iraqi police with 4 family members slain

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An Iraqi policeman, on the ground at left, was wounded by a terrorist attack in central Baghdad. (file photo)

Unidentified gunmen have shot dead a police officer and his four family members in the southern Iraqi city of Hilla, according to security and medical officials.

The assailants broke into the officer’s house late on Sunday, held him and his mother, wife and two children in one room before shooting them multiple times.

According to a military source, the attackers were driving a private vehicle.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but police officials say the prime suspects are al-Qaeda-linked militants, who have carried out similar attacks in the past.

“When we arrived after the neighbors called us, we found all the bodies in one room. Each one had many shots in different parts of his or her body,” said a military officer who was at the scene.

“The officer got a dozen shots and his body was torn apart,” he added.

Iraq has seen a surge in violence since the start of the year, with the UN reporting that more than 2,500 people were killed from April through June, the highest level since 2008.

Earlier this month, UN Special Representative to Iraq Martin Kobler advised Iraqâ„¢s leaders to hold meetings to address the countryâ„¢s problems, including the car bomb attacks.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said that militant groups and the remnants of the former Baâ„¢athist regime are responsible for the latest wave of violence in the country.

GJH/AS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

‘SNC to receive weapons from S Arabia’

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The Turkey-based so-called Syrian National Coalition (SNC), which fights for regime change in Syria, says it is going to receive weapons from Saudi Arabia.

On Sunday, Ahmad Jarba, who was elected as the SNC head on Saturday in Istanbul, said he was expecting “advanced weapons” to reach the foreign-backed militants in Syria, Lebanese TV station al-Mayadeen reported.

Jarba described the opposition’s military position as weak, but he said the situation would change with Saudi Arabiaâ„¢s weapons.

He added that the opposition would not take part in the peace conference due to be held in Geneva unless its military position becomes strong.

Jarba also offered the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a truce during the holy month of Ramadan — an offer many believe could be used as a cover to facilitate the delivery of arms to the insurgents in Syria.

During the past 48 hours, the Syrian army has managed to gain more ground in Damascus and some other important regions.

The Syria crisis began in March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of soldiers and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.

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

Damascus says the West and its regional allies, such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, are supporting the militants.

In an interview broadcast on Turkish television in April, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said that if the militants take power in Syria, they could destabilize the entire Middle East region for decades.

Å“If the unrest in Syria leads to the partitioning of the country, or if the terrorist forces take control… the situation will inevitably spill over into neighboring countries and create a domino effect throughout the Middle East and beyond,” he stated.

NT/HN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Passengers Recount Frighting Moments Before Fatal San Franscisco Jet Crash

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US officials were combing through the wreckage of an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 passenger jet in San Francisco Sunday, as they tried to determine why it crashed onto the runway, killing two people and injuring 182 others.

The crash sheared off the plane’s landing gear and tore the tail off the fuselage. Large portions of the plane’s body were burned out in the fire that then erupted.

But National Transportation Safety Board chief Deborah Hersman said much of the destruction isn’t visible in the pictures and footage shown in the news.

“What you can’t see is the damage internally. And that is really striking. I think when we look at this accident, we’re thankful that we didn’t have more fatalities and serious injuries and we have so many survivors,” Hersman told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Flight 214 originated in Shanghai, and had 307 people on board — 291 passengers and 16 crew — after it stopped to pick up passengers in Seoul. The aircraft apparently struck a rocky area at the water’s edge short of the airport runway.

Hersman said on ABC her investigation team arrived overnight and “have obtained the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, and they have been sent back to our labs in Washington. We hope that there is good data, good information on those,”

They also plan to talk to the pilot “in the coming days,” to understand what went wrong, she said, on ABC’s “This Week.”

Part of the landing assistance equipment at the airport was out of service for that runway, but Hersman said that should not have created a dangerous situation.

“There are a number of other tools available to the pilots, some less sophisticated, like the lights, precision approach lights,” she told CNN, as well as “some things that are more technologically advanced, (like) things on the airplane that can give you GPS information.”

But she said, with or without the instruments, the pilot’s expertise is crucial.

“So for them to be able to assess what’s happening and make the right inputs to make sure they’re in a safe situation — that’s what we expect from pilots,” she told CNN.

Yoon Young-Doo, the CEO of the Seoul-based Asiana Airlines, had said earlier his company bought the plane in 2006, and that “currently we understand that there are no engine or mechanical problems.”

The plane was flown by experienced pilots, and there was no emergency warning ahead of the crash. “Our pilots strictly comply with aviation rules,” Yoon said.

He was remorseful as he spoke at a press conference in Seoul. “Please accept my deepest apology,” the CEO said, bowing in front of TV cameras.

A four-member South Korean government team was also heading to inspect the site of the accident, officials in Seoul said.

Aboard the flight were 141 Chinese nationals, 77 South Koreans, 61 Americans, one Japanese, three Indians, three Canadians, one French, one Vietnamese, three others of unidentified nationality. There were also 16 crew members, according to Asiana.

Anxious relatives swarmed the airline’s headquarters in Seoul, seeking details of the crash and information on the victims.

The two people killed were Chinese passengers sitting in back seats, Asiana’s CEO said.

South Korea’s transport ministry said separately they were both teenage girls, born in 1996 and 1997.

San Francisco International Airport was closed after the crash but operating normally Sunday.

San Francisco General Hospital said it was treating 34 patients, five of them in critical condition. Other patients were rushed to different area hospitals.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

Pro-, anti-Morsi protests go on in Egypt

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Supporters of ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi gather in Cairo following Friday prayers, July 5, 2013.

Supporters and opponents of Egyptâ„¢s deposed President Mohamed Morsi have remained on the streets, holding protests as tensions continue to rise across the country.

Morsiâ„¢s supporters on Sunday held marches to Rabia al-Adawiya Square and Al-Nahda Square close to Cairo University, demanding his return to power.

They also erected barricades and set up checkpoints across Cairo, where tens of thousands of them blocked the main road leading to the international airport.

Anti-Morsi demonstrators gathered in Cairoâ„¢s iconic Liberation Square and around the presidential palace.

Opponents of the ousted president also took to the streets in Alexandria on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and in other major cities across the North African country.

Meanwhile, Egyptian media reported on Sunday that Social Democratic lawyer Ziaad Bahaa el-Din has been offered to become Egypt’s new prime minister.

Reports also said leading opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei is also set to be appointed as Egyptâ„¢s vice-president. However, the appointments have not been officially confirmed yet.

Leader of Egyptâ„¢s Salafist Nour Party, Younes Makhyoun has dismissed the choice of Bahaa el-Din as interim prime minister and objected to plans to appoint ElBaradei as vice-president. He added that a politically-neutral person should become premier.

On Saturday, the official MENA news agency said that Egyptian interim president Adly Mansour had appointed ElBaradei as interim prime minister, but his office later denied that any final decision had been taken.

Earlier on Sunday, the Nour Party said it would not accept ElBaradei as premier.

On July 3, Egyptâ„¢s army commander General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ousted Morsi, who had taken office in June 2012, and dissolved the country’s constitution.

Morsi is reportedly being held Å“preventively” by the army. Senior military officials say he might face formal charges over accusations made by his opponents.

Meanwhile, Russiaâ„¢s President Vladimir Putin has expressed concern over the situation in Egypt, saying, Å“Syria is already in the grips of a civil war, unfortunately enough, and Egypt is moving in that direction.”

MR/HN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

US spying on Brazilians alarms Brasilia

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Brazil has expressed serious concerns over a report which says the United States has been spying on Brazilian companies and individuals for a decade.

Brazilâ„¢s O Globo newspaper reported on Sunday that the US National Security Agency (NSA) has collected data on billions of telephone and email conversations in the South American country.

The Globo report said that information released by US surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals that the number of telephone and email messages logged by the NSA in the 10-year period was near to the 2.3 billion captured in the US.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota expressed “deep concern at the report that electronic and telephone communications of Brazilian citizens are being the object of espionage by organs of American intelligence.”

“The Brazilian government has asked for clarifications” through the US Embassy in Brasilia and the Brazilian Embassy in Washington, he said.

Patriota also said Brazil will ask the United Nations for measures “to impede abuses and protect the privacy” of Internet users, laying down rules for governments “to guarantee cybernetic security that protects the rights of citizens and preserves the sovereignty of all countries.”

The US Embassy in Brazil refused to comment over the issue.

But the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in the United States issued a statement saying, “The US government will respond through diplomatic channels to our partners and allies in the Americas … While we are not going to comment publicly on specific alleged intelligence activities, as a matter of policy we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations.”

The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, admitted on Sunday that Snowdenâ„¢s exposés have seriously damaged US ties with other countries. Å“There has been damage. I don’t think we actually have been able to determine the depth of that damage.”

Snowden, a former CIA employee, leaked two top secret US government spying programs under which the 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.

Snowden has been holed up at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport since June 23 when he travelled from Hong Kong to avoid US extradition.

He has already sought asylum in more than two dozen countries. Washington has asked these countries not to provide asylum to Snowden.

Three Latin American countries — Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Venezuela — have offered to grant asylum to Snowden.

GJH/AS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

‘Gunmen kill soldier in Egypt's Sinai’

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Egyptian security forces take position during an operation in the northern Sinai Peninsula. (file photo)

Gunmen have killed an Egyptian soldier in an attack on a checkpoint in the north of Sinai, a police official says.

The attack was carried out near the city of El-Arish on Sunday amid crisis in the North African country.

The violence came a day after armed men shot dead a Coptic Christian priest in the area.

Security sources said the religious figure, identified as Mina Aboud Sharween, was attacked in the early afternoon while walking in the Masaeed area in El Arish.

On the same day, gunmen also raided several military checkpoints in the region, the sources said. On Friday, five policemen were killed in the coastal city of El Arish.

At least 36 people died and over 1,100 more wounded in the ongoing political turmoil across Egypt on Friday.

The clashes came after Egypt’s army chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, ousted President Mohamed Morsi, who had taken office in June 2012, and dissolved the country’s constitution.

Al-Sisi also said that new parliamentary elections would be held, and declared head of Supreme Constitutional Court Adli Mansour as the interim president of Egypt.

Mansour was sworn in as interim president in a ceremony in the capital Cairo on July 4, where he vowed to Å“preserve the system of the republic, and respect the constitution and law, and guard the peopleâ„¢s interests.”

MR/AS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Egypt’s al-Nour objects to PM nomination

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Head of Egypt’s al-Nour Party has objected to the nomination of Social Democratic lawyer Ziaad Bahaa el-Din as interim prime minister of the country, adding that he rejects Mohamed ElBaradei as interim deputy president

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Nigeria state closes secondary schools

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Nigerian northeastern state of Yobe has ordered the closure of all secondary schools following an attack on a boarding school that left 42 dead.

The Nigerian government published a statement on Sunday, saying that Yobe State Governor Ibrahim Gaidam “directed that all secondary schools in the state be closed down from Monday July 8th 2013 until a new academic session begins in September.”

Early on Saturday, gunmen — believed to be members of the Boko Haram militant group — launched a gun and bomb attack against a secondary school in Mamudo village, near the city of Potiskum in Yobe.

Haliru Aliyu, an official with Potiskum General Hospital, quoted witnesses as saying that the militants rounded up students and staff in a dormitory before throwing explosives inside and opening fire.

The government called on the countryâ„¢s army to restore mobile phone service so that the residents can report any suspicious activities.

Mobile phone service had been cut off in mid-May when the army launched an attack against Boko Haram militants in the countryâ„¢s northeast.

A senior police officer said the Saturdayâ„¢s attack took place when the students were asleep. The officer added that the militants started “shooting sporadically and subsequently set the students’ hostel ablaze.”

Lieutenant Eli Lazarus, spokesman for a military taskforce in the state, also stated that the gunmen “stormed the school around 5:30 a.m. and began to shoot at the students from different directions.”

Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly gun and bomb attacks in various parts of Nigeria since 2009.

Boko Haram — whose name means Å“Western education is forbidden” — says its goal is to overthrow the Nigerian government.

Over the past four years, violence in the north of Africaâ„¢s most populous country has claimed the lives of about 3,600 people, including killings by the security forces.

NT/AS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Austerity Discredited, Not Defeated – Time to Fight for Jobs and Growth

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Cracked bank(Image: Cracked bank via Shutterstock)For four long years after the recession officially ended, conservative austerity policies have sabotaged America’s economic recovery, condemning millions of Americans to unemployment and poverty. And in Europe, the same policy regime of spending cuts aimed at deficit reduction has thrown most of the continent back into recession.

Austerity has been intellectually discredited in recent months. But conservative spending cuts still dominate policy. And last week’s jobs report shows public sector layoffs are still a serious drag on the U.S. economy.

Economists at the Political Economy Research Institute found fundamental flaws in the work of Harvard’s Reinhart and Rogoff – up until then conservatives’ best case for austerity. But, despite this intellectual victory, sequestration still cripples our recovery.

Officials at the IMF and the World Bank admitted their demands for more austerity in Europe had been misguided. But German bankers are still imposing severe budget cuts as the price for financing the debts of southern European countries.

The Center for American Progress, previously strong supporters of President Obama’s search for a deficit reduction “grand bargain,” came out against austerity as having harmed U.S. and European growth and called for a policy “reset” rejecting further spending cuts. But in September or October, conservatives in Congress are getting ready to hold the world economy for ransom by (once again) refusing to raise America’s debt limit until the president agrees to another round of damaging spending cuts.

Americans have a choice:

We can pretend that the economy is recovering. We can try to convince ourselves and our neighbors that job creation that leaves more than 23 million people in permanent unemployment or underemployment represents the best we can do.

Or we can take action to achieve full employment soon – not by the end of the decade.

Step One: We need to break the grip of conservative austerity policies.

  • Cong. John Conyers and colleagues have introduced a simple bill that would get rid of the sequester. Conservative economists a Macroeconomic Advisers estimate that would prevent the eradication of at least 700,000 jobs and allow the economy to grow by close to 1 percentage point faster. So, let’s convince Congress to act.
  • Another debt ceiling fight is looming. President Obama has promised that this time (in September or October), he won’t give in to conservatives demands for job-killing conditions. Let’s back him up:  No more damage to our fragile recovery.

Step Two:  Stopping austerity would take the conservative foot off the brakes. But that’s not enough.  We also need to step on the jobs accelerator. The Back to Work Budget of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) is the best plan to spur jobs and growth. The Economic Policy Institute describes its impact:

  • Promoting job creation and economic recovery. The Back to Work budget would sharply accelerate economic and employment growth; it would boost gross domestic product (GDP) by 5.7 percent and employment by 6.9 million jobs at its peak level of effectiveness (within one year of implementation).
  • Targeting a full-employment economy. The budget would rapidly restore the unemployment rate near to pre-recession levels of 5 percent.
  • Restoring full economic health. U.S. economic output is currently $985 billion (5.9 percent) below potential, and the economy is projected to remain 6 percent below potential in 2013 under current law. The budget would effectively use fiscal stimulus to restore actual GDP to potential GDP – the key barometer for restoring full employment in the economy.
  • Financing job creation and public investments. The budget finances roughly $700 billion in job creation and public investment measures in 2013 alone and $2.1 trillion over 2013-2015. This fiscal expansion is consistent with Economic Policy Institute estimates of the fiscal support needed to rapidly restore the economy to full health (Bivens, Fieldhouse, and Shierholz 2013).
  • Targeting a sustainable debt level. After increasing near-term borrowing to restore full employment, the budget gradually reduces the debt ratio to a fully sustainable 68.7 percent of GDP by FY2023.

But, wait, you say: a plan as ambitious and as expensive as the Back to Work budget would never pass – not in this Congress. And you would be right. But that is true of any jobs plan, given conservatives’ ability to prevent any bold action.

Should we instead shift from jobs for all to better wages?

Many organizers and groups, feeling full employment is politically impossible, have focused on raising wages and improving job quality, sensibly trying to reverse the decades of dynamics shifting income away from workers and to the rich: fighting for union rights, raising the minimum wage, for a better trade policy that creates good jobs, and a shift increase wages in the growing service sector. These campaigns are vital – and to the extent they succeed, higher wages stimulate jobs and economic growth.

But in a paper published by CEPR (Center for Economic and Policy Research), University of Iowa Historian Colin Gordon shows that a big part of the cause of declining wages story over past decades “is simply slack in the labor market.”

“Over the past generation, the only respite from unrelenting downward pressure on wages came during a brief spell of full employment in the late 1990s. Those years saw wage gains across the board, closely resembling the shared prosperity of the 1947-1973 era. But on either side of that boom, when high rates of unemployment were the norm, wages (especially for those at the median and below) fell steadily.”

So, while we work to raise wages on the jobs we actually have, we should remind our policy-makers that creating more new jobs has a big impact on achieving higher wages.

Therefore, this may be one of those rare times when boldly telling the truth about what it will take to truly achieve our full employment policy objective represents good politics – because claiming that full employment can be achieved based on momentum alone in the face of serious headwinds (as Democrats argued in the run-up to the disastrous 2010 election) simply won’t work. Americans, battered by years of slow growth and a bad economy, want the truth.

There are plenty of other plans, each more or less ambitious about job creation and growth:

Economic Policy Institute:  Investing in America’s Economy

Prosperity Economics

Cong John Conyers: Jobs-For-All Bill

Center for American Progress: “300 Million Engines of Growth

Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray’s: Foundation for Growth: Restoring the Promise of American Opportunity

Perhaps the most cautiously packaged of these jobs proposals is President Obama’s
American Jobs Act, first released and introduced in September 2011 – and then in updated version in early 2013. The president proposed:

Social Security tax cuts and tax reductions for small businesses, a total of $447 billion in spending, including $130 billion in job creation through infrastructure and creation of new jobs, and $65 billion to increase teacher numbers and modernize schools.

Representative Frederica Wilson (D-FL) will soon announce a modified version of that Obama plan, which she calls The American Jobs Act of 2013. She confronts austerity by ending sequestration. And, concerned about undermining Social Security, she replaces that tax cut with tax credits to give low- to moderate-income Americans greater purchasing power and offset the impact of the recent reinstatement of the full payroll tax. It also provides tax credits to small businesses for hiring out-of-work veterans and making new job-creating investments.

The rest of her plan is pretty close to President Obama’s jobs plan. And she will remind Americans that, according to independent analysis by Moody’s, the Obama plan would have created 1.9 million jobs and boosted growth by two percent if passed when originally introduced.

Some may object that this is pretty small, compared to the Back to Work Budget. But for that very reason, the American Jobs Act of 2013 could be a good test of which Representatives and Senators are willing to support anything at all to create jobs.

Ask questions and take names:

Who is willing to oppose austerity…

  • By repealing the sequester?
  • And by raising the debt limit without job-killing conditions?

And who is willing to step on the job creation accelerator by – at the very least – supporting the American Jobs Act of 2013?

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

‘Bahaa el-Din likely to become Egypt PM’

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]An Egyptian presidential spokesman says leading opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei is likely to become interim deputy president and Social Democratic lawyer Ziaad Bahaa el-Dinis is also likely to be appointed as interim prime minister.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Government Spying Has Always Focused On Crushing Dissent … Not On Keeping Us Safe

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Governments Spy On Their Citizens for Control and Power

Top terrorism experts say that mass spying on Americans doesn’t keep us safe.

High-level American government officials have warned for 40 years that mass surveillance would lead to tyranny.  They’ve warned that the government is using information gained through mass surveillance in order to go after anyone they take a dislike to. And a lieutenant colonel for the Stasi East German’s — based upon his experience — agrees.

You don’t have to obsess on the NSA’s high-tech spying to figure out what the government is doing. Just look at old-fashioned, low-tech government spying to see what’s s really going on.

Instead of focusing on catching actual terrorists, police spy on Americans who criticize the government, or the big banks or the other power players.

Todd Gitlin — chair of the PhD program in communications at Columbia University, and a professor of journalism and sociology – notes:

Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) has unearthed documents showing that, in 2011 and 2012, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other federal agencies were busy surveilling and worrying about a good number of Occupy groups – during the very time that they were missing actual warnings about actual terrorist actions.

From its beginnings, the Occupy movement was of considerable interest to the DHS, the FBI, and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies, while true terrorists were slipping past the nets they cast in the wrong places. In the fall of 2011, the DHS specifically asked its regional affiliates to report on “Peaceful Activist Demonstrations, in addition to reporting on domestic terrorist acts and ‘significant criminal activity.’”

Aware that Occupy was overwhelmingly peaceful, the federally funded Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC), one of 77 coordination centers known generically as “fusion centers,” was busy monitoring Occupy Boston daily.  As the investigative journalist Michael Isikoff recently reported, they were not only tracking Occupy-related Facebook pages and websites but “writing reports on the movement’s potential impact on ‘commercial and financial sector assets.’”

It was in this period that the FBI received the second of two Russian police warnings about the extremist Islamist activities of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the future Boston Marathon bomber. That city’s police commissioner later testified that the federal authorities did not pass any information at all about the Tsarnaev brothers on to him, though there’s no point in letting the Boston police off the hook either. The ACLU has uncovered documents showing that, during the same period, they were paying close attention to the internal workings of…Code Pink and Veterans for Peace.

***

In Alaska, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, intelligence was not only pooled among public law enforcement agencies, but shared with private corporations – and vice versa.

Nationally, in 2011, the FBI and DHS were, in the words of Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, “treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity.”  Last December using FOIA, PCJF obtained 112 pages of documents (heavily redacted) revealing a good deal of evidence for what might otherwise seem like an outlandish charge: that federal authorities were, in Verheyden-Hilliard’s words, “functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.” Consider these examples from PCJF’s summary of federal agencies working directly not only with local authorities but on behalf of the private sector:

– “As early as August 19, 2011, the FBI in New York was meeting with the New York Stock Exchange to discuss the Occupy Wall Street protests that wouldn’t start for another month. By September, prior to the start of the OWS, the FBI was notifying businesses that they might be the focus of an OWS protest.”

– “The FBI in Albany and the Syracuse Joint Terrorism Task Force disseminated information to… [22] campus police officials… A representative of the State University of New York at Oswego contacted the FBI for information on the OWS protests and reported to the FBI on the SUNY-Oswego Occupy encampment made up of students and professors.”

– An entity called the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC), “a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the private sector,” sent around information regarding Occupy protests at West Coast ports [on Nov. 2, 2011] to “raise awareness concerning this type of criminal activity.” The DSAC report contained “a ‘handling notice’ that the information is ‘meant for use primarily within the corporate security community. Such messages shall not be released in either written or oral form to the media, the general public or other personnel…’ Naval Criminal Investigative Services (NCIS) reported to DSAC on the relationship between OWS and organized labor.”

– DSAC gave tips to its corporate clients on “civil unrest,” which it defined as running the gamut from “small, organized rallies to large-scale demonstrations and rioting.” ***

– The FBI in Anchorage, Jacksonville, Tampa, Richmond, Memphis, Milwaukee, and Birmingham also gathered information and briefed local officials on wholly peaceful Occupy activities.

– In Jackson, Mississippi, FBI agents “attended a meeting with the Bank Security Group in Biloxi, MS with multiple private banks and the Biloxi Police Department, in which they discussed an announced protest for ‘National Bad Bank Sit-In-Day’ on December 7, 2011.” Also in Jackson, “the Joint Terrorism Task Force issued a ‘Counterterrorism Preparedness’ alert” that, despite heavy redactions, notes the need to ‘document…the Occupy Wall Street Movement.’”

***

In 2010, the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee learned … that the Tennessee Fusion Center was “highlighting on its website map of ‘Terrorism Events and Other Suspicious Activity’ a recent ACLU-TN letter to school superintendents. The letter encourages schools to be supportive of all religious beliefs during the holiday season.”

***

Consider an “intelligence report” from the North Central Texas fusion center, which in a 2009 “Prevention Awareness Bulletin” described, in the ACLU’s words, “a purported conspiracy between Muslim civil rights organizations, lobbying groups, the anti-war movement, a former U.S. Congresswoman, the U.S. Treasury Department, and hip hop bands to spread tolerance in the United States, which would ‘provide an environment for terrorist organizations to flourish.’”

***

And those Virginia and Texas fusion centers were hardly alone in expanding the definition of “terrorist” to fit just about anyone who might oppose government policies. According to a 2010 report in the Los Angeles Times, the Justice Department Inspector General found that “FBI agents improperly opened investigations into Greenpeace and several other domestic advocacy groups after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, and put the names of some of their members on terrorist watch lists based on evidence that turned out to be ‘factually weak.’” The Inspector General called “troubling” what the Los Angeles Times described as “singling out some of the domestic groups for investigations that lasted up to five years, and were extended ‘without adequate basis.’

Subsequently, the FBI continued to maintain investigative files on groups like Greenpeace, the Catholic Worker, and the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh, cases where (in the politely put words of the Inspector General’s report) “there was little indication of any possible federal crimes… In some cases, the FBI classified some investigations relating to nonviolent civil disobedience under its ‘acts of terrorism’ classification.”

***

In Pittsburgh, on the day after Thanksgiving 2002 (“a slow work day” in the Justice Department Inspector General’s estimation), a rookie FBI agent was outfitted with a camera, sent to an antiwar rally, and told to look for terrorism suspects. The “possibility that any useful information would result from this make-work assignment was remote,” the report added drily.

“The agent was unable to identify any terrorism subjects at the event, but he photographed a woman in order to have something to show his supervisor. He told us he had spoken to a woman leafletter at the rally who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent, and that she was probably the person he photographed.”

The sequel was not quite so droll. The Inspector General found that FBI officials, including their chief lawyer in Pittsburgh, manufactured postdated “routing slips” and the rest of a phony paper trail to justify this surveillance retroactively.

Moreover, at least one fusion center has involved military intelligence in civilian law enforcement. In 2009, a military operative from Fort Lewis, Washington, worked undercover collecting information on peace groups in the Northwest.  In fact, he helped run the Port Militarization Resistance group’s Listserv. Once uncovered, he told activists there were others doing similar work in the Army. How much the military spies on American citizens is unknown and, at the moment at least, unknowable.

Do we hear an echo from the abyss of the counterintelligence programs of the 1960s and 1970s, when FBI memos – I have some in my own heavily redacted files obtained through an FOIA request – were routinely copied to military intelligence units?  Then, too, military intelligence operatives spied on activists who violated no laws, were not suspected of violating laws, and had they violated laws, would not have been under military jurisdiction in any case. During those years, more than 1,500 Army intelligence agents in plain clothes were spying, undercover, on domestic political groups (according to Military Surveillance of Civilian Politics, 1967-70, an unpublished dissertation by former Army intelligence captain Christopher H. Pyle). They posed as students, sometimes growing long hair and beards for the purpose, or as reporters and camera crews. They recorded speeches and conversations on concealed tape recorders. The Army lied about their purposes, claiming they were interested solely in “civil disturbance planning.”

Indeed, the New York Review of Books notes that spying in America has always been focused on crushing dissent:

In the United States, political spying by the federal government began in the early part of the twentieth century, with the creation of the Bureau of Investigation in the Department of Justice on July 1, 1908. In more than one sense, the new agency was a descendant of the surveillance practices developed in France a century earlier, since it was initiated by US Attorney General Charles Joseph Bonaparte, a great nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, who created it during a Congressional recess. Its establishment was denounced by Congressman Walter Smith of Iowa, who argued that “No general system of spying upon and espionage of the people, such as has prevailed in Russia, in France under the Empire, and at one time in Ireland, should be allowed to grow up.”

Nonetheless, the new Bureau became deeply engaged in political surveillance during World War I when federal authorities sought to gather information on those opposing American entry into the war and those opposing the draft. As a result of this surveillance, many hundreds of people were prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act and the 1918 Sedition Act for the peaceful expression of opinion about the war and the draft.

But it was during the Vietnam War that political surveillance in the United States reached its peak. Under Presidents Lyndon Johnson and, to an even greater extent, Richard Nixon, there was a systematic effort by various agencies, including the United States Army, to gather information on those involved in anti-war protests. Millions of Americans took part in such protests and the federal government–as well as many state and local agencies–gathered enormous amounts of information on them. Here are just three of the numerous examples of political surveillance in that era:

  • In the 1960s in Rochester, New York, the local police department launched Operation SAFE (Scout Awareness for Emergency). It involved twenty thousand boy scouts living in the vicinity of Rochester. They got identification cards marked with their thumb prints. On the cards were the telephone numbers of the local police and the FBI. The scouts participating in the program were given a list of suspicious activities that they were to report.
  • In 1969, the FBI learned that one of the sponsors of an anti-war demonstration in Washington, DC, was a New York City-based organization, the Fifth Avenue Peace Parade Committee, that chartered buses to take protesters to the event. The FBI visited the bank where the organization maintained its account to get photocopies of the checks written to reserve places on the buses and, thereby, to identify participants in the demonstration. One of the other federal agencies given the information by the FBI was the Internal Revenue Service.

***

The National Security Agency was involved in the domestic political surveillance of that era as well. Decades before the Internet, under the direction of President Nixon, the NSA made arrangements with the major communications firms of the time such as RCA Global and Western Union to obtain copies of telegrams. When the matter came before the courts, the Nixon Administration argued that the president had inherent authority to protect the country against subversion. In a unanimous decision in 1972, however, the US Supreme Court rejected the claim that the president had the authority to disregard the requirement of the Fourth Amendment for a judicial warrant.

***

Much of the political surveillance of the 1960s and the 1970s and of the period going back to World War I consisted in efforts to identify organizations that were critical of government policies, or that were proponents of various causes the government didn’t like, and to gather information on their adherents. It was not always clear how this information was used. As best it is possible to establish, the main use was to block some of those who were identified with certain causes from obtaining public employment or some kinds of private employment. Those who were victimized in this way rarely discovered the reason they had been excluded.

Efforts to protect civil liberties during that era eventually led to the destruction of many of these records, sometimes after those whose activities were monitored were given an opportunity to examine them. In many cases, this prevented surveillance records from being used to harm those who were spied on. Yet great vigilance by organizations such as the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought a large number of court cases challenging political surveillance, was required to safeguard rights. The collection of data concerning the activities of US citizens did not take place for benign purposes.

***Between 1956 and 1971, the FBI operated a program known as COINTELPRO, for Counter Intelligence Program. Its purpose was to interfere with the activities of the organizations and individuals who were its targets or, in the words of long-time FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize” them. The first target was the Communist Party of the United States, but subsequent targets ranged from the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference to organizations espousing women’s rights to right wing organizations such as the National States Rights Party.

A well-known example of COINTELPRO was the FBI’s planting in 1964 of false documents about William Albertson, a long-time Communist Party official, that persuaded the Communist Party that Albertson was an FBI informant. Amid major publicity, Albertson was expelled from the party, lost all his friends, and was fired from his job. Until his death in an automobile accident in 1972, he tried to prove that he was not a snitch, but the case was not resolved until 1989, when the FBI agreed to pay Albertson’s widow $170,000 to settle her lawsuit against the government.

COINTELPRO was eventually halted by J. Edgar Hoover after activists broke into a small FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, in 1971, and released stolen documents about the program to the press. The lesson of COINTELPRO is that any government agency that is able to gather information through political surveillance will be tempted to use that information. After a time, the passive accumulation of data may seem insufficient and it may be used aggressively. This may take place long after the information is initially collected and may involve officials who had nothing to do with the original decision to engage in surveillance.

***

Since President Obama is asking us to trade some of our privacy with respect to our phone calls and our use of the Internet for greater protection against terrorism, at the very least we need to know exactly how our privacy is being violated. We also need to debate fully whether such measures uphold our Constitutional rights, such as the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of expression and the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures. Yet if the program is kept secret, and if even the court opinions stating the rationale for authorizing surveillance are kept secret, we cannot decide whether a trade-off is warranted; if it is warranted, exactly what should be traded; if constitutional rights are implicated, whether these are appropriate matters for a trade; or how we can impose limits on any trade so as to minimize the violation of our rights. A trade made in ignorance is not much of a trade.

Postscript: This is not some “post-9/11 reality”. Spying on Americans started before 9/11.

Republished with permission from: Global Research

Egyptian court acquits Morsi critics

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Protesters opposing Egyptâ„¢s ousted President Mohamed Morsi wave Egyptian flags and shout slogans against him in Cairo on June 30, 2013.

A court in Egyptâ„¢s capital Cairo has acquitted a group of outspoken critics of ousted President Mohamed Morsi.

The Egyptian state news agency MENA reported on Sunday that the eleven defendants had been on trial on charges of provoking violence during anti-Morsi protest back in March.

The news agency said the criminal court in Cairo cleared them of inciting violence and destroying public property, with the activists maintaining that their case was part of a crackdown on dissent.

One of the defendants was Ahmed Douma who is a high-profile blogger and activist. In a separate case, he had been sentenced to six months in jail, for calling Morsi a criminal in media interviews. Douma was released from prison on July 6 on orders of the public prosecution.

On July 3, Egyptâ„¢s army commander General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ousted Morsi, who had taken office in June 2012, and dissolved the country’s constitution.

On July 6, the Muslim Brotherhood said the West fully backed the ouster of Morsi, the country’s first democratically elected leader, in a military coup, adding that the move would backfire.

Å“We feel, with great regret, that the international community is somehow intervening in recognition and support of the military coup,” Mohamed El-Beltagi, a senior Muslim Brotherhood leader said.

On July 5, tens of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood activists and their supporters took to the streets across the country to protest against the coup, and clashes between pro-Morsi and opposition protesters and security forces left at least 36 people dead and more than 1,000 injured.

MR/AS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Presidents, Plots, Broken Promises, Coups, Torture, Two Gulags and the “American Dream”

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“Oh what a tangled web we weave,

When first we practise to deceive.”  (Sir Walter Scott, 1771-1832.)

It has been a bit of a foot-in-mouth week for the constitutional lawyer who is President of the United States.

As Egypt’s increasingly autocratic and theocratic Muslim Brotherhood’s President Mohammed Morsi was rejected by the population with an estimated thirty three million person demonstration  and a twenty two million signature petition, the US Nobel Prize Peace Laureate cheer leading for the overthrow of Syria’s sovereign Head of State, declared he is “deeply concerned” over the ousting of President Morsi.

He called for the :

“ … return (of) full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government as soon as possible, through an inclusive and transparent process, and to avoid any arbitrary arrests of President Morsi and his supporters.”

 ”The United States continues to believe firmly that the best foundation for lasting stability  … is a democratic political order with participation from all sides and all political parties – secular and religious, civilian and military,” Obama stated, demanding that: ” …during this uncertain period, we expect the military to ensure that the rights of all Egyptian men and women are protected.”

Further, the United States supported:

“ … a set of core principles, including opposition to violence, protection of universal human rights, and reform that meets the legitimate aspirations of the people.”

CNN called the (certainly also infiltrated) demonstrations the largest number of protestors at a political event in the history of mankind. Whatever the outcome of the interim government and the nation’s longer term response to it, it was demonstration of another rare kind: democracy in action.

Whilst castigating Egypt for an example of democracy’s definition, by his avowed hero Abraham Lincoln — whose journey Obama emulated on road to the White House —  “government of the people, by the people, for the people (which) shall not perish from the earth” (Gettysburg Address, November 19th 1863) Obama blithely ignored the dangerous criminality of sections of the ousted President Morsi’s supporters.

On 4th July, as the US celebrated Independence Day, in a chilling mirror image of America’s favoured fundamentalists in Iraq, Libya and Syria:’

“True to their vows, pro-Morsi Muslims are attacking Egypt’s Christians for participating in the anti-Morsi protests.  The St. George Coptic Christian Church in a village in al-Minya, Egypt, has just been set on fire  by “pro-Morsi” forces.

Copts are reported to be in a state of  “fear and panic.” ‘

Days earlier, a letter was circulated in al-Minya, which has a very large Coptic population, calling on Copts not to join the protests, otherwise their “businesses, cars, homes, schools, and churches” might “catch fire.” ‘ (i)

The message concluded:

“If you are not worried about any of these, then worry about your children and your homes.  This message is being delivered with tact.  But when the moment of truth comes, there will be no tact.”

Some of the other threats delivered in support of Dr Morsi, to those of all or no religious persuasions, include relieving them of their eyes and wiping them “off the face of the earth.” (ii)

Yet President Obama  related his deep concern at : “ …  the decision of the Egyptian Armed Forces to remove President Morsi and suspend the Egyptian constitution” calling on: “the Egyptian military to move quickly and responsibly to return full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government as soon as possible, through an inclusive and transparent process, avoiding any arbitrary arrests of  President Morsi and his supporters.” This as he is stepping up funding and weapons to terrorists in Syria committing acts of barbarity exceeding even anything in Eqypt.

Obama’s deep concern at the removal of President Morsi is at odds with his repeated statements on President Assad, as exampled in the May White House meeting with Turkey’s now embattled Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan: “We both agree that Assad needs to go. He needs to transfer power to a transitional body,” he said (news, websites.)

President Assad’s government and territorial integrity is, of course enshrined in the fine legalese of the UN. Further, as Obama pledges millions$ in equipment, training and aid to the Syrian insurgents, he directs his Administration to review US assistance to Egypt — on the basis that American law forbids aid to countries that remove leaders in a military coup, as he plans and funds one for Syria. Arguably, a lawyer who gives the term “legal leeway”, entirely new dimensions.

The atrocities in Syria being committed by the “Free Syrian Army”, alleged to be paid in “crisp US $ bills” are a legion. The terrorist “commander” videoed mutilating a corpse and cannibal-like eating parts of organs, was described in the Los AngelesTimes (14th May 2013) as vowing thus:

‘ “I swear to God, soldiers of Bashar, you dogs  – we will eat your heart and livers”, the “commander” declares, while brandishing the organs, directing a sickening message to Syrian President Bashar Assad. “Oh my heroes of Baba Amr, you slaughter the Alawites and take their hearts out to eat them!”

‘Human Rights Watch said the man in the video appeared to be a rebel figure known as Abu Sakkar, of the Independent Omar al-Farouq Brigade, which arose … last year in the Baba Amr district of the city of Homs. The brigade is one of scores of rebel factions in Syria that answer to no central command.’

Those pad in “crisp US $ bills” have summarily executed across the country, including a fifteen year old street tea seller for “blasphemy.” Beheadings also include a Priest and a Bishop, along with desecrated bodies, burned Mosques and Christian churches and reportedly the massacre of an entire village of Christians at al-Duvair. (iii)

Also in formerly secular Syria “units” from the self-declared “Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham” (ISIS)  – from the equally formerly secular Iraq until the US backed fundamentalists gained sway — have also begun imposing stricter interpretations of Islamic law and have filmed themselves executing members of rival rebel groups.

The latest internecine clashes were in the town of Al Dana, near the Turkish border, on Friday, local “activists” said. An opposition group known as the Free Youths of Idlib said dozens of fighters were killed, wounded or imprisoned.

The bodies of a “commander” and his brother, from the local Islam Battalion, were reportedly found beheaded, with locals saying that the men’s heads were found next to a trash bin in a main square. Again, chillingly reminiscent of years of the same, which overwhelmed Iraq under the American and British invasion and occupation.

Of Egypt, last Wednesday Obama demanded that: “during this uncertain period, we expect the military to ensure that the rights of all Egyptian men and women are protected.” No such demands over the daily slaughter of innocents in Iraq under a US puppet Prime Minister, Syria under US funded and armed gangs  — and a presumption that the President’s ritual signing off on the droning to death of men and women in the villages of Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia or where ever — is a God given right.

But perhaps the greatest example of schizophrenic chutzpah, was the Nobel Laureate’s visit to South Africa’s Robben Island prison, where  Nelson Mandela was held for eighteen years, in and eight ft., by eight ft., cell.

After standing in Mandela’s former place of incarceration, looking out of the barred window for a photo op, he wrote in the prison, now museum visitors’ book: “On behalf of our family, we’re deeply humbled to stand where men of such courage faced down injustice and refused to yield. The world is grateful for the heroes of Robben Island, who remind us that no shackles or cells can match the strength of the human spirit.”

Tell that to Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning. Ironically, his Secret Service agents stood watch in the old tower where South Africa’s  apartheid thugs watched over Nelson Mandela and his colleagues. What symbolism.

Tell it also to those without hope who Obama made an election promise to release, rotting in another island gulag: Guantanamo Bay, where in fact there are eight stalags, built on a US leased former coaling and naval stations dating back to 1898.

In 2008 Amnesty USA recreated a life-size replica of  a maximum security Guantanamo cell and toured the States with it. (iv) At eight feet high, ten feet long and seven feet wide, it is just two feet longer than Mandela’s cell — and one foot narrower.

However, when the first prisoners arrived at the gulag on 11th January 2002, cells were reported to the made from chain-link fencing and measuring just six feet by eight feet, with corrugated metal roofs. Sleeping arrangements were a foam sleeping mat on the concrete floor. Two buckets sufficed for washing and a toilet. (v)

After Camp Four riots in June 2006, prisoners in Camp Six were incarcerated alone: “for at least 22 hours a day in windowless, concrete, steel-doored cells.

In even more restrictive camps such as Camps Three and One, it is reported that the prisoners are denied “special items” — such as toilet paper. When nature calls, a prisoner must ask the guards for the “necessary” amount of toilet paper.Think about it.

“Lights in the prison are kept on 24 hours a day …  The camps are surrounded by barbed wire and green sheets to restrict any views, including that of the ocean.”

“Since the opening of the prison at Guantanamo Bay on 11 January 2002, the U.S. government has detained more than 759 men there.  To-date, only three prisoners have been convicted of committing war crimes against the United States.”

In Camp Three:

“The detainees’ cells were sufficiently isolated from one another that they couldn’t see one another. Additionally, there were noise generators near each cell so they couldn’t hear one another.”

In April 2010 the Guardian reported that a TV had been installed in a common area in Camp Six — with prisoners shackled to the floor during television “privileges.”

On the campaign trail in 2008 Barack Hussein Obama was unequivocal, if elected: “We are going to lead by shutting down Guantanamo and restoring habeus corpus … I have said repeatedly that I will follow through on it.” Further: “I have said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture, I am going to shut down on it, we are not being true to our values.” (vi)

This week, two allegations of torture at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, including: “electric shocks; repeated brutal beatings; sleep deprivation; sensory deprivation; forced nudity; stress positions; sexual assault; mock executions; humiliation; hooding; isolated detention; and prolonged hanging from the limbs”, by US mercenaries employed by CACI, were dismissed by US District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee.

The Judge’s grounds were that US corporations are immune from prosecution for acts committed on foreign soil. This in spite of the fact that the US military was an occupying force and thus legally responsible for the well being of the Iraqi population at the time CACI was committing the unimaginable — and a US General was in overall charge of Abu Ghraib and eleven other of Iraq’s prisons.

Speaking after he left that tiny cell on Robben Island, Obama said: “Nelson Mandela showed us that one man’s courage can move the world.” Quite, especially if you are the self styled most powerful one on earth..

Incidentally the window in Nelson Mandela’s sparse little place of incarceration, in front of which Obama stood for his photo op, was multiple times larger than the near slits that pass for windows in Guantanamo cells that have them. (viii)

“Pity someone didn’t slam the door shut on him”, remarked an intolerant friend. Tut, tut.

Notes

i. http://cpnagasaki.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/revenge-coptic-christian-churches-homes-are-reportedly-under-attack-by-morsi-supporters/

ii. http://cpnagasaki.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/revenge-coptic-christian-churches-homes-are-reportedly-under-attack-by-morsi-supporters/

iii. http://www.dailypaul.com/287415/syrian-rebels-massacre-christian-village

iv.http://blogs.suntimes.com/conventions/2008/09/inside_your_very_own_guantanam.html

v. http://the-beacon.info/countries/united-states/demographics-of-guantanamo-bay-prison/

vi. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8USRg3h4AdE (1.43m)

vii. http://www.allgov.com/news/us-and-the-world/americans-get- away-with-murder-and-torture-in-iraq-130701?news=850439

viii. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-23121416

Republished with permission from: Global Research

Storm Clouds?

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As the panic over the destiny of the Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing” program reaches hysterical proportions, uncommonly bizarre economic anomalies are surfacing. In the last week of June, the news that first quarter US Gross Domestic Product growth report was reduced dramatically from 2.4% to 1.8% was met by an equally dramatic, but paradoxical positive jump in equity markets. Normally, a rather staggering drop in GDP estimates would trigger stock market losses– investor confidence would be battered. But the opposite occurred. 
What’s going on?
Pundits and investors hailed the bad news because they hope that it will keep the Federal Reserve committed to the $85 billion per month bond purchasing project dubbed “quantitative easing.” They believe that the Fed would not dare to relax the program in the face of poor economic performance. And they recognize that without the Fed’s foot firmly pressing the accelerator, the capitalist economy will stagnate or slow. The Federal Reserve program is truly a life-support system for our economy, and capitalism’s apologists recognize that they are in deep trouble without it. Therefore, investors welcomed the fall in GDP growth!
Even Paul Krugman, the popular voice of social democratic theory in the US, has caught the contagion of fear. In a late-June appeal in The New York Times (Ettu, Ben?) to Federal Reserve head, Ben Bernanke, Krugman calls for the Fed to keep its foot aggressively on the gas pedal. A firm advocate of an alternative policy option, fiscal stimulus (spending on infrastructure, public works, etc), Krugman holds his nose and urges the continuation of the Fed’s monetary stimulus program of printing money for bond purchases.
So why can’t we just all agree to get along and urge the Federal Reserve to keep printing dollars?
In the first place, the Fed’s policy of dollar-printing promiscuity is losing its healing powers. The effect of the purchase of government debt– Treasury notes– in order to restrain bond yields and interest rates has diminished since mid-2012. Moreover, the Fed remedy has lost its magic entirely in May and June of this year, with the yield on the 10-year Treasury note rising by two-thirds, mortgage rates jumping about 27% from March to the end of June, and the US and European (except Germany) bond market experiencing a sell-off. All of these indicators demonstrate that quantitative easing, as a stimulus policy, is simply losing its punch.
The Federal Reserve sees its injection of $85 billion into the economy every month as a hedge against the dreaded deflation, a sure companion to stagnation or negative growth. They watch to see when inflation crosses their target of 2% in order to slap on the brakes to avoid an overheated economy. But there is no reason for the Fed to fret: inflation is well below their target, a clear sign that without monetary stimulus we would be in a deflationary period. Corporations are hoarding cash rather than investing: they are holding 5.6% of their total assets in cash, against a forty year average of 4.4%. It was weak business investment, in part, that caused the first quarter GDP growth revision downward by 25%.
The Chicago Federal Reserve’s three-month moving average National Activity index remained in negative territory, underlining the diminishing effects of quantitative easing.
Aside from its ineffectiveness, quantitative easing poses more serious, more fundamental problems: Fed monetary promiscuity distorts markets and masks underlying economic processes. Given that a capitalist economy is an enormously complex organism made up of mutually interactive actors, commodities and processes, manipulating some of the central elements such as interest rates, the money supply, debt growth, etc. can have unforeseen and damaging repercussions in other sectors of the economy. Mechanisms fail and balances are disrupted. A therapy becomes an injury. This is a lesson that the leadership of the Peoples’ Republic of China is learning from the volatility created by its shadow banking sector. Even with majority public ownership of the biggest banks, the informal private sector distorts the impact of policy decisions.
In Marxist terms, the massive Federal Reserve intervention in financial markets violates the law of value. That is, it replaces the exchange of equivalent-for-equivalent in financial markets, with exchanges determined independently of market forces by the officers of the Fed. Those exchanges must, at some point, be reconciled; but in the meantime, they distort exchange relationships in other sectors of the economy. They create a disconnect between the financial sector and the signals sent to the productive economy. They distort the rate of profit in the financial sector, channeling capital into speculation and over-reliance on cheap credit. It’s no wonder that corporations hoard cash and seek higher returns on retained capital and easily available capital.
In reality, quantitative easing invites the very conditions that led to the 2007-8 collapse.
And we are now seeing omens in the economic data.
The exuberant 2013 stock market is suffering a retreat, but even more ominously, demonstrating growing volatility. Last year, the small investor jumped back in the market, a sure sign that a bear market was in sight. Much of the volatility comes from market manipulators exploiting the amateur day-traders. Like the swaggering Vegas weekend gambler, they are ripe for the picking. One can watch the picking by following the end-of-day trading; they don’t know when to get in or when to get out.
US exports are pulling back.
The post-World War II record profits reported in 2012 are threatened. Of 108 companies scheduled to report profits in the second quarter of 2013, 87 offered negative guidance to their shareholders. Falling profits, contrary to underconsumption theorists, are a better predictor of a downturn than falling consumption. Consumption generally falls as a result and as an amplifier of economic decline.
Today, US consumption hangs precariously in the balance. While savings are declining, wages are in free fall. The year ending in September 2012 experienced a wage decline of 1.1%. First quarter estimates augur a shocking decline. The consumer is simply running out of money, savings, and available credit.
And the just announced June unemployment figures actually show an increase in the more telling U6 calculation to 14.3%. That rate includes those who have dropped out of the job market and those working part-time but desiring a full-time job.
Not a promising picture.
In most of the world’s capitalist countries, the labor movements and left political parties have yet to decouple their fate from that of the monopoly capital, profit-driven, market-governed system. They are like ships on turbulent waters unwilling to bring their vessels and crew to port. They are simply counting on the storm to subside. They are neither prepared for nor expecting a hurricane or a shipwreck. After five disastrous years, one would hope that left and labor leaders would began to look for alternatives to capitalism, a safe haven for their fellow passengers.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

How Do You Know When President Obama is Lying? MSNBC’s "Progressive" Hosts Won’t Tell You.

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I was a young person when I first heard the quip: “How do you know when the President is lying? His lips are moving.” At the time, President Nixon was expanding the war in Vietnam to other countries and deploying the White House “plumbers” to commit crimes against antiwar leakers.

Forty years have passed. Sadly, these days, often when I see President Obama moving his lips, I assume he’s lying.

Like Nixon, our current president is prolonging an endless, borderless and counter-productive war (“on terror”) and waging a parallel war against “national security” leakers that makes the plumbers’ burglary of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office look almost quaint.

The World War I vintage Espionage Act, originally used to imprison socialists for making antiwar speeches, has been used by the administration against whistleblowers with a vengeance unprecedented in history: eight leakers have been charged with Espionage under Obama, compared to three under all previous presidents. The Obama administration has prosecuted not a single CIA torturer, but has imprisoned a CIA officer who talked about torture with a journalist. National Security Agency official Thomas Drake, who was unable to get abuses fixed internally, now has a criminal record for communicating with a reporter years ago about sweeping domestic surveillance.

So there I was watching Obama’s lips move about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden at a June 27 press conference. Saying he wouldn’t be “scrambling military jets to go after a 29-year-old hacker,” Obama added that he would not “start wheeling and dealing and trading on a whole host of other issues, simply to get a guy extradited.”

I didn’t believe a word of it.

Given Obama’s war on whistleblowers and journalists who utilize them, and given the Army’s abusive treatment of military whistleblower Bradley Manning (apparently aimed at getting him to implicate WikiLeaks), it’s inconceivable that Obama was truly blasé about Snowden. To deter future whistleblowers, Snowden would have to be caught and made an example of — and probably mistreated (like Manning, in hopes of getting him to turn against WikiLeaks and even journalist Glenn Greenwald).

As his lips were moving, Obama knew well that he would go to extreme lengths to prevent this articulate young man from securing asylum in some Latin American country, where he could continue to inform the world’s media about the Surveillance State that has blossomed alongside the Warfare State under the Bush and Obama administrations.

That Obama wasn’t truthful became clear when the U.S. campaign of “wheeling and dealing” led to possible asylum countries retreating in fear one after another (Vice President Biden was deployed to pressure Ecuador’s president by phone). And even clearer with last week’s outrageous, international law-breaking that effectively forced down the presidential plane of Bolivian President Evo Morales.

And if Obama eventually does scramble jets to force down a plane with Snowden on board, the commander-in-chief will be applauded for taking bold and decisive action by mainstream TV talking heads, “national security” experts and the opposition he seems most intent on pleasing: conservatives. Criticism from civil libertarian and peace voices (or unions and environmentalists, for that matter) has rarely daunted Obama.

The bipartisan consensus in support of our bloated Military/Surveillance State — which so undermines our society as a whole — is reflected in Congress and both the Bush and Obama administrations, as well as mainstream media.

When it comes to issues of U.S. militarism and spying, the allegedly “progressive” MSNBC often seems closer to the “official network of the Obama White House” than anything resembling an independent channel. With a few exceptions (especially Chris Hayes), MSNBC has usually reacted to expanded militarism and surveillance by downplaying the abuses or defending them.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

I’ll not get fair trial in US: Snowden

1

US surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden has written in his asylum request letter to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega that it is unlikely he will receive a fair trial in the United States.

Nicaragua revealed some details of Snowden’s letter to Ortega late on Saturday, AFP reported on Sunday.

“I, Edward Snowden, citizen of the United States, am writing to seek asylum in the Republic of Nicaragua because of the risk of being persecuted by the (US) government and its agents” for revealing the existence of a vast US spying program, he wrote, according to the Spanish language text of the letter.

“Under the circumstances, it is unlikely that I would receive a fair trial or appropriate treatment before trial,” in which, Snowden added, he would “face the possibility of life in prison or death.”

Snowden, a former CIA employee, has been holed up at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport since June 23 when he travelled from Hong Kong to avoid US extradition.

He has already sought asylum in more than two dozen countries. Washington has asked these countries not to provide asylum to Snowden.

Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Venezuela have offered to grant asylum to Snowden.

On Friday, the Nicaraguan president said, “We are open, respectful of the right to asylum, and it is clear that if circumstances permit it, we would receive Snowden with pleasure and give him asylum here in Nicaragua.”

The US has revoked Snowdenâ„¢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/AS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Progressive Radio News Hour Guests for July 12, 13, and 14, 2013

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Progressive Radio News Hour Guests for July 12, 13, and 14, 2013
Friday, July 12 at 10AM US Central time: James Petras
Petras is Binghamton University, New York Professor Emeritus, a noted figure on the left, a distinguished Latin American expert, and longtime chronicler of the region’s popular struggles.
He’s also a consummate scholar and prolific writer of hundreds of articles and dozens of books, including his latest titled, “The Arab Revolt and the Imperialist Counterattack.”
Major world and national issues will be discussed.
Saturday, July 13 at noon US Central time: James Fetzer
Fetzer is the distinguished Department of Philosophy McKnight University Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota, Duluth.
He’s a prolific author of numerous articles and over 29 books in the philosophy of science and on the theoretical foundations of computer science, artificial intelligence and cognitive science.
He’s also the founder of Scholars for 9/11 truth. It’s a non-partisan association of faculty, students, and scholars, dedicated to exposing official lies, removing the shroud of deceit, and revealing truths behind 9/11.
Major world and national issues will be discussed.
Sunday, July 14 at noon US Central time: John McMurtry
McMurtry is an internationally recognized moral and political philosopher who is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and University Professor Emeritus at the University of Guelph, Ontario.
His volumes on Philosophy and World Problems for UNESCO are globally published, and his widely translated works include the influential books, “Unequal Freedoms,” “The Cancer Stage of Capitalism,” and “Value Wars.”
McMurtry is also an active public advocate for global justice, world peace, and international law.
Major world and national issues will be discussed.

Republished with permission from: Stephen Lendman

'Gunmen kill soldier in Egypt's Sinai’

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Gunmen have killed an Egyptian soldier during an attack on a checkpoint in the north of Sinai, a police official says.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Fort Lauderdale may use cameras to catch parking scofflaws

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Larry Barszewski
Sun Sentinel
July 7, 2013

Fort Lauderdale soon may have a new way to track down and then disable your car if you have racked up multiple unpaid parking tickets.

The system the city is looking at relies on specially programmed cameras that rapidly scan license plates and identify ticket-paying procrastinators.

The cameras would be attached to parking enforcement officer vehicles and operate while officers troll city streets, parking lots and garages. The officers would put a boot on any car identified as a three-time parking offender.

The system is catching on. Locally, Hollywood also has considered such license-recognition cameras for parking enforcement, and nationwide, Washington, D.C., Hartford and other cities are already using them.

“This is still in its infancy, but this thing is going to go hog-wild in the next few years,” said Mike Bourre, vice president of sales for gtechna, one of the companies marketing the technology to local governments.

The system would be just the latest “gotcha” in a growing list – all courtesy of your car’s license plate.

Red-light cameras throughout the region snap pictures of violators, who are hit with $158 fines.

Hillsboro Beach and Lighthouse Point use stationary cameras to photograph the plates of anyone driving through town, automatically checking to see if cars or their owners are wanted in connection with any crimes.

Cameras are even atop some police cars in Boca Raton, Boynton Beach and other cities, scanning license plates and alerting officers to the presence of wanted individuals.

It may sound like Big Brother, but “legally it’s OK because it’s not a search,” said Barry Butin, with the Broward chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s really not [a] privacy [issue] because everybody that drives signs up for a license plate.”

Fort Lauderdale did a three-hour test of a parking scofflaw system this year, finding and booting six cars with a total of $1,200 in unpaid traffic tickets. The city ended up collecting $2,345.65 when late fees and penalties were added, officials said.

And there’s plenty more ahead. The city lists 6,000 vehicles with at least three unpaid citations, owing between $115 and $2,000 each.

“There is no system in place that allows parking enforcement specialists to quickly and efficiently identify repeat violators,” spokesman Chaz Adams said. “Instead, repeat offenders are found randomly when being cited for new violations. The process is time-consuming, cumbersome and labor intensive.”

Imagine, then, cameras that can read up to 1,800 license plates a minute as a parking enforcement vehicle rides down a street or through a parking lot, and a system that instantly identifies which cars should be immobilized until past citations are paid.

“We estimate that one boot team, consisting of two parking enforcement specialists, will be able to monitor every city garage, parking lot and major on-street parking area on a daily basis,” Adams said.

City officials are working on a proposal to present to commissioners. City Manager Lee Feldman has recommended spending $50,000 in his proposed budget to pay for an additional employee for the city’s booting team.

The systems generally cost about $40,000 to equip one vehicle with cameras, laptop computer, docking station and software, Bourre said.

Hollywood put out a request for proposals last year, but did not move forward with it. City spokeswoman Raelin Storey said officials expect to issue a new request next year for a more comprehensive parking approach, with the scofflaw program just one component.

The city hopes to tie it into a larger pay-by-plate system where people paying for a parking space would punch in their license plate number.

Fort Lauderdale currently has 15 boots that can be used to immobilize cars.

“Vehicle boots are not released until all fines are paid,” Adams said. “When the new system is implemented, we will monitor and evaluate if there is a need for additional boots.”

Why Republicans Want to Tax Students and Not Polluters

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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_republicans_want_to_tax_students_and_not_polluters_20130707/

Posted on Jul 7, 2013

Republished with permission from: TruthDig

EPA’s Abandoned Fracking Study One Retreat of Many

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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/epas_abandoned_fracking_study_one_retreat_of_many_20130707/

Posted on Jul 7, 2013

Republished with permission from: TruthDig

Protesters Face Tear Gas, Water Cannons, and Machete-Wielding Assailants in Taksim Park

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A plainclothes man standing with police as they fire tear gas at demonstrators in Istanbul’s Taksim Park Saturday. (Photo: @Ronanburtenshaw/ Twitter)Tear gas and water cannons rained down on roughly 3000 protesters Saturday as Turkish police attacked a group of demonstrators assembled in Istanbul’s Taksim Square.

The demonstrators were attempting to enter the adjacent Gezi Park, a section of green space that the government had planned to raze and replace with a shopping center sparking a month of protests and fierce backlash by law enforcement.

According to AFP, Saturday’s organizers were planning to break through police cordons of the park and serve a notice to authorities of a court decision that has annulled the redevelopment plans–what many are considering a victory for the protests, though the court’s decision is not yet final.

AFP continues:

The nationwide protests have largely dwindled although thousands of demonstrators have been gathering at Taksim every Saturday for the past three weeks, demanding justice for a protester who was killed by police fire.

This time, some protesters argued with police standing guard at the entrance of Gezi Park. Police then pushed protesters away from the square with pressurized water and tear gas. They also chased protesters down two main streets off Taksim, firing tear gas.

This video from Italy’s Euro News shows police vehicles bulldozing through the crowds:

And another video, taken from inside a restaurant, shows an eye-witness account of a TOMA truck chasing down protesters with water cannons:

Meanwhile, Al Jazeera reports that following the police attack, an amateur video surfaced showing two men armed with machetes attacking protesters who were fleeing from the tear gas near Taksim Square.

“One of the men was seen kicking a woman on her back while holding a machete in his hand,” they write, adding that–following the video’s release–Turkish security forces were criticized for not intervening against the machete-wielding attackers.

The video has since gone viral and according to Istanbul governor Huseyin Avni Mutlu, the two men pictures have been found and arrested.

According to the Turkish Medical Association, four people were killed and about 7,500 wounded in the police crackdown since demonstrations began in late May.

_____________________

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

Republished with permission from: Common Dreams

Uganda president orders UBC probe

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Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has ordered an immediate investigation into the countryâ„¢s national broadcaster over management irregularities, Press TV reports.

The presidentâ„¢s probe into the struggling Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC) came after the countryâ„¢s Auditor General announced in its earlier report that top officials have mismanaged millions of dollars, allocated to the national broadcaster.

Some cabinet ministers have been using transistors belonging to the national broadcaster to establish their private television stations, an act that is considered criminal, the Auditor General stated.

The report went on to say that such cases of mismanagement and abuse of national body for personal gains is still rife in the East African Country.

Meanwhile, Ugandan analysts have accused the ruling party and other politicians of using the national broadcaster as a platform to promote their political propaganda.

Å“What you see is a reflection of a political struggle and conflict within the ruling party. That is why you see the national broadcaster had all of these issues,” a political analyst, named Nicholas Opio told Press TV.

Opio went on to say that, Å“There seems to be no stability; there seems to be no confidence in having a fairly free and a public service national broadcaster.”

MM/PR

Republished with permission from: Press TV

'Rohani win, chance to resolve N-issue'

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An Iranian lawmaker says the election of Hassan Rohani as Iranâ„¢s next president has created a significant opportunity to resolve the Islamic Republicâ„¢s nuclear issue.

Å“Rohaniâ„¢s familiarity with the process of the Islamic Republicâ„¢s nuclear case and the positive approach taken by the Europeans to his election are considered two remarkable opportunities for the progress of talks between Iran and the P5+1,” spokesman for the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Hossein Naqavi Hosseini said.

Å“Western countries must use the opportunity created in Iran and make the negotiations [between Iran and P5+1] yield a result since they are well aware that the Islamic Republic has no aim but to use peaceful nuclear energy and this issue has been proven many times,” the Iranian legislator added.

Rohani emerged victorious in Iran’s June 14 presidential election, which was marked by high voter turnout.

Naqavi Hosseini further described the United States as Å“the only obstacle and threat to the success of Iranâ„¢s nuclear case,” saying the new round of anti-Iran sanctions signifies Washingtonâ„¢s unwillingness to see the resolution of Iranâ„¢s nuclear issue through negotiations.

Å“Tehran hopes Western countries use a logical approach to manage the talks,” he added.

Iran and the P5+1 group of world powers – Russia, China, France, Britain, and the US plus Germany – have held several rounds of talks, mainly over the Iranian nuclear energy program.

The West led by the United States accuses Iran of using its nuclear energy program as a cover for military purposes.

Iran has vehemently rejected the allegation, 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 and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

MKA/HGH/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

"We're Not Leaving": Opposing Factions Face Off in Cairo

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Pro-Morsi supporters protesting outside the Presidential Guard Club in Cairo. (Photo:Matthew Cassel/ Al Jazeera)Tensions in Egypt continued to escalate Sunday as factions on both sides of the ideological divide gathered in Cairo, both groups digging in their heels to preserve–what they believe to be–the goals of the 2011 revolution.

Reporting from Cairo University, Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel Hamid said she had seen crowds moving towards Tahrir Square, carrying Egyptian flags and chanting slogans in favor of the armed forces and against the Muslim Brotherhood. 

The youth-led Rebellion Movement which was behind the protests that sparked the ouster of former President Mohammed Morsi have dubbed Sunday’s rally in Tahrir the “Dawaran Shubra” march to protect the gains of the revolution.

Meanwhile, a crowd of thousands of pro-Morsi supporters have begun to assemble in Nasr City while approximately 1,000 regime supporters have completely blocked Salah Salem, the main artery that connects the city to the airport, reports Al Jazeera’s Matthew Cassel.

On Saturday, the interim president Adly Mansour attempted to appoint former UN nuclear watchdog chief and Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed Elbaradei as his prime minister. However, the process was suspended when the ultra-fundamentalist Salafi Nur Party objected on the basis that he is ‘too secular.’

Crowds swelling in Nasr City. (Screenshot: Al Jazeera)The Guardian’s Patrick Kingsley contributed this analysis of the position of the pro-Moris group:

The pro-Morsi protesters have an obvious message, but it may be less clear what their victorious opponents are still in the streets for.

In essence, it’s to ensure their goals are met. In the short term, that means the appointment as prime minister of Mohamed ElBaradei, the former UN diplomat turned liberal figurehead, whose elevation to higher office was stalled by the Salafi Nour party.

Mohamed Khamis, a leading Tamarod organiser, known to activists as ‘the General’, explains:

“Mohamed ElBaradei is our choice for prime minister — why should we change our plans just because one group, the Nour party, says they don’t want him? This is unbelievable, especially after so many people went on the streets this week. The citizens are asking for Baradei. Why should we change plans just for a small group.”

Khamis says that activists have learnt their lesson from 2011, when they left Tahrir too soon to achieve meaningful systemic change following the decapitation of Mubarak.

“There’s no way that we can do what we did on 11 February 2013, and think that everything would be paradise. We’re not going to leave Tahrir or any other place until we achieve the goals of the revolution.”

Updates on twitter detail the unfolding situation in Cairo:

_____________________

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

Republished with permission from: Common Dreams

Mental challenges combat dementia

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A new research has suggested that brain exercise throughout lifetime can slow cognitive decline and protect the brain against dementia in old age.

The new study conducted by the American researchers shows that mental activities such as reading books or writing letters help the brain stay sharp.

Some 300 people over the age of 55 were examined through different tests that measured memory and thinking over the course of six years, according to the study published in Neurology.

The participants answered a questionnaire about whether they read books, wrote letters and took part in other activities linked to mental stimulation during childhood, adolescence, middle age, and in later life.

After death, their brains were also studied in seeking for evidence of the physical signs of dementia, such as brain lesions and plaques.

The team explored that the people who had a record of keeping the brain busy, both early and late in life, had a rate of cognitive decline estimated at 15% slower than those who did not.

Å“Exercising the brain across a lifetime is important for brain health in old age,” said the study leader Dr Robert Wilson of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

Å“The brain that we have in old age depends in part on what we habitually ask it to do in life,” he added.

To reduce the risk of developing dementia, the experts suggest some ways such as eating a balanced diet, exercising regularly, reading more and doing crosswords.

The lifetime risk of Alzheimerâ„¢s for women is 17% and for men is one in ten. By 2050, the Alzheimerâ„¢s Association estimates that the prevalence of dementia will double due to the increased proportion of the elderly in the population.

FGP/FGP

Republished with permission from: Press TV

‘Majority of Finns oppose Turkey EU bid’

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File photo shows the flags of Turkey and EU on the foreground and a minaret on the background.

A recent poll shows that the majority of Finnish people are against Turkey’s membership of the European Union.

The survey, conducted by Think If Laboratories Oy of Finland on 1,760 Finns, indicated that 68 percent of the respondents were against Turkey’s EU membership, Finnish TV channel MTV3 reported on Saturday.

Turkey has been seeking to gain accession to the 27-member European bloc since 2005 but its EU membership bid has been thwarted by vehement opposition from key members including France and Germany.

Meanwhile, the Council of Europeâ„¢s Human Rights Commissioner Nils Muiznieks has called for an investigation into Turkey’s excessive use of police force against anti-government protesters.

Muiznieks made the remarks at a press conference in Ankara on Saturday during his five-day visit to Turkey.

“All instances of excessive use of force by the police must be fully investigated and adequately punished,” he said.

His visit came after nationwide demonstrations against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan rocked Turkey for more than a month.

Several people were killed and some 8,000 others injured in violent crackdown on protesters.

Demonstrations erupted in late May after police broke up a sit-in at Istanbul’s Taksim Square in protest against a proposal to demolish Gezi Park.

The violence turned into nationwide demonstrations against the ruling Justice and Development Party, with police using water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets against demonstrators.

Erdogan, whose government was the main target of protests, has described the demonstrators as foreign-backed extremists and terrorists.

MAM/PR

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Tech Companies Hiding Depth of Cooperation with NSA Surveillance

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The New American and others continue to comb through the leaked PowerPoint presentation explaining PRISM – the National Security Agency’s (NSA) program monitoring the Internet activity of millions of Americans.

Under PRISM, the NSA and the FBI are “tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time,” as reported by the Washington Post.

As the investigation proceeds, it is becoming apparent that the level of collusion between the surveillance agency and the country’s largest tech companies appears much higher than representatives of those corporations would have customers believe.

As if that unconscionable cooperation wasn’t enough, stories in other outlets report that the federal government’s spying apparatus’ corporate partners in the construction of the surveillance state are handing over more private customer data than has been revealed so far.

For example, consider this story published by Bloomberg:

Thousands of technology, finance and manufacturing companies are working closely with U.S. national security agencies, providing sensitive information and in return receiving benefits that include access to classified intelligence, four people familiar with the process said.

In addition to private communications, information about equipment specifications and data needed for the Internet to work – much of which isn’t subject to oversight because it doesn’t involve private communications – is valuable to intelligence, U.S. law-enforcement officials and the military.

Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process.

Larry Page, chief executive officer of Google Inc., said in a blog posting June 7 that he hadn’t heard of a program called Prism until after Edward Snowden’s disclosures and that the company didn’t allow the U.S. government direct access to its servers or some back-door to its data centers.

These programs, whose participants are known as trusted partners, extend far beyond what was revealed by Edward Snowden, a computer technician who did work for the National Security Agency. The role of private companies has come under intense scrutiny since his disclosure this month [June] that the NSA is collecting millions of U.S. residents’ telephone records and the computer communications of foreigners from Google Inc (GOOG). and other Internet companies under court order.

Many of these same Internet and telecommunications companies voluntarily provide U.S. intelligence organizations with additional data, such as equipment specifications, that don’t involve private communications of their customers, the four people said.

And this, from Reuters:

Former U.S. officials and intelligence sources say the collaboration between the tech industry and spy agencies is both broader and deeper than most people realize, dating back to the formative years of Silicon Valley itself.

As U.S. intelligence agencies accelerate efforts to acquire new technology and fund research on cybersecurity, they have invested in start-up companies, encouraged firms to put more military and intelligence veterans on company boards, and nurtured a broad network of personal relationships with top technology executives.

And they are using those connections to carry out specific espionage missions, current and former officials say, even as they work with the tech industry to avoid overt cooperation that might raise the hackles of foreign customers.

Joel Harding, an intelligence officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the 1990s who went on to work at big defense contractors Computer Sciences Corp and SAIC, said spy agencies have at times persuaded companies to alter their hardware and software products to enable monitoring of foreign targets.

This last disturbing disclosure corresponds in many material ways to a story published by BusinessWeek online:

Through its open-source Android project, Google has agreed to incorporate code, first developed by the agency [the NSA] in 2011, into future versions of its mobile operating system, which according to market researcher IDC runs on three-quarters of the smartphones shipped globally in the first quarter. NSA officials say their code, known as Security Enhancements for Android, isolates apps to prevent hackers and marketers from gaining access to personal or corporate data stored on a device. Eventually all new phones, tablets, televisions, cars, and other devices that rely on Android will include NSA code, agency spokeswoman Vanee’ Vines said in an e-mailed statement.

In a 2011 presentation obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek, Smalley listed among the benefits of the program that it’s “normally invisible to users.” The program’s top goal, according to that presentation: “Improve our understanding of Android security.”

Vines wouldn’t say whether the agency’s work on Android and other software is part of or helps with Prism.

How does the NSA come by such root-level access to technology millions of Americans rely on every day for hundreds of reasons?

Again, from Reuters:

Despite these secret collaborations, former intelligence officials and company executives say the great fear of overseas customers – that widely used U.S. technology products contain a “back door” accessible only to the National Security Agency or Central Intelligence Agency – is exaggerated. They said computers and communications overseas are captured by other means, including third parties such as the laptop reseller and special software developed by the agencies.

Defense contractors offer the government the means to break in to the products of virtually every major software vendor, according to a product catalogue reviewed by Reuters that was described as typical for the industry.

The scope of the surveillance and the collusion appears to be much more widespread and incestuous than previously reported.

The military-industrial-surveillance-technology complex is massive and the threat it poses to the Fourth Amendment can be neither overstated nor overlooked, if liberty is to be preserved.

The aggregate message of these separate accounts is that the federal government, in cooperation with several of the country’s largest corporate entities, treats every American citizen as a suspect.

Moreover, the scope of the surveillance is being expanded to gather every word, every movement, every text, every conversation, every e-mail, and every social media post under the never-blinking eye of the federal domestic spying apparatus.

The hour is now late if this Republic is to remain a land under the rule of law. To that end, it is critical that Americans recognize that the sweeping surveillance dragnet thrown by the NSA, FBI, and other federal agencies is in direct, open, and hostile deprivation of the fundamental freedoms protected by the Constitution. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution clearly states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

In the wake of the presentation of this appalling evidence of government-corporate collusion in the constant surveillance of innocent citizens, have Americans rushed to rid themselves of the devices sold to them by Silicon Valley?

No. According to BNAMericas online:

Worldwide smartphone sales are expected to reach 1bn units in 2013, compared to 675mn in 2012, research and consultancy firm Gartner said in a release.

Meanwhile, tablets are also expected to see continued rapid growth this year, with unit sales increasing 69.8% to 197mn.

The decline of liberty, it seems, has done nothing to slow the growth of dependence on the very tools being used to build the surveillance state.

Photo: AP Images

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

Turkey issues Egypt travel warning

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The Turkish Foreign Ministry has issued a warning to its citizens traveling to and inside Egypt, as the unrest in the North African country continues.

Å“Apart from city centers and holiday resorts that have direct flight connections, it is advised that travelers should avoid roads, and citizens should keep away from the venues of protests,” the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

The ministry also advised Turkish people in Egypt to contact the Turkish Embassy in Cairo, the Consulate General in Alexandria, or the ministryâ„¢s 24-hour consular call center in case of emergency.

Former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi was unseated on July 3, and the chief justice of Egyptâ„¢s Supreme Constitutional Court, Adly Mansour, was sworn in as interim president of Egypt on July 4.

Morsi is reportedly being held Å“preventively” by the military. Senior army officials say he might face formal charges over accusations made by his opponents.

Several arrest warrants have been issued for the members of Muslim Brotherhood. Egyptian troops and security forces have recently expanded their roundup of top political figures from Muslim Brotherhood that had fielded Morsi for office.

Tens of people have been killed in the recent clashes between Morsiâ„¢s opponents and supporters. Hundreds of others have also been injured.

Egypt is expecting fresh protests by thousands of supporters and opponents of Morsi as political turmoil rages on in the North African country.

SZH/PR

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Iran, Russia to ensure Caspian security

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Iranian and Russian Navy commanders have highlighted the significance of strengthening joint cooperation to ensure the security of the Caspian Sea in collaboration with other littoral states.

Iran Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, who is in Russia to attend International Maritime Defense Show (IMDS 2013), held talks with Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy Viktor Viktorovich Chirkov in St. Petersburg on Sunday.

Sayyari and Chirkov discussed bilateral and regional cooperation, particularly ways to safeguard security of common and international waterways.

They called for holding joint maneuvers, Iranian and Russian warships visiting each otherâ„¢s ports, and boosting educational and technical cooperation.

Sayyari also held meetings with his counterparts from Germany, Greece, Poland, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. The sides exchanged views on maritime issues, joint cooperation to enhance the security of international waterways, and fighting piracy and terrorism.

Iran and Russia are examining a plan to conduct a join naval exercise in the Caspian Sea in the next few months. The two countries conducted their first joint maneuvers in the Caspian Sea, involving about 30 vessels, in 2009.

The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water by area, and is variously classed as the world’s largest lake or a full-fledged sea.

SF/HGH/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

University Of Denver Draws Heat For Plan To Present George W. Bush With ‘Improving Human Condition’ Award

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Andrea Tudhope
The Colorado Independent
July 7, 2013

Screen capture from University of Denver's Josef Korbel School.

Screen capture from University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School.

Hundreds of students, staffers and alumni are protesting the University of Denver’s decision to honor former President George W. Bush with an award traditionally recognizing recipients for their work on behalf of humanity.

“It’s been mostly just a lot of surprise,” Seth Masket, associate professor of Political Science said of the award to be bestowed by the University’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies.

“Why Korbel sought out to do this and honor Bush in this way — it all seems very unusual.”

The Korbel School was founded by Josef Korbel, father of former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Among various other widely recognized graduates of Korbel is former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and U.S. Army General George Casey.

The school hosts the Korbel Dinner to present the award each year. In June, the Sept. 9 dinner was announced and invitations circulated both by mail and on the school’s website, pictured below, saying the 43rd president would be welcomed and honored as the 2013 recipient of the “Improving the Human Condition Award.”

On June 23, Christine Hart — a 2012 Korbel graduate with a master’s degree in human rights — saw the announcement and wrote a petition objecting to her alma mater’s choice of honoree.

“As students, alumni, faculty, and supporters of the Josef Korbel School and the University of Denver, we urge you to choose an alternative recipient of the 2013 ‘Improving the Human Condition Award’ who better represents a humanitarian spirit, a commitment to human rights and human dignity, and whose contributions and leadership have truly resulted in positive change,” reads the petition.

In addition to the petition, posted at Change.org, Hart set up a Facebook page called “Josef Korbel School Against Bush ‘Improving the Human Condition’ Award” as a platform where people frustrated by the decision could share information, organize courses of action and disseminate the petition.

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Banks pushing for repeal of credit unions’ federal tax exemption

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Jim Puzzanghera
L.A. Times
July 7, 2013

Credit unions have been snatching customers from banks amid consumer frustration over rising fees and outrage over Wall Street’s role in the financial crisis.

Now banks are fighting back by trying to take away something vital to credit unions – their federal tax exemption.

With fast-growing credit unions posing more formidable competition to banks, industry trade groups are pressing the White House and Congress to end a tax break that dates to the Great Depression.

“Many tax-exempt credit unions have morphed from serving ‘people of small means’ to become full-service, financially sophisticated institutions,” Frank Keating, president of the American Bankers Assn., wrote to President Obama last month.

“The time has come to abolish this exemption,” Keating said in the letter, which was part of a blitz that included print and radio ads in the nation’s capital.

Bankers long have complained the tax break is an unfair advantage for large credit unions. Now they see an opportunity to get rid of it as lawmakers begin work on a major overhaul of the tax code that is aimed at eliminating many corporate exemptions and lowering the overall tax rate.

The exemption cost $1.6 billion this year in taxes avoided and would rise to $2.2 billion annually in 2018, according to Obama’s proposed 2014 budget.

In a 2010 report on tax reform, the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board said eliminating the exemption would raise $19 billion over 10 years and remove the credit unions’ “competitive advantage relative to other financial institutions” in the tax code.

Credit unions said the effort to take away their tax exemption was simply an attempt to stifle competition and remove one of the only checks on bank fees for consumers.

And it comes as some in Congress are pushing to loosen regulations on credit unions so they can expand their business further, including legislation that would lift a cap on the amount of money they can lend to businesses.

The tax exemption is crucial to credit unions, which by law can’t raise capital through public stock offerings the way that banks can, said Fred R. Becker Jr., president of the National Assn. of Federal Credit Unions, a trade group with about 3,800 federally chartered members.

“They’ll have to convert to banks, which is what the banks want,” he said. “Then they’d have, for lack of a better term, a monopoly.”

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Iran pursing expulsion of UAE Iranians

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Iran Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Araqchi says the Islamic Republic is seriously following up on the expulsion of Iranian nationals from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

On Sunday, Araqchi said a number of foreign nationals have 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.

According to a report published by ISNA News Agency on Saturday, over the recent months, Abu Dhabi has revoked the residence permits of tens of Iranians, some of whom had been living in the country for 25 years, and forced them to leave the Arab state without providing any reason.

Araqchi said, Å“The issue is being seriously pursued by the Foreign Ministry as well as the Iranian Embassy in Abu Dhabi.”

The Iranian diplomat further described as inaccurate media reports about the expulsion of over 100 Iranians residing in the UAE, saying accurate information was not yet available in this regard.

According to Araqchi, the situation of Iranian nationals living in the Arab state will be discussed during the Iran-UAE Joint Consular Committee meeting, which is scheduled to be held after the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

On Saturday, Vahid Ahmadi, a senior Iranian legislator, also criticized Adu Dhabi over the move and said the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee would be carrying out an investigation into the case.

MKA/HGH/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Egyptians stage fresh rallies in Cairo

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An Egyptian raises up a placard during a demonstration of opponents of Mohamed Morsi at Liberation Square in Cairo on July 7, 2013

Egyptians have staged fresh rival rallies in Cairo as tensions continue to flare up across the North African country.

Fresh pro- and anti-Morsi rallies were held in Cairoâ„¢s iconic liberation square on Sunday evening.

The protests gained momentum after the Muslim brotherhood called on its supporters to take to the streets en masse and keep up protests until president-elect Mohammed Morsi returns to power.

Hundreds of protesters were also out to back the military move and the new interim government led by top Judge Adly Mansour.

At least 36 people have been killed following the coup that sparked mass street protests across the country.

Meanwhile, talks continue in Egypt over choosing an interim prime minister who can lead the country out of crisis.

The military-backed president earlier named leading opposition figure Mohammad ElBaradei as the logical choice for the post. But he later backtracked on the decision, denying that his appointment was ever certain.

The change in decision followed criticisms by several groups– including Egyptâ„¢s largest Salafist bloc, the Nour Party, which said it would not work with ElBardaei.

Several arrest warrants have been issued for the members of Muslim Brotherhood. Egyptian troops and security forces have recently expanded their roundup of top political figures from Muslim Brotherhood that had fielded Morsi for office.

Morsi is reportedly being held Å“preventively” by the military. Senior army officials say he might face formal charges over accusations made by his opponents.

JR/PR

Republished with permission from: Press TV

AT&T joins Verizon, Facebook in selling customer data

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RT
July 7, 2013

AT&T has announced that it will begin selling customers’ smart phone data to the highest bidder, putting the telecommunications giant in line with Verizon, Facebook and other competitors that quietly use a consumer’s history for marketing purposes.

The company claims its new privacy policy, to be updated within “the next few weeks,” exists to “deliver more relevant advertising” to users based on which apps they use and their location, which is provided by GPS-tracking. Apparently recognizing the natural privacy concerns a customer might have, AT&T assured the public that all data would be aggregated and made anonymous to prevent individual identification.

A letter to customers, for instance, described how someone identified as a movie fan will be sent personalized ads for a nearby cinema.

“People who live in a particular geographic area might appear to be very interested in movies, thanks to collective information that shows wireless devices from that area are often located in the vicinity of movie theaters,” the letter states. “We might create a ‘movie’ characteristic for that area, and deliver movie ads to the people who live there.”

A June 28 blog post from AT&T’s chief privacy officer Bob Quinn said the new policy will focus on “Providing You Service and Improving Our Network and Services,” but the online reaction has been overwhelmingly negative, with many customers looking for a way to avoid the new conditions.

“You require that we allow you to store a persistent cookie of your choosing in our web browsers to opt out,” one person wrote. “No mention of how other HTTP clients, such as email clients, can opt out. If you really did care about your customers, you would provide a way for us to opt out all traffic to/from our connection and mobile devices in one easy setting.”

One problem for any customer hoping for a new service is the lack of options, smartphone or otherwise. Facebook, Google, Twitter and Verizon each store consumer data for purposes that have not yet been made clear. And because of the profit potential that exists when a customer blindly trusts a company with their data, small Internet start-ups, including AirSage and many others, have developed a way to streamline information into dollars.

The nefarious aspect of AT&T’s announcement is underscored by the recent headlines around the National Security Agency, which has spent years has compelling wireless corporations to hand over data collected on millions of Americans. Unfortunately for the privacy of those concerned, AT&T’s new policy may only be a sign of things to come.

“Instead of merely offering customers a trusted conduit for communication, carriers are coming to see subscribers as sources of data that can be mined for profit, a practice more common among providers of free online services like Google and Facebook,” the Wall Street Journal wrote about the matter in May.

Iran concerned about Egypt clashes

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Iran Foreign Ministry has expressed Å“deep concern” over the Egyptian-Egyptian clashes and the recent arrests of Egyptian officials, urging firm commitment to a democratic trend in the North African state.

Å“The Islamic Republic of Iran is closely following the … developments in Egypt … and stresses the urgency of remaining committed to a democratic process and using the means and tools of realizing democracy,” the ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

It added that the Egyptian-Egyptian clashes provoke violence in the country, undermine national unity and domestic solidarity, and makes Egyptâ„¢s enemies happy.

The statement criticized the Å“destructive behavior” of certain extremist movements over the past months which caused concern in Egypt, and stressed the importance of respecting humanitarian principles.

The Iranian ministry hailed the resistance of brave Egyptians against the Israeli regimeâ„¢s plots and policies and called on them to beware of Tel Avivâ„¢s efforts to misuse the ongoing events in the country.

Å“There is no doubt that the Egyptian people are vigilant and firm in countering any effort by enemies to deviate the path of their revolution,” the statement pointed out.

Egypt has been the scene if fresh rallies by thousands of the supporters and opponents of ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, as political turmoil escalates in the North African country.

Morsi was unseated on July 3, and the chief justice of Egyptâ„¢s Supreme Constitutional Court, Adly Mansour, was sworn in as interim president of Egypt on July 4.

Morsi is reportedly being held Å“preventively” by the military. Senior army officials say he might face formal charges over accusations made by his opponents.

SF/HGH/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Iran to up electricity exports to Iraq

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Iran has reached an agreement with Iraq to increase its electricity exports to its western neighbor, an Iranian vice president says.

Å“At present, nearly 1,300 megawatts of electricity is exported to Iraq and it is forecast that nearly 150 megawatts will be added to the volume of Iranâ„¢s electricity exports to this neighboring country,” Ali Saeedlou said Sunday.

Saeedlou, who is the Vice President for International Affairs, said one of the goals of Iranâ„¢s electricity exports to Iraq is eventually Å“transmitting this energy carrier to Syria and Lebanon in the near future.”

He put the volume of trade exchanges between the two countries at USD 16 billion a year.

The official stated that Iran would soon start delivering natural gas to Iraq to feed its power plants.

Iranian Deputy Oil Minister Javad Owji said in March that Iran would start exporting 40 million cubic meters (mcm) a day of natural gas to Iraq by summer 2013.

The pipeline will stretch from Assaluyeh, near the massive offshore South Pars Gas Field in southern Iran, and will continue into neighboring Iraq to feed three Iraqi power plants running on gas.

The South Pars Gas Field, which is shared with Qatar, holds about 14 trillion cubic meters of gas, or about eight percent of the total world reserves, and more than 18 billion barrels of liquefied natural gas resources.

Iran, which sits on the world’s second largest natural gas reserves after Russia, is making efforts to up its gas production by increasing foreign and domestic investments, especially in South Pars Gas Field.

KA/HGH/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Snowden says Western states ‘in bed with NSA’

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AFP
July 7, 2013

Fugitive intelligence leaker Edward Snowden said the US National Security Agency operates broad secret spying partnerships with other Western governments now complaining about its programmes, in an interview published Sunday.

Snowden said in comments made before his exposure of US espionage practices came to light last month and printed in German news weekly Der Spiegel that NSA spies are “in bed together with the Germans and most other Western states”.

In remarks published in German, Snowden said an NSA department known as the Foreign Affairs Directorate coordinated work with foreign secret services.

The partnerships are organised so that authorities in other countries can “insulate their political leaders from the backlash” if it becomes public “how grievously they’re violating global privacy,” he said.

The interview was conducted by US cryptography expert Jacob Appelbaum and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras using “encrypted emails shortly before Snowden became known globally for his whistleblowing”, Spiegel said.

On cooperation with Germany’s BND foreign intelligence agency, Snowden said the NSA provides “analysis tools” for data passing through Germany from regions such as the Middle East.

The US government has revoked the passport of Snowden, a former NSA contractor who is seeking to evade US justice for leaking details about a vast US electronic surveillance programme to collect phone and Internet data.

He has been stranded at a Moscow airport for two weeks but three Latin American countries have now offered him asylum.

His claims about widespread US spying on Western partners have sparked uproar among European allies in particular and threatened to derail talks on the world’s largest free-trade zone due to start Monday.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke with US President Barack Obama Wednesday and agreed to a “high-level meeting” between US and German security officials in the coming days to address intelligence matters.

Cop Enraged As Citizen Attempts To Defy Independence Day DUI Checkpoint

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Mikael Thalen
Infowars.com
July 7, 2013

A young man in Murfreesboro, Tenn. attempted to uphold his constitutional rights to enraged officers this Independence Day, at a DUI checkpoint.

As the man in the video pulls up, officers immediately demand he roll down his window further, to which the man refuses, a right he is entitled to.

The officer then demands to know the man’s age, to which the driver also refuses. The officer then lies to the driver, telling him that he is required to give his age despite there being no law stating you must give an officer your date of birth if not being legally detained.

The officer then orders the driver to pull over to a secondary area for further investigation despite no concrete probable cause or reasonable suspicion.

“Am I being detained?” the driver asks.

The officer becomes enraged almost instantly, refusing to answer the man’s question, knowing full well he has to legally let the man go.

After the driver’s car is surrounded by officers, who are now attempting to intimidate the driver into complying, the driver decides to pull up to the secondary checkpoint.

The officer then orders the driver out of the car, continuing the illegal detainment.

“Are you an attorney or something? You know what the law is?” the officer asks.

The officer, knowing he can’t search the car without the driver’s permission, demands access to the vehicle, which the driver refuses.

Officers then unleash the K9 Unit, now searching for drugs at the DUI checkpoint despite no questions regarding alcohol ever being brought up to the driver.

At 3:56 in the video, the officer appears to make the dog give a “false positive,” making it seem as if the dog found drugs despite the fact that there were none in the vehicle.

As officers enter the man’s car illegally, they notice the man’s video camera on the seat and instantly become silent. The officer searching the vehicle then grabs the man’s camera and turns it the opposite direction, so the officers’ actions can not be seen.

Despite the officer’s admission that the driver is well within his rights, he continues to ignore them at every possible moment.

“He’s perfectly innocent and he knows his rights. He knows what the constitution says,” the officer says as he searches the man’s vehicle illegally.

While most everyone agrees on the importance of keeping drunk drivers off the streets, it cannot be done while defying and ignoring the Constitution.

As social media and the internet continues to educate citizens on their rights at government checkpoints, officers are now beginning to engage a growing and informed public.

Mikael Thalen’s article first appeared at Examiner.com and SecretsOfTheFed.com.

Pope Francis’ Saintly Politics

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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/pope_francis_saintly_politics_20130707/

Posted on Jul 7, 2013

Republished with permission from: TruthDig

Rethinking Thomas Jefferson

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Americans are proud that their Declaration of Independence was also a declaration of universal rights. But the hard truth is that, in 1776, the words were mere propaganda cloaking the fact that a third of the signers were slaveholders, including the famous author, Thomas Jefferson, as Robert Parry recalls.

Thomas Jefferson is admired for his elegant prose in the Declaration of Independence, but he was a world-class hypocrite. He wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” — but he didn’t really believe any of that.

In his thoroughly repugnant book, Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson even engaged in the pseudo-science of measuring the skulls of African-Americans to prove that not all men were created equal. Some of Jefferson’s white supremacy nonsense survives to the present day in the views of unreconstructed segregationists.

Because of his racism — and his undeniable political skills — Jefferson also ranks among the Founders as perhaps the most responsible for putting the United States on course for the Civil War. In the years after the Constitution was ratified, he pushed a highly constrained view of federal power, supporting the interests of white Southern plantation owners who feared that a strong central government would eventually doom slavery.

To promote that position, Jefferson injected a nasty factionalism that demonized George Washington’s Federalist allies, especially Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, in the 1790s. Hamilton, Adams and Washington believed that a vibrant central government was crucial for the nation’s development.

However, Jefferson and other Southern slaveholders saw an effective central government as an existential threat to slavery. Thus, they ramped up their angry insistence of “states’ rights” and concocted an extra-constitutional theory about the power of the states to “nullify” federal law.

Jefferson was the driving force in this movement, creating what became known as the Virginia Dynasty, a string of three consecutive two-term U.S. presidents from Virginia, starting with Jefferson in 1801 and continuing through James Madison and ending with James Monroe in 1825. By then, slavery’s roots had dug down even deeper across the South and spread into new states to the west.

It would take the bloodbath of the Civil War to finally pull slavery out of the soil of the South, but Jefferson’s weed-like political legacy would keep resurfacing, first after Reconstruction with the South’s reassertion of “states’ rights” and white supremacy. The South again would resist federal authority and repress blacks under Jim Crow laws and segregation.

Even today’s anti-government extremism from the likes of the Tea Party and “libertarians” can be traced back to Jefferson, a common thread from the days when Jefferson’s pro-slavery “nullificationists” tied up the pre-Civil War Congress to today’s anti-government extremism that has made Congress again a laughingstock of dysfunction.

Fearing Slave Rebellion

So, as Americans admire Jefferson’s soaring words — first read to the American people on July 4, 1776 — they shouldn’t forget that Jefferson and many of his fellow delegates at the Continental Congress considered their African-American slaves as mere investments, albeit potentially dangerous ones who needed to be kept in line with whips, guns and nooses.

A major impetus toward the Revolution in Virginia came when the tough-minded Royal Governor, the Earl of Dunmore, responded to colonial insults and insubordination in 1775 by threatening to “declare freedom to the slaves.” This perceived British encouragement of slave rebellions scared Virginia’s white aristocracy and created a financial incentive for plantation owners to join the drive toward independence, much as Britain’s blockade of Boston’s port did for the colonial ruling class of Massachusetts.

Some of Jefferson’s modern defenders argue that he shouldn’t be criticized too harshly for his hypocrisy on slavery, saying he should be judged by the standards of his time. But Jefferson — more than most people today — knew the horrors and degradations of slavery. He made that clear in his first draft of the Declaration of Independence when he included a segment blaming the King of England for the slave trade:

“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium ofinfidelpowers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold.

“He has prostituted his negative [his veto] for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce; and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die. He is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of whichhehas deprived them, by murdering the people for whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against thelibertiesof one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against thelivesof another.”

This section was largely deleted by slaveholding delegates of the Continental Congress — only the phrase “He has excited domestic Insurrections among us” survived — but Jefferson’s attempt to place the blame for slavery on the King, rather than on the colonists who owned slaves, reveals that he was well aware of the evils involved in the slave industry. Ultimately, a third of the signers of the Declaration of Independence owned slaves, including Jefferson.

Fighting the Federalists

After the Revolutionary War was won, the country floundered under the Articles of Confederation, which declared the states “sovereign” and “independent.” To save the nation’s fragile independence, George Washington and his then-protégé James Madison devised a new Constitution in 1787 that concentrated power in the central government.

However, this major change was fiercely opposed by key Southerners, such as Virginia’s Patrick Henry and George Mason, who warned that the federal government would eventually come under the control of the North and would demand the end of slavery — thus intruding on the “rights” of white Virginians to own black slaves. Despite these warnings, the Constitution won ratification, albeit narrowly in Virginia. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “The Right’s Dubious Claim to Madison.”]

During this period of the writing and ratification of the Constitution, Jefferson was outside the country serving as the U.S. representative to France. His input into the debate over the Constitution was limited to several letters to Madison in which Jefferson criticized the dramatic power shift but did not advocate rejection.

When Jefferson returned to the United States in 1789 — and then served as President Washington’s Secretary of State — he grew worried about Virginia’s interests within the new constitutional framework and became harshly critical of Treasury Secretary Hamilton’s ambitious plans for creating a financial system and building the nation.

The charismatic Jefferson also began pulling his Virginia neighbor Madison out of Washington’s orbit and into his own, a shift in allegiance that caught Washington and Hamilton by surprise. Soon, with Jefferson secretly funding newspaper attacks on the Federalists – and them returning the favor – the young United States began descending into the bitter factionalism that Washington had feared.

A gifted wordsmith and impressive intellectual, Jefferson also proved adept at playing these power games as he shaped his small-government political faction into the Democratic-Republican Party. In 1800, from his perch as Vice President, Jefferson succeeded in ousting President John Adams amid such acrimony that it left lasting scars in the two men’s relationship which stretched back to Adams recruiting Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence.

Jefferson considered his election in 1800 the “Second American Revolution” in that it pushed back against the strong nationalism of the Federalists and replaced it with a new constitutional interpretation that emphasized “states’ rights.”

Jefferson succeeded in selling his movement as the essence of democracy, relying on industrious small farmers and their common wisdom. But his real political base was the aristocracy of Southern plantation owners. It was their vast investment in slavery that was protected most by Jefferson’s resistance to an activist central government.

Through the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century, with the federal government constrained and with Virginians at the helm, the cataclysmic fear of Jefferson’s fellow slaveholders — Patrick Henry and George Mason — could be deferred; a weak federal government would not soon infringe on their “liberty” to own other humans.

The ‘Black Jacobins’

But fear of slave rebellions was never too far beneath the surface of Jefferson’s thinking, coloring his attitudes toward a slave revolt in the French colony of St. Domingue (today’s Haiti). There, African slaves took seriously the Jacobins’ cry of “liberty, equality and fraternity.” After their demands for freedom were rebuffed and the brutal French plantation system continued, violent slave uprisings followed.

Hundreds of white plantation owners were slain as the rebels overran the colony. A self-educated slave named Toussaint L’Ouverture emerged as the revolution’s leader, demonstrating skills on the battlefield and in the complexities of politics.

Despite the atrocities committed by both sides of the conflict, the rebels — known as the “Black Jacobins” — gained the sympathy of the American Federalists. L’Ouverture negotiated friendly relations with the Federalist administration under President John Adams. Alexander Hamilton, a native of the Caribbean himself, helped L’Ouverture draft a constitution.

But events in Paris and Washington soon conspired to undo the promise of Haiti’s emancipation from slavery. Despite the Federalist sympathies, many American slave-owners, including Jefferson, feared that slave uprisings might spread northward. “If something is not done, and soon done,” Jefferson wrote in 1797, “we shall be the murderers of our own children.”

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the chaos and excesses of the French Revolution led to the ascendance of Napoleon Bonaparte, a brilliant and vain military commander possessed of legendary ambition. As he expanded his power across Europe, Napoleon also dreamed of rebuilding a French empire in the Americas.

In 1801, Jefferson became the third President of the United States — and his interests at least temporarily aligned with Napoleon’s. The French dictator wanted to restore French control of St. Domingue and Jefferson wanted to see the slave rebellion crushed.

President Jefferson and Secretary of State Madison collaborated with Napoleon through secret diplomatic channels. Napoleon asked Jefferson if the United States would help a French army traveling by sea to St. Domingue. Jefferson replied that “nothing will be easier than to furnish your army and fleet with everything and reduce Toussaint [L’Ouverture] to starvation.”

But Napoleon had a secret second phase of his plan that he didn’t share with Jefferson. Once the French army had subdued L’Ouverture and his rebel force, Napoleon intended to advance to the North American mainland, basing a new French empire in New Orleans and settling the vast territory west of the Mississippi River.

Stopping Napoleon

In 1802, the French expeditionary force achieved initial success against the slave army, driving L’Ouverture’s forces back into the mountains. But, as they retreated, the ex-slaves torched the cities and the plantations, destroying the colony’s once-thriving economic infrastructure. L’Ouverture, hoping to bring the war to an end, accepted Napoleon’s promise of a negotiated settlement that would ban future slavery in the country. As part of the agreement, L’Ouverture turned himself in.

But Napoleon broke his word. Jealous and contemptuous of L’Ouverture, who was regarded by some admirers as a general with skills rivaling Napoleon’s, the French dictator had L’Ouverture shipped in chains back to Europe where he was mistreated and died in prison.

Infuriated by the betrayal, L’Ouverture’s young generals resumed the war with a vengeance. In the months that followed, the French army — already decimated by disease — was overwhelmed by a fierce enemy fighting in familiar terrain and determined not to be put back into slavery.

Napoleon sent a second French army, but it too was destroyed. Though the famed general had conquered much of Europe, he lost 24,000 men, including some of his best troops, in St. Domingue before abandoning his campaign. The death toll among the ex-slaves was much higher, but they had prevailed, albeit over a devastated land.

By 1803, a frustrated Napoleon — denied his foothold in the New World — agreed to sell New Orleans and the Louisiana territories to Jefferson, a negotiation handled by Madison that ironically required just the sort of expansive interpretation of federal powers that the Jeffersonians ordinarily disdained.

However, a greater irony was that the Louisiana Purchase, which opened the heart of the present United States to American settlement and is regarded as possibly Jefferson’s greatest achievement as president, had been made possible despite Jefferson’s misguided — and racist — collaboration with Napoleon.

“By their long and bitter struggle for independence, St. Domingue’s blacks were instrumental in allowing the United States to more than double the size of its territory,” wrote Stanford University professor John Chester Miller in his book, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery. But, Miller observed, “the decisive contribution made by the black freedom fighters … went almost unnoticed by the Jeffersonian administration.”

Without L’Ouverture’s leadership, the island nation fell into a downward spiral. In 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the radical slave leader who had replaced L’Ouverture, formally declared the nation’s independence and returned it to its original Indian name, Haiti.

A year later, apparently fearing a return of the French, Dessalines ordered the massacre of the remaining French whites on the island. Jefferson reacted to the bloodshed by imposing a stiff economic embargo on Haiti. In 1806, Dessalines himself was brutally assassinated, touching off a cycle of political violence that would haunt Haiti for the next two centuries.

Hand-Wringing over Slavery

On a personal level, Jefferson might occasionally wring his hands about the evils of slavery and express his earnest wish that something could be done. But he also viewed his slaves as investments. He considered his child-bearing female slaves particularly valuable because they could boost his “capital” via reproduction.

“I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm,” Jefferson remarked. “What she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labors disappear in mere consumption.”

Though considering blacks inferior to whites and rejecting the possibility that free blacks could live peaceably with whites, Jefferson reputedly bedded one of his teenage slave girls, Sally Hemings.

Jefferson’s many apologists either deny the evidence of this sexual relationship or they insist it was consensual, amounting to something like a historic love story. Some Jefferson apologists also excuse his failure to free his slaves in his will — as George Washington and some other Founders did — because of his financial difficulties. Jefferson only allowed a few slaves from the Hemings family to go free.

Jefferson’s defenders also whitewash much of his political legacy, arguing that “Jeffersonian democracy” was the paragon of liberty, with its supposed reliance on the simple wisdom of hardworking family farmers. But the hypocrisy of “Jeffersonian democracy” was largely the same as the hypocrisy that pervaded the Declaration of Independence.

Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party was controlled by slave-owning elites, not common farmers and surely not citizens who were serious about setting African-Americans free. Indeed, Jefferson’s political promotion of states’ rights, including “nullification” of federal law, helped set the stage for Southern secession after Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860 as an anti-slavery candidate.

Yet, even after the bloody Civil War, many Southern whites continued to embrace Jefferson’s political hostility to a strong central government, leading to the decades of Jim Crow repression of blacks and surviving to the present day with the racism that bubbles just beneath the surface of the Tea Party.

Virginian First

Arguably, Jefferson’s greatest weakness as a national leader — and why modern Americans should view his legacy with particular skepticism — is that he was a Virginian first, an American second. Like many of his contemporaries, he grew up considering Virginia his country, just as many Bostonians saw themselves primarily as citizens of Massachusetts.

Some colonial leaders, especially George Washington, overcame their parochial interests and came to see themselves as Americans first. For Washington and his aide-de-camp Alexander Hamilton, that transformation was aided by their involvement in fighting up and down the length of the nation. But Jefferson was not a soldier and spent most of the war in Virginia.

As historians Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg note in their 2010 bookMadison and Jefferson,Jefferson — and his later ally Madison — were, first and foremost, politicians representing the interests of their constituencies in Virginia.

“It is hard for most to think of Madison and Jefferson and admit that they were Virginians first, Americans second,” Burstein and Isenberg note. “But this fact seems beyond dispute. Virginians felt they had to act to protect the interests of the Old Dominion, or else, before long, they would become marginalized by a northern-dominated economy.

“Virginians who thought in terms of the profit to be reaped in land were often reluctant to invest in manufacturing enterprises. The real tragedy is that they chose to speculate in slaves rather than in textile factories and iron works. … And so as Virginians tied their fortunes to the land, they failed to extricate themselves from a way of life that was limited in outlook and produced only resistance to economic development.”

So, while it’s understandable why Americans would celebrate Thomas Jefferson’s famous words in the Declaration of Independence, they should not forget the history. Those noble words about the “self-evident” truths — that “all men are created equal” endowed with “unalienable Rights” — were simply propaganda in 1776. They were given substance only by a long struggle against the political machinations of, among others, their author.

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

Hey, Hollywood! Race Does Matter

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When I learned that Disney was remaking the “The Lone Ranger,” I thought: Wow, Hollywood really has run out of ideas; they just keep making the same movies over and over. Then, when I found out that Johnny Depp was playing the Native American character Tonto, I realized Hollywood also keeps making the same mistakes over and over, casting white actors in roles for people of color.

Johnny Depp’s casting follows a grand old “tradition” of having (often well-known) white actors portray characters who are Native American, African-American, Hispanic and Asian American. This “tradition” started, of course, with the choice of Swedish actor Warner Oland to play the detective Charlie Chan in a series of 1930s movies. The very first Charlie Chan movies actually had Asian actors (Japanese actor George Kuwa, Korean actor E.L. Park) in the title role. Both films minimized Chan’s role (to only ten minutes in one case) and were not commercial successes. It was after Oland was hired to play Chan in (as one film writer puts it) a self-effacing and subservient manner that the films started to do well at the box office.

It is not that there weren’t any Native American, African-American, Hispanic and Asian American actors “back then” to act in movies. Hollywood, an eye ever on the bottom line, was just not interested in hiring them, and audiences apparently were not interested in seeing them, preferring to see stereotypical, racist portrayals by white actors in a lot of make-up.

But what is really troubling is that, after the Civil Rights Era and at a time when the President of the United States is African-American, Hollywood is repeating its own troubled history by making movies starring white actors as Native Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities. Here are some egregious examples, some quite recent:

1. Russian-born Yul Brynner played the King of Siam (that is, Thailand) in the 1956 The King & I.

2. The 1956 film The Teahouse of the August Moon featured Marlon Brando in prosthetic eyepieces and make-up as a “wily interpreter.”

3. Audrey Hepburn played the adopted Native American daughter of a frontier family in the 1960 movie, The Unforgiven. (Yes, the very Belgian-born actress who played a European princess in the 1953 Roman Holiday and a New York call girl from Texas in the 1961 Breakfast At Tiffany’s whose cast included a grotesque performance by Mickey Rooney in yellow face  as I.Y. Yunioshi.)

4. The 1961 film West Side Story featured Natalie Wood (whose parents were Russian immigrants) as the sister of Puerto Rican gang leader Bernardo (who was played by George Chakiris, whose parents were Greek immigrants).

5. A 1981 remake of the Charlie Chan movies (don’t ask me why anyone thought we needed such a thing), Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen, featured Peter Ustinov in the title role.

6. William Hurt won a BAFTA award for his portrayal of a gay Brazilian prisoner in the 1985 film Kiss of the Spider Woman, which was based on a novel by Argentine writer Manuel Puig.

7. Winona Ryder was one of the stars of the 1993 movie House of Spirits, which was adapted from a novel of the same name by Isabel Allende and set in Chile. Except for Antonio Banderas, the film’s main actors (Jeremy Irons, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close) were all white.

8. The new Lone Ranger movie is not the first time that Depp has played a Native American character. In the 1997 The Brave, Depp cast himself as the lead role as Raphael, an impoverished Native American who agrees to star in a snuff film to earn a large sum of money for his family.

9. The 2001 film A Beautiful Mind, which was based on the life of Nobel Laureate in Economics John Nash, contained a serious factual error. Nash’s wife Alicia, who was from El Savador, was played not by a Latina actress, but by Jennifer Connelly.

10. In the 2009 film Killshot, Mickey Rourke (who’s of Irish and French descent by way of upstate New York and Florida) plays a Native American character.

Hollywood keeps claiming that, hey, it’s “just the movies.” People who go to the cinema (or, rather, sign up for Netflix) just want a little entertainment and don’t want to be, and shouldn’t be, bothered by irksome questions about race and color-blind casting.

But the truth is that it matters more than ever that the characters of color in movies are played by people of color. More than half of the children now born in the U.S. are from racial and ethnic minorities, according to U.S. Census data. Two out of three students in Texas public schools are now Hispanic. The U.S. of the future is going to look like my classroom at a small university in Jersey City, where only 25 percent of the student population is white.

In a U.S. in which “minorities” are becoming – are, in many places – the majority, for Hollywood to keep making movies starring white actors in roles for people of color is a sign of how very, very, very far removed it is from reality. But what can you expect from an industry that’s all about fantasy and profits?

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

Do Walmart, Target and Home Depot Hurt the Economy?

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Controversy around big-box stores like Walmart, Target, Lowes and Home Depot is nothing new, but communities are getting smarter about tackling these corporate giants – sometimes against considerable odds. In Cape Cod and a handful of other areas across the country, the Economic Impact Review is becoming a vital tool for handling development disputes and related issues. The review forces a detailed, thoughtful conversation on the true local economic impact of big-box construction. The result, reports Stacy Mitchell at Grist, can be empowering.

You might think opposition to big-box stores is limited to chichi communities with decided ideas about their look, feel, and “character” as evidenced in communities like California’s Sonoma, which has a long history of very rigid restrictions on development. It turns out, opposition to these stores is about more than whether they look attractive or preserve the historic heritage of a community. Many people are legitimately concerned about the local economy, and unfortunately, development review meetings commonly exclude this vital factor from the conversation.

While planning commissions can meet to discuss environmental impact, adherence to the building code, and a range of other topics, a conversation about the local economic impact may not be part of what’s allowed to take place in deliberations. The Walmarts of the world typically like it that way, because it keeps negative economic impacts from interfering with their profits. Such businesses often argue that they bring jobs and income into the community, when in fact, the opposite appears to be true – at least according to Economic Impact Reviews’ research.

Take Cape Cod, for example, which started integrating local economic issues into development policy in the 1990s. Mitchell notes that the Cape Cod Commission, a collective of 15 towns, has been embroiled in reviews for a new Lowe’s: “In a filing [PDF] with the commission, Lowe’s said the store would create 115 new jobs. But an analysis [PDF] by FXM Associates found that Lowe’s would not be adding to the economy, but rather siphoning off 10 to 20 percent of the sales at dozens of local hardware, lumber, appliance, paint, plumbing, and other stores. Declining revenue would force these retailers to lay off 163 people.”

Think that’s bad? “These threatened jobs pay about 25 percent more on average than Lowe’s does, meaning the store’s arrival would trigger a net decline in household incomes of $3.2 million annually. The drain on the region’s economy is even greater, the analysis notes, if you consider the fact that, unlike competing locally owned retailers, Lowe’s will purchase very little in the way of goods and services from other Cape Cod businesses.”

To look just at the Lowe’s report submitted to the planning commission that would be approving the development, it would seem like a boom for the local economy. But if you drill below the surface, you find that approving the development would actually be bad for local people, businesses and the economy overall.

Numerous cities across the US have considered moratoriums and other crackdowns on big box development, but the Economic Impact Review may be a smarter long-term solution when it comes to sustainable, smart and equitable development. It provides communities with the tools they need to fairly evaluate proposed developments and reject them if they don’t meet community needs. The more ways communities start talking about land use policy and sustainable development, the better. Because these are issues that are only going to grow in the coming years.

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

Truthout TV Interviews Mark Karlin About the Recent Court Ruling on Jeff Olsen

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Ted Asregadoo speaks to Mark Karlin, editor at Buzzflash at Truthout, about the recent court ruling on Jeff Olsen – who was charged with 13 counts of vandalism by the San Diego city attorney for writing protest messages against Bank of America on public sidewalks. Mark addresses the wider legal implications of the case.

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

Ancient firepot bases found in Iran

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An ancient Zoroastrian fire temple in the Iranian province of Kerman (file photo)

Three ancient firepot bases belonged to the Sassanid era have been accidentally discovered in the southern Iranian province of Bushehr.

The relics have been unearthed during a construction project by some people restoring their earthquake-hit house located on a historical hill in the village of Keshtu, south of Iran.

The inverted palm-shaped bases, are stony covered with a mortar of cement and gypsum, represent the architecture of Sassanid era, said the expert of Bushehr Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Department Hadi Akhlaqi.

The unearthed items which are unique in form and size belong to a Zoroastrian fire temple where hosted ritual ceremonies.

The area is known a historical spot as various generations belong to different eras were living and working there.

A strong earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale hit the region on April 9, 2013.

According to the Iranian Seismological Center, the quake center was in the town of Kaki, some 90 kilometers southeast of Bushehr, killing at least 37 people and leaving more than 850 injured.

FGP/FGP

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Tehran, Kabul to hold consultative talks

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Iran and Afghanistan are set to hold a consultative committee meeting in an effort to exchange views on multi-dimensional relations between the two countries.

Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Ershad Ahmadi is due to visit Tehran on Monday to take part in the Iran-Afghanistan Political Consultative Committee meeting to negotiate various aspects of the ties between the two nations.

During his stay, the Afghan official is scheduled to hold talks with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Asia and Pacific Affairs Abbas Araqchi. Ahmadi will also meet with Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi to discuss Tehran-Kabul ties.

In this regard, Araqchi, who is also the spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said, Å“Iran and Afghanistan are two close neighbors that enjoy extensive areas of bilateral cooperation”

Å“There are issues over which Tehran and Kabul need to regularly hold talks and be in touch about them. General relations between the two countries will be discussed during Mr. Ahmadiâ„¢s trip to Tehran,” he added.

Iran, an immediate neighbor of Afghanistan, has repeatedly called for a regional solution to the Afghan crisis, saying that foreign military presence is the reason behind the growing insecurity and drug trafficking in the war-torn country.

Over the past three decades, the Islamic Republic has also hosted many refugees from neighboring countries, especially Afghanistan, though it has received little international support.

The voluntary repatriation of Afghan refugees from Iran has been slow in recent years due to the tenuous security situation and economic hardships in Afghanistan, which political analysts say is mainly a result of the US-led occupation of the country.

MKA/HGH/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Two more die of SARS-like virus

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In Saudi Arabia, two more people die of a SARS-like virus. (File photo)

Two more people have died from a virus related to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in Saudi Arabia, health authorities say.

The Saudi Arabian Health Ministry said on its website on Sunday that a 53-year-old man in the countryâ„¢s Eastern Province and a two-year-old child in the Red Sea city of Jeddah have died from the MERS virus.

The recent deaths put the total number of people to die from the respiratory infection in Saudi Arabia at 38.

This is while three new cases of MERS have been reported in Riyadh and Hafr al-Batin.

The virus first emerged in the Middle East, and was discovered in September 2012 in a Qatari man who had recently traveled to Saudi Arabia.

Cases have been reported in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, France, Italy, Tunisia and the United Kingdom.

Health authorities are trying to determine how people contract the virus in a bid to find a cure for it. The nCoV-EMC novel coronavirus is a cousin of SARS.

The virus does not appear to be as contagious as SARS, which killed some 800 people in a 2003 epidemic.

The novel coronavirus is most closely related to a bat virus. Scientists are considering whether bats or other animals like goats or camels are a possible source of infection.

The World Health Organization has advised countries to test any people with unexplained pneumonia for the virus.

SZH/PR

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Campaigning for Mali pres. vote begins

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Campaigning for presidential election in Mali began officially on Sunday, July 07, 2013.

Campaigning for Maliâ„¢s upcoming presidential elections, a first since the last year military coup overthrew democratically elected President Amadou Toumani Toure, has officially begun.

The Malian central government lifted the nearly six-month-old state of emergency on Saturday, aiming at restoring security and peace to the country ahead of the July 28 Presidential election.

The state of emergency was declared on January 12, a day after France launched a war in the West African country under the pretext of driving out militants occupying the north.

The lifting of the state of alert came on after a peace deal — mediated by regional African powers, the United Nations, and the European Union — was signed on June 18 by Mali’s Territorial Administration Minister Colonel Moussa Sinko Coulibaly and the representatives of two Tuareg movements in Ouagadougou, the capital of neighboring Burkina Faso.

The Tuareg rebels, under the signed agreement, allowed the Malian troops to enter their stronghold, the strategic city of Kidal on July 5.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon praised the road map to peace by both sides, saying, Å“The situation in Mali is of great concern… It is vital that the elections be credible and peaceful, with an outcome accepted by all Malians.”

This is while the UN peacekeeping mission is to integrate more than 6,000 West African soldiers into its ranks to keep security during and after the elections.

However, Maliâ„¢s election commission has expressed its concerns over the insecurity, saying it is not sure whether the country is ready to hold election on July 28, as some 500,000 Malians were driven out of their homes following the conflict.

Former government peace negotiator Tiebile Drame, also a presidential candidate, also said the government is not Å“ready” for the elections and has called for a delay.

Maliâ„¢s constitutional court released a list of 26 candidates on July 5, including four of the former prime ministers and one female candidate.

MM/PR

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Edward Snowden is a whistleblower, not a spy — but do our leaders care?

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Spencer Ackerman
Guardian.co.uk
July 7, 2013

According to US legislators and journalists, the surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden actively aided America’s enemies. They are just missing one essential element for the meme to take flight: evidence.

An op-ed by Representative Mike Pompeo (Republican, Kansas) proclaiming Snowden, who provided disclosed widespread surveillance on phone records and internet communications by the National Security Agency, “not a whistleblower” is indicative of the emerging narrative. Writing in the Wichita Eagle on 30 June Pompeo, a member of the House intelligence committee, wrote that Snowden “has provided intelligence to America’s adversaries“.

Pompeo correctly notes in his op-ed that “facts are important”. Yet when asked for the evidence justifying the claim that Snowden gave intelligence to American adversaries, his spokesman, JP Freire, cited Snowden’s leak of NSA documents. Those documents, however, were provided to the Guardian and the Washington Post, not al-Qaeda or North Korea.

It’s true that information published in the press can be read by anyone, including people who mean America harm. But to conflate that with actively handing information to foreign adversaries is to foreclose on the crucial distinction between a whistleblower and a spy, and makes journalists the handmaidens of enemies of the state.

Yet powerful legislators are eager to make that conflation about Snowden.

The Twitter account of Representative Mike Rogers (Republican, Michigan), the chairman of the House intelligence committee, on 18 June placed Snowden and accused WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning in the same company as Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, two infamous CIA and FBI double-agents. (The tweet appears to have been deleted.)

When I asked about the conflation, Rogers’ Twitter account responded: “All 4 gave critical national security information to our enemies. Each did it in different ways but the result was the same.”

Never to be outdone, Peter King, a New York Republican and former chair of the House homeland security committee, proclaimed Snowden a “defector” on 10 June. Days later, Snowden left Hong Kong to seek asylum in an undetermined country — a curious move for a defector to make.

Once elected and appointed leaders casually conflate leaking andespionage, it is a matter of time before journalists take the cue. For insight into the “fear and isolation that NSA leaker Edward Snowden is living through”, CNN turned to Christopher Boyce — who sold US secrets to the USSR before becoming a bank robber.

Read full article

Deadliest Drone Strike in Nine Months Bucks Recent Trend

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A reaper drone in Afghanistan. (Photo: David_axe/cc/flickr)A drone strike in the early hours of Wednesday morning was the bloodiest since October 2012, bucking a recent trend for falling numbers of deaths in each attack.

Multiple drones attacked a vehicle and building in Miranshah, one of the main towns in North Waziristan, in Pakistan’s tribal northwest.

‘I never heard such a huge drone strike before. They simultaneously fired four huge missiles and jolted the entire town,’ local Nasrullah Khan told NBC reporter Mushtaq Yusufzai. Although initial reports suggested between two and four people were killed, the death toll later rose to 16-18, with up to five others injured.

Following the strike the Pakistan Foreign Ministry issued a statement ‘strongly’ condemning the strike as a ‘violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty’. The government issues such statements after almost every strike.

The strike’s high death toll is in sharp contrast to recent attacks. The Bureau’s six-monthly report, published on Monday, highlighted that in the first half of 2013, each drone strike killed an average of 3.9 people — down from an average of 11.4 casualties per strike in the same period of 2010.

The last strike to kill so many people hit the border of Orakzai Agency and North Waziristan on October 11 2012, reportedly killing 16-26. Only two further strikes in the past two years have reportedly killed 16 people or more. Even within the broader context of the nine-year campaign, the attack was notably large: only around one strike in 13 has had such a high body count.

The Bureau attributes this tendency towards smaller strikes partly to a decline in the highly controversial tactic of signature strikes, in which groups of individuals are targeted based on what analysts believe is suspicious behaviour.

Professor Rosa Brooks, a constitutional law expert and law professor at Georgetown university, told the Bureau the ‘optimistic theory’ for the decline in deaths per strike was that the White House was bowing to criticism of signature strikes and the drone programme in general. ‘The less optimistic theory would simply be they have started running out of targets,’ she added.

Reza Jan, a Pakistan analyst with the Critical Threats project, suggests the death toll has also diminished because militants have changed their behaviour as a result of drone strikes. He said: ‘The death tolls of individual strikes have gone down over time, not only because the US has reportedly changed its targeting procedures but also because militants are now more [wary] of gathering in large numbers in vulnerable locations.’

Recently, the CIA has appeared to prefer ‘personality’ strikes, aimed at senior militants dubbed ‘high-value targets’ (HVTs). Nine of the 15 drone strikes in 2013′s first six months killed named alleged militants, including very senior figures such as Maulvi Nazir, the commander of a faction of the so-called ‘good Taliban’, and Wali Ur Rehman, second-in-command of the Pakistani Taliban (TTP). Rehman’s death caused the TTP to withdraw from planned peace talks with the newly elected Pakistani government and sparked revenge attacks.

Reports of Wednesday’s strike indicated that this, too, may have been aimed at a senior militant. Multiple outlets reported the drones targeted a site occupied by the Haqqani Network, a group allied with the Afghan Taliban.

‘Sarai Darpa Khel near Miranshah, where the strike took place, is reportedly a Haqqani stronghold; the high death toll might then be attributed to the target site being a part of the network’s infrastructure (where large numbers would be more likely to gather) rather than an individual’s house, or to the presence of a visiting high-value target and ensuing meeting,’ Jan added.

Zahir Shah, a reporter for Pakistani newspaper Dawn, told the Bureau that Haji Shahrifullah, an alleged militant described as the ‘head commander’ of the Haqqani Network, had been at the site but escaped unharmed. Dawn and US news agency McClatchy reported that he owned the house. A commander named Sher Khan died, unnamed Pakistani intelligence officials told reporters.

Reporter Mushtaq Yusufzai told the Bureau: ‘I spoke to the Taliban tribespeople and they said it is a surprise for them as they knew there would be no more drone strikes from the US in Pakistan after the Taliban opened their office in Qatar and admitted they are negotiating with the US. But some people said it could be a revenge from the US after recent suicide bombings by the Taliban.’

On June 25, the Afghan Taliban launched an attack on the Kabul compound that is home to a CIA base as well as the Afghan presidential palace. Reuters cited Afghan security officials saying the strike was carried out by the Haqqani Network.

Republished with permission from: Common Dreams

Divine world order must prevail: Iran

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Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addresses a special event organized by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting on July 7, 2013.

Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stressed the importance of replacing the current cruel and inhumane global system with a divine world order.

In a Sunday speech at a special event organized by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting to honor his administrationâ„¢s achievements over the past eight years, Ahmadinejad said a strong Iran can be influential in international relations.

Å“By relying on a strong Iran, the flag of divine values can be raised in the world and a divine and human order can replace the current cruel one,” the president stated, adding, Å“We seek a great development and an ideal government … [because] the [Islamic] establishment, the government and the Islamic Revolution are meaningless without divine and human ideals.”

The president emphasized that great developments require strong divine and human bases and warned that if opportunities are not used properly they become threats.

He noted that Iran must be strong and developed in all fields Å“because a weak country can never spread divine values in the world.”

Ahmadinejad pointed out that arrogant powers and enemies of the Iranian nation have made every effort to hinder the countryâ„¢s progress.

Å“Now that the countryâ„¢s scientists have obtained this [nuclear] know-how, they [arrogant powers] can never prevent its continuation in our country,” he added.

The Iranian president said the capitalist system has spread discrimination and injustice in the world while giving opportunities, wealth and economic activities to a certain group of people.

Ahmadinejad is scheduled to hand over the presidency to Hassan Rohani in early August.

SF/HGH/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

US agent detained in Afghanistan

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File photo shows Afghan security forces in Kabul.

Senior provincial officials in Afghanistan’s southern province of Kandahar say they have detained a US agent who has been deeply involved in torturing and killing of Afghan citizens.

The provincial officials say the US citizen of Afghan origin was detained in the troubled Aino Maina region of southern province of Kandahar on Sunday.

Kandahar governor’s spokesman Ahmad Jawed Faisal said evidence show the suspect alongside American forces has committed torture and multiple crimes against civilians in the Wardak Province

This comes weeks after Afghan investigators found substantial proof that American Special Forces have been involved in kidnapping, torturing and killing of Afghan civilians in Maidan Wardak Province back in February.

The developments came after locals complained to human rights groups of being terrorized in recent months by US commandos and armed Afghan irregulars working with them.

Local residents said hundreds of families had left their homes due to harassment and torture by US-backed military units in the province in recent months.

The US-backed NATO command has for months ignored residentsâ„¢ complaints of severe abuses committed by the elite American troops.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai ordered US Special Forces to immediately withdraw from the violence-wracked province after investigators revealed evidence of torture and killings

Karzai has also prohibited his armed forces from requesting NATO airstrike support. Hundreds of Afghan civilians have been killed in several US-led airstrikes in various regions of Afghanistan over the past few months.

Civilian casualties have long been a source of friction between the Afghan government and US-led foreign forces and have dramatically increased anti-US sentiments in Afghanistan.

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001 as part of Washingtonâ„¢s so-called war on terror. The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but insecurity remains across the country despite the presence of thousands of foreign troops.

JR/PR

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Oil Train Explosion: Tragic Reminder of High Cost of Fossil Fuel Dependency

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Firefighters continue to put out flames on the scene of the derailment of a train carrying crude, “fracked” oil from the Bakken oil fields. (Photo: REUTERS/Christinne Muschi)Fires continues to burn in the small town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec on Sunday–over twenty-four hours after a train carrying crude oil derailed and exploded in the community’s downtown, engulfing the area in flames and black smoke. 

With many individuals still missing, rescuers have begun the process of sifting through embers searching for remains.

“Three bodies have been found,” police spokesman Michel Brunet told reporters. “There are still people who have been reported as missing or unaccounted for. We can’t give you a number. We know there will be other deaths.”

The terrible irony of the explosion is not lost on local environmentalists who, just last week, blockaded a set of railroad tracks passing through the nearby town of Fairfield, Maine to stop a train carrying 70,000 barrels of “fracked oil” on its way to the Irving oil refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick.

The action was meant to draw attention to the “fracked oil” that is quietly being transported through small towns throughout Canada and Maine on a regular basis.

“It’s not lost on any of us that this is exactly what we were pointing out could happen in Maine, with millions of barrels being transported across the state each year,” Meaghan LaSala, an organizer with 350 Maine which was behind the direct action, told Common Dreams. “Our hearts are going out to the people in Quebec right now.”

“It’s devastating that, so close to our action, the the thing we were most afraid of happening did,” she added.

Lac-Megantic, which sits just miles over the border from Maine, is one of thousands of small towns through which trains carry crude, fracked oil from the Bakken oil fields of the northern midwest United States and central Canada to the Irving refinery.

LaSala points out that, while destroying the communities surrounding the oil fields where the fracking occurs, the transportation of such volatile and toxic fuel “also destroys the communities along the way.”

“The industry has built up rail as the safest way to transport [this fuel]. We know that pipelines are more dangerous–partly because of volume, when they do spill it’s a much bigger diasaster. Also, the number of incidents are even higher,” said LaSala.

But, she adds, they wanted to do the direct action to point out that trains aren’t safe either. “It’s never safe to transport fossil fuels…the emphasis [for the industry] is not on safety.”

Back in Lac-Megantic, fire officials confirmed that three out of the five tankers that were burning had been extinguished with foam while two more are still on fire and are at risk of explosion, CBC reports.

Crews have not yet been able to tally the amount of crude oil that was spilled from the wrecked train. Reports estimate that a large amount had poured into the Chaudière River, with residents reporting that the water has turned shades of orange.

Further updates on the situation can be found on twitter:

_____________________

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

Republished with permission from: Common Dreams

Mafia boss arrested in Italy

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An Italian mafia boss, Roberto Pannunzi (c), is escorted by Colombian security forces at the headquarters of the National Police in Bogota, Colombia, on July 6, 2013.

Roberto Pannunzi, the suspected boss of Ndrangheta, Italy’s Calabrian mafia, has been arrested at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport after he was deported back to the European country from Colombia.

The 65-year-old man who is said to be the world’s biggest cocaine dealer was arrested by Italian security forces upon his arrival at the airport Saturday evening.

According to a statement released by deputy chief prosecutor in Reggio Calabria in southern Italy, Nicola Gratteri, Å“He is the biggest cocaine importer in the world. He is the only one who can organize purchases and sales of cocaine shipments of 3,000 kilos (6,600 pounds) and up.”

This comes after the Colombian Defense Ministry said in a statement that the fugitive Italian mobster was captured near the capital city of Bogota with the help of the US Drug Enforcement Administration on Friday.

When arrested, Pannunzi presented himself with a fake Venezuelan identification card bearing the name Silvano Martino, the statement further said.

He was first caught in Colombia in 1994 and extradited to Italy but was freed when his detention order expired.

In 2004, he was re-arrested and later convicted. Pannunzi fled from a clinic in the Italian capital Rome, where he was being treated as a prisoner.

Ndrangheta is considered by Italian authorities as the country’s most dangerous and wealthiest crime syndicate, which has overtaken the Sicilian mafia and become one of the world’s largest criminals.

In April, Colombia arrested another alleged top Italian mafia member, Domenico Trimboli, suspected to be a lynchpin between the Colombiaâ„¢s Medellin drug cartel and the Ndrangheta, based in the Calabria region.

MAM/PR

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Egypt divided over new PM appointment

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A handout picture released by the Egyptian Presidency shows Egypt’s interim president Adly Mansour (R) meeting with opposition National Salvation Front leader Mohamed ElBaradei (L) in Cairo on July 6, 2013.

Senior Egyptian authorities say growing differences among political parties have delayed the nomination of a new interim prime minister in the North African country.

A spokesman for interim President Adly Mansour said on Sunday that consultations were continuing over choosing an interim prime minister who can lead the country out of crisis.

The military-backed presidency earlier named leading opposition figure Mohammad ElBaradei as the logical choice for the post. But it later backtracked on the decision, denying that his appointment was ever certain.

The change in decision followed criticisms by several groups — including Egyptâ„¢s largest Salafist bloc, the Nour Party, which said it would not work with ElBardaei.

ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, leads an alliance of liberal parties opposed to ousted president, Mohamed Morsi.

The possible appointment of ElBaradei also caused anger among the supporters of Morsi, who want to see him back in power.

Egypt has braced for fresh rallies by thousands of supporters and opponents of Morsi as political turmoil rages on in the North African country.

Morsi was unseated on July 3, and the chief justice of Egyptâ„¢s Supreme Constitutional Court, Adly Mansour, was sworn in as interim president of Egypt on July 4.

Morsi is reportedly being held Å“preventively” by the military. Senior army officials say he might face formal charges over accusations made by his opponents.

Several arrest warrants have been issued for members of Muslim Brotherhood. Egyptian troops and security forces have recently expanded their roundup of top political figures from Muslim Brotherhood that had fielded Morsi for office.

JR/PR/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Cleric denies terrorism charges in Jordan

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Cleric Abu Qatada has pleaded not guilty after terrorism charges were brought against him by the countryâ„¢s military prosecutors.

According to a statement by the clericâ„¢s lawyer Taysir Diab, Abu Qatada denied the charges on Sunday just hours after he was deported from Britain.

“I will appeal tomorrow (Monday) to the (state security) court to release him on bail,” the lawyer added.

Abu Qatada was charged with conspiracy to carry out terrorist acts at a court near the Marka military airfield, located east of Amman.

“He was remanded in judicial custody for 15 days in the Muwaqqar prison,” a Jordanian judicial official said.

The cleric was deported from Britain on Sunday, after a decade-long battle over his extradition.

After years of taking legal action against Abu Qatada, Britain finally launched extradition proceedings against the cleric in 2005.

In May, Qatada accepted to return to Jordan voluntarily after the countryâ„¢s government ratified the Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters with Britain, ensuring a fair trial for him.

Although Jordan’s information ministry had promised a transparent handling of the case, reporters were not allowed in the court on Sunday.

The cleric was sentenced to life and a 15-year jail term in 1999 and 2000 respectively, for planning to carry out terrorist attacks in Jordan.

SZH/PR

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Iran wants closer ties with Comoros

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Iran Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has expressed Tehran’s firm determination to strengthen “amicable and very close” relations with the Comoros in all fields.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

British PM welcomes Qatada deportation

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British Prime Minister David Cameron and Home Secretary Theresa May have welcomed Jordanian cleric Abu Qatadaâ„¢s deportation from Britain.

Cameron said Abu Qatada has no right to live in the UK and he was considered as a threat to the country.

Moreover he said the deportation of Qatada is Å“excellent news” and was a priority for his government.

“I was absolutely delighted. This is something this government said it would get done, and we have got it done,” Cameron told reporters.

May also welcomed news of Qatadaâ„¢s deportation, adding, “This dangerous man has now been removed from our shores to face the courts in his own country”.

The 51-year-old cleric arrived in Jordan, where he could face allegations of plotting bomb attacks, after being flown out of Britain in the early hours today.

Qatadaâ„¢s deportation comes after the UK and Jordan ratified a treaty ensuring that the Jordanian cleric will face a trial without the use of evidence obtained by torture.

Earlier in May, Abu Qatadaâ„¢s lawyer previously told a London court that his client will return to Jordan voluntarily if the countryâ„¢s government ratifies a treaty with Britain that ensures he will receive a fair trial.

Britainâ„¢s justice system has accused Qatada of being linked to al-Qaeda and threatening the countryâ„¢s national security. No charges, however, have been introduced against the Muslim cleric yet

According to reports, a near decade-long battle to get Qatada out of Britain cost British taxpayer at least £1.7 million.

MOS/HE

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Egypt on Verge of Civil War — Putin

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RIA Novosti
July 7, 2013

Egypt is on the verge of a civil war, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday as tensions continued to escalate in the North African country between the supporters and opponents of deposed Islamist President Mohamed Morsi.

“Syria is already engulfed in a civil war and, no matter how sad it may sound, Egypt is also moving in the same direction. It would be good, if the Egyptian people avoided this fate,” Putin said during his working visit to Kazakhstan.

The Egyptian armed forces on Wednesday deposed Morsi and suspended the country’s constitution, Egyptian Defense Minister Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi said in a televised address to the nation.

Full story here.

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

The Pentagon was behind Egypt’s Military Coup

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Press TV has conducted an interview with Michel Chossudovsky, Centre for Research on Globalization, Montreal about the coup d’état by the Egyptian military that has deposed the elected Morsi government after large anti-government protests arose.

The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: I’d like to have your impression on the situation in Egypt two days after a coup d’état the situation is very tense in Egypt. Tell us more about your opinion.

Chossudovsky: Well, I think we have to reflect a little bit on the history of the Morsi government going back to the Arab Spring, in other words, two and a half years ago. And we also have to ask ourselves, who are the major actors behind this coup d’état?

Complete transcript below

The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: I’d like to have your impression on the situation in Egypt two days after a coup d’état the situation is very tense in Egypt. Tell us more about your opinion.

Chossudovsky: Well, I think we have to reflect a little bit on the history of the Morsi government going back to the Arab Spring, in other words, two and a half years ago. And we also have to ask ourselves, who are the major actors behind this coup d’état?

It is a coup d’état in the sense that the military have intervened and they have demoted a duly elected government. I should underscore the fact that the reports confirm that the protest movement against the Muslim Brotherhood government was also directed against the United States.

In other words, the protest movement perceives the Morsi government as a proxy of the United States and in particular the Muslim Brotherhood government has accepted all the conditions, which were imposed by the International Monetary Fund upon the accession to the formation of a government — namely the application of strong economic medicine, which essentially is continuity in relation to the previous period.

It’s a structural adjustment program; it’s devastating economic reforms; and I think what’s motivated the protest movement, certainly the derogation of civil liberties, the implementation of Islamic law is an issue; but more fundamentally it is the process of impoverishment, which has become heightened by the installation of this government and the social situation in the country is far more serious than it was during the Mubarak period.

So that what we have is a continuity pertaining to these neoliberal economic reforms: massive austerity measures, rising food prices, rising unemployment and ultimately this discontent is motivated by the collapse in the standard of living and also by the hope that a new government would do something different to what the Mubarak government was doing. So I think that has to be taken into account. However, let us look at who is behind this coup.

The press reports suggest that the protest movement is directed against the United States and that the armed forces in a certain sense are supportive of the protest movement. I think this in many regards is a smokescreen because US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel as well as the US Chief of Staff General Martin Dempsey were in permanent liaison with the architects of the coup in the two weeks preceding the military takeover.

We should be under no illusions, the Egyptian military may have differences within its ranks, but ultimately it tows the line, it takes its orders from Washington DC.

Egypt is the largest recipient of US military aid after Israel. It is a strong ally and if they have taken this position of intervening and demoting a duly elected government, they have done it with the green light from the Pentagon.

I think it is highly unlikely that General Abdul Azizi who is the architect of the coup d’état would have acted without consulting his counterpart namely US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

If we look a little bit at recent events we see that Azizi was in permanent liaison by telephone to US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel; we should also understand that the defense minister who instigated the coup d’état is also a graduate of the US war college — he’s very close to the US military; and I sincerely doubt that he would have acted without having the go-ahead from his US counterparts.

This of course doesn’t mean necessarily that… I mean, there are certain contradictions — you have a protest movement, which is directed against the Morsi government and then you have a military, which is supported by the United States.

In fact the United States is supporting both sides and that is part of its underlying strategy. It supports the military and then it supported — it no longer supports — but it supported the Brotherhood.

And what this is leading to is a situation of internal conflict, which could lead to a process of destabilization on a much broader scale. I should also mention that the border with the Gaza Strip has been closed.

This crisis has a bearing not only on Egypt, but on the broader region because Egypt is very strategic for America; it’s a gateway for North Africa and is also a gateway for sub-Saharan Africa.

Press TV: Morsi, initially when he came in he had the support of the US, but now it seems he doesn’t have the support of the US. Just what is in it for America now?

Chossudovsky: Ultimately what the United States action involved was essentially to ensure that this protest movement doesn’t get out of control and the coup d’état is ultimately intend to manipulate the protest movement and prevent the accession of a real people’s government.

Morsi was not a people’s government. Well, he got 50-plus percent of the vote, but immediately upon accession to his position as president he reached an agreement with the IMF, which was imposed by Washington and Wall Street and essentially he continued in the footsteps of Mubarak.

So, this was not an alternative to the Mubarak governments by any means. It was a replacement of the Mubarak government, which in effect was following in the same path, adopting the same economic measures as ultimately those economic measures is what mattered. So Morsi actually did exactly what Mubarak was doing, faithfully obeying the orders of the Washington consensus from the outset of his presidency.

And that economic model dates back to 1991. I happened to be — and this is of course beyond the scope of this interview — I happened to be in the minister of finance’s office in 1991 in Cairo at the very moment when this program was being implemented and imposed by the IMF talking to senior advisors of the government, everybody was against it, but their hands were bound.

We must understand that from 1991 to the present — over a 20-year period, the Egyptian economy has been destabilized, the Nile Value bread basket has been destroyed. 3,000 years of self-sufficient agriculture; food prices have risen; unemployment has gone sky high; the industrial fabric of a relatively self-reliant economy has been destroyed; and this is the basis of the protest movement. People are protesting because their living standards have collapsed and they saw in this new government an avenue of change. But bear in mind the United States is supporting both sides and their objective and their strategy is to destabilize this country as a nation-state.
Press TV: Some say the army is in power until the turbulence and tension in the country calms down. How willing is the army to initiate another election for a civilian government to be put into power?

Chossudovsky: That’s a very difficult question at this stage. They may have a certain legitimacy. I don’t doubt that in Washington there is already a scenario of regime change and that scenario of regime change is there with a view to ensure continuity. But at the same time there is also a scenario of political and economic destabilization on an unprecedented scale.

But what is occurring now in the streets of Cairo is a clash between two competing political movements, both of which have been misled by the people who are pulling the strings behind the scenes. It’s worth noting that www.military.com, which is essentially the mouthpiece of the US military establishment stated and I quote, “US Defense Secretary Hagel and US Chief of Staff General Martin Dempsey were walking a fine line expressing concern while attempting to avoid the impression that the US was manipulating events behind the scene”. And that comes from a mainstream military online source.

I would suggest and my understanding is that in effect this whole process has been manipulated; the protest movement is infiltrated; many sectors of the opposition to Morsi are in fact supported by US foundations and in turn the Brotherhood is supported covertly by the United States and US intelligence.

And it has you know, starting in the 1940s it as supported by the British secret service and throughout the 1950s and up to the present, the Brotherhood has always been supported or infiltrated by Western intelligence.

Press TV: What do outside countries think about this situation in Egypt, countries other than the US, Egypt’s friends?

Chossudovsky: Well, I think at this stage that is something, which is too early to say, I think there is a lot of confusion in what has actually happened. The armed forces in some sectors of Western public opinion are considered as patriots, as nationalists, who are coming to the rescue of the protest movement and then this protest movement is then portrayed as anti-American. The new military leaders and the interim president have requested the recall of the US Ambassador to Egypt, which then provides, in fact creates the illusion that ultimately the military are anti-American, which they’re not. They are very close with their US counterparts, both US military and intelligence.

Press TV: Do you see any role or involvement by remnants of the previous regime of Mubarak in this situation?

Chossudovsky: That’s always a possibility. I think that the names will change. I think we’re possibly going towards another regime change, but I should specify that this is a regime replacement; it is not an alternative neither to the Morsi government nor to the previous government of Hosni Mubarak. From my standpoint, with some nuances, they are very similar because they are obeying the orders of a proxy regime and they are faithfully fulfilling the corporate opening-up of the Egyptian economy to foreign investors and so on. And that’s what matters to the United States and its allies.

It’s a neo-Colonial policy, which in effect is restructuring Egypt as a territory within the region and that is what is ultimately very disturbing and there is a lot of confusion.

This could also, potentially, evolve towards a civil war. I’m suggesting it will, but I’m saying there are elements of crisis at the moment and it just so happens that both factions within the protest movement — the supporters of Morsi on the one hand and the protesters, those who wanted the demise of the Muslim Brotherhood government — both these sections are supported by the same handlers, Western handlers namely the United States of America.

Some are supported by Western foundations, others are supported by the US military — the close relationship of the Egyptian military to the Pentagon; several civil society organizations Kifaya, April 6th movement, which we know was supported historically even by the US State Department.

So we’re dealing with a protest movement, which was manipulated in early 2011 and it is manipulated currently in the present context in the opposition movement to the Morsi government.

Republished with permission from: Global Research

One killed, 5 wounded in Bahrain attacks

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Two separate attacks in Bahrain leave one policeman dead and five others wounded. (File photo)

Two separate bomb attacks have killed at least one policeman and injured five others outside the Bahraini capital, Manama.

According to the Bahraini Interior Ministry and police officials, the attacks took place on late Saturday.

Bahrainâ„¢s public security said in a statement released by the official BNA news agency that the first attack took place at a police station in a Shia village in Sitra.

General Tariq Hasan said the bomb attack has “killed policeman Yasser Dhaib and wounded two others.”

The second incident occurred in the Shia village of Janabiya after a security patrol was attacked, leaving three policemen injured, the interior ministry said.

Since mid-February 2011, thousands of pro-democracy protesters have staged numerous demonstrations in the streets of Bahrain, calling for the Al Khalifa royal family to relinquish power.

The Bahraini government promptly launched a brutal crackdown on peaceful protests and called in Saudi-led Arab forces from neighboring states.

Dozens of Bahraini people have been killed in the crackdown, and security forces have arrested hundreds, including doctors, and nurses who had treated injured revolutionaries.

Bahrainis say they will continue holding demonstrations until their demand for the establishment of a democratically elected government is met.

A report published by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry in November 2011 found that the Al Khalifa regime had used excessive force in the crackdown and accused Manama of torturing political activists, politicians, and protesters.

SZH/PR

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Egypt violence: Gang throws rivals to their deaths from top of a building

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Keir Mudie
Daily Mirror
July 7, 2013

A bloodthirsty gang is filmed flinging r­ivals to their deaths from the top of a building as violence spirals out of control in Egypt.

Horrific scenes captured on a mobile phone and posted on YouTube show a group of men surrounded by captors in the north-east city of Alexandria, the Sunday People can report.

Sickeningly, the victims are tossed head-first from a ledge. They land on the ­concrete roof below, where they are beaten and left for dead.

Clashes between opponents and supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi intensified yesterday, leaving 36 people dead. British tourists were feared to be at risk of terrorist attack last night after the head of al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, issued a call to arms after the military coup ousted Islamist Morsi.

Full story here.

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

Cut Off US Aid to Egypt? It's Not Just a Good Idea, It's the Law

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Egyptian soldiers stand guard outside the Republican Guard headquarters in Cairo, July 5, 2013. Islamist supporters of Egypt's ousted president, Mohammed Morsi, demanded his reinstatement in large protests and engaged in sometimes deadly clashes with security forces and anti-Morsi demonstrators. (Photo: Yusuf Sayman / The New York Times)Egyptian soldiers stand guard outside the Republican Guard headquarters in Cairo, July 5, 2013. Islamist supporters of Egypt’s ousted president, Mohammed Morsi, demanded his reinstatement in large protests and engaged in sometimes deadly clashes with security forces and anti-Morsi demonstrators. (Photo: Yusuf Sayman / The New York Times)There has been a military coup in Egypt, overthrowing the democratically elected President.

By law, the U.S. must cut off aid to Egypt until a democratically elected government has taken office.

Here’s the relevant law, from the webpage of Senator Patrick Leahy:

Coups d’Etat

Sec. 7008. None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available pursuant to titles III through VI of this Act shall be obligated or expended to finance directly any assistance to the government of any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup d’etat or decree or, after the date of enactment of this Act, a coup d’etat or decree in which the military plays a decisive role: Provided, That assistance may be resumed to such government if the President determines and certifies to the Committees on Appropriations that subsequent to the termination of assistance a democratically elected government has taken office: Provided further, That the provisions of this section shall not apply to assistance to promote democratic elections or public participation in democratic processes: Provided further, That funds made available pursuant to the previous provisos shall be subject to the regular notification procedures of the Committees on Appropriations.

The plain meaning of the law is clear. U.S. aid must be cut off until there is a democratically elected government. The only exception is aid “to promote democratic elections or public participation in democratic processes.” If someone wants to argue that U.S. military aid to Egypt – which is the overwhelming majority of U.S. aid – falls under this exception, let them put forward that argument forward for all to see.

Some people would like to claim that a coup is not a coup if there were demonstrators in the streets calling for the removal of the democratically elected President.

This argument is, of course, nonsense. By this standard, the coup against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973 was not a coup; by this standard, the coup against the democratically elected government of Manuel Zelaya in Honduras in 2009 was not a coup; by this standard, the coup against the democratically elected government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 2002 was not a coup; by this standard, the coup against the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran in 1953 was not a coup. By this standard, the word “coup” would have no objective meaning, except perhaps “overthrow of a democratically elected government that we like by people that we don’t like.”

Middle East scholar Marc Lynch correctly noted, as reported in the New York Times:

“Military coups are often driven by popular mobilization and received by popular acclaim, but this does not change what they are,” said Marc Lynch, a Middle East scholar at George Washington University. “It is possible, of course, that this will be the sort of coup which ‘resets’ the political arena and quickly restores civilian rule. The military can’t help but to have learned the lessons of 2011, when their direct rule went so badly. But it’s still a coup.” [My emphasis.]

In addition to the importance of adhering to the rule of law – not a small thing in its own right – there are other good reasons to cut off U.S. aid to Egypt.

The Obama Administration says that it wants to use the threat of an aid cutoff to pressure the Egyptian military to quickly restore democratic rule and to not repress supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood.

But a key question hangs over the Obama Administration: is it wielding a credible threat?

It is widely believed in Egypt that the U.S. is not capable of following through on the threat to cut off aid.

Cutting off U.S. aid would prove that this belief is wrong. Cutting off some part of U.S. aid (at least) would be a start. And aid could be restored once a democratically elected government is in place – exactly as the law says and exactly as the Obama Administration says it wants.

If U.S. aid is not cut off, it will set a bad precedent elsewhere. Every military in the world that receives U.S. aid will know that in this case, U.S. law was not enforced. This will be an invitation to others that are tempted to overthrow democratically elected governments: how can we make our coup be like the coup in Egypt, and thus escape the legally mandated aid cutoff?

If we cannot cut off aid to Egypt when an aid cutoff is mandated by U.S. law, under what circumstances could we do it?

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

Pelican Bay Two Years Later: Those Still Buried Alive Vowing Hunger Strike "Till the End"

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Robert Luca, an inmate at Pelican Bay State Prison who was a gang member, looking out the grates of his cell, near Crescent City, Calif., Feb. 10, 2012. (Photo: Jim Wilson / The New York Times) Robert Luca, an inmate at Pelican Bay State Prison who was a gang member, looking out the grates of his cell, near Crescent City, Calif., Feb. 10, 2012. (Photo: Jim Wilson / The New York Times)

July 1st marks the two-year anniversary of the start of the 2011 Pelican Bay hunger strikes protesting indefinite solitary confinement and SHU conditions. The hunger strikes, each lasting three weeks, ended after CDCR agreed to negotiations with hunger strike representatives over their demands. In late 2012, the CDCR implemented a pilot program to release those held in the SHU on gang charges. Prisoners and their advocates have denounced the program for keeping the most objectionable aspects of the old program and expanding qualifications for SHU placement. Prisoners are calling for a hunger strike to begin on July 8, 2013, vowing not to eat until their demands are met.

“A lot of people aren’t aware that thousands are buried alive in solitary confinement cells in this country’s prisons – for no legit reason,” Todd Ashker reminded Truthout in a recent letter. Ashker should know – he has been locked in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) in California’s Pelican Bay State Prison since 1990 after confidential informants claimed he was a gang member. In the SHU, which comprises half of Pelican Bay prison, people are locked into their cells for at least 22 hours a day. Prison administrators place them in the SHU either for a fixed term for violating a prison rule or for an indeterminate term for being accused of gang membership. These accusations often rely on confidential informants and circumstantial evidence. Hundreds have been confined within the SHU for over a decade. Until recently, the only way to be released from the SHU was to debrief, or provide information incriminating other prisoners, who are then placed in the SHU for an indeterminate sentence

The 2011 hunger strikes

As reported earlier in Truthout, 1,035 of the 1,111 people locked in the prison’s Security Housing Unit embarked on a three-week hunger strike in July 2011. They had five core demands:

  1. Eliminate group punishments for individual rules violations;
  2. Abolish the debriefing policy and modify active/inactive gang status criteria;
  3. Comply with the recommendations of the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in Prisons (2006) regarding an end to long-term solitary confinement;
  4. Provide adequate food;
  5. Expand and provide constructive programs and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates.

The hunger strike spread to 13 other state prisons and, at one point, involved at least 6,600 people in men’s and women’s prisons throughout California. In September, prisoners renewed the strike, which lasted three weeks until the CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) offered to begin negotiations around these demands. The hunger strike was called off and prisoners began monthly meetings with CDCR representatives.

Post Hunger Strikes

By July 2012, however, little had changed. “Our five core demands have not been implemented,” reported hunger striker Mutope DuGuma. As reported in Truthout, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of those who have spent between ten and 28 years in Pelican Bay’s SHU. On May 2, 2013, they filed a motion for class certification, which would allow them to represent over 1,000 people serving indeterminate sentences for gang charges. A hearing on that motion has been scheduled for August 8, 2013.

On June 11, 2013, attorneys traveled to Pelican Bay to meet with the ten plaintiffs. Attorney Carol Strickman described the conditions under which her colleagues met their clients: The ten men were confined to small cages known as “therapy cages.” “Picture a small booth that’s just big enough for a man to sit in,” she explained. “They brought ten of those booths into the room. Then there were the two attorneys in the room with them. We had to fight very hard to even get that much. The CDCR didn’t want us to meet with them at all. They claimed they [the plaintiffs] are ‘dangerous people.'”

The CDCR Step Down Program

In Fall 2012, the CDCR unveiled its “Step Down” program. Under the program, even those who have spent years in the SHU may still be required to spend two to three additional years in solitary confinement. The debriefing program remains in place. In the past, possessing certain art or literature, exercising with others or even saying hello to another prisoner was used to prove gang association. Under the new program, these actions can be used to prove gang membership, which warrants indefinite SHU placement. The CDCR has started its review process of those accused of gang association, which, under the old policies, warranted a six-year SHU term. Those accused of gang association make up approximately 80% of SHU placements; many have been kept in SHU past the original six-year term.

Dolores Canales’ son is one of the men in SHU for alleged gang association. “He’s a jailhouse lawyer,” she told Truthout. “He’s assisted with legal work for men charged with being in gangs.” Canales’ son, who has spent 13 years in the SHU, has yet to be reviewed. “He’s still in solitary confinement, still labeled an associate,” she said.

Azadeh Zohrabi is part of the mediation team of outside advocates that meets with CDCR. She told Truthout that, according to the figures the CDCR gave them on May 29, 249 SHU reviews have been completed. Of these, 130 have been approved for release to general population with 87 having actually been transferred, 83 have been approved for placement in the Step Down program, and 15 have been retained in the SHU. In addition, 16 have been retained in SHU until they complete Phase One of debriefing. “They have to convince the gang investigators that they’ve revealed everything they know about the gang, its structure, members, affiliates, code of conduct, protocols, codes, past activities, current/planned activities,” Zohrabi explained. “Basically if they don’t implicate anyone else, the gang investigators would say they haven’t fully debriefed.” She also notes that the CDCR’s numbers do not distinguish between people serving definite and indefinite SHU sentences.

Todd Ashker, who has filed several lawsuits against the CDCR including the 2012 Ashker v. Brown, stated that he knows several men who have been released to general population. None have filed civil suits against the CDCR and, within the prison system, have rarely filed grievances. [4/24/13] While Zohrabi was unable to corroborate Ashker’s assertion, she did note contradictions between CDCR’s claim of reviewing associates who had been in SHU longest and their actual practice. “People who have been in SHU for five years have been reviewed/released to general population while those in SHU for twenty have not.” CDCR officials told the mediation team that, if provided with names of those serving lengthy SHU sentences, they would look into these cases. They would not, however, inform the mediation team of the outcome(s).

The CDCR has also allowed SHU prisoners several amenities, such as pull-up bars and the ability to buy a combined TV/radio. “The few things they’ve achieved, those are all things they should have already had,” Canales pointed out. “But it took two hunger strikes to get even these things. Meanwhile, Sacramento continues to justify the solitary confinement units, their use of solitary confinement, and the duration in these units.”

Terry Thornton, CDCR’s Deputy Press Secretary, denies that SHU prisoners are in solitary confinement. “A lot of people say that,” she told Truthout. “But they do associate with people. Some of them even have cellmates. They have visits, they go to the yard every day. They are not deprived in any way.” She added that the CDCR’s new policy addresses the hunger strikers’ 2011 demands. [6/27/13]

Both prisoners and outside advocates disagree with Thornton’s statement, charging that the Step Down program does not address the five core demands. In addition, the program expands the criteria for people eligible for SHU placement. Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity, a grassroots coalition of Bay Area-based organizations and community members, called the new program a “human rights disaster,” stating, “Under the old policies, a prisoner could be placed in the SHU for affiliation with any of seven prison gangs. Under the new program, any grouping of three or more prisoners can be added to the list as a “security threat group,” membership in which can result in a SHU term.”

According to the CDCR, no women are in SHU indeterminately for gang membership or association. However, the conversion of Valley State Prison to a men’s prison and transfer of women to the California Institution for Women (CIW) has caused a dramatic increase in the number of women in CIW’s SHU. Originally built to hold 60 people, CIW’s SHU went from 64 women in September 2012 to 112 in April 2013 with two women in each SHU cell. One family member reported that “Belinda,” who went on a solidarity hunger strike in 2011, has completed her 15-month SHU sentence for possessing tweezers but, because of overcrowding, will remain in SHU until her 2014 release date. “Belinda” now suffers from agoraphobia and cannot leave her cell during her allotted one hour in the yard.

A Renewed Call to Strike

Prisoners at Pelican Bay have announced a renewed hunger strike, combined with a work strike, to begin July 8th. They demand that the CDCR sign a consent decree spelling out the specific terms of the policies they will enact. “We have been on two hunger strikes and the CDCR agreed to our five core demands. But when we come off hunger strike, they then disregard our agreement,” explained Mutope DuGuma. [5/27/13]

“This time myself and others will end up in a hospital on feeding tubes until our demands are officially signed off on,” said Paul Redd, another SHU prisoner. “We are tired of all the games, lies and cover-ups. We hope we receive twice the number of outside supporters to put pressure on CDCR officials and put pressure on legislators to conduct real hearings.” [6/17/13]

On June 19, 2013, SHU prisoner representatives and outside supporters met with CDCR officials for a court-ordered mediation session. The meeting, said prisoner representatives via a press release, “did not result in CDCR officials agreeing to settle the case on acceptable terms.” They confirmed that they will begin refusing food on July 8th.

In addition to the 2011 core demands, Pelican Bay prisoners have issued 40 more demands, such as expunging all violations issued for participation in the 2011 hunger strikes and prohibiting retaliation for those participating in the upcoming hunger strike. Other demands focus on improving prison conditions in both the SHU (such as not being penalized for giving away artwork) and general population (such as the ability to have family overnight visits and a yearly restocking of the prison library).  

“At the end of the day, there will be prisoners held in SHU whether we like it or not, but not for long term,” wrote DuGuma. “Those individuals who have to serve a determinate sentence in SHU shouldn’t be under torture. They should be allowed contact with other humans, especially their families on visits, educational programs, etc.” Currently all visits, both family and legal, take place behind glass barriers. No phone calls are allowed except during a family emergency. J. Baridi Williamson calls these “family death calls.” During his 20 years in SHU, Williamson has only been allowed two phone calls – once after his father’s death and another after his mother’s death. “These are collect calls for our families with them having to pay the cost,” he added. According to advocacy group (and co-counsel on the federal lawsuit) Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, a 15-minute collect call can cost as much as $2.95 per minute. One of the hunger strikers’ additional demands is that SHU prisoners be allowed one phone call each week.

Momentum for the upcoming strike is growing: Prisoners in San Quentin’s Death Row publicly vowed to join the hunger strike, demanding changes to their own conditions.Prisoners in Washington State, including some in juvenile facilities, have vowed to join the work stoppage on July 8 as well. Family members on the outside have continued organizing. Canales, family members and advocacy organizations are planning a caravan to and solidarity rally outside Corcoran State Prison, which holds 1,367 people its its SHU, on July 13, 2013.

SHU prisoners are already reporting retaliation following the announcement of the hunger strike. Lorenzo Benton reported the institution of regular cell searches to enforce a policy limiting property to six cubic feet including a limit of ten books and magazines. “For a lot of us who have been in prison twenty, thirty, forty years or more, our property is a reflection of our lives and, over the years, we have accumulated a lot of property.” [6/4/13]

On June 4, 2013, legal visitors to Pelican Bay were informed about the new CDCR policy requiring guards to conduct “welfare checks” on SHU prisoners every half hour. During these checks, every prisoner must be observed physically moving or showing skin. Zohrabi reported that they heard complaints from both guards, who said the new policy disrupted their work flow, and prisoners, who were sleep-deprived. “This is torture,” Zohrabi stated in a press release. “This intensified sleep deprivation adds to the long list of human rights violations endured by thousands of prisoners held in solitary for prolonged and indefinite terms, some for decades.”

These new rules and restrictions have not undermined prisoners’ determination. “It looks like we are about to enter a stage of repression,” Benton wrote the day after the half-hour “welfare checks” began. “But for those of us sure of spirit, we will not be swayed within our resolve in bringing about meaningful changes within prison conditions.” [6/4/13]

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

Guantanamo Reports 106 Captives Still on Hunger Strike

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Food that is force-fed to detainees on hunger strikes at the detainee medical clinic in Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on June 9, 2010. (Photo: Richard Perry / The New York Times)Food that is force-fed to detainees on hunger strikes at the detainee medical clinic in Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on June 9, 2010. (Photo: Richard Perry / The New York Times)The U.S. military on Saturday said no Guantánamo captives had quit their months-old hunger strike, reporting that 106 prisoners were refusing meals — and Navy medical forces put 45 of them on a list for forced-feedings.

Army Maj. Gordon Campbell, a deputy prison spokesman, said an earlier report that two captives had voluntarily resumed eating was in error.

The figure of hunger strikers has only risen since the military acknowledged the protest in March.

Commanders say Navy medical staff use a calculus of missed meals and weight loss to decide when to count a captive as a hunger striker. On the flipside, a hunger striker has to voluntarily eat a number of meals in a row to get off the list.

Lawyers for the detainees say the protest erupted after a Feb. 6-7 search of their cells; the prisoners perceived that the guards had disrespected their Qurans.

The chief prison camp spokesman, Navy Capt. Robert Durand, said the protest began a month later after a false report by the Taliban and that Guantánamo’s guards treat Islam’s holy book respectfully. Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, who has oversight of the prison, said the captives were “devastated” that, after pledging to close the prison in Cuba, President Barack Obama appeared to retreat from that vow.

No prisoners have abandoned their fasts, Campbell said. He attributed earlier reports of a reduction to a numerical “mix up.”

The figures remained steady days before Monday evening’s start of Ramadan when Muslims traditionally fast by day and have festive meals at night. The Pentagon said in a court filing this week it will continue to force-feed hunger strikers to prevent any from dying of starvation, but planned to do it after sunset and before dawn barring “any unforeseen emergency or operational issues” in consideration of the day-time fasting holy month.

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

Can We Afford to Wait for Redistribution?

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The ‘market’ isn’t working for working people. The rich have rigged the rules. We ought to keep trying, of course, to reduce the resulting inequality. But why not, unions are asking, end the rule rigging?

Labor analysts are increasingly making the case for what they call “predistribution.”

Sometimes we need new words to get a grasp on new ideas. Frances O’Grady, Britain’s highest-ranking labor leader, has a new word for us. Predistribution.

Why does O’Grady, the general secretary of the UK’s Trades Union Congress, want us talking “predistribution”? In our staggeringly unequal modern times, her union federation argues in a new paper released last week, redistribution no longer gets us particularly far.

The rich – on both sides of the Atlantic – have seen to that. Over recent years, they’ve systematically dismantled progressive tax systems, the historic heart to public policies that aim to redistribute top-heavy concentrations of wealth.

Even worse, the rich and their cheerleaders have turned redistribution into a political four-letter word. They’ve branded anything that smacks of redistribution a dangerous assault on the “natural” wisdom of our market economy.

We have to sit back, their argument goes, and let the market reward the enterprising and punish the slothful. Or else risk eternal economic damnation.

In reality, of course, markets don’t just reward the enterprising. They reward the price-fixers and the union-busters, the monopolists and the just-plain lucky. And if you inherit grand fortune, the market will merrily heap rewards your way year after year, no matter how slothfully you may behave day-to-day.

Those who hold power shape the rules that determine how markets operate – and who profits the most from them. 

Markets, in short, don’t follow “natural” laws. They reflect existing power relationships. Those who hold power bend the rules, formal and informal, that determine how markets operate – and who profits the most from them.

Back in the mid 20th century, in both Britain and the United States, average citizens wielded enough power – through trade unions and at the ballot box – to impact those rules. But that power has ebbed over the last three decades. The rich have rewritten the rules, to line their pockets and their pockets alone.

How profoundly are our new marketplace rules – on everything from minimum wage levels to collective bargaining – depressing wages in Britain and the United States? In the UK today, 20.6 percent of employees work in jobs that rate as “low wage,” that is, pay less than two-thirds the nation’s median paycheck.

Only one other major developed nation in the world – the United States – has a higher share of workers in low-wage work. That U.S. share: 24.8 percent.

Other nations are doing far better at making work pay. In France, only 11.1 percent of workers labor in low-wage jobs. In Norway, only 8 percent.

No eternal “marketplace” realities, in other words, determine how high or how low a nation’s average paychecks go. Real decisions by real people – on the rules that shape how economies actually operate – make this determination.

The rich have rewritten the rules, to line their pockets and their pockets alone.

And more progressive taxes by themselves, British labor analysts argue, won’t be enough to undo the stark inequality the rule changes of recent years have created.

We can’t just, in other words, redistribute anymore. We need to predistribute – end those marketplace practices that steer the wealth our economy creates away from the people who actually create it.

The British labor pamphlet Frances O’Grady introduced last week, How to Boost the Wage Share, advances a gameplan for reversing the trends that are shoving income from worker paychecks to employer profits.

The pamphlet’s authors, veteran economic analysts Stewart Lansley and Howard Reed, offer a wide assortment of short-, medium-, and longer-term propoals that endeavor to forge “a more equal distribution of wages before taxes and benefits.”

Their proposals share one underlying commonality. They all target “the root causes of rising inequality rather than concentrating on tackling the symptoms through redistribution.”

This new Trades Union Congress pamphlet, at a more nuts-and-bolts level, explores everything from hiking the minimum wage to placing worker representatives on the corporate boards that set executive pay.

Overall, many of the new pamphlet’s ideas mirror proposals that also appear in Prosperity Economics, a paper by Yale University’s Jacob Hacker and Nathaniel Loewentheil that Americans unions have enthusiastically embraced.

Both these American and British analyses stress the importance, as Lansley and Reed put it, of “rebalancing the economy away from low-paid work.” And what if we don’t? What if we let the wage share continue to decrease? What if we continue to let the powerful and privileged grab with such unfettered abandon?

Without measures aimed at “raising the earnings floor” and “capping excessive rewards at the top,” Lansley and Reed argue, the “recovery” from the global economic collapse that began in 2007 will remain a nonstarter.

“Ultimately,” they conclude, “creating a lower gap will depend on a fundamental shift in the balance of economic and social power.”

In a word: predistribution.

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

Militarized police gone wild across America; terrorizing citizens, shooting pet dogs

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Behaving like occupying military force

Mike Adams
NaturalNews
July 7, 2013

America is rapidly devolving into the oppressive police state we’ve been warning readers about. Right now, cops are exhibiting thuggish, out-of-control “mafia” behavior as they run loose across America, terrorizing innocent citizens, shooting up the vehicles of people who are merely driving cars on public roadways, taking warrantless blood draws from drivers, shooting pet dogs of people who are merely filming police, raiding farmers at gunpoint over raw milk and terrorizing young women for buying bottled water and cookie dough.

All of these are real and happening right now in America. The cause behind them? Police are being “militarized” through federal training while being given weapons of war through federal grants. Police departments across the country are now being handed armored assault vehicles, surveillance drones and full-auto assault rifles. Along with this equipment comes a training and engagement posture that is increasingly aggressive and militaristic, subjecting more and more Americans to the kind of “theater of war” engagement tactics that the U.S. military would typically use at a roadblock in Afghanistan, for example. (See latest example, below.)

Military tactics and equipment now used by your local police

“In recent years, police departments have widely adopted military tactics, military equipment (armored personnel carriers, flash-bang grenades) – and, sometimes, the mindset of military conquerors rather than domestic peacekeepers,” writes TimesDispatch.com.

President Obama famously said, during the gun control debate of 2012, that, “AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not on the streets of America.” Yet it is his administration that’s putting weapons of war on the streets of America via local police departments. By arming police and training police in the hardware and tactics of military warfare, the Obama administrations is doing an end-run around Posse Comitatus and effectively putting wartime troops on the streets of America.

As part of all this, federal law enforcement have been training with so-called “no hesitation targets” that train them to instinctively shoot pregnant women, children, young moms and old men. These targets – whose existence was first denied, and then downplayed when the denials didn’t work – offer irrefutable proof that the corrupt, criminal government currently running the USA is actively planning to engage women, children and senior citizens with weapons of war.

This is, of course, on top of the long-confirmed two billion rounds of ammunition the Department of Homeland Security has ordered (and partially acquired) in an attempt to stockpile enough ammunition for a twenty-year war with the American people. Once again, this stockpiling of hollow-point ammo by DHS was first denied, then downplayed, and now has been called a “conspiracy theory” even thought it is confirmed by the federal government iself which says it needs the ammo for “training purposes.”

The IRS is now being trained with AR-15 rifles, and DHS has also purchased thousands of armored assault vehicles that are mine resistant and bulletproof.

Meanwhile, the Boston marathon bombing proved that local police will now act completely outside of law and initiate Martial Law in a manhunt for a teenager. It wasn’t declared Martial Law, of course… it was called “shelter in place,” meaning you could not leave your homes. Once the lockdown was in place, Boston police went door to door, yanking citizens out of their homes at gunpoint, screaming at them to put their hands up or be shot on sight. This was all done completely without any warrant or any suspicion of wrongdoing on the part of homeowners.

It later turned out that the entire Boston marathon bombing was meticulously planned in advanced by the Boston police and was run as a “terror drill” to terrorize Boston and give the police some much-needed practice in running a police state oppression scenario. This is all 100% confirmed and openly admitted. Even the Boston Globe reported, on June 8th:

The scenario had been carefully planned: A terrorist group prepared to hurt vast numbers of people around Boston would leave backpacks filled with explosives at Faneuil Hall, the Seaport District, and in other towns, spreading waves of panic and fear. Detectives would have to catch the culprits. … But two months before the training exercise was to take place, the city was hit with a real terrorist attack executed in a frighteningly similar fashion.

Now, apparently, local law enforcement can simply utter the word “manhunt!” and completely ignore all citizens’ rights, the Bill of Rights, due process and state and federal law. Police have become rogue gangs with complete immunity from all crimes even while they are the ones committing crimes on a massive scale. They can pull you over for no crime whatsoever, stick their fingers inside your anus and call it a “roadside search” while using the same glove on you that they just used on somebody else’s anus. (True story. Click here for source.)

Police terrorize 20-year-old girl for buying bottled water and cookie dough

The latest example of the terror being dished out by local police operations is found in the story of Ann Downey, a young girl whose vehicle was assaulted by plain clothed “undercover” police who she thought were trying to carjack her.

It is very important to listen to the audio of Ann’s 911 call begging for help as she and her friend were rushed by six men with guns:

It turns out Ann Downey was being terrorized by members of Virginia’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC), which apparently consists of trigger-happy police who are so bored out of their minds that they can think of nothing more useful to do than terrorize young women for buying cookie dough.

Imagine the scene: You’re getting into your car after buying some cookie dough, then suddenly six non-uniformed men rush your car and start screaming at you while wielding guns. At least one of the undercover officers drew his weapon, according to media reports.

Am I the only one here who might have pulled out my own gun and started shooting in self defense, believing my life to be in extreme danger by a rogue gang of armed criminals who were aggressively rushing my vehicle?

As far as I’m concerned, these ABC goons are lucky they didn’t get shot, and if they had been shot, it would be hard to argue that the woman wasn’t exercising her right to self defense in shooting them.

It’s important to note here that the driver of the vehicle, named Elizabeth Daly, was charged with three felonies. In a statement posted online, Daly said:

“This has been an extremely trying experience and one that has called into question what I value most: my integrity, honor and character. …Cookie dough and ice cream for a fundraiser should not put you through an extremely degrading night and afternoon in jail, appearing in court, posting bond, having to pay an attorney …not allowed to leave the state, causing you endless nights of no sleep, [a]ffecting your school work and final exams, wondering if you would be dismissed from school, wondering how this would damage your reputation and ability to get a job, all while waiting on pins and needles to see what the Commonwealth is going to offer you.”

See the interactive map of paramilitary police raids taking place across America

Here’s a map showing just some of the paramilitary police raids and attacks on American citizens:

To see the full map with interactive pop-ups, visit:

http://www.cato.org/raidmap

As you view the map above, keep in mind how widespread these events really are. Just last week in Nevada, a couple filed suit against local police there, claiming they were raided and shot with “pepperball rounds” by police that wanted to use their home as a stakeout location. For refusing this demand, the couple were shot at and then arrested for “obstructing justice.”

As the lawsuit reads:

[Police officers] conspired among themselves to force Anthony Mitchell out of his residence and to occupy his home for their own use. It was determined to move to [the home address] and attempt to contact Mitchell. If Mitchell answered the door he would be asked to leave. If he refused to leave he would be arrested for Obstructing a Police Officer. If Mitchell refused to answer the door, force entry would be made and Mitchell would be arrested.

Seconds later, officers, including Officer Rockwell, smashed open plaintiff Anthony Mitchell’s front door with a metal ram as plaintiff stood in his living room. As plaintiff Anthony Mitchell stood in shock, the officers aimed their weapons at Anthony Mitchell and shouted obscenities at him and ordered him to lie down on the floor. Officers, including Officer David Cawthorn, then fired multiple pepperball rounds at plaintiff as he lay defenseless on the floor of his living room. Anthony Mitchell was struck at least three times by shots fired from close range, injuring him and causing him severe pain. Officers then arrested him for obstructing a police officer, searched the house and moved furniture without his permission and set up a place in his home for a lookout.

This is America? Think again…

When do Americans stand up and say, “Enough!”

So here’s the question: At what point will Americans realize their country has become a Stasi-inspired police state tyranny? When will they march on their state capitols and demand to be treated with dignity and respect rather than being beaten, shot, arrested, intimidated and censored by police?

And I ask this question as a supporter of local law enforcement. I’ve worked with police, trained with police and volunteered with police. I know that most police officers across the country are honorable men and women who are trying their best to keep the peace. But the number of “good” police seems to be shrinking while the number of “rogue” cops is on the rise.

This highly disturbing trend is an intentional one put in place by the Obama administration that’s trying to militarize police all across the nation in a run-up to something very, very big: an event that is expected to cause nationwide rioting and social unrest.

Why else would DHS buy 2+ billion rounds of ammunition, bulletproof roadside checkpoint booths, armored assault vehicles and full-auto assault rifles? Why else would police be trained to shoot pregnant women, children and senior citizens on sight? Why else would the government be spying on every phone call, email and text of every U.S. citizen right now?

We are living under a nightmare Big Brother police state right now, and it’s not an accident. This has all been brought in for a specific purpose: to first acclimate the public to a police state presence (hence the TSA security pat-downs), and then to activate that police infrastructure to engage in the mass-arrest or mass-murder of Americans.

The American people are asleep at the wheel while tyranny encircles them

This will happen as long as Americans allow it to happen. Every day that the American people spend distracted by gay marriage, sports celebrities, TV programs and the Kardashians is another day that the criminal elite running this country build up their infrastructure of terror and oppression against the People.

While Americans are hypnotized into a state of delusional denial by CNN and the New York Times, the Obama administration is strangling freedom to death with a determined rollout of total surveillance, actual death squads that target journalists, the criminalization of whistleblowing, the targeting of reporters in the mainstream media, the intimidation of patriot groups by the IRS and a hundred other forms of oppression, intimidation and blackmail.

What we are witnessing here is a government gone completely criminal. This is a government that now openly kidnapped the President of Bolivia on the off chance that his airplane might have been carrying Ed Snowden. This is the government that openly admits to the existence of secret kill lists that target American citizens for assassination. This is the government that runs the world’s largest surveillance spy program which even spies on ally nations like Germany and France.

Trickle-down tyranny

The U.S. government abides by no law and respects no limits whatsoever to its power. It is a rogue, out-of-control criminal mafia that has taken over positions of government in order to grant itself the appearance of authority.

It is this mafia mentality that’s trickling down to local police departments in the form of aggressive tactical training, armored assault vehicles and even police uniforms which now look like something torn right out of a dystopian, Orwellian sci-fi flick depicting a dark future.

I coined the term “Trickle-Down Tyranny” in 2011. The phrase was later picked up by Michael Savage and became the title of his book by the same name.

Since 2011, Savage himself has become increasingly outspoken about the rise of tyrannical government, the oppression of freedom in America, and the dangerous tactics of intimidation and oppression being practiced by police nationwide.

Everyone can see what’s happening: America is turning into an occupied police state. Individual freedoms are bring crushed. All the rights guaranteed under the Bill of Rights are being systematically destroyed by design. The Obama administration is rapidly becoming the Orwellian dictator we all feared might one day rise up in America, yet half of America remains too far gone to open their eyes and realize what’s happening.

And so the injustices are allowed to accelerate to the point where innocent Americans are being routinely terrorized by law enforcement. While the guilty run free, the innocent are targeted for shakedowns, arrest or beatings.

This is the death of freedom in America. You are watching the destruction of the Land of the Free and the rise of Obama’s tyrannical regime.

If you and millions of others do not rise up against this, you may one day find yourself collapsed on your knees, looking over a large ditch of fresh bodies while a “police officer” holds a pistol to the back of your head and pulls the trigger.

You, like hundreds of millions before you, are about to become another statistical victim of government gone bad. Throughout history, rogue governments have murdered at least 260 million people. And it all began with precisely the same process we are seeing unfold in America today.

Rise up or be exterminated.

Jim Marrs And NASA Insider Talk About Anti Grav!

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Infowars.com
July 7, 2013

Had a chance to talk to two of my old friends yesterday.

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This article was posted: Sunday, July 7, 2013 at 9:00 am

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

Brazil football referee beheaded after stabbing player to death

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RT
July 7, 2013

Outraged spectators in northern Brazil stoned football referee Otavio da Silva to death and hacked up his body, after he stabbed a player, who died on his way to hospital.

Police say the incident happened when the referee red-carded 30-year-old player Josenir Abreu from a game. The two quarrelled and got into a fist fight, then Silva stabbed Abreu.

According to the Maranhao State Public Safety Department fans got to the field and decapitated the referee, then dismembered his body.

Local news reports say the angry mob stuck his head on a stake in the middle of the field.

Police have arrested a 27-year-old man in the ongoing investigation.

“We will identify and hold accountable all those involved in this incident. One crime will never justify another. Actions like this do not correspond with state law,” police spokesman Valter Costa told reporters.

The police are reportedly looking for two more suspects.

  • A d v e r t i s e m e n t

The incident took place with a backdrop of Brazil facing mounting pressure to show it is a safe place before 12 cities host the 2014 World Cup and the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016.

In June, Brazil was swept by the protests partly against the spending in preparation for the World Cup, as well as against the level of corruption.

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Another Problem with Mass Spying: Centralized Data Creates An Easy Mark for Hackers

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Washington’s Blog
July 7, 2013

By Gathering Data On Americans In One Place, The Government Is Creating An Attractive Target For Hackers

As if we needed another reason to oppose mass spying on the American public, Zdnet reports that the NSA database could be hacked by Chinese or -other lurkers:

What’s missing in this discussion [of NSA spying] is this: how secure is the NSA’s spying system?If a foreign entity wanted to spy on US companies or individuals, would it try to tackle the problem directly by targeting the specific company or individual in its electronic spying attempts? It might, but that’s a lot of work for an uncertain payoff.

A much more efficient approach would be to hack into a surveillance system that already has access to the information. Far better to hack into the NSA spying system at Google, or at Facebook, or at Microsoft (if such an NSA system exists, of course).

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Everyone knows that there’s no such thing as a completely secure system. The greater danger in the NSA’s spying activities is not from the NSA itself, but from the many nefarious foreign national, and international criminal enterprises, that find a way to exploit the existing spy systems so thoroughly crafted, and so thoroughly extensive, that have been built by the NSA.

The danger from allowing the NSA to have deep access into the data systems of US companies is that that very system creates an enormous vulnerability that would not have existed. Hack into part of the NSA spy network and you have access to a mass of private data that would be near impossible to collect in any other way.

It’s ironic that the NSA’s activities to improve the security of the US have created the nation’s largest security risk of them all.

Remember, the Chinese have already hacked the most advanced American weapon systems, Congress, America’s largest banks, and other sensitive targets.

And the more centralized any system is, the more vulnerable it is.

Information is safest when it is diversified in many different places. By gathering data on Americans in one place, the government is creating an easy mark for hackers.

Cairo Filmfest invites Iranian cineastes

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The president of Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) Amir Al Omari has invited Iranian cineastes to take part in the 2013 edition of the event.

Å“We will welcome to the screen productions created by the Iranian filmmakers at this yearâ„¢s festival,” Al Omari said.

Though the festival is trying to host Iranian filmmakers, via issuance will depend on the Egyptâ„¢s foreign policy and the festival organizers cannot interfere, he noted.

Amir Al Omari visited Iran in 2012 to attend Tehranâ„¢s Short Film Festival as a jury member.

Several Iranian filmmakers missed the last yearâ„¢s festival over Egyptâ„¢s refusal to issue visas to them.

The Private Life of Mr. and Mrs. M by Rouhollah Hejazi and Flight of the Kites by Ali Qavitan were among the movies participated in last yearâ„¢s edition.

Established in 1976, CIFF is an annual film event held in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.

This yearâ„¢s festival is scheduled to take place from November 27 to December 6, 2013.

FGP/FGP

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Iran pres. meets with foreign envoys

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Iran pres. meets with Australian, Guyanese ambassadors

Incumbent Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for expansion of ties between Iran and Australia, saying the two countries have always enjoyed good relations.

During a Saturday meeting with the new Australian Ambassador to Tehran Paul Foley, Ahmadinejad praised the relations between the two countries.

Å“There is no dark point in the historical relations between the two countries and definitely in the future, the mutual relations will further improve compared to the past and we will witness them broadening and deepening,” he said.

The Australian ambassador submitted his credentials to President Ahmadinejad during the meeting and underlined the need for the enhancement of Tehran-Canberra ties.

In another Saturday meeting with Guyanese Presidential Envoy George Hallaq, President Ahmadinejad said relations between Iran and Guyana will never be weakened or severed despite the long geographical distance between the two countries.

The Iranian president noted that the two countries Å“are on the same front,” expressing hope that the officials of both countries would explore venues of cooperation.

Hallaq also delivered the written message of Guyanese President Donald Ramotar to Ahmadinejad and called for closer ties with Iran.

MKA/HGH/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

None Dare Call it FASCISM: How the NSA has (already) privatized tyranny

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dangerousminds.net
July 7, 2013

yeswescansnsnsnsnsnsnsnsThough most people seem to be dimly aware of the fact that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was not technically an employee of NSA or the US Federal Government, I don’t see anyone raising the kind of stink that this pertinent little fact truly merits. And combine that with the “anything goes” environment that was clearly in operation while Snowden was peering into pretty much whatever he wanted, and the implications are pretty fucking serious indeed.

Let’s start with one of Snowden’s comments to Glenn Greenwald and the UK’s Guardian newspaper:

But I sitting at my desk certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a Federal judge to even the President if I had a personal e-mail.”

Say what? So I’m not allowed to even know this program exists, but a high school dropout working in a lowly cubical in Booz Allen Hamilton can listen in to everything I say on the telephone or write in an email or post on the Internet? What the fuck? Doesn’t anyone see how screwy that is?

Maybe we’ve just stopped giving a shit and are hoping to ride out the last years of Empire in blissful ignorance, chatting about cute cats on Facebook and watching our favorite shows on TV (The Mad Men season finale was just superb, wasn’t it?) OK, I get that. But let’s at least think about what it is we’re tuning out because, who knows? It could cause the US death-spiral to come around far sooner than anticipated, and that would be a serious buzz kill.

So let’s break it down, shall we? What’s the biggest secret exposed by Snowden so far? That the NSA engages in ubiquitous surveillance on pretty much all forms of communication in the US, of both domestic as well as internationally-bound traffic? Well, we kinda knew that already. Back in 2005 AT&T Telecom engineer Mark Klein blew the whistle on the NSA’s “secret room” in the Folsom Street CO (Central Office). Any kind of analysis of that setup (and Klein even included the connection diagrams) would give you a decent idea of what was going on. So no, ubiquitous surveillance wasn’t much of a surprise, not if you were paying careful attention.

What IS a surprise was just how fucked up and sloppy the whole NSA operation is. In fact, during his live chat via The Guardian’s website on June 17th, Snowden said this:

Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications.

In other words, the National Security Agency just let a bunch of freelance contractors more or less run wild with unlimited access to the most sensitive conceivable data of any and every US citizen along with a goodly portion of communications of non-US residents as well.

Monitoring? Controls? Audits? Are you shittin’ me? But how can we be absolutely sure, you might ask, that Snowden was telling the truth? Precisely because even a low-level contractor was able to access and download highly classified PowerPoint presentations and a whole smorgasbord of super secret spy stuff and then leak it to the world! (In modern computer networks this is trivial to control.)

At first blush it would appear that the main thing NSA has been doing with their impenetrable cloak of secrecy is to completely goof off and unaccountably run wild with their very special powers with the only “control” in place being the fear that any leakers would experience the Bradley Manning treatment. If it weren’t for the NSA cone of silence, this would be heralded universally as laughably and unbelievably incompetent. On the other hand, perhaps this isn’t simply complete negligence. Perhaps it’s the symptom of something far darker…

Consider what YOU would do with that level of access. After you got into work, grabbed coffee, and read TMZ, you might spend half an hour or so checking out red-tagged conversations of, say, members of Mosques in Brooklyn, or say, groups of Muslim girls gathering to watch Jon Stewart (yeah, that’s a real thing), or maybe even listen in on the methed-out ravings of some hillbilly militia scaring each other into buying yet more guns in preparation of the UN’s inevitable communist takeover of bumfuck Idaho. But all of that “real work” would get boring fast. So maybe you daydream a bit and then, all of a sudden, it hits you: What if you could, say, listen in on the CEOs, CFOs and whatever other Os there are of some mega-corporation. Hell, you could probably use a special software “agent” to automatically scan huge wads of traffic and send you anything with the phrases, “Bankruptcy announcement to the press tomorrow”, or “Earnings shortfall” or “Hostile takeover.” Knowing as you do that no one’s monitoring what you access on those super-secret NSA pipes, you realize it would be both trivially easy and unbelievably lucrative to act on an early tip before it was announced to Wall Street. In fact, you could possibly make millions.

But then another thought hits you. Maybe, just maybe, you aren’t the first person to think of this. In fact, Booz Allen Hamilton has been growing their government consulting business to National Security agencies by leaps and bounds, and their financial consulting arm has been doing pretty good too:

Booz Allen provides support to all federal finance and treasury organizations charged with the collection, management, and protection of the nation’s financial system. Such agencies include the US Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Reserve Board and Banks, Securities Exchange Commission, and Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation

So doesn’t this strike you as somewhat “funny”? Isn’t this some major league conflict of interest? On the one hand, BAH has been clearly given carte blanche to listen in on anything and everything, and they also happen to be in the financial “consulting” business. Would BAH ever take a significant financial position based on, oh let’s say, very privileged information? Though they may or may not do this under their own name, they clearly have the financial chops to create a vast maze of shell companies. Or maybe BAH as an organization doesn’t do this, but bigshots within it do.

Perhaps this sounds paranoid or like completely baseless speculation, but after the LIBOR and REIT scandals, it’s obvious that there are no government checks in place to detect such activities. Moreover, even if this hasn’t actually happened yet, given the sloppiness of the controls and unlimited access to surveillance data, it’s absolutely obvious that this is going to happen sooner or later. Indeed, perhaps that sloppiness in protecting confidential data is precisely because someone’s dipping into this data goldmine and is making out like a bandit.

From here it’s easy to imagine all sorts of ugly scenarios: A giant, über-secret private company that is ultimately answerable to no one but that has access to anything you might say or post on the Internet (ie, including what you might do to try to stop it), while also being able to capitalize on their access to literally priceless financial secrets via their consulting and access to the markets. Once such a monstrosity sunk its claws in deep enough it would be very difficult to pull that thing off…ever. Then again, isn’t this what the Koch Brothers and their stooges the Tea Party wanted all along? They want to kill the state and Federal agencies so that a small keiretsu of giant companies can step in and take over. This “state corporatism” had a name which was called, hold on a minute while I remember…oh yeah, that’s right, Fascism.

Am I saying there’s some gigantic fascist conspiracy out there ready to take over the world? Nah. Well, probably not. But the point is that there doesn’t need to be an actual conspiracy in order for our true liberties to be under attack by the large corporations: Remember, Nestlé‘s CEO wants to privatize your water supply and sell your water back to you; Bush, Cheney and the cartoonishly malevolent Dr Strangelove Donald Rumsfeld privatized war and Mike McConnell of Booz Allen Hamilton has long been a (successful) advocate of privatizing US national security (and he was previously director of National Security under Bush).

Where’s all this headed? I don’t know, but I DO know it ain’t headed for more security, more freedom and better access to water in the world! These fuckers have a vested interest in keeping things nice and turbulent while making you think that there are legions of Muslims, communists and homosexuals out there just waiting to steal your freedoms, give away all your hard-earned stuff and sodomize your children. Meanwhile, of course, they and the Congress they have bought and paid for keep defunding essential Federal programs to the point where they can no longer function properly, so the public concludes, “Well, these government agencies can’t do anything so we might as well just get rid of them. And let’s privatize prisons and schools while we’re at it.”

Who knows? Will we soon enter the time where private contractors raised on “Call of Duty” operate domestic drones and have kill quotas that earn them cash incentives? Fuck, I read the kill list wrong, one might say, Can you ask your buddy to change the name on my list to whoever it was I just nailed? Thanks, pal. Beers are on me tonight.

What’s the solution? I don’t know, but let’s apply a nice, hot blowtorch to Booz Allen Hamilton’s filthy snout and push them the hell out of that giant government feeding trough filled to the brim with our tax dollars: They’re clearly incompetent, negligent, and have allowed documents of National Security to be accessed, downloaded and then leaked. (And don’t misunderstand: Snowden is a hero for exposing all of what’s been going on, but that still doesn’t mean BAH wasn’t negligent.) We also need to take baseball bat to the giant, heavy-lidded porcine head of the NSA as it gobbles down the information you and I own.

Let’s just not miss what is arguably an even greater danger, the privatization and outsourcing of tyranny itself to the big mega-corporates.

Iran firm sees $300mn investment hike

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Iranian oil technicians working on installations. (File photo)

Iranâ„¢s Petroleum Engineering and Development Company (PEDEC) has witnessed a 300-million-dollar rise in foreign investments attracting during the Persian calendar year ending March 2013.

PEDEC Managing Director Nader Qorbani said on Sunday that the volume of foreign investment attracted by PEDEC rose from USD 1.1 billion in the 2011-2012 period to USD 1.4 billion in the 2012-2013 period.

He added that the Å“upward trend of investment attraction in the company would continue” in the current Persian calendar year (2013-2014).

Established in 2004, PEDEC is tasked with the development of hydrocarbon fields Iran shares with its neighbors.

On July 5, Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said development of the countryâ„¢s oil and gas industry is going on despite the escalation of illegal US-engineered sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

At the beginning of 2012, the United States and the European Union imposed new sanctions on Iranâ„¢s oil and financial sectors with the goal of preventing other countries from purchasing Iranian oil and conducting transactions with the Central Bank of Iran.

The sanctions came into force in early summer 2012.

In November 2012, the US Senate approved a new round of sanctions against Iran’s energy, ports, shipping and shipbuilding sectors.

The illegal US-engineered sanctions have been imposed based on the unfounded accusation that Iran is pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.

Iran rejects the allegation, arguing that as a committed signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

KA/HGH/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

7/7 Mock Terror Drill: What Relationship to the Real Time Terror Attacks?

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July 7, 2005, eight years ago, the London 7/7 bombings.

Was there advanced knowledge of the attacks? Was it a conspiracy?

The following text was published by Global Research on August 8, 2005

*     *     *

A fictional “scenario” of multiple bomb attacks on London’s underground took place at exactly the same time as the bomb attack on July 7, 2005.

Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, a private firm on contract to the London Metropolitan Police, described in a BBC interview how he had organized and conducted the anti-terror drill, on behalf of an unnamed business client.

The fictional scenario was based on simultaneous bombs going off at exactly the same time at the underground stations where the real attacks were occurring:

POWER: At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now.

HOST: To get this quite straight, you were running an exercise to see how you would cope with this and it happened while you were running the exercise?

POWER: Precisely, and it was about half past nine this morning, we planned this for a company and for obvious reasons I don’t want to reveal their name but they’re listening and they’ll know it. And we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they’d met and so within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one and so we went through the correct drills of activating crisis management procedures to jump from slow time to quick time thinking and so on.

(BBC Radio Interview, 7 July 2005)

In response to the flood of incoming email messages, Peter Power —who is a former senior Scotland Yard official specializing in counterterrorism— responded in the form of the following “automatic reply”:

“Thank you for your message. Given the volume of emails about events on 7 July and a commonly expressed misguided belief that our exercise revealed prescient behaviour, or was somehow a conspiracy (noting that several websites interpreted our work that day in an inaccurate / naive / ignorant / hostile manner) it has been decided to issue a single email response as follows:

It is confirmed that a short number of ‘walk through’ scenarios planed [sic] well in advance had commenced that morning for a private company in London (as part of a wider project that remains confidential) and that two scenarios related directly to terrorist bombs at the same time as the ones that actually detonated with such tragic results. One scenario in particular, was very similar to real time events.

However, anyone with knowledge about such ongoing threats to our capital city will be aware that (a) the emergency services have already practiced several of their own exercises based on bombs in the underground system (also reported by the main news channels) and (b) a few months ago the BBC broadcast a similar documentary on the same theme, although with much worse consequences [??]. It is hardly surprising therefore, that we chose a feasible scenario — but the timing and script was nonetheless, a little disconcerting.

In short, our exercise (which involved just a few people as crisis managers actually responding to a simulated series of activities involving, on paper, 1000 staff) quickly became the real thing and the players that morning responded very well indeed to the sudden reality of events.

Beyond this no further comment will be made and based on the extraordinary number of messages from ill informed people, no replies will henceforth be given to anyone unable to demonstrate a bona fide reason for asking (e.g. accredited journalist / academic).

[ signed ] Peter Power”

(quoted in London Underground Exercises: Peter Power Responds, Jon Rappoport, July 13 2005
http://www.infowars.com/articles/London_attack/power_responds_terror_drills.htm)

Mock Terror Drills

There was nothing “routine” in the so-called “walk through” scenarios. Visor’s mock terror drills (held on the very same day as the real attack) was by no means an isolated “coincidence”. Power’s email response suggests that mock drills are undertaken very frequently, as a matter of routine, and that there was nothing particularly out of the ordinary in the exercise conducted on July 7th, which just so happened to coincide with the real terror attacks.

There have indeed been several documented high profile cases of mock terror drills in the US and the UK, held prior or on exactly the same day and at the same time as the actual terror event. In the three previous cases reviewed below, the mock drills bear a canny resemblance to the real time terror attacks.

 1. CIA Sponsored Exercise on the Morning of 9/11

On the morning of September 11 2001, within minutes of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the CIA had been running “a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building”. The simulation was held at the CIA Chantilly Virginia Reconnaissance Office.

The Bush administration described the event as “a bizarre coincidence”. The matter was not mentioned by the media.(AP, 22 August 2002)

The CIA sponsored simulation consisted in a “scheduled exercise” held on the morning of September 11, 2001, where “a small corporate jet crashed into one of the four towers at the agency’s headquarters building after experiencing a mechanical failure.” (Quoted in Associated Press, 22 August 2002.)

The news concerning the 9/11 Chantilly aircraft crashing simulation was hushed up. It was not made public at the time. It was revealed almost a year later, in the form of an innocuous announcement of a Homeland Security Conference. The latter entitled “Homeland Security: America’s Leadership Challenge” was held in Chicago on September 6, 2002, barely a few days before the commemoration of the tragic events of 9/11.

The promotional literature for the conference under the auspices of the National Law Enforcement and Security Institute (NLESI) stated what nobody in America knew about. On the morning of 9/11, the CIA was conducting a pre-planned simulation of a plane striking a building. One of the key speakers at the National Law Enforcement and Security Institute conference was CIA’s John Fulton, Chief of the Strategic War Gaming Division of the National Reconnaissance Office a specialist in risk and threat response analysis, scenario gaming, and strategic planning.

(See . The National Law Enforcement and Security Institute website is: http://www.nlsi.net/ See also The Memory Hole at http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/cia-simulation.htm):

On the morning of September 11th 2001, Mr. Fulton and his team at the CIA were running a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building. Little did they know that the scenario would come true in a dramatic way that day. Information is the most powerful tool available in the homeland security effort. At the core of every initiative currently underway to protect our country and its citizens is the challenge of getting the right information to the right people at the right time. How can so much information from around the world be captured and processed in meaningful and timely ways? Mr. Fulton shares his insights into the intelligence community, and shares a vision of how today’s information systems will be developed into even better counter-terrorism tools of tomorrow. (Ibid)

 2. October 2000 Mock Terror Attack on the Pentagon

In late October 2000 (more than ten months prior to 9/11), a military exercise was conducted which consisted in establishing the scenario of a simulated passenger plane crashing into the Pentagon. The Defense Protective Services Police and the Pentagon’s Command Emergency Response Team coordinated the exercise. According to a detailed report by Dennis Ryan of Fort Myer Military Community’s Pentagram, “the Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise, as the crash was called, was just one of several scenarios that emergency response teams were exposed to on Oct. 24-26 [2000]“:

The fire and smoke from the downed passenger aircraft billows from the Pentagon courtyard. Defense Protective Services Police seal the crash sight. Army medics, nurses and doctors scramble to organize aid. (…) Don Abbott, of Command Emergency Response Training, walks over to the Pentagon and extinguishes the flames. The Pentagon was a model and the “plane crash” was a simulated one.

On Oct. 24, there was a mock terrorist incident at the Pentagon Metro stop and a construction accident to name just some of the scenarios that were practiced to better prepare local agencies for real incidents.

(Dennis Ryan, “Contingency planning, Pentagon MASCAL exercise simulates scenarios in preparing for emergencies”, MDW NEWS 3 Nov 2000. http://www.mdw.army.mil/ )

3. Britain’s Atlantic Blue, April 2005

In Britain, there were several documented exercises of terror attacks on London’s underground system.

In addition to the 7/7 exercise conducted by Visor Consultants, a similar mock terror drill on London’s transportation system entitled “Atlantic Blue” was held in April 2005, barely three months prior to the real attacks. In 2003, a mock terror drill labelled OSIRIS 2 was conducted. It consisted, according to Peter Power in testing the “equipment and people deep in the Underground of London”. It involved the participation of several hundred people. (Interview with Peter Power, CTV, 11 July 2005).

“Atlantic Blue” was part of a much larger US sponsored emergency preparedness exercise labelled TOPOFF 3, which included the participation of Britain and Canada. It had been ordered by the UK Secretary of State for the Home Department, Mr. Charles Clarke, in close coordination with his US counterpart Michael Chertoff.

The assumptions of the Visor Consultants mock drill conducted on the morning of July 7th were similar to those conducted under “Atlantic Blue”. This should come as no surprise since Visor Consultants was involved, on contract to the British government, in the organisation and conduct of Atlantic Blue and in coordination with the US Department of Homeland Security.

As in the case of the 9/11 simulation organized by the CIA, the July 7, 2005 Visor mock terror drill, was casually dismissed by the media, without further investigation, as a mere “coincidence”, with no relationship to the real event.

Foreknowledge of the 7/7 Attack?

According to a report of the Associated Press correspondent in Jerusalem, the Israeli embassy in London had been advised in advance by Scotland Yard of an impending bomb attack:

Just before the blasts, Scotland Yard called the security officer at the Israeli Embassy to say they had received warnings of possible attacks, the official said. He did not say whether British police made any link to the economic conference.(AP, 7 July 2005)

Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was warned by his embassy not to attend an attend an economic conference organized by the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) in collaboration with the Israeli embassy and Deutsche Bank.

Netanyahu was staying at the Aldridge Hotel in Mayfair. The conference venue was a few miles away at the Great Eastern Hotel close to the Liverpool subway station, where one of the bomb blasts occurred.

Rudolph Giuliani’s London Visit

Rudolph Giuliani, who was mayor of New York City at the time of the 9/11 attacks, was staying at the Great Eastern hotel on the 7th of July, where TASE was hosting its economic conference, with Israel’s Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as keynote speaker.

Giuliani was having a business breakfast meeting in his room at the Great Eastern Hotel, close to Liverpool Street station when the bombs went off:

“I didn’t hear the Liverpool Street bomb go off,” he explains. “One of my security people came into the room and informed me that there had been an explosion. We went outside and they pointed in the direction of where they thought the incident had happened. There was no panic. I went back in to my breakfast. At that stage, the information coming in to us was very ambiguous.” (quoted in the Evening Standard, 11 July 2005.)

Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Rudolph Giuliani knew each other. Giuliani had officially welcomed Netanyahu when he visited New York City as Prime Minister of Israel in 1996. There was no indication, however, from news reports that the two men met in London at the Great Eastern. On the day prior to the London attacks, July 6th, Giuliani was in North Yorkshire at a meeting.

After completing his term as mayor of New York City, Rudi Giuliani established a security outfit: Giuliani Security and Safety. The latter is a subsidary of Giuliani Partners LLC. headed by former New York head of the FBI, Pasquale D’Amuro.

After 9/11, D’Amuro was appointed Inspector in Charge of the FBI’s investigation of 9/11. He later served as Assistant Director of the Counterterrorism Division at FBI Headquarters and, Executive Assistant Director for Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence. D’Amuro had close links to the Neocons in the Bush adminstration.

It is worth noting that Visor Consultants and Giuliani Security and Safety LLC specialize in similar “mock terror drills” and “emergency preparedness” procedures. Both Giuliani and Power were in London at the same time within a short distance of one of the bombing sites. While there is no evidence that Giuliani and Power met in London, the two companies have had prior business contacts in the area of emergency preparedness. Peter Power served on the Advisory Board to the Canadian Centre for Emergency Preparedness (CCEP), together with Richard Sheirer, Senior Vice President of Giuliani and Partners. who was previously Commissioner at the NYC Office of Emergency Management, and Director of New York City Homeland Security.

(See CCEP at http://www.ccep.ca/ccep_shei.html)

Concluding Remarks

One should not at this stage of the investigation draw hasty conclusions regarding the mock terror drill of a terror attack on the London underground, held on the same day and at the same time as the real time attacks.

The issue cannot, however, be dismissed. One would expect that it be addressed in a serious and professional fashion by the police investigation and that the matter be the object of a formal clarification by the British authorities.

The issue of foreknowledge raised in the Associated Press report also requires investigation.

More generally, an independent public inquiry into the London bomb attacks is required.

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica and is the author of America’s “War on Terrorism” , Second Edition, 2005, forthcoming.

Republished with permission from: Global Research

NATO tanker torched in SW Pakistan

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Pakistani firefighters extinguish burning NATO supply oil tankers and goods trucks at a terminal following an overnight attack by gunmen in Quetta on December 9, 2011.

Pro-Taliban militants in the troubled southwestern Pakistan have set fire to at least one NATO tanker carrying supplies to US-led forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

Local officials say two gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire at the container in Dhadar area of Bolan district on Sunday.

Å“The container was forced to stop after gun fire, at which point the armed assailants set it on fire,” the daily Dawn newspaper quoted a senior security official as saying.

Meanwhile, Pakistani security forces sealed the area off and begun a search operation in the volatile region.

Hundreds of NATO tankers and containers have been destroyed in different parts of Pakistan during the past three years.

Pakistani security forces have launched several operations in the troubled northwestern and southwestern provinces in a bid to flush out militants from the troubled regions.

Despite the Pakistani government’s operations against Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants and associated groups, they have been able to spread their influence in various regions of the country and kill thousands of people.

Thousands of Pakistanis have lost their lives in bombings and other militant attacks since 2001 when Pakistan entered an alliance with the US in its so-called war against terrorism.

JR/PR

Republished with permission from: Press TV

‘Greece nears deal for rescue loans’

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Anti-austerity protesters stand outside the Greek parliament building in Athens. (File photo)

Greek officials say the debt-ridden country is close to a deal with its international creditors on a new series of austerity measures that are necessary to release the next tranche of bailout funds.

Å“Very important progress was made,” said a finance ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity on Sunday following several hours of negotiations with rescue creditors namely the European Union (EU), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

To receive the next slice of bailout aid worth 8.1 billion euros (USD10.4 billion), Athens must cut thousands of jobs.

On the same day, the main opposition party Syriza, slammed the talks, saying in a statement that Å“The so-called negotiations once again result in new measures for layoffs, school and hospital shutdowns, taxes and wage cuts.”

The Eurogroup will meet in Brussels on Monday to decide whether Athens has done enough to get the new tranche of loans.

Greece was granted a 110 billion euro (USD 145 billion) bailout by the so-called troika in May 2010.

Another 130 billion euro (USD 170 billion) rescue package was approved in February 2012.

Greece has been at the epicenter of the eurozone debt crisis and is experiencing its fifth year of recession, while harsh austerity measures have left about half a million people without jobs.

The record high unemployment level stands at 27 percent and 62.5 percent of youths are without work.

One out of every five Greek workers is currently unemployed; banks are in a shaky position, and pensions and salaries have been slashed by up to 40 percent.

In April, the Greek parliament passed a bill to cut 15,000 state jobs by the end of 2014. The law was a condition for debt-stricken Greece to receive rescue loans from its European partners.

MAM/PR

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Egypt in wake of civil war: Putin

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that the impasse between the supporters and opponents of the ousted Egyptian president might spark a civil war in the African country.

Vladimir Putin, during his visit to Kazakhstan on Sunday, expressed concerns over the present situation in Egypt, saying “Syria is already in the grips of a civil war, unfortunately enough, and Egypt is moving in that direction.”

“We would like to see the Egyptian people avoid this fate,” he added.

On Jun 30, the first anniversary of Morsiâ„¢s inauguration as president following the 2011 revolution that toppled the Western-backed regime of Hosni Mubarak, the opponents and supporters of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi gathered in Cairoâ„¢s Liberation Square.

One side called for the presidentâ„¢s resignation, saying the president has reneged on his promises during his first year in office, while the other side demanded more time for the fledgling government.

On July 1, the Egyptian army gave President Morsi a 48-hour ultimatum to resolve the political crisis in the African country, which followed the opposition movementâ„¢s resignation deadline for Morsi.

Morsi dismissed the armyâ„¢s statement as an attempt to Å“deepen divisions and threaten the social peace,” saying, he would continue with his own plans for national reconciliation.

On July 3, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ousted Morsi and dissolved the country’s constitution in a move aimed at resolving the countryâ„¢s political crisis.

On July 4, the chief justice of Egyptâ„¢s Supreme Constitutional Court, Adly Mansour, was sworn in as interim president of the African country.

MM/PR

Republished with permission from: Press TV

The 7/7 London Bombings and MI5′s “Stepford Four” Operation: How the 2005 London Bombings Turned every Muslim into a Terror Suspect

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Dedicated to former South Yorkshire terror analyst Tony Farrell who lost his job but kept his integrity, and with thanks to the documentation provided by the July 7th Truth Campaign

 One intriguing aspect of the London Bombing report is the fact that the MI5 codename for the event is “Stepford”. The four “bombers” are referred to as the “Stepford four”. Why is this the case? … the MI5 codename is very revealing in that it suggests the operation was a carefully coordinated and controlled one with four compliant and malleable patsies following direct orders. Now if MI5 has no idea who was behind the operation or whether there were any orders coming from a mastermind, why would they give the event the codename “Stepford”?  (Steve Watson, January 30, 2006 Prison Planet)

Background

The word was out that there was easy money to be made by Muslims taking part in an emergency- preparedness operation. Mohammad Sidique Khan – better known by his western nickname “Sid” — had been approached by his contact, probably Haroon Rashid Aswat who was in town, about a big emergency preparedness operation that was looking for local Pakistanis who might take the part of pretend “suicide bombers” for the enactment. The call was somewhat unusual: not just anyone was to be asked. The people running this wanted “young men who were conservatively and cleanly dressed and probably had some higher education”. It looked as if it might be one of the ones related to Visor Consultants, which had a history of holding such events.  Sid’s wife, Hasina Patel, had been experiencing complications in her second pregnancy; he wondered if she might be better off getting help through expensive, private doctors. He agreed to take part in it and to recruit others.

Did he smell a rat? Khan asked only men of Pakistani descent who were single. His friend and younger sidekick Shezad Tanweer, who had just graduated from university, agreed. He had just racked up a big car repair bill on his beloved red Mercedes and could use the money. Eighteen-year old Hasib Hussain was a good guy who was awaiting his exams for entry into Leeds University that September; he could use the money for a car he had been looking at for the commute. Ejaz Fiaz, who was known for sometimes dyeing his hair blonde for parties, also agreed. He was a bit flakey but he seemed to fit the bill. Khan gave their names as volunteers.

What could go wrong? Aswat was well connected with British security and had to be reliable. But he had felt somewhat compromised by his and Tanweer’s work with security people the previous year. No one was more patriotic than he and Tanweer. They loved their country and wanted to help their government in any way. They had allowed themselves to be taped in 2004, but he didn’t feel good about it. He and Tanweer had been acting in good faith in getting other Muslims, like Omar Khyam, to talk on tape, but he started to realize that security people were basically trying to find Muslims to set up for their “War on Terror.” It had become dangerous for Muslims, even for patriots like him and Tanweer. He wondered whether the work they did for security had made them safer or put them in a more precarious position. Tapes the two of them had made for security guys the year before bothered him, tapes that had made them look like some kind of crazy terrorists, dressed up half like pirates and half like Palestinians, with red kifieh’s wrapped around their heads. They had been talked into being photographed like that against his better judgement – of course, they had also gotten paid for it. He hoped that those tapes were lying somewhere, forgotten.

But what could anyone do to him? Everybody knew him; his reputation was such that he had to be untouchable. He had been featured in a Sunday Times educational supplement for his excellent work in counseling children of immigrants; he was known for fixing dangerous situations, including conflict resolution with troubled teenagers, and he had even been able to help get kids off drugs. Kids knew he cared about their problems when he talked to them.  He also knew important people and was even a friend of his Member of Parliament. His mother-in-law knew the Queen and had special recognition for her progressive work with Muslim women. If there was anyone in the Muslim community who had to be beyond any suspicion for any funny business, it had to be him.

Still, it would be naive to think that there were no risks at all involved. It chilled him, wondering why an emergency preparedness operation really needed fake “suicide bombers”.   Khan got the word out that he and Hasina had separated. He didn’t want her harassed if anything went wrong and he was being set up.

Fiaz, the party guy, ended up cancelling out in the end, so Khan contacted Jamal (or, using his non-Muslim name, Germaine) Lindsay, a burly, black bodybuilder who had been born in Jamaica, to take Fiaz’s place. He wasn’t of Pakistani origin, but he was Muslim, anyway. His wife Samantha Lewthwaite was about to deliver their second child, so Lindsay was happy to get extra money.

All of the guys volunteering knew the security contacts; it looked as if it might be fun while they were helping out and making a bit of extra money.

Timeline

Thursday, July 7th, 2005, is a day people still talk about in London, England. A meeting of the G8 had started in Gleneagles and London had just been named as the city for the next summer Olympics. It was all good.

At about 8:50 am, Scotland Yard’s office put a call through to their Mossad contacts at the Israeli embassy. (Sheva, 2005) Benjamin Netanyahu, then serving as Israel’s Finance Minister, was in London to address a conference near Liverpool Station. They warned the Israeli officials that explosions were about to happen. Netanyahu remained in his room that morning.

London’s commuters weren’t as lucky. About five minutes later, explosions started to rip through London Transport subway cars and busses. At around 9 a.m., London Transport put out the word that there seemed to be a “power surge” problem. The Gold Team of London’s Metropolitan police (the “Met”) shut down the mobile phone system for at least an hour in central London – which they initially denied.

At 9:47 a.m., an explosion ripped through a No. 30 bus in Tavistock Square, near the office of the British Medical Association and also the offices of various security operations. Featuring a giant ad for a terror film, the bus seemed to be the only one that had strayed off of its normal route that day. The driver had just stuck his neck out to ask directions, when the back of the upper deck exploded. Photographs of the bus show it with varying degrees of damage. (Antagonist, 2005)

Soon after the Bus No. 30 explosion, the public was notified about that as well as about explosions on subways over the past 50 minutes; the entire London Transport system would be shut down

There had been reports of explosions in three busses and at least six subway cars. The subway explosions seemed to be on trains which could have started from King’s Cross station, although that would not be clear, given witness accounts, with some travelling in opposite directions or even on different subway lines. In addition, the FBI’s Vincent Cannistraro would report the further discovery of two unexploded bombs as well as mechanical timing devices. (Muir et al, 2005)

At 11 a.m. there were reports about police marksmen having killed from 1-4 “suicide bombers” at Canary Wharf, a media center. (Shortnews, 2005) The story made it to numerous international newspapers, including Toronto’s Globe & Mail. (Rook, 2005) The New Zealand Herald also reported that Canary Wharf workers were told to remain away from windows for six hours. (N Z Herald, 2005)

By noon,

  • Ÿ Police Commissioner Ian Blair noted that there had been “about six” explosions and people were asked to stay out of London.
  • Ÿ Also around noon, police inexplicably moved Lindsay’s parked car, with a valid parking ticket on it, from Luton’s commuter parking lot to a restricted parking lot at Leighton Buzzard.
  • Ÿ And around that time, “Sid” Khan’s wife Hasina Patel called the police Missing Persons hotline to report her husband missing; she had lost the baby;
  • Ÿ Some hours later, Hasib Hussain’s mother joined 115,000 frantic hotline callers to report Hasib missing.

Later that afternoon, the head of the security-related Visor Consultants, Peter Power, spoke on radio and TV. Incredibly, his company had been commissioned to carry out an emergency preparedness operation for simultaneous bombings at 9 a.m. at the very stations that were affected by the blasts: Edgware, Aldgate and Piccadilly. (Statisticians have noted that the probability of that being a coincidence are close to zero.) Power, it turned out, had practice making this announcement. He had been part of a mock exercise in April 2004 with the same bombing scenario of three subways and a bus that had been featured on a BBC Panorama program. He had also taken part in joint US/UK London emergency preparedness operations as recently as two months before. (Chossudovsky, 8/8 2005) Power was a veteran of British intelligence until his founding of Visor Consultants in 1995.

Everyone “knew” it was Al Qaeda

By the end of the day, the government claimed that “Islamic extremists” were responsible for four explosions in London that morning. ” Prime Minister Tony Blair was “incensed” at the suggestion by the head of the Opposition that an independent investigation might be appropriate. Since “everyone” knew that the Muslims had done it, it would be an insult to the security services, as well as a waste of time and money. Besides, one month before, The Inquiries Act became law, giving the Prime Minister full control of all inquiries; a truly independent inquiry would not be possible.

The London explosions – which Scotland Yard claimed it had had no advance notice of – was claimed to have killed 52 commuters and injured 700 – 300 of them seriously. The death toll from the bus was initially declared to be two but mysteriously increased to “13 or 14″; Ian Blair called it a complicated situation – without further elaboration. It took several hours for some of the injured to receive help, a possible factor in the death toll that would be investigated at the 2010 Hallett Inquest. The government had not only rejected any inquiry, they were also busy destroying evidence. The bombed vehicles were immediately taken off and disposed of – apparently sent out of Britain to be sold as scrap – without any photographs or documentation of the damage. There were no autopsies of the dead, and no records collected of the survivors’ injuries for forensic purposes.

The day after the explosions, Friday July 8th,

Ÿ Scotland Yard sent off its voluminous “Operation Crevice” files on Omar Khyam and his group, which included information on Khan and Tanweer, to the RCMP in Canada for the Khawaja trial;

Ÿ not long after that, police removed an electronic monitoring device from Khan’s car;

Ÿ Hasib Hussain’s exam results arrived; he had scored high marks in four out of the five exams;

Ÿ There was a big police operation in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, Lindsay’s home:

Chief Superintendent Simon Chesterman, the most senior police officer in Bucks, arrived at his office at Aylesbury Police Station [on Friday, July 8th] to be confronted by Scotland Yard’s counter terrorism unit. Detectives believed that Lindsay, the Kings Cross bomber who killed 26 people, was, in fact, a fifth bomber, was still alive and posed an immediate threat to public safety. Officers had discovered the car of Germaine Lindsay, who lived in Northern Road, abandoned at Luton train station, where he travelled to London with three other bombers. What followed, said Chief Supt Chesterman, was the biggest police operation he had ever witnessed in 22 years on the force.” (Bucks Herald, 2005)

Christophe Chaboud, a French anti-terrorism expert called in to help with the investigation, quickly noted the expertise of the London bombs. He reported that the bombmaker was sophisticated and the explosives high-grade, and specifically not homemade. That evaluation was shared by other explosives experts and confirmed with the identification of an unusual variant of the military plastic explosive C4 at all four bomb sites. The remains of timing devices were also found at the subway blast sites, which meant that no one had to die in those explosions.

 Identifying the accused

On Monday, July 11th, 800 detectives gathered to watch 5,000 Closed Circuit TV (CCTV) tapes to see if they could spot something suspicious: people walking in with large bags and walking out – perhaps at another station – without them. The exercise, which looked like mission impossible, was expected to take a couple of weeks. That night, however, they claimed they were lucky; they spotted four to five men of Asian descent – four with identical backpacks – (similar to those used by the British military) at Luton Station on their way to King’s Cross, which they took to be the origin point of the subway bombings.

Police claimed they had a “lucky break” with Hussain’s mother’s call, which put a name to one of the four men shown in the footage, (which they refused to show to the public.) Police claimed that they then found the identity cards of three of the men, which they could connect to the various blasts: a Mohammad Sidique Khan at Edgware, a Shezad Tanweer at Aldgate, and Hasib Hussain, on the bus. Police claimed that all were “clean skins” or, unknown to the police. (Scotland Yard was embarrassed when Nicholas Sarkozy, then French Minister of the Interior, publicly reminded them that Khan and Tanweer had been known through their “Operation Crevice”.) After the announcement, police noted that Khan’s body was not to be found at the Edgware Road site where he was supposed to have died. (BBC, 7, 2005) Only his ID, which was subsequently found on the bus and, reportedly also at Aldgate. Tanweer’s ID, was not only found at Aldgate, but also on the bus, which exploded almost an hour after he was supposed to have died. Police did not bother with ID cards of others also found at the sites.

The Piccadilly site’s “fourth bomber”

At first, the identity of the fourth bomber was a mystery. One paper named Ejaz Fiaz as the fourth bomber, but noted that the name had not been confirmed. Police claimed that the body of the fourth “suicide bomber” had been so “shredded” at the Piccadilly blast that his identity required DNA analysis. The DNA sample was reportedly taken from the parking stub from the car the police had towed on July 7th (J7 Profile: Lindsay)

The next morning, Wed., July 13th, The Independent published a stunning article that challenged the previous day’s DNA claim. “The suicide plot hatched in Yorkshire” quoted Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist branch:

“The investigation is moving at great speed. “We are trying to establish the movements of the suspects in the run-up to last week’s attack and specifically to establish whether they all died in the explosions.” The article noted: “The four young British men, all thought to be of Pakistani origin, are believed to have blown themselves up with rucksack bombs” … [the body of the fourth bomber] “is thought to be among the remains in the wreckage on the Piccadilly line…” (Bennetto, Herbert, 2005) (emphasis added)

On July 12th, police did not appear to have a body to do DNA testing on! People were wondering why it was taking British police so long to identify the London bombing victims. While the 190 victims of the Madrid bombings had been identified within 24 hours, it would take almost another week, until July 19th, for police to identify the 52 victims of the London bombings. Was it because British police could not find bodies they were looking for?

On Tuesday, July 12th, Lindsay’s wife Samantha Lewthwaite had called police to report her husband Germaine (“Jamal”) missing. Police searched their home immediately. The next day, on July 14th, police announced that they had Lindsay’s ID and he was the fourth bomber. Lewthwaite was incredulous and refused to believe the accusation without DNA proof. The police identification was stunning because they had been claiming that all of the suspects looked Pakistani; there was no way anyone could mistake the big, black Lindsay for an Asian. What had police been looking at?

After Lindsay’s identification was “confirmed”, police provided Lewthwaite with “protection,” presumably monitoring those who tried to contact her. They also arrested Naveed Fiaz, Ejaz’s brother. He was held for one week before being released with no charges.

The Fallout from “Homegrown suicide bombers”

The British public was incensed at the news that British-born citizens could have turned on them; one Muslim man was kicked to death soon after that announcement. The public abuse of Pakistani- British was so ugly that within two months, two thirds of them considered leaving the UK.

Tony Blair, on the other hand, was riding high. The headlines up to July 7th described the political “humiliation” Blair faced from his “anti-terror” (and anti-civil-liberties) legislation. Civil libertarians had been amassing a public war chest of one million pounds Sterling to fight his new legislation. Suddenly, he found the vast majority of the public behind him. Buoyed by the polls, he made vicious comments about Islam and described further legislation he would like: criminalizing speech describing why those under occupation might want to kill themselves; criminalizing the word “martyr”; criminalizing “extremism” – which seemed to mean only “anti-Israeli”. “The game has changed,” Blair declared, and he started to produce legislation that would jettison Britain’s obligations under international humanitarian law.

Identifications of the accused “confirmed”

The fast identification of the accused seemed to be confirmed by the police identification of two cars connected to the accused, one in Luton car park reportedly with “home made” explosives in the trunk, the other parked in Leighton Buzzard. Police had also raided what they claimed was the “bomb factory” – a bathtub filled with what they also claimed was “explosives” in an apartment in Alexandra Grove, Leeds. While Police Commissioner Ian Blair quickly backed off the identification of the explosives that police claimed they had found in the Luton car and Leeds’ bathtub, the story of the London bombs nevertheless changed to “homemade” – bombs which would have left a TATP residue. Despite the fact that TATP residue was not identified, the previous identification of C4 was buried.

The Alexandra Grove apartment with the “bomb factory” bathtub was found to belong to Magdy al-Nashar, an Egyptian who had just received his PhD in biochemistry from Leeds University and was on the list of Leeds’ faculty. He had been forced to leave Britain because of a visa problem the previous month, but was trying to return to resume his job. His apartment had been vacant for about a month. Banner headlines throughout the media claimed that al-Nashar would demonstrate the al Quada link. It fizzled when he was immediately exonerated, and his name was forgotten. While the fingerprints of the accused were identified at their friend al-Nashar’s apartment, they were not found on any containers of chemicals or “explosives.” (Investigating the terror, 2012)

Police came out with further confirmation of the identity of the accused; they claimed that they had both CCTV footage as well as eyewitness confirmation that the accused caught either the 7:40 a.m. or 7:48 a.m. Luton commuter trains to King’s Cross on the morning of July 7th. People wondered why police refused to show any footage that showed any of the men in London that day. The reason became apparent when commuters claimed that those trains had not been running on schedule (if at all) that morning! If the men had expected to catch those particular trains, they could not have made it onto the exploding subway cars. The police refusal to show their footage publicly was becoming increasingly clear: they couldn’t have been looking at CCTV footage! And their earlier claim that the CCTV footage only showed suspicious Asians was confirmation of that fact.

Hasib Hussain and the No. 30 bus

Witnesses claimed that the bus explosion seemed to come from under a seat, possibly from a backpack lying on the ground. The coroner examining the bodies from the No. 30 bus noted that two bodies were particularly badly damaged; either one of them might have been responsible for bringing a bomb. People remarked that a terrorist trying to inflict maximum damage would have chosen to bomb the front bottom of a bus, not the rear top; this placement did not made sense. When Hasib Hussain was named as the bus bomber, witnesses came forward with descriptions: Hussain was either clean shaven or had stubble; he had a huge bag or a small bag; he was wearing a dark suit or a flashy top; he was either fidgeting with his bag or something exploded when he sat down. It became clear that the most publicized witness, a Richard Jones, could not have seen Hussain on the bus.

The bus should have had four CCTV cameras operating; police claimed that they had no footage from any of them, so there was no proof that Hussain had been on the bus and there was no indication of what had caused the explosion.

Because the bus explosion came about 50 minutes after the subway explosions, Hussain became separated from Khan, Tanweer and Lindsay. According to phone records, Hussain tried repeatedly to call the three of them around 9 a.m. – after the explosions — without success, with the phone system shut down. He clearly assumed they were all alive and wondered what was going on. Hussain’s actions between 9 a.m. and the No. 30 explosion at 10:47 a.m. should have been picked up by dozens if not hundreds of CCTV cameras. Although many witnesses claim they saw Hussain at 9 a.m., the July 7th pictures of Hussain appear to have all been “photo-shopped”— digitally created or altered. No one knows what actually happened to Hussain. (Kollerstrom, pp. 57, 64)

Hasib Hussain’s family and friends found the accusation against him unbelievable; his family insists that he will be shown to be innocent when further information comes out.

 The events of July 21st

On Thursday, July 21st, two weeks after the London bombings, Police Commissioner Ian Blair met with Prime Minister Tony Blair to discuss an urgent matter of business. A situation needed to be dealt with. Police had to be sure that their officers would be fully protected legally from killing what might be described as “suspected suicide bombers.” Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) investigators, mandated by law to investigate police killings – had to be blocked from the scene of such a killing. The meeting went smoothly.

At around noon that day, four North African immigrants tried to blow up three London subways and a bus. These bombs were laughable duds; they made a popping sound like champagne being opened then started oozing like wet bread dough. They had been made with chapati flour. The men scattered when they realized that the bombs didn’t work. One donned a burqa and fled to Birmingham. But on that day, all of the CCTVs were working and produced 18,000 hours of footage. All of the men were quickly picked up with the exception of Hussein Osman, who reached Italy.

Although the official police story was that they had no foreknowledge about the attempted bombings, The Mirror’s July 22, 2005 edition showed detailed foreknowledge demonstrated by the British government. Nafeez Ahmed quotes the article,

“Despite the government’s official insistence that it had no prior knowledge of the attacks of 21 July 2005, anonymous British security sources revealed that Scotland Yard had obtained precise advanced warning of replica bomb attacks on the Tube network that would almost certainly be executed on Thursday of that week. . . Indeed, only two hours before the terrorist strikes, Home Secretary Charles Clarke ‘warned senior cabinet colleagues the capital could face another terror onslaught’ in a confidential briefing. … Most surprisingly, the Home Secretary had specifically ‘hinted at fears there could be copycat attacks in the wake of the July 7 atrocities’…. Indeed, police were racing on the morning of the 21 to locate at least one of the bomber suspects, several hours before the detonations … .’ At 9:29 a.m. an armed unit raced to Farrington station as they closed in on the suspected bomber – but narrowly missed him.’

The incident indicates the extent of the detail apparently available to the police. How did they know that a suspect would pass through Farrington? If they had information of such precision, did it extend to other elements of the plot?’” (Ahmed, pp. 103,104)

The grooming of the would-be “copycat” bombers

Before Hussein Osman was extradited from Italy, he gave interviews which provided some insights into the operation. He claimed that he, along with four others were fed for “some weeks”— a steady diet of graphic films that portrayed mutilated Iraqi victims of American and British military actions. The men were instructed not to tell anyone about these mysterious films, which reportedly came from the banned al Mouhajiroun, a group that many believe was linked to British intelligence. By July 21, four of the men were prepared to act in unison to protest the atrocities that the US and UK were committing in Iraq. Although Osman claimed that he only intended to scare people and not cause actual damage, at least some of the men did expect to die: Ramzi Mohammed wrote a suicide note to his girlfriend and the mother of his children.

A report by Italian judges authorising Osman’s extradition to Britain confirmed that the devices, ” which were created with flour, hair lotion, nails, nuts and bolts, and attached to a primitive device with a battery and unidentified powder which could be used as a detonator when attached manually to electrical wires — contained no chemical explosive material.” This description missed a key ingredient: hydrogen peroxide.

The explosive link between the London bombings and the “copycat”

The most interesting part of this story is the recipe for the dud bombs: the only time such a recipe had ever been seen before was the “explosive” found in the Luton car and Leeds’ bathtub. This recipe turned out to a unique use of hydrogen peroxide that explosives experts had never seen before. The discovery that the unique explosive connected to both the July 7th and the July 21st operations was known only to “government scientists” (Casciani,2007) indicates the role of the British government in both operations, and contradicts the British government’s claim that laymen concocted this recipe.

The other significant part of the “copycat bombings” was the police cover story of Hussein Osman’s gym bag that he left behind. According to police, they didn’t get to examine Osman’s gym bag until 4 a.m. the next day, at which time they found a gym membership card belonging to Osman’s friend Abdi Omar. According to some sources, there was no such card in his bag. Also, the two men were members of the same gym club and would not have needed to share cards. In any case, police claimed that Abdi Omar lived at 21 Scotia Road, and they wanted to stake out his apartment in order to question him about Hussein Osman.

The July 22 stakeout at 21 Scotia Road “for Abdi Omar”

By 6 a.m. the morning of Friday, July 22, several of Britain’s most elite intelligence units were operating around 21 Scotia Road. A surveillance unit had a video feed to the Metropolitan Police’s Gold Team unit with Designated Service Officer (DSO) Cressida Dick in charge. While they were supposedly on the lookout for the North African man, Dick activated the tracking units – one on foot, the other by car – when a man described as a “Northern European” white male exited the building around 9:30 am. The targeted man, who would later be identified as a freelance Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes, strolled to a nearby bus stop and took a bus to a subway station. The subway station was closed “for security reasons”, so he called his uncle to tell him he would be delayed, then retraced his steps to get back on the next bus to reach the next subway. By the time he reached the Stockwell subway station, it had taken him about half an hour.

He might have noticed a police car parked in front of the station; a marksman was awaiting his arrival. Suspecting nothing, he picked up a free newspaper, showed his identifying “Oyster” subway card at the ticket office and strolled to the subway platform. The subway car seemed to be parked there, so he made a quick call on his mobile before taking his seat in the car and settling in with his newspaper. The subway driver had arrived at 10 a.m. to find the light red, so he wasn’t moving. The light remained red until the 10:06 killing.

 The killing of Jean Charles de Menezes

There were about 17 other passengers in the subway car. One witness, Anna Dunwoodie, noticed a jumpy, frightened-looking man sitting near her. When what looked like a bunch of rowdies approached their car, he jumped up and pointed de Menezes out to them. Without a word, they surrounded de Menezes, who looked up at them calmly questioningly. He was suddenly pinned down and the shots started. The “rowdies” pumped eleven dumdum bullets into de Menezes, with at least five hitting his head. According to an eye witness who had to insist that her testimony be included in the IPCC report, the shots came at about three-second intervals and lasted for 30 seconds.

The other passengers ran for their lives. One of the police killers chased the terrified subway driver into the tunnel, where he ran across live subway wires and the paths of oncoming trains to escape the “terrorists”.

Pathologist Dr. Kenneth Shorrock was called to look at de Menezes’ body when it was still on the train floor.  He claimed that the police officers at the scene – including the senior investigation officer – lied to him about the circumstances of de Menezes’ death (Morgan, Davis, 2008) claiming that de Menezes had been running away from them. When he looked at the contents of Jean Charles’ pockets, only his passport and loose change remained; police had taken De Menezes’ cell phone.

There was a sign at the scene of the murder which read: ‘Directed by Detective Superintendent Wolfenden not to allow access to the IPCC, authority of commissioner and prime minister.” (Percival, 11/2008). Chief Inspector Stephen Costello claimed that the Prime Minister was consulted over a decision to bar to IPCC from entering Stockwell subway station after the shooting and issued a directive. In fact, the police not only banned the IPCC from the site of the execution, but they also refused to turn over their internal documents, as required by law. (Mitchell, 2007)

The police killers, meanwhile, headed for a lawyer’s office to come up with a story that would protect them all. They had been assured before the operation that whatever happened they would be protected legally. Their story – repeated subsequently under oath by all of them – was that they had called out that they were “police” to de Menezes but that he then reacted in a threatening way which led them to make the decision to kill him. That they had been fitted out with the banned dum dum bullets, used for lethal encounters, was overlooked.

Abdi Omar, the supposed target of the stakeout at 21 Scotia Road, had been out of the UK on business for the past week. A swat team knew where his wife and children were, however, and paid them a visit later that day, putting the mother-in-law in hospital with a heart attack. Omar returned some days later and asked police if they wanted to speak with him; they didn’t.

Police realized at some point that they had a problem: Abdi Omar had only been wanted for questioning and had not been a suicide bombing suspect. For their legal protection – their “get out of jail free card” — they had to have been chasing Hussein Osman, who had made it to Italy. Luckily, their last names both started with “O”. There was disappointingly little notice taken when police changed the name of their supposed target from “Omar ” to “Osman”.

The evening of the killing, a retired Scotland Yard officer on BBC News challenged the government’s claim that the killing had been done by a Scotland Yard officer and there would be no investigation. Impossible, he said; if the killing had been done by a Yard officer, there would automatically be an investigation. Evidence began to indicate that at least two elite British intelligence units had been involved in the murder, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) which specializes in surveillance and “false flag operations” and the newly-formed police marksmen’s unit, C019 (or referred to as S019), trained by the elite SAS. The weapons pictured on the agents as well as the manner of the killing pointed to British special forces carrying out the de Menezes’ execution. (Norton-Taylor, 8/2005)

When people heard about the public police killing of a suspected terrorist, they assumed that the victim had to be black and Muslim. A self-proclaimed eyewitness quickly came forward to say that the targeted man was wearing a “puffy jacket with wires hanging out” and had been chased by police into the Stockwell Subway station, a chase that sounded no more than a few minutes. Police claimed that the CCTV cameras were not operating. Unfortunately for them, this time they were.

There was shock as the news dribbled out that the victim had been a young white man who had been followed by elite units for half an hour, allegedly mistaking him for a North African. Police tried to smear him: he was an illegal; he looked suspicious. One after another, they turned out to be lies. A whistleblower released a photo of the dead De Menezes; he had been wearing a light denim jacket – not any “puffy jacket” with wires. She was quickly fired and harassed. The CCTVs showed him strolling leisurely into the subway; it had been the police leaping over barriers, not de Menezes. The police version was that an interminable number of miscommunications had occurred leading to the deadly mistake. If one believed that the Gold Team had been as incompetent as they claimed, the person in charge would have faced a career disaster. Instead, Cressida Dick was promoted to Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police; her associate was also rewarded with a promotion. No one was to be held accountable in any way for Jean Charles’ murder.

Slowly, over a period of years, the police lies were exposed despite their refusal to give their information to the IPCC. The truth came out as easily as the pulling of police teeth, painfully with small parts of the story being extracted with the various official inquiries. The most dramatic would be the 2008 inquest into Jean Charles de Menezes’ death, the first time witnesses would be heard.

Meanwhile, what had happened to the bodies of the accused?

By August, people started to ask questions about what had happened to the bodies of the accused. None of the families had been allowed to identify them; they had not even been given the bodies for burial. Khan’s family, suspicious, asked for an independent autopsy to be performed; it was not done. On August 24th, when the corpses would have been over six weeks old, The Guardian reported that the Metropolitan police claimed that they were holding the bodies of the accused to reassemble their body parts to analyse their positions on the bombs’ detonations. It would not be until the 2010 Hallett inquest that the shocking details would come out.

Of the accused, only Tanweer and Hussain had family burials. In both cases, the burials were accompanied by security personnel.

  • Ÿ At the end of October 2005, Tanweer’s body was taken to Pakistan for interment in a family grave; security personnel accompanied the body to Pakistan and guarded the site for days after the interment. The family never saw the remains.
  • Ÿ Six police oversaw the funeral of Hasib Hussain, “ensuring the service remained private.”

The Khan Tape (Sept. 1, 2005)

British newspapers had been slowly coming out with stories that questioned whether the accused men thought they were going to die. All of the men had round-trip tickets and they had paid for their cars to be parked for the day. There were no suicide notes and their families all expected them home. And then there was the question of motive: there was none. The men were known to be secular and even apolitical. Khan and Tanweer were both known to be particularly patriotic; all were peace-loving.

Khan’s wife Hasina Patel said she had never heard “Sid” criticize the actions of the British government or its role in world events. In excerpts from an interview with Sky news, Patel said “… I kept thinking that something was wrong, I don’t know, that maybe it was a set up, … I didn’t even have any inkling towards his views even going in that direction … I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams, never.” (Sky, 2007)

On September 1st a short video surfaced showing Khan dressed up in red Palestinian-like scarf used as a head bandana. A crude, hand-woven rug was in the background and he was stabbing the air with a pen, complaining about British crimes towards Muslims. There was no mention of any action that would be taken. The tape, which included an edited-in clip of Al Qaeda’s al Zwahiri, was not shown in its entirety.

It was obvious that at least in some sections, Khan’s words did not match his lip movements. His friends noticed that judging by Khan’s appearance, the tape had to have been made in  2004, the year Khan and Tanweer were taped by police. They also claimed that the tape didn’t sound like Khan and was a fraud.

 The government responses

The government claimed that the four accused had worked alone, with Khan as the “ringleader”, and that the tape showed that Khan’s motive was to martyr himself for Islam. They also claimed that a tape of Tanweer existed. Their claims that the accused worked alone begged the question of who released the tape of Khan, how they knew of Tanweer’s tape and who controlled it.

The following May, two government reports confirmed their official version of the July 7th bombings and recommend a higher security budget.

The Tanweer tape (July 6, 2006)

On July 5, 2006, a U.S. broadcaster with a reputation for security links claimed that a tape of Shezad Tanweer was expected to be shown the next day on Al Jazeera.

On July 6, 2006, the eve of the anniversary of the London bombings, al Jazeera showed part of a video of Tanweer. The shots, also taken in 2004, are strikingly similar to the one released the previous year of “Sid” Khan; Tanweer is wearing the identical Palestinian-like red scarf around his head, with the identical background rug and making the same strange stabbing movements with a pen. The video includes edited-in clips of the al Qaeda leader al Zwahiri as well as a self-proclaimed American member of al Qaeda, Adam Gadahn. (While Gadahn is also known to the FBI as “Abu Suhayb Al-Amriki, Abu Suhayb, Yihya Majadin Adams and Yayah”, he was born Adam Pearlman.) There were also silly shots meant to appear ominous such as a disembodied hand on maps, etc.  Again, words do not match the lip movements. Shezad Tanweer’s family has not publicly commented on it.

Both the Khan and Tanweer tapes were released at politically opportune times for the British government. So while the tapes supposedly show Khan and Tanweer’s support for Al Qaeda, and perhaps Palestinians, the tapes’ origins and releases both implicate British security services.

 The 2008 De Menezes’ inquest

The De Menezes’ family had kept up their pressure on the government for an inquest into their son’s murder; finally, in September, 2008, the inquest opened. The purpose of this inquest, presided over by Coroner Sir Michael Wright, was to allow jurors to decide whether or not the police had killed Jean Charles de Menezes lawfully. Previous inquests had established that no one, including DSO Cressida Dick, would be held personally responsible for Jean Charles’ death.

Sir Ian Blair, who had been hanging onto his job as Police Commissioner, toughing out troubling challenges to his integrity on this issue, finally quit at the start of that inquiry. He must have figured that the jig would be up when certain information came out – information that included his meeting with Tony Blair to give police legal protection for a killing, police perjury, police manipulation of events around the death and tampering with police records. It would be the first time that eye witnesses to this event were allowed to testify. Over fifty agents were given identity protection for testifying and the identity-protected killers were not allowed to be either seen or photographed at the site.

Despite the profoundly shocking information that came out at this inquest, Sir Michael Wright did his best to ensure jurors gave the police a favorable ruling. His actions included:

Ÿ informing jurors that they would only be allowed to return a verdict either of lawful killing or an “open” verdict: they were not permitted to rule against the police;

Ÿ warning jurors that they were not to attach criminal or civil fault to responsible individuals such as DSO Cressida Dick;

Ÿ giving the jury secret advice and suggesting that police perjury might have been committed for selfless motives.

The De Menezes’ inquest results

The jury returned an “open” verdict, much to the relief of the police. Given the evidence, they had been prepared for an “unlawful” verdict, despite the Coroner’s charge to the jury. Despite the agents’ perjury and admitted destruction of evidence, they will not face charges.

The De Menezes’ family finally gave up their fight for justice on November 23, 2009 with a settlement with the Metropolitan police for one hundred thousand pounds plus legal expenses.

The Jean Charles de Menezes inquiry exposed the government betrayal of the public through manipulation of the police, of the justice system and the media:

The media obediently played along as the facts came out. While they did report the stories that showed that de Menezes had been the real target, that police perjured themselves, and that Tony Blair had apparently played a role, each article ended with the mantra that De Menezes’ killing had merely been the result of unfortunate mistakes. The story that the most elite security teams in Britain claimed that they thought a “North European” white male was a North African after a half hour surveillance was not challenged.

The papers never asked why Jean Charles had been targeted. Could a recent job have related to the July 7th “power surges”? No one knew where he had been working. The Guardian approached that subject obliquely in December, 2008, noting that de Menezes’ friends were “terrified”; they understood that the public killing of their friend was a warning not to talk.

 The 2010 Hallett Inquest into the security services

In May 2010, Lady Justice Hallett called for an inquest into the activities of the British security services the year prior to the July 7th bombings. The inquest, which the security services warned would “encourage terrorists,” was held in the fall of 2010; the hearings were public but there was no jury. The families of 52 of the victims were allowed to take part; the families of the accused were barred from participating, and so unable to challenge any witnesses. Lady Hallett said she might consider a future inquest to include them. Lady Justice Hallett and QC Hugo Keith controlled the proceedings.

The inquest was expected to answer questions on the timing, the location and the makeup of the bombs; instead, it raised even more questions:

Ÿ Since the discovery of the “homemade explosive”, the government had claimed that the London bombs had been homemade; in fact, the traces of TATP that should have been found if they had been homemade were not identified at the blast sites;

Ÿ While the government produced some new CCTV evidence, investigators noticed suspicious cuts at key parts of much of it, especially when the accused were meeting other people;

Ÿ The scope of the missing CCTV evidence was staggering, with none of dozens (if not hundreds!) of CCTV cameras allegedly functioning at any of the affected subway stations until after the bombings were over;

Ÿ The government’s destruction of evidence and lack of documentation made it impossible to resolve discrepancies between the government’s claims of damage and witnesses’ accounts.

Ÿ The absence of autopsies and documentation of injury made it difficult to confirm eyewitness accounts that the train explosions originated under the floors.

Ÿ One investigator noticed that the Metropolitan Police diagrams reconstructing the subway explosions did not match the official Home Office description of those killed and injured. Taking the Liverpool/ Aldgate explosion as an example, he noted that the Met diagram only showed a total of 43 people in the carriage while the Home Office narrative claimed that “the blast killed 8 people, including Tanweer, with 171 injured.” According to the police diagram, the two standing on either side of Tanweer survived, one with only minor injuries. The investigator noted that if the blast killed 8 of the 43, that left only 35 potentially- injured in that carriage. The implication is that the other 136 injured at that site must have been occupants of another three cars in that train with a similar occupancy. “ (Investigating the terror, 2012)

Ÿ Evidence pointed to more than three damaged subway cars; Did the government reduce the number of events to correspond to the number of Muslims that volunteered for this event?

While this inquest did produce stunning information about the death counts and the state of the corpses of some accused, it specifically excluded how police came to identify the accused.

 On Hasib Hussain and the No. 30 bus

Ÿ The inquest was shown photos which were claimed to be of Hussain’s body separated from other bodies and under a blue blanket. No one knew who had identified him, who placed him there, or who put the special blanket on him. Or if his body was, in fact, under it.

Ÿ Lisa French, a witness seated no further than five seats in front of the explosion, testified that when she was getting off the bus, police discouraged her from helping a “pile” of people, indicating that they were already dead. (Addley, 2011) Could these have been the extra bodies?

Ÿ At the 2010 inquest, it was discovered that another Asian youth had been sitting at the back of the top deck at the time of the explosion.

 On Khan and Tanweer

Witnesses testified that the initial death counts at the Edgware and Aldgate sites included only commuters, not the bodies of “suicide bombers”. Police added one to each of these tallies later that day so that the accused would be included in the count. A day or two after the bombings, body parts of the accused would be located at the private, off-limit subway sites.

 Ÿ “Sid” Khan’s remains at Edgware:

Ÿ A large part of Khan’s corpse —without hands, head, or even teeth— was found on 6 am July 8th; police turned over the remains at an unspecified date, identifying it when presented to the Home Office Forensic Science Service as belonging to Mohammed Sidique Khan, with a request to confirm the identification through DNA links his parents. (Police apparently were not aware that Khan’s father had married a woman with the same name as Khan’s biological mother.) The identification was not done using DNA known to be Khan’s. (J7 blogspot: Khan)

Ÿ The Edgware death count confirms what had been published. Police had identified Khan as a “suicide bomber” on Tuesday, July 12 even though police then acknowledged that Khan’s body was missing from the Edgware site. (BBC, 7,2005)

Ÿ Khan’s intact ID papers were apparently planted at Edgware, Aldgate and on the bus.

 Shazad Tanweer’s remains at Aldgate:

Ÿ On Saturday, July 9th, only a 1.8 Kg spinal fragment allegedly belonging to Tanweer was found on the train; the DNA lab work, dated July 13 to 28th, included no indication of how police had already identified the remains as belonging to Tanweer; (J7 blogspot: Tanweer)

Ÿ Note that Tanweer’s identification cards — found at both Aldgate and the No. 30 bus – survived the virtually total disintegration of his body.

The damage to Khan’s and Tanweer’s bodies was not consistent with the state of the other corpses. Despite the fact that others — the dead as well as survivors – had been close to the sources of the explosions, the bodies of all other victims had remained basically intact and easily identifiable. It was ironic that the police had initially implied that the bodies of Khan and Tanweer were easy to identify and did not require the assistance of DNA analysis. Could the state of their corpses be explained as efforts to hide bullet wounds the men might have sustained at Canary Wharf?

On Germaine/”Jamal” Lindsay

Interestingly, there was reportedly no “life extinct” count at Piccadilly taken on July 7th as there had been at the other sites; there had to have been a count of the dead at some point, why did it not made it to this inquest?

According to the original police story, the identification of Lindsay required DNA analysis. Although his wife understood that this analysis had confirmed Lindsay’s participation in the events of July 7th, a BBC article on July 14th, 2005, “Fourth bomber’s name disclosed” implied that police might not have had the DNA results that Samantha Lewthwaite thought they did.

The absence of similar DNA information that was provided for Khan and Tanweer appears to be significant, particularly because police admitted that they did not possess Lindsay’s body on July 12th (Bennetto, Herbert, 2005); and that police believed that Lindsay survived July 7th (Jones, 2005) and (Bucks Herald, 2005).  Were police marksmen at Canary Wharf looking only for Pakistanis?

 The Hallett verdict and outcomes

In May 2011 the Hallett Inquest determined that 52 of the 56 London deaths had been “unlawful”, the fault only of the “bombers” rather than of the hours-long medical response time or a lack of diligence of the security services. Hallett refused to hold any investigation for the families of the accused.

The Hallett Inquiry ultimately demonstrated pervasive government manipulation and/or mistreatment of the evidence. On August 2, 2011 a legal challenge by victims’ families to force the British government to hold a public inquiry into the July 7 attacks was abandoned “acknowledging that the proceedings would likely be unsuccessful.”

In 2012-2013, Jamal Lindsay’s wife Samantha Lewthwaite, now remarried and the mother of three (the father of her third child, born in 2009, was not identified), is described in the media as a major terrorist living in East Africa and is reportedly hunted — to be killed on sight – by dozens of MI5 and MI6, the CIA, police from Kenya and detectives from South Africa! This hunt appears to relate to the 7/7 bombings: police claim they found “key chemicals” [sic] related to the London bombings such as “acetone and hydrogen peroxide” at a raid on her home. Does she possess information that makes such a hunt worth the cost?

The evidence of responsibility points to the British government

There was a history of government-run terror exercises in London, including ones that closely mirrored the London bombings’ scenario;

Ÿ There was extensive evidence of police foreknowledge, including Scotland Yard’s warning to the Israeli embassy before the blasts; the police allowed the London bombings to happen;

It was only “government scientists” that knew the recipe of the “unique” hydrogen-peroxide based “explosives” that were in the Luton car, the Leeds bathtub and the “copycat” “bombs;”

Ÿ The government removed, destroyed and neglected to keep important evidence; evidence shown to the public has been shown to be falsified or tampered with;

Ÿ The government has refused to hold any independent, public investigation into the bombings;

Ÿ The government labelling of the London bombings as “suicide bombings” (and the accused, “homegrown suicide bombers”) with no evidence that there had been suicide bombs demonstrated the agenda that allowed Tony Blair to then follow through with his “anti-terror” legislation:

As a result of the July 7th London bombings, the British government eliminated traditional civil liberties and expanded its security services.

In 2007, the July 7th Truth Campaign described the post-7/7 state of British freedoms in “Capitalising on Terror”:  In less than two years the UK has descended into a police state. Taking photographs of landmarks is now classified as ‘terrorist reconnaisance’, being caught in possession of a map has been prosecuted as ‘having information likely to be useful to a terrorist’. Protesting outside the people’s Parliament is now a crime unless the state has first granted permission and you can be arrested for wearing a t-shirt a policeman doesn’t like. Your DNA and fingerprints will be taken and stored indefinitely. Everyone from young children to old age pensioners are actively being targeted under anti-terrorist legislation and this legislation is being used to suppress dissent and opposition to the government, its policies and the way it enforces them. Blair has talked of implementing private police forces and police powers have been given to thousands of non-police entities including amongst others traffic wardens, landlords and council officials. …

Recently the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, suggested that modern day Britain is comparable to Idi Amin’s regime in Uganda. Around the same time the leader of Birmingham Central Mosque, Dr Mohammed Naseem, compared life for Muslims in the UK to that of the life of Jews in Nazi Germany. In among the furore that ensued among the liberal intelligentsia, the leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron, gently reminded everyone that the laws don’t just apply to Muslims, or terrorists, the laws apply to everyone. If you are reading this in Britain, that means you. (J7,2007)

Notes:

Addley, Esther. 2011. “7/7 bus bomber jostled passengers with deadly backpack, inquest told” The Guardian. January 12. Retrieved August 25, 2012 at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/12/77-july-7-bomber-inquest?INTCMP=SRCH

Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq. 2006. The London Bombings, London: Duckworth p103/104/274

BBC, 7/2005. Police release bus bomber images. 14 July, 2005. BBC News. retrieved July 6, 2008 at:

Http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4683555.stm

Antagonist. 2005. London 7/7: Number 30 Bus Explosion — Photos & Questions. 1 September 2005. Anything that defies my sense of reason. , retrieved July 5, 2008 at:

Http://antagonise.blogspot.com/2005/09/london-77-number-30-bus-explosion.html

Bennetto, J, Herbert, I, 2005. The suicide bomb plot hatched in Yorkshire. 13 July. The Independent. Retrieved July 9, 2008 at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/the-suicide-bomb-plot-hatched-in-yorkshire-498616.html

Bucks Herald, The. 2005. Aylesbury was ’30 minutes from evacuation’. Tuesday, 25 October. The Bucks Herald. Retrieved July 28, 2011 at:

http://www.bucksherald.co.uk/news/aylesbury_was_30_minutes_from_evacuation_1_600516

Casbolt, J. A Message of Love to my Asian Brothers and Sisters: The true inside facts about the 7/7 London bombings, February 18, 2007. Jamescasbolt. retrieved June 26, 2008 at: Http://www.jamescasbolt.com/bombings.htm

Casciani, Dominic, 2007. Was it linked to 7/7? Wednesday, 11 July 2007. Retrieved at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6249118.stm 21/7

Chossudovsky, Michel. 8/8 2005. 7/7 Mock Terror Drill: What Relationship to the Real Time Terror Attacks? 8 Aug. Centre for Research on Globalisation. Retrieved June 26, 2008 at:

Http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050808&articleId=821

Televised interview “Peter Power 7/7 Terror Rehearsal” at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKvkhe3rqtc

Chossudovsky, 8/1 2005. Chossudovsky, M, London 7/7 Terror Suspect Linked to British Intelligence? August 1, Centre for Research on Globalisation. retrieved July 7, 2008 at: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20050801&articleId=782

J7 blogspot Khan. The identification of Mohammed Sidique Khan.:J7: The July 7th Truth Campaign. Tuesday, November 30, 2010. retrieved on July 4, 2013 at:

http://77inquests.blogspot.com/2010/11/identification-of-mohammed-sidique-khan.html

J7 blogspot Tanweer. 7/7 Inquests: The Disintegration of Shezad Tanweer. J7: The 7/7 Inquests Blog. Monday, Nov. 8, 2010. Accessed July 28, 2011 at: Http://77inquests.blogspot.com/2010/11/77-inquests-disintegration-of-shehzad.html

July 7th Truth Campaign. Capitalising on Terror: Who is Really Destroying our freedoms? Feb. 25, 2007. Retrieved on July 3, 2012 at: http://julyseventh.co.uk/july-7-article-capitalising-on-terror.html

J7 Profile: Jamal/Germaine Lindsay. J7: The July 7th Truth Campaign, 2006 retrieved July 6, 2008 at:   Http://julyseventh.co.uk/7-7-profile-germaine-lindsay.html

Jones, Sam 2005. Aylesbury house is searched in effort to find associates. Thursday, July 14. The Guardian. Retreived on July 28, 2011 at http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jul/14/july7.uksecurity11

Kollerstrom, Nick. 2012. Terror on the Tube. Palm Desert, California. Progressive.

McGrory, D., and Evans, M. 2005. Hunt for the master of explosives. 13 July. The Times. retrieved June 26, 2008 at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1692033,00.html

Mitchell, P. Police Chief “Cleared” of De Menezes Killing. February 26th, 2007. Ukwatch. retrieved June 26, 2008 at: http://www.ukwatch.net/article/police_chief_%2526quot%3Bcleared%2526quot%3B_of_de_menezes_killing

Morgan, Tom and Davis, Margaret, 2008. Pathologist given false details over Menezes death, inquest told. November 5. The Independent retrieved Nov. 6, 2008 at: Http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/pathologist-given-false-details-over-menezes-death-inquest-told-993987.html

Norton-Taylor, R. 2005. New special forces unit tailed Brazilian. August 4. The Guardian retrieved June 26, 2008 at: Http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/aug/04/july7.menezes

N Z Herald, 2005. ‘Police shot bombers’ reports New Zealander. July 9, 2005. New Zealand Herald. retrieved on July 7, 2008 at http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10334992

Pallister, David 2005. UK-based dissident denies link to website that carried al-Qaida claim. The Guardian. Saturday July 9. Retrieved at July 28 at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jul/09/july7.uksecurity11

Percival, Jenny and agencies, 11/2008. Orders given to police who shot Jean Charles de Menezes were ‘ambiguous’ November 5. The Guardian retrieved Nov. 7, 2008 at: Http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/nov/05/de-menezes-pathologist-inquest

Rook, Katie, 2005. A massive rush of policemen. July 7. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved on July 7, 2008 at: Http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050707.wcanar0707/PPVStory?URL_Article_ID=RTGAM.20050707.wcanar0707&DENIED=1

Sheva, Arutz. 2005. Report: Israel Was Warned Ahead of First Blast. 7 July 2005. Propaganda Matrix. retrieved July 2, 2013: Http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/july2005/070705israelwarned.htm

Investigating the terror, 2012. ” 7/7: Seven Documents that Prove that the Official Story Cannot be True”. www.investigatingtheterror.com. June 30 . Retrieved July 4, 2013 at: www.investigatingtheterror.com/articles/7_7__seven__documents_that_prove_the_official_story_cannot_be_true.htm

Shortnews, 2005.  ’Suicide Bomber Neutralized’ in Canary Wharf, London. July 10, 2005. Shortnews. retrieved June 25, 2008 at: http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=49029

Sky, 2007. Full Text Of July 7 Widow’s Interview With Sky: Here is the full transcript of Hasina Patel’s interview with Julie Etchingham. Friday July 27. Sky News. retrieved April 14, 2009 at http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Full-Text-Of-July-7-Widows-Interview-With-Sky/Article/20070741277315

Sparrow, Andrew. 2005. “New law to stop flow of volunteers to terror camps.” Sunday July 16, Daily Telegraph. Retrieved Sept. 10, 2012 at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1494129/New-law-to-stop-flow-of-volunteers-to-terror-camps.html

Woods, R, Leppard, D., Smith, M. 2005. Tangled web that still leaves worrying loose ends: The arrest of Haroon Rashid Aswat sets numerous questions. July 31. The Sunday Times. retrieved June 26, 2008:  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article549996.ece)

Karin Brothers is a freelance writer who was in England throughout the events related to the London bombings.

Republished with permission from: Global Research

Qur’an exhibition 2013 opens in Tehran

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The 21st International Holy Qurâ„¢an Exhibition has kicked off in Tehran during a ceremony held at the Imam Khomeini Grand Prayer Grounds.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini along with several other officials attended the opening ceremony held on June 5, 2013.

Many memorizers, researchers and those ones who had made efforts for Qur’an were honored during the opening gala.

Å“Qur’an is the book of mankind’s movement from earth toward God. It is the plan for movement. It is the direction toward perfection. Without the book, without a law, without a plan, it is impossible for mankind to reach its peak,”

Ahmadinejad said.

Including over 40 sections, the event is to host numerous exquisite Qurâ„¢anic works from 30 countries that have been presented by the individuals or offered by the organizations from the applicant countries.

Some 50 Qurâ„¢anic products have been unveiled at the yearâ„¢s exhibition focusing on the theme of ËœQurâ„¢anic lifestyleâ„¢.

Different topics including ËœQurâ„¢an and economyâ„¢, ËœQurâ„¢an and sociologyâ„¢ and ËœQurâ„¢an and human sciencesâ„¢ will be discussed in several sessions during the exhibition.

The visitors are also to enjoy the eventâ„¢s various sections such as children, young adults, family, recitations and memorizations, research, education and translation.

Iranâ„¢s President-elect Hassan Rohani is slated to attend the closing ceremony, Iranâ„¢s Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini had earlier said.

Iranâ„¢s international Qurâ„¢an exhibition which is annually held during the blessed month of Ramadan, aims at stimulating development and promotion in concepts of the holy Qurâ„¢an.

Iranâ„¢s 21st International Qurâ„¢an Exhibition will be continued for about one month, until August 6.

FGP/FGP

Republished with permission from: Press TV

15 Signs That The Quality Of Jobs In America Is Going Downhill Really Fast

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Wal-Mart - Photo by Arthur JacobTrying to find a job in America today can be an incredibly frustrating experience. Most of the jobs that are available seem to pay very little, and there is intense competition for just about any job that is open. But it wasn’t always like this. When I was in high school, I was immediately hired when I applied for a job at McDonalds because they were so desperate for workers that they would hire just about anyone that could flip a burger. But in this economic environment, a single nationwide hiring event conducted by McDonalds resulted in a million job applications, and only a small percentage of those applicants were actually hired. Our economy simply does not produce enough jobs for everyone anymore, and the percentage of “good jobs” continues to decline. That means that it is getting really hard to find a job that will enable you to support a family, and a lot of people end up doing jobs that they are massively overqualified for. But when times are tough, people are going to do what they have to do in order to survive.

One thing that we have seen in recent years is an explosion in the number of “temp workers” in America. Even some of the largest companies in America are using them. They like the flexibility of being able to bring in workers when they need them and of being able to dump them the moment they don’t need them anymore. Sadly, those that work in the “temp industry” often work in deplorable conditions for very little pay. The following is a brief excerpt from an absolutely outstanding Pro Publica article…

In cities all across the country, workers stand on street corners, line up in alleys or wait in a neon-lit beauty salon for rickety vans to whisk them off to warehouses miles away. Some vans are so packed that to get to work, people must squat on milk crates, sit on the laps of passengers they do not know or sometimes lie on the floor, the other workers’ feet on top of them.

This is not Mexico. It is not Guatemala or Honduras. This is Chicago, New Jersey, Boston.

The people here are not day laborers looking for an odd job from a passing contractor. They are regular employees of temp agencies working in the supply chain of many of America’s largest companies — Walmart, Macy’s, Nike, Frito-Lay. They make our frozen pizzas, sort the recycling from our trash, cut our vegetables and clean our imported fish. They unload clothing and toys made overseas and pack them to fill our store shelves. They are as important to the global economy as shipping containers and Asian garment workers.

Many get by on minimum wage, renting rooms in rundown houses, eating dinners of beans and potatoes, and surviving on food banks and taxpayer-funded health care. They almost never get benefits and have little opportunity for advancement.

But these are the types of jobs the U.S. economy is “creating” these days. Low paying part-time jobs are continually becoming a bigger part of the economy. This is one of the primary reasons why the middle class in America is shrinking.

You can’t support a family on what most of these part-time jobs pay. But our economy is not producing many high quality full-time jobs these days. The average quality of American jobs just continues to sink.

The following are 15 signs that the quality of jobs in America is going downhill really fast…

#1 The number of part-time workers in the United States has just hit a brand new all-time high, but the number of full-time workers is still nearly 6 million below the old record that was set back in 2007.

#2 In America today, only 47 percent of adults have a full-time job.

#3 Even though the U.S. economy created nearly 200,000 jobs in June, the number of full-time jobs actually decreased.

#4 There are now 2.7 million temp workers in the United States – a new all-time high.

#5 One out of every ten jobs in the United States is now filled through a temp agency.

#6 The U.S. economy has actually lost manufacturing jobs for four consecutive months.

#7 The official unemployment rate has been at 7.5 percent or higher for 54 months in a row. That is the longest stretch in U.S. history.

#8 According to one recent survey, 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

#9 At this point, one out of every four American workers has a job that pays $10 an hour or less.

#10 High paying manufacturing jobs continue to be shipped overseas. Sadly, there are fewer Americans employed in manufacturing now than there was in 1950 even though the population of the country has more than doubled since then.

#11 Today, the United States actually has a higher percentage of workers doing low wage work than any other major industrialized nation does.

#12 The U.S. economy continues to trade good paying jobs for low paying jobs. 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs created since then have been low wage jobs.

#13 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.

#14 At this point, an astounding 53 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year.

#15 According to a study that was released by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, only 24.6 percent of all jobs in the United States qualify as “good jobs” at this point. In a previous article, I detailed the three criteria that they used to define what a “good job” is….

#1 The job must pay at least $18.50 an hour. According to the authors, that is the equivalent of the median hourly pay for American workers back in 1979 after you adjust for inflation.

#2 The job must provide access to employer-sponsored health insurance, and the employer must pay at least some portion of the cost of that insurance.

#3 The job must provide access to an employer-sponsored retirement plan.

All of this is absolutely heartbreaking.

Once upon a time, just about any adult that was willing to work hard in America could go out and find a good paying job that would support a middle class lifestyle.

Now those days are gone forever.

But different conditions exist in different parts of the country.

What are you seeing in your area?

Are good jobs difficult to find?

Please feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below…

Republished with permission from: The Economic Collapse

UK, India to discuss visa cash bonds

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Britain and India will discuss the UKâ„¢s controversial visa cash bonds later in June.

A meeting between representatives of Britain and India will be held later in June over the UKâ„¢s controversial plans to force visitors from six Asian and African nations, including India, to pay £3,000 cash bond deposit to enter Britain.

Diplomats from the Indian high commission in London asked Britainâ„¢s Foreign Office to set a date for talks on the issue, reports.

“We have been informed that it is not the policy of the government but a pilot proposal by the home ministry. Discussions between different ministries in UK will take place soon on the proposal,” India’s Foreign Ministry officials said.

The plans, which aimed at preventing abuse of immigration rules in the country, will initially cover India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Ghana.

British governmentâ„¢s restrictions on visa rules have led to a decrease in the number of foreign students in the UK and could cost Britain’s universities £2.4 billion over the next decade.

MOS/HE

Republished with permission from: Press TV

The Democratic Way of Killing: The President as Judge, Jury, and Executioner

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One wonders whether Americans felt pride when they discovered that, according to the New York Times,their president was “a student of writings on war by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.” As a result, Barack Obama believes that “he should take moral responsibility” for U.S. policy, including killing anyone and everyone seen as a terrorist threat to the United States. Innocents around the world might be dying, but at least the man ordering their deaths was consulting some of the world’s greatest theologians.

National security adviser Thomas Donilon observed, “He’s a president who is quite comfortable with the use of force on behalf of the United States.”

Washington has spent years seemingly at war with Arabs and Muslims. Without equivalent weapons – nuclear missiles, carrier groups, air wings, and the like – Islamic radicals have turned to terrorism. Nothing justifies attacks on civilians, but failing to understand and respond appropriately guarantees more of the same in the future.

After spending years propping up foreign dictators, invading and occupying foreign lands, aiding other governments which do the same, and seizing, torturing, and killing perceived adversaries, the U.S. government has created a lengthy list of enemies. Unfortunately, the broader and more violent America’s response to terrorism, the more enemies Washington creates.

Moreover, it is vital to remember that America is supposed to be a constitutional republic. Terrorists win if they convince Americans to give up their liberties.

America is a geographic location. It is a people. It also is an idea, a community defined by a shared commitment to a free society. Sacrifice the latter and America will be profoundly changed. Yet that has been happening since 9/11.

Obama’s targeted assassination is another step down this treacherous road. Extreme assertions of authority, such as the claim that the president may kill whenever he believes necessary, threaten a liberal order. The danger is greatest when the targets are American citizens. However, the president has no authority to kill foreigners without extraordinary cause either.

Claims to the contrary raise questions about what America is. In the parody song “Obama That I Used to Know,” one of the singers observes, “Sometimes I think that a peace prize winner shouldn’t have a kill list.”

He does, however. And the decision to kill appears to be the president’s alone. The Times ran a long story on the assassinator-in-chief and the regular White House meetings on whom next to kill. Although some 100 officials gather online by video conference, the president alone adjudges guilt and imposes punishment. There is no appeal or review. Rather like a Roman emperor, a thumbs down from the president means death, at least assuming the drone or SEAL team can find the target.

The Founders carefully limited the discretion of the president to start conflicts. He could defend against sudden attack, but that would not extend without congressional authority to launching a continuous series of preventive attacks in nations against which America is not at war. And the drone campaigns are war. For instance, at least 2,400 Pakistanis have been killed by drones since 2004.

No limits

After 9/11 Congress approved the Authorization for Use of Military Force. More general than a typical declaration of war, it nevertheless targeted specific people, most of whom are now dead or in captivity – those who “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the 9/11 attacks. Today that measure is too distant in circumstance, time, geography, and people to authorize the administration’s multiple drone campaigns.

Moreover, secret military campaigns reduce political accountability. The practice moves foreign and defense policy into the shadows. One reason the Founders insisted on a congressional declaration of war was to encourage a full public debate over basic issues of war and peace. Raining missiles on another country from drones is the equivalent of war, yet it occasions little notice.

Complained Murtaza Hussain in Salon, “In the past governments have often found their ability to wage wars abroad constrained by the citizenry who have borne the brunt of the social pressures these wars inevitably create.” Today, however, Americans are scarcely aware of the multiple wars being fought in their name.

Moreover, undertaking a policy of promiscuous assassination transforms both the battlefield and the enemy. In a traditional conflict the opposing sides are reasonably clear: Anyone in uniform on a battlefield is a legitimate target. But in the “war on terrorism” no one wears a uniform and anyone anywhere can be a combatant, making the entire world, including the American homeland, a battlefield.

Indeed, the very ease of drone assassinations undermines any safeguards on their use. Warned Amos Guiora and Laurie Blank in the Guardian, “A ‘flexible understanding of imminence’ ultimately produces an approach that can only be defined as ‘kill all the bad guys.’ If everyone who constitutes ‘a bad guy’ is automatically a legitimate target, then careful analysis of threats, imminence, proportionality, credibility, reliability, and other factors simply goes out the window.” A 2004 United Nations report raised similar concerns: “Empowering governments to identify and kill ‘known terrorists’ places no verifiable obligation upon them to demonstrate in any way that those against whom legal force is used indeed are terrorists, or to demonstrate that every other alternative has been exhausted.”

Are there any limits on government, especially executive, power?

This president recognizes none. Indeed, the Obama administration’s policy seems to be to kill first and consider other options second. The Bush administration kidnapped and tortured, but at least its mistakes could, and occasionally were, remedied by the victim’s release. That option is not available with targeted assassinations.

Admittedly it isn’t easy to grab possible enemies in tribal Pakistan or Yemen, and the administration claims that some adversaries have been identified and then arrested and imprisoned by local authorities. Yet the sheer number of assassinations raises the question whether the United States really has so many deadly enemies.

Politics is never far in the background. In the New Yorker Steve Coll pointed to evidence “suggesting that the Obama Administration leans toward killing terrorism suspects because it does not believe it has a politically attractive way to put them on trial.” Indeed, the entire program is surrounded by political spin. Noted Dennis Blair, the administration’s first director of national intelligence, “It is the politically advantageous thing to do – low cost, no U.S. casualties, gives the appearance of toughness. It plays well domestically, and it is unpopular only in other countries. Any damage it does to the national interest only shows up over the long term.”

Unfortunately, that damage can be extensive.

The first is moral. The United States has a basic ethical obligation to minimize the deaths of noncombatants. Obviously, that is difficult when the combatants live and train among civilians. However, most people recognize that terrorism is outrageous precisely because it targets innocents. To be just, counterterrorism must seek to avoid the same consequence, even if unintentional. In discussing the Obama drone program, the Times cited the possibility of “explicit intelligence posthumously proving” people to be innocent, but as yet, alas, there is no medical procedure to posthumously unkill them.

The administration acknowledges the duty to avoid noncombatant casualties and claims that few, if any, civilians have been killed recently. However, such claims deserve to be treated with skepticism. We now know that many nonterrorists – some innocent civilians, others Taliban foot-soldiers – were arrested, detained, tortured, and imprisoned as if they were terrorists.

Moreover, in Pakistan the United States has relied on “signature” strikes, which, according to the Times, aimed not at “named, high-value terrorists” but instead “targeted training camps and suspicious compounds in areas controlled by militants.” Internal administration critics, reported the Times, “complained to the White House that the criteria used by the C.I.A. for identifying a terrorist ‘signature’ were too lax. The joke was that when the C.I.A. sees ‘three guys doing jumping jacks,’ the agency thinks it is a terrorist training camp, said one senior official. Men loading fertilizer could be bombmakers – but they might also be farmers, skeptics argued.”

Such attacks obviously are no joke for those killed. Washington is following a similar policy in Yemen, where the administration has undertaken “Terrorist Attack Disruption Strikes.” At least they are supposed to be based on more-stringent standards than are “signature” attacks. However, the administration apparently still does not even know the names of those it is killing.

Creating terrorists

Of course, no one really knows how many of those killed by drone strikes (or other means) are terrorists, enablers, or innocents. Obviously, real terrorists have an incentive to overstate civilian losses, but locals respond to administration claims with incredulity.

Moreover, Washington uses definitions to assert a peerless rec-ord. Reported the Times, the administration “in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent. Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good.” So living next to, riding with, or talking to a possible terrorist entails the risk of a death sentence.

Third-party casualty figures vary widely, but most contradict the administration. The website Long War Journal, New America Foundation, and the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism have estimated that the number of noncombatants killed in Pakistan alone ranges from 138 to 832. Innocent deaths may be inevitable in war, but killing hundreds of noncombatants is morally abhorrent.

Moreover, killing innocents will create additional terrorists. Noted the Times, “Drones have replaced Guantanamo as the recruiting tool of choice for militants.” The Pakistani Taliban had little interest in America until Washington began targeting the group’s members. Faisal Shahzad, the U.S. citizen who attempted to set off a bomb in New York City’s Times Square, received assistance from the Pakistan Taliban.

Yet the administration has been expanding its kill list. The Times cited Baitullah Mehsud, head of the Pakistan Taliban, “whose group then mainly targeted the Pakistan government.” The administration decided “that he represented a threat, if not to the homeland, to American personnel in Pakistan,” but targeting him may have turned him into a threat to the homeland as well.

Much the same has happened in Yemen, where U.S. officials admitted, “There were times when we were intentionally misled, presumably by [former president Ali Abdullah] Saleh, to get rid of people he wanted to get rid of,” one unnamed official told the Washington Post. Washington is now targeting Yemenis who at most pose a threat to Americans in Yemen – who, not coincidentally, are supporting the authoritarian regime against which many Yemenis are fighting. Reported the Post, “A growing number of attacks have been aimed at lower-level figures who are suspected of having links to terrorism operatives but are seen mainly as leaders of factions focused on gaining territory in Yemen’s internal struggle.”

There are many bad people in the world, but most have no desire to attack Americans. If the United States targets them, however, they have a compelling reason to reconsider. If they do, Washington then would fire more missiles on them, reinforcing the cycle. That should not surprise U.S. officials: Americans would react badly if a distant country, say China, was killing their neighbors in the name of fighting terrorism – even if those killed really were terrorists. And some day, as the global balance of power shifts, Americans might suffer such attacks on the basis of the precedent set by their government.

Washington’s de facto war also destabilizes target nations. Of course, it is possible that countries such as Pakistan and Yemen would be in worse shape with more terrorists absent the steady stream of drone attacks. Yet both those countries have deteriorated as U.S. strikes have increased. Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state that is perennially on the brink. Washington is widely reviled there.

Writing from Yemen, author and political activist Ibrahim Mothana warned that because of the drone strikes “a new generation of leaders is spontaneously emerging in furious retaliation to attacks on their territories and tribes. This is why [al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] is much stronger in Yemen today than it was a few years ago. In 2009, A.Q.A.P. had only a few hundred members and controlled no territory; today it has, along with Ansar al-Sharia, at least 1,000 members and controls substantial territory.”

The Obama administration’s desperate attempt to eradicate every last radical operative, whether dangerous or not, could have regrettable consequences. Warned Michael Boyle in the Guardian, Obama has allowed “short-term tactical victories against terrorist networks to overwhelm America’s wider strategic priorities and leave its relations with key governments in a parlous state.” If Pakistan implodes, Washington might find itself chasing loose nukes as well as violent jihadists.

Osama bin Laden and his followers never had a chance of winning the military side of the war on terrorism. But they did triumph when they caused Americans to give up some of their most important freedoms and adopt an even more interventionist foreign policy, which inevitably creates more hostility and encourages more terrorism – and which in turn encourages Americans to sacrifice more of their liberties. Barack Obama has reinforced both trends. That very likely isn’t the kind of change that many of his supporters expected in 2008.

It’s nice to know that Obama reads Aquinas and Augustine. It would be better if he renounced the autocratic authority to engage in targeted killings and ended U.S. government meddling around the globe. Unconstrained executive power undermines both Americans’ liberty and their humanity.

Republished with permission from: Global Research

Iraqi Kurdish leader visits Baghdad

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The leader of Iraqâ„¢s autonomous Kurdish Regional Government Massoud Barzani (File photo)

Leader of Iraqâ„¢s autonomous Kurdish Regional Government Massoud Barzani has visited the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, for the first time in two years.

Barzaniâ„¢s visit is aimed at resolving long-time disputes and tensions over land and oil between Iraqâ„¢s central government and the Kurdish region.

The Sunday visit comes a month after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki made a trip to Kurdistan.

Å“We discussed disputes and agreed to work on passing frozen laws in the parliament, especially the oil and gas law,” Maliki said during a joint press conference.

“We agreed to cooperate and work together and to face everything that threatens Iraq and the (Kurdish) region, and we consider this a national duty,” said Barzani.

A senior Kurd official also said that the two leaders have discussed Iraq’s worsening security situation, the administration of territories both sides claim power over, and a national hydrocarbons law that has been in limbo for years.

Last week, the Kurdish parliament approved delaying presidential election due in September, keeping Barzani in office for another two years.

Kurdistan has been an autonomous part of Iraq since 1991. Baghdad and the Kurdistan region have been at odds over a number of issues, including oil production and lands.

The Kurds are determined to maintain their autonomy and develop their own oil resources. They have signed contracts on their own terms over the past years, causing resentment in Iraqâ„¢s central government.

Baghdad and the Kurdistan region also lay claim to a tract of land that stretches from Iraq’s eastern border with Iran to its western frontier with Syria.

SZH/PR

Republished with permission from: Press TV

'Violent clashes kill 80 in Afghanistan'

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Afghan security forces conduct a large-scale security operation in an area of Afghanistan (file photo)

Nearly 80 people have been killed and dozens more injured in violent clashes between security forces and Taliban militants across Afghanistan, security officials say.

Afghan security officials said at least 54 militants were killed in large-scale security operations in provinces of Wardak, Kandahar, Kabul, Kunar and Paktia over the past 24 hours.

Authorities added that 14 police forces have lost their lives in Taliban attacks across the country.

Local medical sources said the death toll is expected to rise as some of the injured are reported to be in critical condition.

Fatalities among Afghan security forces have sharply risen in recent months. Latest figures show more than 900 Afghan troops have been killed since the beginning of the year.

Despite the Afghan government’s operations against Taliban militants and associated groups, they have still been able to spread their influence in various regions of the war-torn country.

There has been no letup in the Taliban attacks on US-led foreign troops across Afghanistan.

US-led troops and Afghan forces hence are falling prey to Taliban attacks on an almost daily basis.

In late April, the Taliban announced the start of their annual “spring offensive” against US-led and Afghan forces, vowing a new wave of attacks across Afghanistan.

The militant group said it would use “every possible tactic” to inflict casualties on Afghan and US-led forces. They specifically mentioned insider and bomb attacks.

The announcement prompted Afghan authorities to beef up security in major cities across the country, including the capital city of Kabul.

US-led foreign forces have killed thousands of people, including many civilians, in airstrikes and night raids since they invaded the country in 2001.

Washington claims it targets Taliban militants, but civilians are often the victims of such attacks.

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan as part of Washingtonâ„¢s so-called war on terror. The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but the country is still gripped by insecurity.

JR/PR

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Act of War: Israel Attacks Syrian Weapons Depot Containing Advanced Russian Arms

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A massive explosion last Thursday at a major Syrian weapons depot in Latakia, not far from the main port of Tartus, completely destroyed the facility and munitions stored there.  

Tartus is Syria’s main port.  It is largely controlled by the Russian military, and the route by which all weapons transported by sea would enter Syria.  As such, any advanced Russian weaponry would enter via Tartous and might be stored in the Latakia depot.

latakia arms depot explosionThough the Free Syrian Army took immediate credit for the attack, it was not the responsible party.  A confidential Israeli source informs me that Israeli forces attacked the site.  The target were components of Russia’s SA-300 anti-aircraft missile system which had been shipped by Russia to Tartus and stored in Latakia.

Israel and exerted tremendous pressure on Vladimir Putin to cancel its contract to supply the missile batteries to Syria, since once they were operational they would render Israeli aircraft more vulnerable to attack.  Israel, of course, will countenance no front-line state having even defensive weapons which give it superiority over Israeli weapons systems.  In response to Israeli entreaties, Russia’s leader refused to budge and recommitted to providing the weapons to Assad.  Apparently, he’d begun to follow through on his promise with these first shipments.

This is Israel’s third attack inside Syria since January.  It considerably escalates the conflict there since it is the first known attack by Israeli forces which destroyed Russian armaments.  Though Putin was surely warned by Israel that this would happen if he went forward with the arms deal, actually attacking Russian munitions is an act to which Putin will not take kindly, to say the least.

Assad bragged publicly a month ago that the SA-300 deliveries had arrived.  Turns out he was right.  Perhaps he shouldn’t have shot his mouth off.

Ilatakia arms depot attacksrael’s Channel 10 aired a claim by Syria rebels that Israel attacked and Israel journalists tell their viewers that they know things they’re not allowed to tell.  A clear indication of Israeli involvement.  Haaretz reports that a Syrian army source called the explosion the result of a technical failure, which hardly seems credible.

My source further notes that the FSA coordinated with the IDF and launched a rocket attack on nearby government military installations in order to distract loyalist forces from the real target.  But the rebels played no role in the attack on the munitions cache.  Their claim of responsibility conveniently takes Israel off the hook (until people read this report) and lessens pressure or condemnation on Israel for its third major attack inside Syria since January.

It’s all the stranger that Haaretz’s Amos Harel, in writing about the incident would write this:

Israel wasn’t mentioned in connection with Thursday’s incident in Latakia.  It doesn’t intervene in events in Syria.

Apparently, Israelis believe that “intervention” means invading the country with boots on the ground.  When it sends its jet planes to bomb Syrian targets inside the country, that’s not considered intervention.  This is further evidence of Israeli delusions and self-denial about their level of interference in the affairs of frontline Arab states.  Such refusal to acknowledge Israel’s real role allows Israelis to believe falsely they’re innocent bystanders, sometimes even victims (!) in the affairs in the region.

How does Harel think Israel coordinated the FSA diversionary attack near Latakia?  With smoke signals?  No, Israeli intelligence has created a tacit alliance with the rebels who serve Israel’s interests when Assad acts in ways Israel believes will harm it.  Hezbollah’s role in the Qusayr fight may have caused alarm in the Israeli defense ministry, which may’ve seen this as further evidence of escalation inside Syria.  If Israel could take Hezbollah down a peg or two after its victory taking the Syria town on Assad’s behalf, it would be eager to do so.  In this sense, the Syrian civil war is a proxy battle between Israel and Hezbollah who are itching for their next direct confrontation (the last one being in 2006).

Israel launched a very similar raid several months ago on the Sudanese capital Khartoum, in which it destroyed a major government arms depot.  It’s known that Iran ships its weapons to Hamas and Syria via ports on the Arabian Sea, from where they’re shipped via Sudan to points north.  Again, Israel has sucked countries throughout the region into the vortex of its own conflict with the Palestinians.  If this doesn’t prove that this conflict is a major destabilizing force in the region, nothing will.

The area attacked is in the Alawite heartland of northwestern Syria.  As such, Assad would think of it as one of his most secure bastions.  Violating it as Israel has done would be meant to show Assad that he has no sanctuary from which to hide and serve as a psychological blow.  At least, Israel would hope to convey such a message.

Haaretz’s Hebrew edition reports that Israel may’ve chosen this time to attack because the attention of the international media was focussed on the Egyptian coup, which served as a convenient distraction.

Another factor to keep in mind is that the recent assistance that Hezbollah offered to Assad in sending 4,000 fighters to subdue the strategic town of Qusayr would come with a price.  Hezbollah would not be shy is extracting its share of the bargain, which would certainly involve transshipment of advanced Iranian or Russian weaponry via Syria to Lebanon, where the Lebanese militia would use it against Israel in any future military confrontation.

Another possibility is that Russia, which recently confirmed that it would honor its contract with Assad calling for delivery of the SA-300 anti-aircraft system.  It’s possible Russia had begun shipping components of these missile batteries to Assad.

This site speculates that Israel used cruise missiles launched from its German-built Dolphin submarines to destroy the complex.  If true, it would mean that German built advanced armaments were being used by Israel in a pre-emptive attack violating the territorial sovereignty of another Mideast country.  Though Israel could just as easily have used its own air force to do the job.

Republished with permission from: Global Research

The U.S. Border: A Constitution-Free Zone Where Officials Can Grab Your Computer And Copy Your Hard Drive

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CustomsDid you know that the U.S. government considers the U.S. border to be a “constitution-free zone”? Did you know that customs officials can take your computer away from you, keep it for 30 days or more, and make a copy of everything that is on your hard drive? Sadly, this is actually true. According to the government, when you choose to cross the U.S. border you temporarily give up your constitutional rights. They can look at anything on your computer that they want to, and if they find anything that violates any law, they can use it against you in court. You may think twice about taking your computer out of the country after you read the rest of this article.

A lot of people think that it is the TSA that is doing this, but they are not supposed to be doing these kinds of searches. According to the official TSA blog, only customs officials are authorized to search laptops and other electronic devices…

Our officers might visually inspect your laptop and perform an explosives trace detection test, but that’s it. Our officers don’t even turn computers on during inspection.

So where are the reports coming from? They’re coming from people who have had their laptops searched by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

According to the Fourth Amendment, U.S. citizens are never supposed to be searched without probable cause. But the U.S. government has decided to throw out the Fourth Amendment, and the courts have gone along with it. So now customs officials can search anything that you bring across the border — including your computer. The following is from Wikipedia…

The United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP), ICE-HSI Special Agents, and Coast Guard officers (E4 grade and above) who are all customs officers (those tasked with enforcing Title 19 of the United States Code) with the United States Department of Homeland Security, are permitted to search travelers and their belongings at the American border without probable cause or a warrant. Pursuant to this authority, customs officers may generally stop and search the property of any traveler entering or exiting the United States at random, or even based largely on ethnic profiles.

If you get “flagged” for some reason, you are much more likely to have your computer searched.

Of course this is going to make people much more hesitant to speak out against the government and it is going to have an incredibly chilling affect on our First Amendment rights, but that is probably what they want anyway.

One example of an individual that was “flagged” for special treatment was described in an article by Lisa Vaas…

According to a report in Sunday’s Boston Globe, the consultant — a former MIT researcher, David House — was returning from rest and relaxation in Mexico when federal agents seized his laptop.

According to the Globe, the government wanted to know more about House’s connections to Bradley Manning, the US Army private accused of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks.

The seizure comes as no surprise. As Globe writer Katie Johnston notes, United States ports of entry are dubbed “Constitution-free zones” by civil liberties advocates.

Barring invasive techniques such as strip seizures, government agents are free to disregard Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. They don’t need reasonable suspicion or probable cause, and they can take what they like, be it laptops or smart phones.

It has been estimated that 5,000 laptops, cell phones, iPods and cameras are searched each year, but nobody really knows.

And if they do take your computer, you might not get it back for a very long time…

Two years ago The Constitution Project issued a report on the issue, “Suspicionless Border Searches of Electronic Devices: Legal and Privacy Concerns with the Department of Homeland Security’s Policy.”

The group explained: Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement “officers may detain electronic devices for significant periods of time. For CBP, detentions can be extended well beyond the minimum five-day guideline with supervisory approval. If the device is detained by ICE, the detention can last for ‘a reasonable time,’ which according to its Directive can last 30 days or more.” Neither agency sets any firm time limit.

Does this upset you?

It should.

When I first heard about this, I was hesitant to believe it.

It just seemed too crazy to me.

But we live in a crazy world that is rapidly getting crazier.

The U.S. government has decided that any American citizen that chooses to cross the border temporarily gives up their constitutional rights, and the courts are going along with it.

So what should we do?

Well, number one, you might want to avoid going across the border if you can.

Secondly, you might want to consider not taking any computer with you when you do travel internationally. Any little thing that they find can be used to put you away behind bars.

We are very quickly being transformed into a “Big Brother” society, and our rights are constantly being eroded. Hopefully the American people will begin to stand up and say something about these issues, because if they don’t eventually we won’t have any privacy left at all.

Big Brother At The Border

Republished with permission from: The American Dream

Venezuela Grants Snowden Asylum

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On July 6, Russia Today headlined ” ‘Free from imperial persecution:’ Venezuela offers Snowden asylum.”

Days earlier, President Nicolas Maduro said asylum would be “seriously” considered if sought. Snowden deserves a “humanitarian medal,” he added.

“If this young man is punished, nobody in the world will ever dare to tell the truth,” he stressed.

He’s a man of his word. It’s official. Maduro granted Snowden asylum. He did so on Venezuela’s Day of Independence.

On April 10, 1810, the First Republic of Venezuela was established. Venezuela’s War of Independence began.

On July 5, 1811, Venezuela declared independence. Spanish colonial rule ended.

Venezuela was its first American colony to break free. Doing so reflected Bolivar’s vision. He liberated half of South America. He advocated using national wealth responsibly, equitably and fairly.

He fought against what he called the imperial curse “to plague Latin America with misery in the name of liberty.”

Chavez was his modern-day incarnation. Maduro carries his torch. Doing so responsibly matters most. Hopefully he’s up to the challenge.

Chavez called him Venezuela’s most capable administrator and politician. His leadership experience prepared him well. His credentials are impeccable.

He’s ideologically left of center. He’s a former union leader, legislator, National Assembly speaker, foreign minister, and vice president. On April 19, 2013, he succeed Chavez as president.

Venezuela’s independence was short-lived. It lasted until July 25, 1812. Chavez restored Bolivarianism. It’s institutionalized. It benefits all Venezuelans. It does so equitably and fairly.

Americans are cheated. They’re deprived. They’re denied. They’re persecuted. State terror is policy. Police state justice targets challengers.

Neoliberal harshness punishes millions. Americans get force-fed austerity, growing poverty, high unemployment, and unaddressed homelessness and hunger.

They get government of, by and for wealth, power and privilege alone. They’re targeted for supporting right over wrong.

Venezuelans enjoy government of, by and for everyone. National wealth is equitably shared. On July 5, Maduro acted responsibly, saying:

“As head of state and of government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, I have decided to offer humanitarian asylum to the young American Edward Snowden.”

“To be independent, we must feel it. We must exercise our independence and sovereignty. Our discourses are meaningless if they aren’t exercised with force at the national level.”

“I announce to the friendly governments of the world that we have decided to offer this statute of international humanitarian law to protect the young Snowden from the persecution that has been unleashed from the most powerful empire in the world.”

“Let’s ask ourselves: who violated international law? A young man who decided, in an act of rebellion, to tell the truth of the espionage of the United States against the world? Or the government of the United States, the power of the imperialist elites, who spied on it?”

“Who is the guilty one,” he added. “A young man who denounces war plans, or the US government which launches bombs and arms the terrorist Syrian opposition against the people and legitimate president, Bashar al-Assad?”

Venezuela isn’t alone. Bolivia suggested asylum would be granted. On Friday, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega said he’ll “gladly receive Snowden.”

“We are open, respectful of the right to asylum, and it is clear that if circumstances permit it, we would receive Snowden with pleasure and give him asylum here in Nicaragua,” he said.

Presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela, as well as delegations from Brazil, Chile and Peru reacted to France, Italy, Portugal and Spain denying Evo Morales airspace and landing rights.

Their Declaration states:

“Given the situation that the President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Evo Morales, was subjected to by the governments of France, Portugal, Italy and Spain, we denounce before the international community and various international organizations:

  • The flagrant violation of international treaties governing peaceful coexistence, solidarity and cooperation between our states, that took place is an unusual act, unfriendly and hostile, configuring an unlawful act that affects freedom of movement and displacement of a head of state and his delegation.
  • The abuse and neocolonial practices that still exist on our planet in the XXI century.
  • The lack of transparency about the motivations of policy decisions that prevented air traffic for the Bolivian presidential vessel and its president.
  • The injury suffered by President Evo Morales, which offends not only the Bolivian people but all our nations.
  • The illegal spying practices that threaten the rights of citizens and friendly coexistence among nations.”

“In view of these denunciations, we are convinced that the process of building the Patria Grande (Integrated Latin America) to which we are committed must be consolidated with full respect for the sovereignty and independence of our peoples, without interference from global hegemonic powers, conquering the old practices of imposing first and second class.(status on) countries.”

“The men and women heads of state and governments of countries of the Union of South American Nations, gathered in Cochabamba on July 4, 2013:

(1) We declare that the unacceptable restriction on the freedom of President Evo Morales, making virtually him a hostage, is a rights violation of not only the Bolivian people but of all countries and peoples of Latin America and sets a dangerous precedent for existing international law.

(2) We reject the actions that clearly violate norms and principles of international law, the inviolability of the heads of state.

(3) We call on the governments of France, Portugal, Italy and Spain to explain the reasons for the decision to prevent the presidential plane from the Plurinational State of Bolivia from overflying through its airspace.

(4) Similarly, we urge the governments of France, Portugal, Italy and Spain present the corresponding public apologies for the serious incidents that occurred.

(5) We support the complaint filed by the Plurinational State of Bolivia to the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for the serious violation of human rights and specific endangerment of the life of President Evo Morales; we also support the right of the Plurinational State of Bolivia to take all actions it deems necessary to the courts and relevant agencies.

(6) We agreed to form a monitoring committee, entrusting the task to our foreign ministries to perform the actions necessary to shed light on the facts.”

“Finally, in the spirit of the principles set forth in the treaty establishing UNASUR, we urge all the heads of state of the union to stand by (accompany) this declaration.

Similarly, we call on the United Nations and regional organizations that have not done so yet, to make a pronouncement on this unjustifiable and arbitrary event.

Cochabamba, July 4, 2013″

On Friday, Maduro accused CIA officials of “order(ing) to the air traffic authorities, which gave the alert that Snowden was going in (Morales’) plane.”

He said Washington sent an extradition request. It came while Evo Morales was still in Moscow. Venezuela rejected it. Maduro was blunt and unequivocal saying:

Washington has “no moral authority to request the extradition of a young man who exposed the illegality under which the Pentagon, the CIA and the power of the US work. I reject any request they are making for extradition.”

He justifiably wants Luis Posada Carriles extradited. He conspired with Orlando Bosch. They’re responsible for downing Cubana flight 455. In 1976, all 78 passengers aboard died.

Bosch died in April 2011. Carriles remains free in Miami. He’s a former CIA operative. He admitted responsibility for numerous terrorist attacks. Washington protects him. It rejects Venezuela’s request for justice.

Bolivia got America’s extradition request. Its Foreign Ministry called it “strange, illegal and unfounded.”

At the same time, Morales threatened to expel US diplomats and close Washington’s embassy, saying:

“We don’t need the pretext of cooperation and diplomatic relations so that they can come and spy on us.”

Washington unjustifiably claims Snowden “unlawfully released classified information and documents to international media outlets.”

“The United States seeks Snowden’s provisional arrest should Snowden seek to travel to or transit through Venezuela. Snowden is a flight risk because of the substantial charges he is facing and his current and active attempts to remain a fugitive.”

It explained charges against him. They include:

  • “Theft of Government Property
  • Unauthorized Communication of National Defense

Information (and)

  • Willful Communication of Classified Intelligence Information to an Unauthorized Person.”

Each charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment and $250,000 fine.

Snowden’s called “a fugitive who is currently in Russia. It urged Venezuela to arrest and hold him in custody. It wants items he has seized.

Maduro rejected Washington’s charges. He did so responsibly. He exposed lawless NSA spying. He told the truth, Maduro said.

He deserves his just reward. He’s free at last. Or is he? Traveling safely to Venezuela won’t be easy. His flight route’s important.

Attempting to overfly EU countries risks trouble. Flying east perhaps avoids it. A potentially safe route might be Moscow to Hong Kong, Beijing or Shanghai, then Caracas.

He needs proper travel documents. Without identity papers, they’ll him cross international borders legally.

Russia must approve. So must an airline carrier. Private non-commercial travel’s simpler. At issue is who’ll cover costs either way. Traveling from Moscow to Caracas isn’t cheap.

Commercial flights are expensive. Cost exceeds $1,000. Who’ll pay if Snowden can’t? Wherever he goes, he’s unsafe. Washington’s long arm threatens him. Obama wants him silenced, imprisoned or dead. Snowden knows and said so.

He’ll live every free day ahead like his last. Hopefully he’ll avoid US injustice. He deserves his just reward.

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/venezuela-grants-snowden-amnesty/

Republished with permission from: Global Research

Egypt army to arrest Muslim Brotherhood

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Supporters of ousted Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, gather in Cairo following Friday prayers, July 5, 2013.

The Egyptian Army Chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi plans to imprison thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members in detention centers that are already under construction.

According to an article published by Debka, Middle East sources believe that al-Sisi knows overthrowing Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi was the first step in a process that includes rewriting of the constitution, setting up an interim administration and holding presidential and parliamentarian elections over the next six months.

Egypt plunged into a fresh wave of unrest after al-Sisi ousted Morsi and dissolved the country’s constitution on July 3.

One day later, the chief justice of Egyptâ„¢s Supreme Constitutional Court, Adly Mansour, was sworn in as interim president of the country. The Egyptian military also said Morsi was being held Å“preventively.”

The article says al-Sisi has planned two moves in order to prevent chaos from engulfing the country.

The first measure includes mass arrest of thousands of the local members of Muslim Brotherhood across the country and incarcerating them in prisons that are already in preparation.

According to the article, al-Sisi is well aware that such a move, similar to the actions of Gamal Abdel Nasser in the fifties and Anwar Sadat in the seventies would face the US opposition, but he would enjoy the support of Persian Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia.

The second measure, the article noted, is general crackdown on an estimated 10,000 armed Salafists, some of them working for al-Qaeda, who dwell Sinai Peninsula.

Citing military sources, the article stated that as the former military intelligence chief, al-Sisi is familiar with the peninsula.

MYA/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

11 Signs That Italy Is Descending Into A Full-Blown Economic Depression

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The Leaning Tower Of PisaWhen you get into too much debt, really bad things start to happen. Sadly, that is exactly what is happening to Italy right now. Harsh austerity measures are causing the Italian economy to slow down even more than it was previously. And yet even with all of the austerity measures, the Italian government just continues to rack up even more debt. This is the exact same path that we watched Greece go down. Austerity causes government revenues to drop which causes deficit reduction targets to be missed which causes even more austerity measures to become necessary. But if Italy collapses economically, it is going to be a far bigger deal than what happened in Greece. Italy is the ninth largest economy on the entire planet. Actually, Italy used to be number eight, but now Russia has passed it. If Italy continues to stumble, India and Canada will soon pass it as well. It really is a tragedy to watch what is happening in Italy, because it really is a wonderful place. When I was a child, my father was in the navy, and I got the opportunity to live there for a while. It is a land of great weather, great food and great soccer. The people are friendly and the culture is absolutely fascinating. But now the nation is falling apart. The following are 11 signs that Italy is descending into a full-blown economic depression…

#1 The unemployment rate in Italy has risen to 12.2 percent. That is the highest that it has been in more than 35 years.

#2 The youth unemployment rate in Italy is sitting at 38.5 percent, and in southern Italy it recently hit the 50 percent mark.

#3 An average of 134 retail outlets are shutting down in Italy every single day. Overall, approximately 224,000 retail establishments have closed since 2008.

#4 Italy’s economy has now been contracting for seven quarters in a row.

#5 It is being projected that Italy’s GDP will shrink by 1.8 percent this year.

#6 Industrial production in Italy has declined for 15 months in a row. It has now fallen to its lowest level in about 25 years.

#7 Overall, factory output in Italy has fallen by about one-fourth since 2008.

#8 In May, automobile sales in Italy were down 8 percent compared to one year earlier.

#9 The number of people that are considered to be “seriously deprived” in Italy has doubled over the past two years.

#10 Italy now has a debt to GDP ratio of 130 percent.

#11 It is being projected that Italy will need a major EU bailout within six months.

At this point, Italy is flat broke.

And unlike the U.S. or Japan, Italy cannot run over to a central bank and have them print up oodles of new money with which to buy up government bonds. Italy is married to the euro, and so that greatly limits their options. Unfortunately, the money is rapidly running out. The following is from a recent article by Wolf Richter…

In most countries, it would be an act of mind-bending chutzpah, or perhaps a display of political insanity, but in Italy it barely made ripples: for a government official, a minister no less, to declare that the country cannot pay its long overdue bills, and not for a month or two, but for the rest of this year! Due to “technical” problems.

The Italian government is out of money. Not that the US government is in any better shape in that respect, or the Japanese government for that matter, but they have central banks that print the missing moolah with lavish abandon. Italy doesn’t. It has the ECB which is run by an Italian who promised last year to print with lavish abandon to keep countries like Italy afloat. But that promise is not the same thing as having your own central bank.

On July 4, Italy’s budget fiasco came to light once again. Wracked by the pretense of austerity, expenditures rose 1.3% in the first quarter, while revenues remained flat. So the deficit rose to 7.3% of GDP, up from 6.6% last year, bringing the national debt to 130% of GDP. Ballooning debt and deficits in a shriveling economy — Italy has been in recession since the fourth quarter of 2011 — is a toxic combination in the Eurozone.

While those numbers may sound really bad, the reality is that the people that are suffering the most are the average folks on the street. Many Italians have been completely blindsided by this economic depression, and suicides are skyrocketing…

In Italy, the tragic stories of suicides apparently linked to the deep recession are becoming all too frequent. Last month, a former factory worker hanged himself near Turin because he could not find work, his relatives said. In May, a young man committed suicide outside of Rome shortly after he lost his job. The next day, Italian President Giorgio Napolitano begged the government to deliver “the utmost attention for situations of greatest malaise and need” to help stop the wave of suicides.

That is absolutely tragic.

But you know what?

The United States is headed down the same path that Italy has gone.

In the coming years unemployment and suicide will both skyrocket here too.

Those that are sticking their heads in the sand right now will be absolutely blindsided by what is coming. But those that understand what is on the horizon and are preparing for it will have the best chance of making it through.

Italy is kind of like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Everyone knows that it is going to fall eventually, and when it does fall it is going to be a major disaster.

When the financial system of Italy totally implodes, that will be a sign that things are really starting to accelerate. Expect dominoes to start tumbling much more rapidly in the aftermath.

Republished with permission from: The Economic Collapse

‘Egypt, salutary lesson to Turkey’

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A protester in Turkey is hit by a jet of water during a police crackdown on anti-government protests. (File photo)

An Iranian lawmaker has warned Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the possibility of an Egypt-style crisis in Turkey unless he overhauls his domestic and foreign policies.

Å“The developments in Egypt should be a salutary lesson to the Turkish prime minister to seriously reconsider his domestic and foreign policy,” said Ebrahim Aqa-Mohammadi, a member of Iran’s Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, on Sunday.

Å“Erdoganâ„¢s strategic mistakes in the areas of domestic and foreign policy have posed serious challenges to Turkeyâ„¢s integrity and unity to the extent that in the Justice and Development Party, which supports him, he has disagreement with President Abdullah Gul,” he added.

Egypt plunged into a fresh wave of unrest after the Egyptian army overthrew President Mohamed Morsi on June 3 following days of massive anti-government protests across Egypt.

Meanwhile, Turkey has been the scene of anti-government demonstrations since May 31, when the police broke up a sit-in staged at Taksim Square to protest against a redevelopment plan, which involved the demolition of Gezi Park in Istanbul.

The Turkish protesters say Gezi Park, which is a traditional gathering point for rallies and demonstrations as well as a popular tourist destination, is one of Istanbulâ„¢s last public green spaces.

The Turkish protests soon spread to other cities across the country and turned into calls for the resignation of Erdogan, who had strongly backed the project.

Å“The failure of the Turkish prime minister to revive a neo-Ottoman empire with reliance on Islamic tendencies led him toward racism and Pan-Turkism, creating public discontent in the country,” Aqa-Mohammadi pointed out.

The Iranian lawmaker called on Erdogan to extend an apology to the Turkish nation and avoid the discourse of intimidation, so that the crisis in the country does not deteriorate.

Erdoganâ„¢s opponents say he has become increasingly authoritarian since he came to power a decade ago.

Several people have been killed in the violent crackdown on peaceful protesters, whom Erdogan has described as foreign-backed extremists and terrorists.

On June 24, Erdogan praised the Å“legendary heroism” of police forces in quelling anti-government protests.

ASH/HJL

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Soccer viewers behead referee in Brazil

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Brazilian soccer spectators decapitate a referee after he fatally stabs an amateur football player for refusing to leave the game field. (File photo)

Brazilian soccer spectators have decapitated a referee after he fatally stabbed an amateur football player for refusing to leave the game field.

Brazilian police spokesman Kena Souza said on Saturday that the incident took place on June 30 in northern remote town of Pio XII.

The dispute began when player Josenir dos Santos, 30, approached the referee Octavio da Silva, 20, during a game to object to a ruling.

Dos Santos reportedly threw a punch at da Silva, who took out a knife he was carrying and fatally stabbed the player.

The spectators responded to the refereeâ„¢s attack by storming the field and stoning Da Silva, before they beheaded him.

Souza reported that police at the regional headquarters of Santa Ines arrested a 27-year-old man on July 2 over the killing and authorities are continuing to investigate the incident.

The deadly attack comes as Brazil is struggling to depict itself as a safe place as the host of the upcoming 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.

The recent Confederations Cup, which was also held in Brazil in June, was overshadowed by violence as police clashed several times with anti-government protesters angered by the vast amount of money being spent on the sport events.

CAH/HJL

Republished with permission from: Press TV

'Iran-Iraq trade volume tripled’

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Iranâ„¢s Vice President for International Affairs Ali Saeedlou says the Islamic Republic and neighboring Iraq have already tripled their trade volume and this figure can further increase in the near future.

Å“Our economic cooperation started from USD three or four billion and has now reached more than USD 12 billion… We predict the volume of economic cooperation to increase to USD 16 billion if things go well,” Saeedlou said on Sunday.

The Iranian official made the remarks after signing a cooperation accord between Iran and Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

Saeedlou said the issues of joint investment, construction projects, transferring gas and electricity to Iraq and tourism were among those mentioned in the accord.

Å“Currently, some 1,200 megawatts of electricity is exported to Iraq, which is expected to increase by 150 megawatts in order to be transferred to Syria and Lebanon,” the Iranian official said.

Å“Carrying out [joint] infrastructure economic projects with neighboring countries, particularly the friendly and brother country of Iraq, is one of the priorities of the Islamic Republic,” Saeedlou added.

The Iranian vice president said that, due to the damages caused by the US-led war, Iraq is in need of infrastructure such as roads, dams and power plants.

In January, a memorandum of understanding was signed by Iran, Iraq and Syria to expand trade cooperation and the transit of goods between the three countries.

MYA/HJL/HMV

Republished with permission from: Press TV

UK child migration: a scandalous history

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An abusive British imperial system has been involved in export of unwanted children, mainly from orphanages and other juvenile institutions, to be tortured with crushing labor and sexually abused at a number of former British colonies.

The kids were shipped off in large numbers to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and central Africa, without the consent or even knowledge of their potential families and even themselves, for forced labor.

They were sent with the intension of stopping the children being a burden on the British state while supplying the receiving countries with potential workers and — as a parliamentary inquiry found in 1998 – to help expand the white population in British colonies.

The Australian episode of the practice in the mid 20th century was especially painful as officials in London did what it took to populate their colony with Å“good white stock” to compete with locals and other Asiatic nations in a racial and religious competition.

Australia was the destination to some 10,000 children between 1947 and 1967 with Perth being a notorious torture ground.

Boys aged younger than 16 were sent to an institution north of the western city run by Catholic Christian Brothers.

Children as young as seven had to work in construction projects without adequate food or basic safety measures and many were injured at work at an age when they would have been playing if they lived an ordinary life.

The institutions behind the de facto child trafficking were officially embraced under philanthropic guises by the British and Australian governments and established organizations, many of them religious charities.

It is also estimated that tens of thousands of children were sent to suffer similar fates in New Zealand, Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) and Canada from the late 19th century well into the 1960â„¢s until the practice was exposed and stopped in 1967after exposure by a socialist worker.

The so-called emigration schemes were launched in the 19th century claiming to offer children in orphanages better chances abroad.

The schemes, however, were driven by a combination of economic, colonial and racial motives, and Canada was the key destination until the 1930â„¢s.

The children served as a boost to the white infusion of the population against Indians in Canada and indigenous population in New Zealand while the religious charities used the forced recruits to gain some income from the public subsidies provided to the schemes.

In New Zealand, children were often placed with foster parents without legal procedures while in Canada they were sent to farms or to home labor, as befitted their gender.

The brutality of the so-called foster parents or institutions was such that some Canadian farmers were even charged with manslaughter as smuggled kids were seen as a source of cheap unaccounted-for labor.

After Canadian government halted the deliveries of children in 1930, deliveries were launched to Australia, New Zealand and other destinations.

There were in all around 150,000 children who were forced out of Britain under the schemes over the 20th century.

The British government, whose top authorities were directly in charge of the shameful measures, has never led a large-scale public inquiry into the abuses.

The mistreatment was only acknowledged in February 2010 when the then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a public apology to former child migrants on behalf of Britain.

AMR/HE

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Georgia curries favor with West: Iran MP

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Mansour Haqiqatpour, a member of Iran’s Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee

An Iranian lawmaker has slammed Georgiaâ„¢s recent measure to unilaterally revoke a visa-free travel regime with Iran as an attempt to gain advantages from the US and its Western allies.

Å“The Georgian government curries favor with its Western and American masters in an attempt to gain some advantages from them in return,” said Mansour Haqiqatpour, a member of Iranâ„¢s Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, on Sunday.

Å“Such behavior has few precedents in the history of Iran-Georgia ties and will negatively affect Tehran-Tbilisi relations,” he added.

Last week, Georgiaâ„¢s Foreign Ministry spokesman Irakli Vekua announced that the country has reinstated visa requirements for the Iranians, saying, Å“As of July 1, Iranian citizens have to obtain a visa to enter the Georgian territory.”

Vekua declined to provide further information on Tbilisiâ„¢s new decision; however, media reports say the Georgian government has adopted the measure over speculations that Tehran might be using its booming business ties with the small ex-Soviet state to circumvent the Westâ„¢s embargoes.

Iran and Georgia had signed an agreement for visa-free travel between the two countries in 2010, in a move to enhance bilateral ties in trade and tourism.

Haqiqatpour argued that Tbilisiâ„¢s new measure against Tehran indicates that Georgia is not a sovereign state and is under US sway.

Many in Georgia believe that the decision to halt visa-free entries by Iranian nationals is made under pressure from the United States.

Some experts also contend that this may be an attempt by the new Georgian government to regain American support, which, they say has weakened after the administration of US President Barack Obama came to power.

ASH/HJL/HMV

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Germans protest against Neo-Nazism

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Germans stand in a protest chain against Neo-Nazism in the southern state of Baden-Wurttemberg, July 6, 2013.

Thousands of Germans have protested against Neo-Nazism by forming a 30-kilometer human chain in the southern parts of the country.

About 5,000 anti-far right protesters participated in the rally, which took place on Saturday between the cities of Heilbronn and Bietigheim-Bissingen in the southern state of Baden-Wurttemberg.

The protest was supported by various political groups, including Greens, Social Democratic Party of Germany and the Left as well as the union organizations IG Metall and Verdi.

The participants held banners reading Å“Against the right” and Å“Hand in hand for more tolerance in the country.”

The protest came as the country has been hit by a growing wave of right-wing extremism.

The most notable is the case of the Neo-Nazi group National Socialist Underground (NSU), whose members killed nearly a dozen people in Germany between 2000 and 2007.

One of its founders, Beate Zschaepe, is currently standing trial charged with complicity in the murder of eight ethnic Turks, one Greek immigrant and a policewoman.

The murdered policewoman, Michele Kiesewetter, lived and served in the city of Heilbronn.

CAH/HSN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Syria army gains more ground in battle

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Syria army has gained more ground in its battle against foreign-backed Takfiri militants in several parts of the country.

The army has launched operations in the western city of Homs and its countryside, killing a number of Takfiris.

Syrian troops have also destroyed large amounts of equipment, weapons and ammunition used by the armed groups.

Army soldiers on Saturday took control of several buildings in the district of Khaldiyeh in Homs.

On the outskirts of the capital Damascus, army units uncovered a 500-meter tunnel used for militant operations.

Media sources say computers, surveillance equipment, stolen medical supplies and a workshop for making explosives were found inside the tunnel.

The army on Saturday restored security to the industrial area of al-Qaboun on the eastern outskirts of the capital.

Syrian troops also retook control of the northwestern part of the Sayyida Zeinab camp near Damascus.

The army also inflicted heavy losses on the militants in the northwestern city of Aleppo, as well as the cities of Hama and Idlib.

The Syrian army has conducted successful operations against the foreign-backed militants over the past weeks.

The army established control over the strategically important town of Qusayr, near the Lebanese border, in early June.

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

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

DB/HSN/HMV

Republished with permission from: Press TV

UK embassy hosted secret Syria meeting

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The British embassy in Turkey has hosted a meeting of senior intelligence officers from European and Middle Eastern countries to discuss reprisals against the Syrian government over its pushing back of foreign-backed militants from the strategic city of al-Qusayr.

The emergency meeting, held last month with the participation of senior spies from Britain, the US, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan, focused on attacks on Syrian government buildings and army positions, Fars News Agency reported.

According to the report from an informed source, who requested anonymity, the participating countries, except Jordan, were represented by their regional intelligence chiefs in the meeting.

They reportedly discussed morale-boosting media propaganda and military operations for the foreign-backed terrorists after their heavy losses against Syrian army forces over the past months.

The foreign-backed militants were whacked by the army operation in al-Qusayr in early June that led to a strategic victory for the Syrian government forces.

The army troops managed to fully recapture the western town, which served as an important center and supply route for the foreign-backed militants, following three weeks of combat.

The meeting on Syria also focused on alternatives for sending arms and supplies to the terrorists after they lost control of al-Qusayr.

AMR/HE

Republished with permission from: Press TV

‘Iran to complete projects in Comoros’

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Iranâ„¢s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has stressed the importance of accelerating the implementation of Iranian projects in the African island nation of Comoros.

Describing the relations between Iran and Comoros as positive, Salehi on Sunday expressed hope that Tehranâ„¢s projects in this African country would be completed soon. He further called for the expansion of bilateral trade, cultural, scientific, technical and economic ties between the two countries.

Salehi arrived in Comoros on the second leg of his three-nation tour of African countries.

The Iranian foreign minister voiced Tehranâ„¢s readiness to share its experiences in the field of health and infrastructures with Comoros.

Referring to the lack of sufficient electricity infrastructures in Comoros, Salehi said Iran seeks to resolve the African countryâ„¢s electricity and fuel problems by using solar cells and wind turbines.

Comorian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohamed Bacri, who welcomed Salehi at the airport, expressed hope for the expansion of bilateral ties between Iran and Comoros.

The top Iranian diplomat left Tehran for Zimbabweâ„¢s capital, Harare, Thursday on the first leg of his trip.

A central plank of Iranâ„¢s policy is to enhance relations with African nations on all political, economic and cultural fronts.

Å“The Islamic Republic of Iran has always made efforts and plans to pave the way for fundamental, practicable and sustainable cooperation with African countries,” Salehi pointed out in late May.

He said that Iran and African countries have numerous potentialities to boost reciprocal ties, and called for the removal of obstacles to the promotion of mutual economic cooperation.

MYA/HJL/HMV

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Blasts injure 5 in India Buddhist complex

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Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar (C) visits the Mahabodhi Temple following eight low-intensity serial blasts at the Bodh Gaya Buddhist temple complex, July 7, 2013.

Multiple explosions have hit the Bodh Gaya temple complex in eastern India, leaving at least five people dead.

The series of small blasts happened in quick succession early Sunday in the complex, which is located in the town of Bodh Gaya in Bihar State.

A senior police officer said a gate at one of the shrines was badly damaged in Bodh Gaya.

According to the official, four blasts took place on the campus of the Mahabodhi Temple and the Buddhist Great Awakening temple. Four other explosions were reported at the nearby Karma temple and a shrine with a 180-feet tall Buddhist tower.

There were few pilgrims inside the complex at the time.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh strongly condemned the blasts, saying Å“such attacks on religious places will never be tolerated.”

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the explosions.

India’s Junior Home Minister R.P.N. Singh said that an investigation would be carried out to determine the perpetrators.

The Bodh Gaya temple complex attracts Buddhist pilgrims from around the world, especially from Japan, Thailand and Myanmar.

MSH/HJL

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Iran stresses adherence to law in Egypt

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Protesters opposing Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi set off fireworks during a protest at Liberation Square, Cairo, June 30, 2013.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Araqchi has underscored the importance of fulfilling the popular demands of the Egyptian nation through legal channels.

Å“The Islamic Republic of Iran stresses the fulfillment of the legitimate public demands in Egypt, but we believe this should be achieved through legal paths,” Araqchi said on Sunday.

Å“We believe that governments elected by popular vote should be respected and the peopleâ„¢s demands must be pursued through the channels stipulated by law,” he added.

Å“We do not consider the interference of military forces in political affairs and the change of governments that have come to power through elections a proper measure,” the Iranian diplomat pointed out.

Iranâ„¢s Foreign Ministry spokesman praised Egypt as the Å“flag bearer of political developments in the Arab world,” which plays a key role in the Islamic Awakening, adding, Å“The maintenance of territorial integrity, solidarity, tranquility, stability and the unity of the political circles in Egypt, as a great and important country in the Muslim world, is important to us.”

Egypt plunged into a fresh wave of unrest after the Egyptian army overthrew President Mohamed Morsi following days of massive anti-government protests across Egypt.

General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the head of the Egyptian Army, declared on June 3 that Morsi was no longer in office and announced the suspension of the countryâ„¢s constitution.

A day later, the chief justice of Egyptâ„¢s Supreme Constitutional Court, Adli Mansour, was sworn in as interim president of the country. The Egyptian military also said Morsi was being held Å“preventively.”

Araqchi described the political environment in Egypt as Å“full of ambiguity” and Å“not very easy to be judged,” adding, Å“In Egypt, on the one hand, we face the popular demands that need to be addressed, and, on the other hand, we witnessed the inefficiency of the government of Mr. Morsi, which had its own consequences and we had seen them in the countryâ„¢s foreign policy.”

He pointed to the multi-faceted nature of the Egyptian crisis and the instances of foreign interference in the country and stressed that Iran will soberly follow the developments in the North African country.

Å“The recent developments in Egypt cannot be construed as a failure of the Islamic Awakening or Islamic tendencies; from the outset, we had known and said that the Egyptian revolution would have tough years ahead on its way to stability,” Araqchi pointed out.

On Friday, tens of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood activists and their supporters took to the streets across the country to protest against what they called a coup, and clashes broke out between pro-Morsi and opposition protesters and security forces that left 36 people dead and more than 1,000 injured.

Earlier on Friday, Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie said the military coup against Egyptâ„¢s first democratically elected president was illegal and millions would remain on the street until Morsi was reinstated as president.

ASH/HJL/HMV

Republished with permission from: Press TV

‘Morsi ouster, bitter blow to Syria rebels’

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The ouster of Egyptâ„¢s President Mohammad Morsi by the countryâ„¢s army is a Å“major setback” for the foreign-backed militants operating in Syria, an analyst says.

The militants Å“are facing a major setback this week that didnâ„¢t even happen on their own territory. The coup in Egypt ousted an Islamist president who was outspokenly sympathetic to them, and has left Syriaâ„¢s own opposition blocs in even more of a shambles than they already were,” read an article by Jason Ditz, published on Antiwar website on July 5.

On July 3, Egyptâ„¢s army commander General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ousted Morsi, who had taken office in June 2012, and dissolved the country’s constitution.

The article added that under the presidency of Morsi, Egyptâ„¢s Å“government permitted” its citizens to go into Syria to fight with Syrian troops, Å“and Morsi even appeared at rallies where they were encouraged to do so.”

Last month, Morsi said Egypt must cut off all diplomatic relations with the Syrian government, ordering the closure of the Syrian embassy in Cairo.

Morsi, who was addressing thousands of his supporters at a rally in Cairo on June 15, also called on Western states to enforce a no-fly zone over Syria.

The United States has recently announced that it will impose a no-fly zone over Syria and the Pentagon is drawing up plans for the move.

The 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.

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

DB/HJL

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Last Week in Poverty: The Unfinished March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

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July 1, 2013
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The following article first appeared on the Nation.com. For more great content from the Nation, sign up for their email newsletters here.

“[African-Americans] must march from the rat-infested, overcrowded ghettos to decent, wholesome, unrestricted residential areas disbursed throughout our cities…. They must march from the play areas in crowded and unsafe streets to the newly opened areas in the parks and recreational centers,” said Whitney Young Jr., executive director of the National Urban League.

When I read those words this week, I thought it sounded like a good recommendation for residents of my hometown, Washington, DC, which has in essence been two separate and unequal cities since my great grandparents came here in the 1920s–and it remains so today.

But Young said this at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, exactly fifty years ago on August 28. A new report from the Economic Policy Institute, “The Unfinished March–An Overview,” offers a compelling look at the economic vision that was laid out on that day and has since been forgotten. It also examines the continuing struggle to achieve that vision.

Most Americans associate the March with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a Dream” speech and celebrate the victories of the civil rights movement that followed. But report author Algernon Austin, director of EPI’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy (PREE), writes that there were “nine other speeches that day” and that the march organizers called for “decent housing, adequate and integrated education, a federal jobs program for full employment, and a national minimum wage of over $13.00 an hour in today’s dollars.”

Where do we stand today in meeting those goals?

There are still ghettos of poverty that lack decent housing–where poor minority children don’t have the same access to resource-rich, middle-class communities as poor white children do. Nearly half of poor African-American children live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty, defined as areas where 30 percent of the census tract population lives below the federal poverty threshold (on less than $18,000 for a family of three). In contrast, only 12 percent of poor white children live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty. (Thirty-nine percent of poor American Indian children live in areas of concentrated poverty, as do 35 percent of poor Hispanic children and 21 percent of poor Asian and Pacific Islander children.)

Austin describes how concentrated poverty is correlated “with a host of social and economic challenges,” including: higher crime rates, higher exposure to lead, higher prevalence of alcohol and fast food outlets and fewer opportunities to be physically active due to crime and limited green space. All of these factors make the struggle to rise from poverty significantly harder.

Relatedly, Austin points to the call by speakers at the March “for black children to gain access to adequate and integrated education.”

“[We] must march from the congested ill-equipped schools, which breed dropouts, and which smother motivation, to the well-equipped integrated facilities throughout the cities,” argued Young at the March.

But today we have public schools that are essentially separate and unequal. 74 percent of African-Americans still attend majority nonwhite schools, compared to just over 76 percent in the late 1960s. That number had dropped down to 63 percent by the early 1980s, but Austin suggests that progress reversed due to a “lack of commitment by the federal government and multiple decisions by the Supreme Court.” The share of black children in schools that are 90 to 100 percent nonwhite has also stagnated at around 38 percent since the early 2000s.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

5 Photos Show King Coal’s Grip on Appalachia

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July 2, 2013
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Editor’s Note: Tara Lohan is traveling across North America documenting communities impacted by energy development for a new AlterNet project, Hitting Home. Follow the trip on Facebook or follow Tara on Twitter.

The signs in Appalachian states like West Virginia and Kentucky remind you who’s in charge. “Friends of Coal.” “Coal Keeps the Lights On.” They’re posted in front yards and as you enter the small towns squeezed into valleys (or “hollers”) between steep mountain slopes.

In his address to the nation last week about climate change, President Obama talked about moving away from “dirty energy,” which was shorthand for coal. Moves to close dirty coal-burning power plants should be welcomed, but they only take into account one part of coal’s lifecycle. The people of Appalachia still contend with the mining and processing of coal, of which is done underground, but the most destructive is done by surface mining, including mountaintop-removal mining.

And for what? “The long­term trends show mine employment is declining, despite the recent uptick, and poverty rates in Appalachian coal counties are among the highest in the nation,” reports Appalachian Voices. “Analysts see demand for Appalachian coal continuing to decline, leaving little prospect of an economic revitalization driven by the coal industry. Therefore, the focus should be on creating and attracting new industries to the region, not continuing to subsidize an outmoded industry.”

The people of Appalachia deserve good jobs that don’t sacrifice the health of their own communities. Still, coal seems to get a free pass.

1. Here’s a weight limit sign posted on a bridge in Kentucky that includes exceptions for coal trucks. This makes absolutely no sense, of course, since weight limit signs are designed to protect bridges from damage (that will be repaired at taxpayers’ expense).

2. Driving the roads of Appalachia it can be difficult to see the most destructive parts of the mining process, because the forests are thick and the hills are steep. It helps to get above the action for a better view. Here’s a look at how surface mining creates a virtual moonscape by felling trees, leveling mountaintops and covering up streams.

3. Mountaintop-removal mining involves blowing hundreds of feet off the tops of mountains to access slim seams of coal. Here’s a closeup of one of those seams exposed at the surface. The rest of the rock is considered “overburden” and is dumped into valleys.

4. Companies are required to “reclaim” the land, which involves replanting fast-growing (and often non-native) species to quickly green the area. Without soil and species diversity, however, the area is nothing more than a monoculture devoid of life that still fragments habitat. Companies are required to “replace” the stream, which they do by building in a straight line of rocks down the side of the hill, which you can see in this photo.

5. The bumpersticker, “Everyone lives downstream,” captures the notion that we’re all impacted by environmental issues. While this is true in the big picture, some people are inevitably more impacted, especially communities that live in areas of extraction or burning of fossil fuels. Most Appalachian communities are nestled in valleys between steep mountains. When surface mining occurs above them, the inhabitants are endangered by polluted water, blasting and land/rock slides as forests are cleared and the structural integrity of the mountain is undermined. This Kentucky community sits directly beneath a mountaintop-removal site.

Twenty peer-reviewed studies have documented the impacts of mountaintop-removal mining on the health of Appalachian residents, and the results are frightening.

“More than 500 of the nation’s oldest mountains have already been destroyed and every day mountaintop removal is allowed to continue, the impacts of air and water pollution on human health grow worse,” reports Appalachian Voices. “As many as 60,000 additional cases of cancer in Central Appalachia are directly linked to mountaintop removal, and more than 700 additional deaths from heart disease occur every year due to the practice.”

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

America, Passive Nation — Why Can't We Stand Up for Ourselves When Our Rights Are Stolen?

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July 2, 2013
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I’m a longtime subscriber to an Internet mail list that features items from smart, thoughtful people. The list editor forwards items he personally finds interesting, often related to technology and/or civil liberties. Not long after the Guardian and Washington Post first started publishing the leaks describing the National Security Agency’s vast surveillancedragnet, an item appeared about a White House petition urging President Obama to pardon Edward Snowden. The post brought this reply, among others:

“Once upon a time I would have signed a White House petition to this administration with no qualms. Now, however, a chilling thought occurs: what ‘watch lists’ will signing a petition like this put me on? NSA? IRS? It’s not a paranoid question anymore, in the United States of Surveillance.”

As we Americans watch our parades and fire up our grills this 4 July, the 237th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence — the seminal document of the United States — we should take the time to ask ourselves some related questions: how did we come to this state of mind and behavior? How did we become so fearful and timid that we’ve given away essential liberties? Do we realize what we’re giving up? What would the nation’s founders think of us?

No one with common sense believes Obama is planning to become a dictator. But the mail list question was indeed not paranoid — because Obama, building on the initiatives of his immediate predecessors, has helped create the foundation for a future police state. This has happened with bipartisan support from patriotic but short-sighted members of Congress and, sad to say, the general public.

The American media have played an essential role. For decades, newspaper editors and television programmers, especially local ones, have chased readers and ratings by spewing panic-inducing “journalism” and entertainment that helped foster support for anti-liberty policies. Ignorance, sometimes willful, has long been part of the media equation. Journalists have consistently highlighted the sensational. They’ve ignored statistical realities to hype anecdotal — and extremely rare — events that invite us to worry about vanishingly tiny risks and while shrugging off vastly more likely ones. And then, confronted with evidence of a  war on journalism by the people running our government, powerful journalists suggest that their peers — no, their betters — who had the guts to expose government crimes are criminals. Do they have a clue why the First Amendment is all about? Do they fathom the meaning of liberty?

The founders, for all their dramatic flaws, knew what liberty meant. They created a system of power-sharing and competition, knowing that investing too much authority in any institution was an invitation to despotism. Above all, they knew that liberty doesn’t just imply taking risks; it absolutely requires taking risks. Among other protections, the Bill of Rights enshrined an unruly but vital free press and guaranteed that some criminals would escape punishment in order to protect the rest of us from too much government power. How many of those first 10 amendments would be approved by Congress and the states today? Depressingly few, one suspects. We’re afraid.

America has gone through spasms of liberty-crushing policies before, almost always amid real or perceived national emergencies. We’ve come out of them, to one degree or another, with the recognition that we had a Constitution worth protecting and defending, to paraphrase the oath federal office holders take but have so casually ignored in recent years.

What’s different this time is the surveillance infrastructure, plus the countless crimes our lawmakers have invented in federal and state codes. As many people have noted, we can all be charged with something  if government wants to find something — the Justice Department under Bush and Obama has insisted that simply violating an online terms of service is a felony, for example. And now that our communications are being recorded and stored (you should take that for granted, despite weaselly government denials), those somethings will be available to people looking for them if they decide you are a nuisance. That is the foundation for tyranny, maybe not in the immediate future but, unless we find a way to turn back, someday soon enough.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

Why Is It Still Taboo for Women to Enjoy Taking Drugs?

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July 3, 2013
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Yesterday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report about the rate of opioid and prescription drug overdose among women in the United States. It’s bad, and getting worse. Yet, it’s not getting much attention.

According to the CDC’s report, since 2007, more women have died each year from drug overdoses than from motor vehicle-related injuries. Between 1999-2010, deaths attributed to prescription opioids (such as oxycodone and hydrocodone) have increased fivefold among women. Since 1993, hospitalizations for prescription opioid overdoses have been more frequent among women than men. Women are more likely than men to be prescribed opioids, to use them chronically and to receive prescriptions for higher doses, according to the CDC.

Surprised?

Well, it makes sense if you’re surprised. We rarely tell that story. We rarely talk about the many women who sell drugs, or the pregnant women who use drugs. We rarely talk about the women incarcerated on drug charges. To a good degree, women and women’s issues tend be pretty absent in the media portrayals about victims or resistors of the war on drugs.

In many drug war documentaries, including some of the recent ones ( The House I Live In, How to Make Money Selling Drugs, Breaking the Taboo, etc.), men are given a lot of screen time and it’s the voices of men we hear most often, representing every inch of the drug war spectrum–policymakers, manufacturers, neighborhood drug sellers, celebrities with tales of redemption from drug addiction. Virtually all the filmmakers are men, and they tend to tell stories about other men. True, men are incarcerated for drugs in larger numbers than women, and men die from drug overdose in greater numbers than women. But that doesn’t mean, nor should it imply, that women’s lives are uncomplicated vis a vis drugs.

It’s worth mentioning that for all of their good work on raising awareness about the skyrocketing rates of fatal overdose in the United States, the CDC missed an opportunity to promote the generic antidote to opioid overdose, naloxone, in its report today. It concluded their report with a whole host of ways accidental fatal overdose can potentially be reduced among women, but not a single mention of the actual antidote to opioid overdose.

Women need to know how to prevent, recognize and respond to an opioid overdose. Our partners, parents, children and friends should have that information, as well. Not only are we now dying in greater numbers from drug overdose, but we’re not even being made aware of the lifesaving measures available to us. In many states across the country, women should be encouraged to call 911 for medical assistance at the scene of a suspected drug overdose, without fear of arrest or incarceration. Making use of 911 Good Samaritan laws is just one way women can be empowered to save lives–or that their own lives can be saved.

Many of the drug war’s most strategic and most effective fighters are women. Women do the policy work, the program work, the social service support; they run the syringe exchanges, organize social media and fundraising campaigns. They share the stories of their lives and the ways drugs have made them difficult or complicated, or more fun. Women are in there working with the clients who use drugs and many of them use drugs themselves. It’s time to shine a light on all of that, because, too often, it gets overlooked.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

Are Corporations Trying to Distract Us with Social Issues While They Take Control of Our Economy?

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I was having breakfast with a friend in North Carolina the day after that state voted against gay marriage, and after Barack Obama said on television that he now supported it. My friend knew I had supported the cause for a long time, so he asked me what I thought of Obama’s comments. I said “I think he’ll be tacking to the right economically once he’s re-elected.”

I was right, but not because I have any special predictive gifts. History had provided the background for Obama’s changed views while Republicans had pioneered his tactics.

One key to Obama’s “evolution” can be found in Thomas Frank’s 2004 book, What’s the Matter with Kansas? In it, a frustrated Frank argued that conservatives had persuaded heartland Americans to vote against their own interests by using social issues like gay marriage and abortion. His arguments resonated with a lot of liberals. Many of my friends expressed anger, frustration, and even contempt for the way “values voters” (as Republicans called them) repeatedly undermined their own economic needs in the voting booth.

Is it their turn? Politicians are winning liberal hearts and minds on social issues, while at the same time embracing a corporate political agenda based on ever-greater wealth for the few and increasing austerity for the many.

Let’s be clear: The term “social issues” is not used dismissively. These are human rights issues which speak to our core values of personal freedom and social justice. But are these just causes being exploited by corporate-backed politicians?

The answer seems to be yes.

Politicians in the “liberal Kansas” school are increasingly outspoken on issues like reproductive choice and gay marriage, while at the same time continuing to promote their corporate economic agenda. Many, if not most, of them are so-called “centrist” Democrats from the Bill Clinton wing of the party. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Democrat turned Republican, is also a prominent member of the “personally liberal, economically conservative” clique.

They’re not alone. I’ve known more than a few corporate leaders and Wall Street executives, and most of them were quite liberal on social issues too. It makes sense, when you think about it. When your goal is money, you’re not likely to care what people do with their bodies — as long you get their wallets.

That’s the “liberal Kansas” strategy in a nutshell.

Frank considered the “Kansas” phenomenon a liberal political failure, and he was certainly right about that. He also derided the centrist Democrats as “criminally stupid” for “pushing the party to forget blue-collar voters and concentrate instead on recruiting affluent, white-collar professionals who are liberal on social issues.”

That’s also correct, if the Democratic Party ever wants to win consistently and build a working majority. But it’s beginning to look as if, at least where its base is concerned, the Democratic “Kansas” strategy is working. It seems that most of party’s rank and file is happy to let this rightward economic shift continue, as long as its leaders say the right things about social issues.

Democrats campaigned on populist themes in 2012 campaign. But as soon as the election was over the party’s leaders returned to what Frank described in 2004 as “endless concessions on economic issues, on welfare, NAFTA, Social Security, labor law, privatization, deregulation, and the rest of it.”

Since his re-election, Barack Obama has proposed to cut Social Security, echoed the deficit hysteria of the right, continued to negotiate NAFTA-like trade deals in secret (hidden from Congress and the public but available to 600 “corporate advisors”), and continued to privatize the military/national security state. (He has also pursued the most aggressive anti-whistleblower presidential campaign in American history.)

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

Meet an Internet Shamer and the Person He Publicly Shamed

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July 5, 2013
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When it comes to holding private people accountable for their hurtful behaviors, online public shaming has become the way Internet users attempt to obtain justice. The recent phenomenon has inspired a variety of vigilantism, from women fighting back against bad relationship behavior to heavier people taking on size-ist comments. Even some restaurants have begun posting the names of people who break reservations on their social media pages.

This public shaming trend has sparked a debate on whether or not it is effective in changing behavior. And so, while many media outlets and bloggers have speculated about its value, few–if any–have spoken to someone who’s actually been publicly shamed.

Meet the Publicly Shamed

Michael was one of the people publicly shamed on a blog called Public Shaming for tweeting the following after the Boston Marathon bombing:

Michael told AlterNet that he was shocked to see his tweet on the blog after his friend pointed it out. However, he said he wasn’t embarrassed by what he tweeted.

“I stand by my tweets. … They were inappropriate, but I still stand by it,” Michael said. “Say the whole sand monkey thing was racist, and it was. But first of all, responding like two or three hours after an eight-year-old gets killed, obviously I might be in the mood to be a little bit disrespectful. If you look at my other tweets, I don’t say a word about race. I have friends of all different races. But because my brother was running in that Boston Marathon – he finished before the attack – I was obviously passionate about it. I was so pissed off that I just had to tell it like it was.”

Michael said he wouldn’t use the offensive term again, not because of being publicly shamed, but rather because he doesn’t typically use racist language to begin with. He said that, in the end, being publicly shamed simply amounted to a barrage of Twitter attacks.

“It wasn’t effective at all because … just random people were tweeting at me saying I’m a racist pig, I’m all this stuff.”

A look on his Twitter page reveals that he was bombarded with Twitter attacks, some of them even suggesting that he should die. Although unapologetic in his interview, he did apologize for his language several times to Twitter users. The only resemblance of a healthy dialogue to emerge went like this: one user tweeted, “offensive, no?” to which he replied, “I apologize, that tweet was said in the heat of the moment.” To which she replied, “Cool, thanks for that.” Other than that, the attacks on both sides were brutal.

Meet the Public Shamer

For Matt Binder, the creator and editor of the Public Shaming blog, changing the behavior of those he shames is not even his goal.

Binder told AlterNet, “My goal isn’t really to change these people. A post isn’t going to do that. People contacting these people isn’t going to do that.”

Instead, Binder said, he wants to show readers that classist, racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. thoughts are still pervasive throughout our society – so much so that people are even willing to post these thoughts on a public forum.

“It’s more so to let people know these types of things exist–these thoughts, these views. I think a lot of people see things as being changed. They think, ‘When racist times were’ or ‘When sexist times were.’ I mean, yeah, we’ve moved a lot, but, at the same time, there’s still a lot more to go. And if you drop [these issues] now, [they are] only going to stall more.”

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

New Site Aims to Be Kickstarter for Porn

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July 6, 2013
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Misogynist pickup artists aren’t the only ones unwelcome on Kickstarter – the crowd-funding website has long banned pornographic projects of all stripes. But a new website, Fan Fund XXX, which launched today, is more than happy to pick up its slack.

CEO Peter Housley told me in an email that the service is in part a response to the difficulty of getting funding for X-rated projects. “Banks, venture capital and even angel investors tend to shy away from adult entertainment for multiple reasons,” he says. “Crowd funding in any form, mainstream or adult, allows creativity and ingenuity to flow – it offers a place where fans of a concept or idea can choose to make it a reality [rather] than leaving decisions to starched white shirts pushing pencils and tapping calculators scrutinizing a pro-forma built by some accountant.”

Fan Fund is hardly the first to exploit Kickstarter’s prudery. Offbeatr and GoGoFantasy have already beat them to the punch.

Many of the projects on GoGoFantasy are best described as charity porn. One description pleads, “Help me hire cute, petite, everyday girl to make a porno with me!” Another reads, “25 year old really hoping to make his own video with tons of bitches like the pros.” They’ve raised $100 and $310, respectively. A self-described 42-year-old virgin managed to raise $1,720 to lose his virginity – presumably by paying a woman to have sex with him. A particularly amusing project by the name of “Spank and a Wank” explains its mission like so, “We are 2 dudes that want to masturbate while we wait and sit in a hotel room filming it.” In exchange for donating $5 they promise “a 1 page story of the day” including details about not only how many times they masturbated, but also descriptions of “what the carpet looked like afterwards.” They’ve raised an impressive $725.

Offbeatr is is less lowbrow, but not exactly highbrow – let’s call it nerd-brow. Proposals include one for a video game by the name of “Pocket Pussies,” which has raised more than $18,000. Another proposed game description reads, “You’re lost. Far from home, owing a certain someone a great deal of money for the cargo you carelessly lost, and without a penny to your name. Clearly, there’s only one thing to do – start a brothel!” There are projects for furries, including one for “cat girl porn,” kinksters and even lovers of Mormon missionaries.

The question is what these X-rated crowdsourcing services will mean for the mainstream porn industry. These sites have the potential to empower amateur porn performers to create higher-quality material; it’s yet one more step in the direction of democratizing porn production, which isn’t exactly in the best interest of major adult studios. (Maybe someday soon we’ll see Vivid Entertainment pulling a Zach Braff  and trying to crowd-raise funds for a sequel to the “Teen Mom” porno.) Housley points out that fan-funding “has been tremendously successful for the music industry which suffers from similar issues.” But he ultimately seems more concerned with the impact crowdsourcing will have on consumers: Illegal downloads and tube sites may hurt pornographers’ bottom line, but he says it also fundamentally impacts their ability “to develop programming that consumers want to view.” I can only hope that the latest project added to Fan Fund isn’t representative of what the porn consumers want: an X-rated parody of “Saw II.”

Tracy Clark-Flory is a staff writer at Salon. Follow@tracyclarkflory on Twitter.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

America’s New Cold War: European Allies Outraged at Snowden Revelations

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There is a depressing statistical comparison that should shame all of us who voted twice for Barack Obama’s ascent to the White House. Our man, a former constitutional law professor who pledged to reverse the Bush administration’s abuses of national security concerns, has charged seven government whistle-blowers, including Edward J. Snowden, with violating the Espionage Act. That’s more than double the combined three charged with leaking classified information by all previous presidents, George W. Bush included.

The defense of his unprecedented prosecution of those who dare tell us the truth is that we live in particularly dangerous times, an obviously absurd notion given the civil wars, foreign threats and other sources of mayhem periodically experienced by most of the world’s nations. At its best, the “metadata” aggregation, including the logs of all email traffic and telephone calls, is a paranoid assault on our right to personal space enshrined in the Fourth Amendment. At worst it is an out of control grab for worldwide power over the new information age.

As a New York Times account Sunday suggests, “A close reading of Mr. Snowden’s documents shows the extent to which the eavesdropping agency now has two new roles: It is a data cruncher, with an appetite to sweep up, and hold for years, a staggering variety of information. And it is an intelligence force armed with cyberweapons, assigned not just to monitor foreign computers but also, if necessary, to attack.”

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A surveillance power run amok? The latest disclosures from Snowden’s leaks published in the German magazine Der Spiegel on Sunday turn out to have nothing to do with national security and everything to do with a compulsive and unseemly snooping not only into the lives of ordinary citizens throughout the world but also into the diplomatic correspondence, including trade and other negotiating strategies, of some of our closest allies.

How inconvenient to the outraged innocence of the National Security Agency and its private for-profit counterpart Booz Allen Hamilton to find the names of France, Italy, Japan and Mexico among the 38 embassies and missions bugged at will by our electronic spooks, along with the Washington and Brussels office of the European Union. The code-named Dropmire bugging of the encrypted fax machine at the EU and other invasions of the organization’s private data were, as The Guardian summarized Sunday the content of the leaked documents, “to gather inside knowledge of policy disagreements on global issues and other rifts between member states.”

Germany is one of those member states, prompting that nation’s justice minister to declare Sunday: “If the media reports are correct, this brings to memory actions among enemies during the Cold War. … If it is true that EU representations in Brussels and Washington were indeed tapped by the American secret service, it can hardly be explained with the argument of fighting terrorism.”

This was a sentiment echoed by French President Francois Hollande on Monday: “We demand that this stop immediately. … There’s enough evidence for us to ask for an explanation.” And French technology minister Fleur Pellerin was so impressed with the significance of the information leaked by Snowden that she entertained the idea of an international whistle-blower protection for individuals who leak information exposing what they believe is illegal activity. “There is no international statute that allows for the protection of these people if necessary,” Pellerin said Monday. “I think it is a good occasion to get into the subject, which is a gray area of international law.”

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

One of the Best Rockumentaries Ever Made Tells Story of Background Singers to Superstars

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July 6, 2013
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It’s one of the best music documentaries ever made–but that’s because the music, the storyline, and the characters’ artistry and life stories are phenomenal and compelling.

On the surface, 20 Feet From Stardom tells the story of the overlooked but not underheard background singers whose astounding voices gave classic rock-and-roll and R&B much of their punch and soul. But the movie is more than a walk down musical memory lane to give belated credit to some of the most talented women–mostly women of color–who have appeared in a single film.

The documentary scrolls through the musical history of the past half-century to show how backup singers were used, sometimes abused, and occasionally cherished by the producers and stars of the day. Do the names Judith Hill, Lisa Fischer, Darlene Love, Merry Clayton or Tata Vega ring any bells? Hill was slated to sing duets with Michael Jackson before his untimely death. Merry Clayton was summoned to a New York City studio after midnight by the Rolling Stones, and wearing a fur coat and hair curlers, decided she would impress a band she didn’t even know, giving us the beyond harrowing call-and-response in Gimme Shelter. Darlene Love sang on so many of egomaniac producer Phil Spector’s 1960s hits that he bought out her contract for a competitor, intentionally stifling her solo prospects.

And then there’s the women who helped the Talking Heads get funky. And there’s Luther Vandross backing up David Bowie. And Claudia Lennear with Ike and Tina Turner. They were young and beautiful. They didn’t grasp the depths of their talent and appeal. And more often than not, they were channeling a direct line from the African-American church choir into white-dominated mainstream pop culture.

The movie explores why some of them didn’t make it to stardom on their own. After all, millions of people knew their voices. As Sting tells the camera, show business isn’t fair. But he–and Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, Sheryl Crow and others–all say how it takes an inner strength, a certain kind of ego and luck to become a star. Jagger is almost embarassed that Merry Clayton is backing him up.

The singers in the movie possess exceptional amounts of inner strength and creative drive. However, as the film explores in its subtler moments, knowing what lead singers need to make them sound better, and giving it to them on stage, is not the same as knowing what you might want to sing and say as a bandleader in your own right. Thus the title, 20 feet from stardom, makes this gulf seem smaller than it may be.

Some of the artists, like Lisa Fischer, are content to join bands like the Stones and be a staple of their sound for decades. Others, like Darlene Love, tried to launch solo careers and didn’t quite make it, but have been recognized for their earlier achievements. Still others, like Judith Hill, are still trying to be stars and the closeups of her at the piano and singing makes one wonder, how can anyone that good not succeed? And yet, when she tried to launch a solo career after Michael Jackson’s death, she was eliminated from network television’s The Voice this spring. But, one hopes, unlike former Ikette Claudia Lennear, she doesn’t give up and her transcendent talent will triumph.      

All this and more is in this amazing film. The director, Morgan Neville, taps into a super-rich vein of human spirit and musical inspiration. Whether you go to see vintage footage with the likes of Billy Preston playing Hammond organ behind Ray Charles–before he became part of the Beatles–or to focus on the singers’ stories and their late-in-life recognition, it doesn’t matter. This movie captures large souls, big music and triumphant spirits.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

Airplane Crash at San Francisco International Airport Leaves At Least Two Dead (VIDEO)

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July 6, 2013
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At least two people were reported to have died and more than 60 injured after a Boeing 777 crash-landed at San Francisco airport on Saturday.

The Asiana Airlines flight from Seoul, South Korea, came to rest at the side of the runway with a plume of thick black smoke billowing from the hull and debris strewn across the tarmac. The plane is thought to have crashed as it touched down at about 11.30am local time, Laura Brown, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said. Passengers described how the pilot appeared to overshoot the runway.

The San Francisco Fire Department told media that two people had died and 61 were injured.

Passengers were forced to jump down emergency slides to escape the plane, which lost its tail and much of its roof. Fire crews on the scene extinguished the blaze, which had burned through the cabin ceiling. Asiana said that there were 291 people on board, including a group of South Korean schoolchildren.

Rachael Kagan, a spokeswoman for San Francisco General Hospital, said 10 critically injured people had been taken there, including two children, six women and four men. She said most of them spoke only Korean.

Passenger David Eun called the crash “surreal” on Twitter. He wrote: “Fire and rescue people all over the place. They’re evacuating the injured. Haven’t felt this way since 9/11.”

Anthony Castorani witnessed the crash from a nearby hotel. “You heard a pop and you immediately saw a large, brief fireball that came out from underneath the aircraft,” he said.

Ying Kong, of Albany, New York, who was waiting at the airport for her brother-in-law, Fawen Yan, 47, from Richmond, California, said he telephoned her after surviving the crash to say it had been “really smoky and scary”. “He feels it difficult to breathe, but he’s OK,” she said. She added: “He said a lot of people had to run. He said some people got hurt.”

Lynn Lunsford, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), said the plane was Flight 214. Air traffic at the airport was halted after the crash, which took place under sunny skies with only a slight breeze.

The Asiana flight departed from Seoul at 5.04pm Korean time and touched down in San Francisco at 11:28am PDT, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks flights. The flight lasted 10 hours and 23 minutes, it said.

The National Transportation Safety Board said on its Twitter feed that it was sending an investigative team to the scene.

Boeing expressed concern for those on board the flight and added that it will provide technical assistance to the NTSB as it investigates the accident.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

Venezuela Grants Venezuela Asylum

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Venezuela Grants Snowden Asylum
by Stephen Lendman
On July 6, Russia Today headlined ” ‘Free from imperial persecution:’ Venezuela offers Snowden asylum.” 
Days earlier, President Nicolas Maduro said asylum would be “seriously” considered if sought. Snowden deserves a “humanitarian medal,” he added. 
“If this young man is punished, nobody in the world will ever dare to tell the truth,” he stressed.
He’s a man of his word. It’s official. Maduro granted Snowden asylum. He did so on Venezuela’s Day of Independence. 
On April 10, 1810, the First Republic of Venezuela was established. Venezuela’s War of Independence began. 
On July 5, 1811, Venezuela declared independence. Spanish colonial rule ended. 
Venezuela was its first American colony to break free. Doing so reflected Bolivar’s vision. He liberated half of South America. He advocated using national wealth responsibly, equitably and fairly.
He fought against what he called the imperial curse “to plague Latin America with misery in the name of liberty.” 
Chavez was his modern-day incarnation. Maduro carries his torch. Doing so responsibly matters most. Hopefully he’s up to the challenge. 
Chavez called him Venezuela’s most capable administrator and politician. His leadership experience prepared him well. His credentials are impeccable. 
He’s ideologically left of center. He’s a former union leader, legislator, National Assembly speaker, foreign minister, and vice president. On April 19, 2013, he succeed Chavez as president.
Venezuela’s independence was short-lived. It lasted until July 25, 1812. Chavez restored Bolivarianism. It’s institutionalized. It benefits all Venezuelans. It does so equitably and fairly.
Americans are cheated. They’re deprived. They’re denied. They’re persecuted. State terror is policy. Police state justice targets challengers. 
Neoliberal harshness punishes millions. Americans get force-fed austerity, growing poverty, high unemployment, and unaddressed homelessness and hunger.
They get government of, by and for wealth, power and privilege alone. They’re targeted for supporting right over wrong.
Venezuelans enjoy government of, by and for everyone. National wealth is equitably shared. On July 5, Maduro acted responsibly, saying:
“As head of state and of government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, I have decided to offer humanitarian asylum to the young American Edward Snowden.”
“To be independent, we must feel it. We must exercise our independence and sovereignty. Our discourses are meaningless if they aren’t exercised with force at the national level.” 
“I announce to the friendly governments of the world that we have decided to offer this statute of international humanitarian law to protect the young Snowden from the persecution that has been unleashed from the most powerful empire in the world.”
“Let’s ask ourselves: who violated international law? A young man who decided, in an act of rebellion, to tell the truth of the espionage of the United States against the world? Or the government of the United States, the power of the imperialist elites, who spied on it?”
“Who is the guilty one,” he added. “A young man who denounces war plans, or the US government which launches bombs and arms the terrorist Syrian opposition against the people and legitimate president, Bashar al-Assad?”
Venezuela isn’t alone. Bolivia suggested asylum would be granted. On Friday, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega said he’ll “gladly receive Snowden.”
“We are open, respectful of the right to asylum, and it is clear that if circumstances permit it, we would receive Snowden with pleasure and give him asylum here in Nicaragua,” he said.
On July 4, USASUR countries adopted the Cochabamba Declaration. 
Presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela, as well as delegations from Brazil, Chile and Peru reacted to France, Italy, Portugal and Spain denying Evo Morales airspace and landing rights.
Their Declaration states:
“Given the situation that the President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Evo Morales, was subjected to by the governments of France, Portugal, Italy and Spain, we denounce before the international community and various international organizations: 
  • The flagrant violation of international treaties governing peaceful coexistence, solidarity and cooperation between our states, that took place is an unusual act, unfriendly and hostile, configuring an unlawful act that affects freedom of movement and displacement of a head of state and his delegation. 
  • The abuse and neocolonial practices that still exist on our planet in the XXI century. 
  • The lack of transparency about the motivations of policy decisions that prevented air traffic for the Bolivian presidential vessel and its president. 
  • The injury suffered by President Evo Morales, which offends not only the Bolivian people but all our nations. 
  • The illegal spying practices that threaten the rights of citizens and friendly coexistence among nations.”
“In view of these denunciations, we are convinced that the process of building the Patria Grande (Integrated Latin America) to which we are committed must be consolidated with full respect for the sovereignty and independence of our peoples, without interference from global hegemonic powers, conquering the old practices of imposing first and second class.(status on) countries.” 
“The male and female heads of state and governments of countries of the Union of South American Nations, gathered in Cochabamba on July 4, 2013: 
(1) We declare that the unacceptable restriction on the freedom of President Evo Morales, making virtually him a hostage, is a rights violation of not only the Bolivian people but of all countries and peoples of Latin America and sets a dangerous precedent for existing international law. 
(2) We reject the actions that clearly violate norms and principles of international law, the inviolability of the heads of state. 
(3) We call on the governments of France, Portugal, Italy and Spain to explain the reasons for the decision to prevent the presidential plane from the Plurinational State of Bolivia from overflying through its airspace.
(4) Similarly, we urge the governments of France, Portugal, Italy and Spain present the corresponding public apologies for the serious incidents that occurred. 
(5) We support the complaint filed by the Plurinational State of Bolivia to the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for the serious violation of human rights and specific endangerment of the life of President Evo Morales; we also support the right of the Plurinational State of Bolivia to take all actions it deems necessary to the courts and relevant agencies. 
(6) We agreed to form a monitoring committee, entrusting the task to our foreign ministries to perform the actions necessary to shed light on the facts.”
“Finally, in the spirit of the principles set forth in the treaty establishing UNASUR, we urge all the heads of state of the union to stand by (accompany) this declaration. 
Similarly, we call on the United Nations and regional organizations that have not done so yet, to make a pronouncement on this unjustifiable and arbitrary event. 
Cochabamba, July 4, 2013″
On Friday, Maduro accused CIA officials of “order(ing) to the air traffic authorities, which gave the alert that Snowden was going in (Morales’) plane.”
He said Washington sent an extradition request. It came while Evo Morales was still in Moscow. Venezuela rejected it. Maduro was blunt and unequivocal saying:
Washington has “no moral authority to request the extradition of a young man who exposed the illegality under which the Pentagon, the CIA and the power of the US work. I reject any request they are making for extradition.”
He justifiably wants Luis Posada Carriles extradited. He conspired with Orlando Bosch. They’re responsible for downing Cubana flight 455. In 1976, all 78 passengers aboard died. 
Bosch died in April 2011. Carriles remains free in Miami. He’s a former CIA operative. He admitted responsibility for numerous terrorist attacks. Washington protects him. It rejects Venezuela’s request for justice.
Bolivia got America’s extradition request. Its Foreign Ministry called it “strange, illegal and unfounded.”
At the same time, Morales threatened to expel US diplomats and close Washington’s embassy, saying:
“We don’t need the pretext of cooperation and diplomatic relations so that they can come and spy on us.”
Washington unjustifiably claims Snowden “unlawfully released classified information and documents to international media outlets.”
“The United States seeks Snowden’s provisional arrest should Snowden seek to travel to or transit through Venezuela. Snowden is a flight risk because of the substantial charges he is facing and his current and active attempts to remain a fugitive.”
It explained charges against him. They include:
  • “Theft of Government Property
  • Unauthorized Communication of National Defense
Information (and)
  • Willful Communication of Classified Intelligence Information to 
an Unauthorized Person.”
Each charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years 
imprisonment and $250,000 fine.
Snowden’s called “a fugitive who is currently in Russia. It urged 
Venezuela to arrest and hold him in custody. It wants items he 
has seized.
Maduro rejected Washington’s charges. He did so responsibly. He exposed lawless NSA spying. He told the truth, Maduro said.
He deserves his just reward. He’s free at last. Or is he? Traveling safely to Venezuela won’t be easy. His flight route’s important. 
Attempting to overfly EU countries risks trouble. Flying east perhaps avoids it. A potentially safe route might be Moscow to Hong Kong, Beijing or Shanghai, then Caracas.
He needs proper travel documents. Without identity papers, they’ll him cross international borders legally.
Russia must approve. So must an airline carrier. Private non-commercial travel’s simpler. At issue is who’ll cover costs either way. Traveling from Moscow to Caracas isn’t cheap.
Commercial flights are expensive. Cost exceeds $1,000. Who’ll pay if Snowden can’t? Wherever he goes, he’s unsafe. Washington’s long arm threatens him. Obama wants him silenced, imprisoned or dead. Snowden knows and said so.
He’ll live every free day ahead like his last. Hopefully he’ll avoid US injustice. He deserves his just reward.
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/venezuela-grants-snowden-amnesty/

Republished with permission from: Stephen Lendman

Jobs Report Shows America in Decline

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Jobs Report Shows America in Decline
by Stephen Lendman
Headlines cheered America’s June report. Bloomberg said “US Employers Added More Workers in June Than Forecast.”
“Employment roared ahead in June.” America’s “economy is poised for faster growth as it shakes off the impact of tax increases and budget cuts.”
The Wall Street Journal headlined “Job Gains Show Staying Power,” saying:
June showed “solid promise.” Doing so suggests “the economy might be strong enough to grow with less help from the Federal Reserve.” More on that below.
Bond investors “rush(ed) to sell.” Ten-year Treasuries spiked above 2.7%. In May, yields were about 1.6%. Friday’s level was the highest since August 2011.
According to ED&F Man Capital Markets fixed income analyst Tom di Galoma:
“A huge bond bubble was created, and that will take some time to resolve itself.”
Thirty-year Treasury yields jumped from 3.45% in April to 4% in June. Junk bonds spiked from 5.79% in April to 7.72% in June.
Vanguard Group bond manager Gregory Nassour expects trouble. “The market is saying (it) think(s) tapering is going to happen much faster than anticipated and that cash flows are going to get very negative.”
Fixed income analyst Mike Larson compared what’s happening to the dot.com bust.
He calls the bond bubble bigger than late 1990s tech mania. Follow the money, he says. The more speculative investment in asset classes, the greater the risk.
Values skyrocket to irrational levels. “(W)hen everyone (piles in), you can be sure valuations will get ridiculous, and that the groundwork will be laid for a painful bust.”
From 2009 through April 2013, investors poured $1.15 trillion into bonds. Doing so excludes ETF investments. They include around another $300 billion.
Last month, another $80 billion overall was added. Bond bubble mania awaits unwinding. It’ll likely come incrementally. Expect many months south ahead. Forewarned is forearmed.
Irrational exuberance affects equity investors. Momentum profits don’t last forever. Analyst Graham Summers understands. He knows bubbles when he sees them. 
He warns about ugly times ahead. He expects worse trouble than 2008. Perhaps it already began, he suggests. No one rings a bell and says so. Markets fluctuate. 
Ordinary investors stick with what works. They’re mindless of huge risks. Most don’t know they’ve been had until too late. Current problems are too important to ignore.
China faces a potential liquidity crisis. It’s slowing its economy to avoid greater trouble later on. Despite unprecedented QE, Japan’s economy shows weakness.
Multiple indicators flash America’s economy heading south. Corporate profits are down. Europe’s back in crisis mode. 
Disruptive protests rage in Egypt and Turkey. Others do intermittently in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, and elsewhere across Europe.
Washington’s war on Syria rages. It spilled cross border to Lebanon. It threatens regional stability.
QE may slow sooner than expected. Economist David Rosenberg expects it.
It’s no longer justifiable, he said. He’s not alone saying so. More on that below.
Paul Craig Roberts commented on Friday’s job report. “No Hope on The Jobs Front: Rising Unemployment in America,” he headlined.
“For the umpteenth consecutive month and year,” he said, June’s report was less than meets the eye. High-paying/good benefit jobs weren’t created. They haven’t been for years. America’s being thirdworldized. 
June added 195,000 jobs. Hold the cheers. A Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report explained, saying:
Leisure and hospitality: +75,000 
Professional and business services: +37,000
Retail: +37,000
Healthcare (mostly ambulatory services): +20,000
Financial activities: +17,000
Federal government: -5,000 (down 65,000 year-over-year)
“Employment in most other major industries, including mining and
logging, construction, manufacturing, and transportation and
warehousing, showed little change in June.”
In other words, except for modest financial services gains and some highly sought skill areas, virtually zero high-quality jobs were created.
The average workweek and overtime hours were unchanged. Year-over-year hourly earnings rose 2.2%. At around 9% based on 1980s calculations, inflation is multiple times higher than official numbers.
According to economist John Williams, full-time June employment plunged by 240,000. “Economic issues accounted for 75% of” part-time jobs. “Payroll gains were warped heavily by inconsistent seasonal factors.”
Discouraged workers rose by 197,000. Involuntary part-time ones spiked by 322,000. Real unemployment’s 23.4%. The headline 7.6% figure is fake.
According to Roberts:
“This deplorable report provided the cover for the market riggers to take the stock market up and the gold market down.” 
“Remember that economic theory about ‘rational markets?’ Another deception.”
For weeks, Fed officials suggested slowing QE ahead. Only its timing remains uncertain. According to Graham Summers, investors hoping for continuity “are in for a rough surprise.”
QE did wonders for equity investors. It didn’t land on Main Street. When consumers have money, they spend it. Doing so stimulates growth. Jobs are created. Maybe better ones than now.
Central banks are losing control, said Summers. Big trouble ahead looms, he suggests.
Martin Feldstein’s an establishment economist. He’s National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) president emeritus. On July 1, he headlined “The Fed Should Start to ‘Taper’ Now,” saying:
It shouldn’t wait. It “should emphasize that the pace of quantitative easing must adjust to the likely effectiveness of the program itself, and to the costs and risks of continuing to buy large quantities of bonds.”
“Although the economy is weak, experience shows that further bond-buying will have little effect on economic growth and employment.” 
“Meanwhile, low interest rates are generating excessive risk-taking by banks and other financial investors.” 
Doing so “could have serious adverse effects on bank capital and the value of pension funds.” 
“In Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s terms, the efficacy of quantitative easing is low and the costs and risks are substantial.”
Where was Feldstein earlier? QE’s been ongoing since late 2008. Mortgaged-backed securities (MBS) were bought. QE continued wrongly directed. It’s done nothing for economic growth.
Bernanke suggested slowing it weeks earlier. He reiterated doing it in June. He made it conditional on labor market improvement. He said judgment depends on more than the (U-3) unemployment rate.
Year-over-year, there’s been “no increase in the ratio of employment to population, no decline in the teenage unemployment rate, and virtually no increase in the real average weekly earnings of those who are employed,” said Feldstein.
“The decline in the number of people in the labor force in the past 12 months (way) exceed(s) the decline in the number of unemployed (based on U-3 calculations).”
Real unemployment’s the highest in decades. It reflects Depression levels. It’s shows a troubled economy. It’s getting worse, not better. Half of more of US households are impoverished or bordering on it.
Social safety net protections are eroding when increasing them is vital. Force-fed austerity assures harder than ever hard times.  Growing millions are affected. 
Creating money for speculation excludes it for economic growth. America’s economy is weak, not strong. Conditions are bleak. Nothing ahead looks promising.
Manufacturing is slowing. Exports are down. So is personal income. Corporate profits are declining. Aggregate demand’s weak. Rising interest rates spell trouble. Investors accepting significant risks do so at great peril.
“The danger of mispricing risk is that there is no way out without investors taking losses,” said Feldstein. “And the longer the process continues, the bigger those losses could be.” 
“That’s why the Fed should start tapering this summer before financial market distortions become even more damaging.” He suggests ending it entirely by mid-2014.
Equitable QE works. Bernanke spurned it. He’s Wall Street’s man in Washington. He threw money at banks. He’s doing it now. What can’t go on forever, won’t.
Wrongheaded policy continues. It’s been that way far too long. Greenspan and Bernanke prioritized money printing/bond buying recklessness. Push eventually meets shove. A day of reckoning looms.
The longer money printing madness continues, the greater the eventual trouble. Feldstein’s partly right. Money printing madness should be slowed en route to ending it altogether. It should be done as quickly as possible.
At the same time, he omitted explaining what matters most. Money printing works when done responsibly. David Stockman was Reagan’s Office of Management and Budget Director.
In late 2010, he said:
QE “is injecting high grade monetary heroin into the financial system of the world, and one of these days it is going to kill the patient.”
In early 2009, Michael Hudson said America “reached its debt limit and is entering its insolvency phase. We are not in a cycle but (at) the end of an era. The old world of debt pyramiding to a fraudulent degree cannot be restored.”
Delaying the inevitable postpones a painful day of reckoning. QE helped wreck America’s economy. It didn’t have to be this way. Responsible officials would have prevented it. America’s not run that way.
Monied interests alone are served. Popular needs go begging. Safety net protections are quaint and out-of-date. Speculative gains matter most.
Money printing madness reflects one of the greatest disconnects of all time. It robs poor Peter to benefit rich Paul. It prioritizes rising markets. It’s done so at the expense of economic and human wreckage.
QE works when used constructively. Money injected responsibly into the economy creates growth. America once was sustainably prosperous. It can be again. It won’t be with rogues making policy. Feldstein didn’t explain.
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/jobs-report-reflects-america-in-decline/

Republished with permission from: Stephen Lendman

Tunisians stage anti-Israel protest

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Young protesters burn a hand-made Israeli flag during a demonstration in Tunis, May 6, 2013.

Tunisians have held an anti-Israel protest in the capital to demand a ban on the normalization of ties with the Israeli regime.

The protesters marched on the National Constituent Assembly in Tunis on Sunday, setting fire to the Israeli flag and chanting anti-Israel slogans.

The demonstrators want the constitution to include a bill that criminalizes the normalization of relations with Tel Aviv.

Activists are concerned that the new draft constitution does not include the ban.

They say those parts have been eliminated by Tunisian lawmakers under pressure from foreign elements.

In previous protests, the demonstrators called for the maintenance of Article 27 of Tunisiaâ„¢s old constitution in the new charter. The Article reads, Å“All forms of normalization with Zionism and the Zionist entity is a crime punishable by law.”

Tunisia does not have formal diplomatic ties with Israel. Protesting Israelâ„¢s response to the Second Intifada, Tunis broke off ties with the Zionist regime in 2000.

In March, 2012, the leader of the ruling Islamic party Ennahda, Rached Ghannouchi ruled out normalizing ties with Israel.

Å“Tunisiansâ„¢ problem is with Zionism, not with Judaism,” Ghannouchi said.

DB/HSN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Truthdiggers of the Week: NSA Protesters

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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/truthdiggers_of_the_week_nsa_protesters_20130706/

Posted on Jul 6, 2013

Republished with permission from: TruthDig

Iranian v-ballers score double over Cuba

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Iranâ„¢s volleyball team once again beat their Cuban rivals in a four-set match (22-25, 25-20, 25-18, 25-22) in the FIVB World League, July 7, 2013.

Iran’s national volleyball team has defeated its host Cuba for the second time in the space of a day in Pool B of the FIVB World League.

The Iranians began the Sunday game in the Cuban capital city of Havana on a high note but it was Cuba which bagged the first set 25-22. The Iranian team, however, went on to stage a comeback in the second set 25-20.

Iranian volleyballers won the two remaining sets (25-18, 25-22). Iran’s Amir Ghafour was the top scorer of the match with 19 points.

Iranian sportsmen had earlier outclassed their Cuban opponents 3-2 (24-26, 19-25, 25-19, 25-22, 16-14) in a close encounter in Havana early Saturday.

On June 30, Italy defeated Iran 3-2 in Sassari after Iran won its second victory of the tourney by beating Italy 3-1 in the northern Italian city of Modena.

On June 23, Iranian volleyball players gained their first victory in the 2013 FIVB World League against Serbia.

The Iranian national volleyball squad defeated Serbia 3-2 (25-20, 24-26, 23-25, 25-22, 15-12) in a home match at Azadi Sports Complex in western Tehran.

In addition to Iran and Cuba, Pool B also includes Russia, Italy, Serbia, and Germany. Iran is now 4-4 after eight games.

The other two groups competing at the 24th FIVB World League include Pool A (Brazil, Poland, USA, Bulgaria, Argentina and France) and Pool C (Canada, Korea, Finland, the Netherlands, Japan and Portugal).

The Intercontinental Round runs from May 31 until July 14. The Finals will be held in Mar del Plata, Argentina, from July 17-21.

The top two teams from Pools A and B, the winners of Pool C and the host nation will compete in the Finals. As Argentina is in Pool A and is already among the qualified teams, the best two ranked teams of Pool A – outside of Argentina – will be selected.

MYA/HMV

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Israel soldiers injure 2 women in Al-Khalil

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Palestinian demonstrators take cover during clashes with Israeli security forces following a protest against the expropriation of Palestinian land by Israel in the village of Kfar Qaddum, near Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, July 5.

At least two Palestinian women have been wounded in an attack by Israeli regime forces on a group of demonstrators near the city of Al-Khalil (Hebron) in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli soldiers also arrested three people in the protest, which was held in Um al-Kheir neighborhood, east of Al-Khalil on Saturday.

The demonstrators were protesting against the regimeâ„¢s illegal settlement expansion in the West Bank.

The Tel Aviv regime continues expanding its illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, despite calls from the international community to stop the move.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 illegal settlements built since Israelâ„¢s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds in 1967.

Israeli regime forces have also intensified arrests of and attacks against the Palestinian people in the occupied West Bank in recent weeks.

In their latest assault, which occurred on July 3, Israeli soldiers killed Moataz Sharawna, a Palestinian youth, in the village of Dura near Al-Khalil after running over him with a military jeep.

On July 1, Israeli forces also arrested Palestinian journalist and photographer Mohammad Waleed al-Azzeh after raiding his familyâ„¢s house in Aida Refugee Camp, located north of the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

Al-Azzehâ„¢s family told Press TV that more than 30 Israeli soldiers entered the house and took him away after violently beating him.

The Israeli military regularly raids the houses of Palestinians in the West Bank, arresting activists and civilians, mostly without any charges. Many Palestinians remain under detention in Israeli prisons.

According to Israeli group, Bâ„¢Tselem, more than 4,700 Palestinian prisoners, including about 170 administrative detainees, are currently held in Israeli prisons.

DB/HJL

Republished with permission from: Press TV

‘NHS appalling, wrecked by managers’

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One of Britainâ„¢s top cardiologists says the National Health Service (NHS) is in an Å“appalling” state, Å“wrecked” by shambolic managers.

Jane Somerville, who established the first adolescent cardiology ward at the National Heart Hospital in London in 1995, warned at the Desert Island Discs radio program that Å“interfering” managers have devastated the system and scandals like the Mid Staffordshire Hospital chaos.

Å“I think this erratic care…I think Staffordshire is not alone,” the veteran physician said.

Her warning came after an inquiry found back in February that failings at Å“every level” of the hospital led to up to 1,200 deaths between 2005 and 2009.

The findings led to calls for a shake-up of the health watchdogs and consideration of criminal charges for those behind such incidents.

The Mid Staffordshire Hospital deaths also led the British Prime Minister David Cameron to call for arrangements to prevent such Å“appalling neglect and mistreatment” in the future.

However, the warning by Somerville has sparked fears that Cameron has settled for just words rather than actions over the past months.

This comes as the NHS was hit by another scandal last month after revelations that 16 babies and mothers died because of poor care at Morcambe Bay health centers.

Health watchdog, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO), said at the time that they are investigating a number of other complaints by families of victims of NHS failures.

AMR/HE

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Bolivia offers asylum to Edward Snowden

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Bolivia has offered asylum to former CIA contractor Edward Snowden, becoming the third Latin American country willing to give refuge to the intelligence leaker.

Bolivian President Evo Morales declared on Saturday that Bolivia had Å“no fear” of the United States and its European allies and that the country would grant asylum to Snowden if it receives a formal request.

Å“I want to tell… the Europeans and Americans that last night I was thinking that as a fair protest, I want to say that now in fact we are going to give asylum to that American who is being persecuted by his fellow Americans,” Morales stated.

Boliviaâ„¢s decision came after some European countries banned the plane transporting Morales on July 3 from their airspace on rumors that Edward Snowden was on board.

Meanwhile, two other Latin American countries, Nicaragua and Venezuela, have already offered to grant asylum to Snowden.

President Daniel Ortega said on Saturday that the Nicaraguan government would grant Snowden political asylum Å“if circumstances permit.”

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro offered on July 5 Å“humanitarian asylum to the young Snowden… to protect this young man from the persecution launched by the most powerful empire in the world.”

Å“Who is the guilty one? A young man… who denounces war plans, or the US government, which launches bombs and arms the terrorist Syrian opposition against the people and legitimate President Bashar al-Assad?” Maduro said.

The White House has declined to comment on the issue, but one US official speaking on condition of anonymity said, Å“Itâ„¢s fair to say in general that US officials have been pressuring governments where Snowden might try to go.”

Snowden, a former CIA employee, has been holed up at Moscowâ„¢s Sheremetyevo Airport since June 23, when he traveled from Hong Kong to avoid extradition to the United States.

After arriving in Russia, US authorities revoked his passport to stop him from traveling further.

Snowden admitted on June 9 his role in leaking two top-secret US government spying programs, under which the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have been eavesdropping on millions of American and European phone records and the Internet data.

CAH/HSN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Two Koreas agree to reopen Kaesong

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This file photo shows South Korean soldiers setting up barricades across the road to the Kaesong joint industrial zone.

North Korea and South Korea have agreed to reopen the jointly-run Kaesong Industrial Zone, which has been suspended for three months amid tension on the Korean Peninsula.

On Saturday, the two Koreas started their talks in the Ëœtruceâ„¢ village of Panmunjom, a traditional point of contact on the border. The ceasefire that ended the 1950-53 Korean War was signed in Panmunjom.

Å“(North and South Korea) will hold a next meeting on July 10 at the industrial zone in order to restart operations, prevent an operation suspension in the future and normalize the zone as soon as the both sides are ready to do so,” South Koreaâ„¢s chief delegate Suh Ho told reporters after the talks.

Å“We got an impression that the North was very willing to resolve the Kaesong issue and Pyongyang is making great efforts as well.”

The talks come three weeks after a previous attempt to negotiate fell apart over protocol issues.

The two sides have also agreed to hold another meeting at the complex on July 10 to discuss ways to prevent another shutdown.

Å“The North and the South will make sure that the businesses in the KIZ will restart, depending on their preparations,” North Koreaâ„¢s state-owned KCNA news agency reported.

Kaesong is located on the North Korean side of the fortified border and houses the operations of over 120 South Korean companies, employing both South and North Korean workers.

Pyongyang blocked access to the site and withdrew its 53,000 employees in May amid rising tensions with Seoul. South Korea also pulled out the last of its workers on May 3.

Kaesong was launched in 2003 to boost ties between the two neighbors.

The Korean Peninsula has been locked in a cycle of military rhetoric over the past few months.

MSH/HSN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Oh Say Can You See Through the Frackers' Big Lie?

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The surge in fracked gas is headed for export and won’t boost the nation’s energy independence.

Big Oil’s frackers are wrapping their shameless profiteering in our flag.

In shale fields across the country, you’ll see fracking rigs festooned with Old Glory, and they even paint some of their rigs red, white, and blue.

This ostentatious patriotic pose is part of the industry’s cynical PR campaign to convince you and me that its assault on our health, water, air, and economic future should be mindlessly saluted, rather than questioned.

“Energy Independence! ” is their deafening cry. The so-called shale gas boom, they proclaim, will free America from dependence on foreign producers.

This Fourth of July, can you sing “Oh say can you see through the frackers’ big lie”?

Joel Dyer, editor of the Boulder, Colorado Weekly, has peeked behind their-star spangled curtain. The investigative digger uncovered what he called “one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated on America.”

Far from independence, we’re going to get the pollution – while foreigners take the energy. The gas extracted from our fractured land is destined for export. How do we know that?

First, because the industry and its government enablers admit it in their internal communications. Second, guess who’s paying for the fracking of America?

Dyer cites reports by Bloomberg news that China has pumped $5.5 billion into the U.S. drilling boom – not only so it can export the energy back to their people, but especially so the Chinese can “redeploy the best U.S. practices and technologies” back to China.

Other foreign investors fracking us hail from Japan ($5 billion invested so far), India ($3.5 billion), France ($4.5 billion), as well as South Korea, the UK, and Norway.

Norway? Come on, America – don’t let the profiteers wrap you up in our own flag. It’s the Fourth of July – let’s rebel!

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

‘Iran to send more naval fleets to Russia’

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Deputy Commander of the Iranian Navy Rear Admiral Gholam-Reza Khadem Bigham says Iran will continue dispatching more naval fleets to Russia.

Khadem on Saturday pointed to the recent dispatching of an Iranian naval fleet to the Russian port city of Astrakhan and said, Å“We should expect the continuation of the process and the sending of other naval groups.”

In late June, Iran sent two indigenously-manufactured missile-launching warships, Joshan (Armor) and Peikan (Arrow), for the first time to Astrakhan Port.

The measure was aimed at consolidating the amicable ties between Iran and Russia and conveying Tehranâ„¢s message of peace and friendship to the Caspian Sea littoral states.

On April 21, a group of Russian Navy warships docked at the southern Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas after a long journey from the Pacific Ocean.

The fleet, which comprised of Admiral Panteleyev anti-submarine destroyer and the logistic battleships Peresvet and Admiral Nevelskoi with a crew of 712, entered the Iranian naval zone with the purpose of strengthening relations between Tehran and Moscow and promoting bilateral naval cooperation to maintain maritime security.

Admiral Khadem also pointed to the manufacturing of Iranâ„¢s newest submarine, Fateh (Victor).

Fateh is currently being manufactured by Iranâ„¢s Defense Ministry and will be delivered to the Navy in the upcoming months, he pointed out.

In recent years, Iranâ„¢s Navy has been increasing its presence in international waters to protect naval routes and provide security for merchant vessels and tankers.

The Islamic Republic has repeatedly asserted that its overseas naval presence is meant to convey a message of peace and friendship to other countries.

ASH/HJL

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Mali lifts state of emergency

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Members of the Malian and the Tuareg delegations shake hands after signing a ceasefire agreement in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, on June 18, 2013.

Mali has lifted a nearly six-month-old state of emergency before the start of the campaign for the July 28 presidential election.

The central government made the announcement in a statement issued on Saturday.

The state of emergency was declared on January 12, a day after France launched a war in the West African country under the pretext of driving out militants occupying the north.

On Friday, the Malian army reestablished control over the strategic city of Kidal, which had been held by Tuareg rebels.

The Tuareg rebels had agreed to allow the army to enter the northern city in a peace deal that was signed between the government and the rebels last month.

The peace agreement — mediated by regional African powers, the United Nations, and the European Union — was signed on June 18 by Mali’s Territorial Administration Minister Colonel Moussa Sinko Coulibaly and representatives of two Tuareg movements in Ouagadougou, the capital of neighboring Burkina Faso.

The consensus was reached after nearly two weeks of negotiations between all sides.

“The signing of this agreement represents a significant step in the stabilization process in Mali,” said UN Special Representative to Mali Bert Koenders, who attended the signing ceremony.

On February 1, Amnesty International said Å“serious human rights breaches” — including the killing of children – were occurring in the French war in Mali.

Chaos broke out in Mali after President Amadou Toumani Toure was toppled in a military coup on March 22, 2012. The coup leaders said they mounted the coup in response to the government’s inability to contain the Tuareg rebellion in the north of the country, which had been going on for two months.

However, in the wake of the coup d™état, the Tuareg rebels took control of the entire northern desert region, but the Ansar Dine extremists then pushed them aside and took control of the region, which is larger than France or Texas.

GJH/HGL

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Egypt-Israel gas pipeline blown up

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]A section of an Egyptian pipeline supplying gas to Israel and Jordan has been blown up in the Lehfin area south of the city of al-Arish in the Sinai Peninsula.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

West backs coup in Egypt: Brotherhood

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Muslim Brotherhood supporters rally in support of ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi at Rabia al-Adawiya Mosque in Cairo on July 5, 2013.

The Muslim Brotherhood says the West has fully backed the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, the country’s first democratically elected leader, in a military coup, adding that the move that will backfire.

Mohamed El-Beltagi, a senior Muslim Brotherhood leader, said on Saturday that the Western governmentâ„¢s decision to support the military coup will fuel more hatred towards the United States and European states, Reuters reported.

“We feel, with great regret, that the international community is somehow intervening in recognition and support of the military coup,” Beltagi stated.

“This restores the state of hatred towards those European and American nations whose states always stand with despotic regimes against nations looking for freedom,” he added.

On Friday, tens of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood activists and their supporters took to the streets across the country to protest against the coup, and clashes between pro-Morsi and opposition protesters and security forces left 36 people dead and more than 1,000 injured.

Earlier on Friday, Muslim Brotherhood supreme leader Mohammed Badie said the military coup against Egyptâ„¢s first democratically elected president is illegal and millions will remain on the street until Morsi is reinstated as president.

Badie made the remarks during a speech to tens of thousands of Brotherhood supporters gathered at Rabia al-Adawiya Mosque in Cairo.

He vowed to “complete the revolution” that toppled the Western-backed regime of former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

Badie repeatedly referred to Morsi as the president, who was removed from power after millions of people protested over his leadership, saying Morsi “is my president and your president and the president of all Egyptians.”

He vowed Morsi would return to the office soon. “God make Morsi victorious and bring him back to the palace,” Badie stated. “We are his soldiers we defend him with our lives.”

On Wednesday, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ousted Morsi, who took office in June 2012, and dissolved the country’s constitution in a move aimed at resolving the countryâ„¢s political crisis.

The Egyptians launched the revolution against the pro-Israeli regime on January 25, 2011, which eventually brought an end to the 30-year dictatorship of Mubarak on February 11, 2011.

GJH/AS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

UK royals, 3rd most expensive in EU

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A new study has revealed the UK monarchy to be only the third most expensive monarchy in Europe following royals in Norway and the Netherlands.

According to the study, Norwayâ„¢s monarchy cost the taxpayer more than £36million, the Dutch royal family more than £34million and Britainâ„¢s royals spent £32million of the taxpayer last year. Meanwhile, the cheapest monarchy was in Spain at £6.8 million.

The figures were rev­ealed in an annual report on eight monarchies including Sweden, Belgium, Denmark and Luxembourg, compiled by Belgian professor Herman Matthijs.

Republicans in the UK will be dismayed to learn that Franceâ„¢s Socialist president Francois Hollande costs almost three times what Britons pay for the Queen, the study put the cost of the French presidency at £91million.

Three years ago, it was concluded that the Queen headed the most expensive Royal Family in Europe – but since then other monarchies have been forced to become more transparent about their costs.

The study does not include security and other hidden expenses that push the true cost of the Royal Family to more than £200million

MOL/

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Islamist gunmen kill 42 in school attack in Nigeria: Report

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AFP
July 6, 2013

Gunmen believed to be Islamists from Nigeria’s Boko Haram insurgent group killed 42 people, mostly students, in an overnight attack on a secondary school in restive Yobe state, a medical worker and residents said Saturday.

“We received 42 dead bodies of students and other staff of Government Secondary School (in) Mamudo last night. Some of them had gunshot wounds while many of them had burns and ruptured tissues,” Haliru Aliyu of the Potiskum General Hospital told AFP.

Mamudo is some five kilometres from Potiskum, the commercial hub of Yobe State which has been a flashpoint in the Boko Haram insurgency in recent months.

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

Canada train blast: At least one dead

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A freight train loaded with oil has gone off the track in Canada’s Quebec province, leaving at least one person dead and dozens missing.

The derailment occurred Saturday in the town of Lac-Megantic, around 250 kilometers (155 miles) east of Montreal, near the US border and state of Maine.

It sparked thunderous explosions that engulfed about 30 buildings in fire, according to media reports.

The accident created a spectacular fireball, said witnesses, who reported as many as six major explosions during the night.

Michel Brunet, a spokesman for Quebec’s provincial police, said at least one person was killed and a second was injured in the incident. Radio-Canada reported some 60 people were unaccounted for.

“There have been several reports” from people who said they were unable to reach relatives who lived near the accident site, Brunet said.

“The fire is still raging, our investigators have not yet even be able to get close to the scene,” Brunet added, more than 12 hours after the train went off the rails at around 1:20 am local time (0520 GMT).

An initial evacuation zone of a kilometer around the crash site was widened Saturday afternoon as a precaution against harmful particles in the air, bringing the total to 2,000 people forced to leave their homes.

Some 150 firefighters were battling the blaze, and the cause of the crash was still unknown.

NN/NN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

UK royals urged to learn from Belgium

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Belgium monarch abdicates in favour of son; it teaches other EU royals Ëœa lessonâ„¢

The King of Belgians, Albert II, 2nd right.

The King of Belgians, Albert II, has announced his abdication from the throne, following a nearly 20-year reign marked by political strife between northern Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking southern Wallonia.

The 79-year-old monarch stepped down in favour of his son Crown Prince Philippe, 53, on 21 July, Belgium’s national day.

His departure ended months of speculation about an early end to his rule. He also cited bad health as one of key reasons behind the decision to abdicate, saying that Å“my health was no longer good enough to fulfill my duties well.”

“Age and health no longer allow me to perform my duties,” he said.

“After a 20-year reign, the time has come to pass the torch to the next generation.”

Albert was sworn in as the sixth king of the Belgians on 9 August 1993, following the death of his childless brother, King Baudouin at the age of 62.

The Belgian monarchy is largely a ceremonial position, but Albert had in recent years been forced into playing a mediator role when his increasingly divided kingdom of 10.5m people found itself without a government for a record 541 days during political deadlock between representatives in northern, Dutch-speaking Flanders and southern, French-speaking Wallonia.

Belgiumâ„¢s sole national figure, as he was called, had a much more controversial and complex family life.

Albert™s first scandal surfaced a few years after he became king when Delphine Boël, a British-educated artist, came forward claiming she was his illegitimate daughter born out of an extra-marital relationship.

That issue came to the fore again this spring when Boel opened court proceedings to prove she was the king’s daughter. There is some speculation in the media that this may have influenced his decision to abdicate.

King Albert’s announcement comes only three months after Queen Beatrix of the neighbouring Netherlands vacated the Dutch throne in favour of her son Willem-Alexander.

Despite going through some tough times, Europe’s ageing monarchs refuse to step down.

This is while there is no longer such a thing as a job for life in a Europe which is grappling with ever greater longevity, higher retirement ages and soaring youth unemployment.

In Britain, many millions want the whole institution of monarchy consigned to the history books.

However, the 86-year-old Queen Elizabeth II is showing scant sign of calling it a day.

The monarchy is practically an institution that is not fit for purpose. It is secretive, having recently lobbied successfully to have itself removed entirely from the reaches of the UKâ„¢s Freedom of Information laws; it lobbies government ministers for improvements to its financial benefits and for its own private agenda; it is hugely costly — an estimated £202 million a year, enough to pay for thousands of teachers, nurses or police officers at a time of sweeping public spending cuts.

Britain and Europe as a whole are supposed to be democratic societies, which mean they should cherish and value democracy as it is.

However, Spainâ„¢s monarch Juan Carlos, currently enduring the toughest of times as his debt-ridden country goes through hell, clings on at 75.

Margrethe II of Denmark has just chalked up 41 years as queen ahead of her 73rd birthday in April.

King Carl-Gustaf of Sweden, embarrassed by a recent stream of philandering allegations and kiss-and-tell revelations, is a relatively sprightly 66.

This week the Dutch bucked the trend. Just ahead of her 75th birthday on Thursday, Queen Beatrix announced she was to become a princess.

Abdication is an extremely rare event among the monarchs of Europe, albeit not for the Dutch. Queens Juliana and Wilhelmina, Beatrix’s mother and grandmother, both made way for their daughters, while the first Orange king, William I, also threw in the towel in the 19th century.

Elsewhere, it seems to be unthinkable. An abdication in the house of Windsor might trigger a crisis in the UK, at least it did the last time it happened in 1936. It has never occurred in Sweden’s 195-year-old monarchy although the opinion polls show a majority wishing King Carl-Gustaf would go and make way for his much more popular daughter, Crown Princess

Victoria.

King Juan Carlos has just survived the worst year of his reign. For the first time since his starring role in stabilising Spain’s post-fascist democracy in 1975 and warding off an abortive military putsch in 1981, he has become a bit of a laughing stock.

Allegations of sleaze and revelations of family dys-functionality are weighing heavily on the royals in Belgium, with Albert this week forced to issue a highly unusual statement confessing he had been “humbled” by tales of financial impropriety involving the 84-year-old dowager Queen Fabiola, the widow of Baudouin, Albert’s late brother and predecessor on the throne.

And the ageing monarchs of Britain, Spain, and Belgium may even be witnessing their realms’ end to an extent, owing to secessionist pressures in Scotland, Catalonia, and Flanders, the latter two being strongly republican.

In this context, Queen Beatrix might be seen to have cannily set the right example, injecting greater dynamism into the dynasty by handing over to a younger generation.

“The Dutch have difficulty accepting all the heritage stuff. You really have to work hard at being king or queen. It’s very much seen as a career,” said Daniela Hooghiemstra, a historian of the house of Orange. “So it’s better if you’re not too old. If you’re 80 years old, it’s hard to bring in new ideas. It’s not wise of Queen Elizabeth to stay on this long. What Beatrix has done means that the monarchy will keep up with modern times.”

If queens Elizabeth and Beatrix have had a good year, Europe’s ruling males are faring a lot less well. This week Juan Carlos’s son-in-law was ordered to stump up £7million bail or be imprisoned in a fraud investigation, amid allegations he used a not-for-profit company on Mallorca as a vehicle for embezzling public funds.

The sleaze claims come as Spain struggles to weather a devastating financial and economic crisis with unemployment nudging 30%. In the middle of the crisis last year, Juan Carlos initially sought to hush up an all-expenses-paid big safari excursion to Botswana.

MOL/HE

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Only 47% of Adults Have Full-Time Job

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Mike Flynn
Breitbart
July 6, 2013

The release of the June Jobs’ Report Friday was something of a relief for the markets. The Labor Department reported that the economy gained 195,000 jobs in June, which beat economists’ expectations. The Department also reported that the economy gained 70,000 more jobs in April and May than it originally estimated.

The report, however, also provides clear evidence that the the nation is splitting into two; only 47% of Americans have a full-time job and those who don’t are finding it increasingly out of reach.

Of the 144 million Americans employed last month, only 116 million were working full-time. Friday’s report showed that 58.7% of the civilian adult population of 245 million was working last month. Only 47% of Americans, however, had a full-time job.

The market’s positive reaction to Friday’s report is another sign of how far our economic expectations have fallen. If today the same proportion of Americans worked as just a decade ago, there would be almost 9 million more people working. Just in the last year, almost 2 million Americans have left the labor force.

With a majority of the population not holding a full-time job, it isn’t surprising that economic growth has been so weak.

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4 killed, 47 injured in Lahore bombing

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People gather at the scene of a bombing that rocked in the Anarkali bazaar area of downtown Lahore on July 6, 2013.

A bombing in a busy food market in the Pakistani city of Lahore has killed four people and injured 47.

The incident occurred late on Saturday on Food Street in the Anarkali bazaar area of downtown Lahore.

Punjab Province Finance Minister Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman confirmed the casualty count and said the bomb was planted outside a restaurant.

The bomb detonated as people were eating inside the restaurant, he told reporters, adding that children were among the dead and injured.

Security sources said they believe one kilogram of explosives along with ball bearings and other objects were used in the device, which was packed in a black shopping bag and detonated with a timer.

No group or individual has claimed responsibility for the attack, and the police say they are still investigating the incident.

Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, has enjoyed relative calm in recent months, compared with Pakistan’s other major cities, which have experienced many bombings and other terrorist attacks.

Since late 2009, there has been a surge in militant attacks in Pakistan.

Over 36,000 Pakistanis have lost their lives in bombings and other militant attacks since 2007.

MRS/HGL

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Police chief killed with rifle lost in ATF gun-tracking program

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Richard A. Serrano
L.A. Times
July 6, 2013

A high-powered rifle lost in the ATF’s Fast and Furious controversy was used to kill a Mexican police chief in the state of Jalisco earlier this year, according to internal Department of Justice records, suggesting that weapons from the failed gun-tracking operation have now made it into the hands of violent drug cartels deep inside Mexico.

Luis Lucio Rosales Astorga, the police chief in the city of Hostotipaquillo, was shot to death Jan. 29 when gunmen intercepted his patrol car and opened fire. Also killed was one of his bodyguards. His wife and a second bodyguard were wounded.

Local authorities said eight suspects in their 20s and 30s were arrested after police seized them nearby with a cache of weapons – rifles, grenades, handguns, helmets, bulletproof vests, uniforms and special communications equipment. The area is a hot zone for rival drug gangs, with members of three cartels fighting over turf in the region.

A semi-automatic WASR rifle, the firearm that killed the chief, was traced back to the Lone Wolf Trading Company, a gun store in Glendale, Ariz. The notation on the Department of Justice trace records said the WASR was used in a “HOMICIDE — WILLFUL — KILL —PUB OFF —GUN” —ATF code for “Homicide, Willful Killing of a Public Official, Gun.”

Hundreds of firearms were lost in the Fast and Furious operation. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed illegal purchasers to buy the firearms at the Lone Wolf store in the Phoenix suburb and other gun shops in hopes of tracing them to Mexican cartel leaders.

The WASR used in Jalisco was purchased on Feb. 22, 2010, about three months into the Fast and Furious operation, by 26-year-old Jacob A. Montelongo of Phoenix. He later pleaded guilty to conspiracy, making false statements and smuggling goods from the United States and was sentenced to 41 months in prison.

Court records show Montelongo personally obtained at least 109 firearms during Fast and Furious. How the WASR ended up in the state of Jalisco, which is deep in central Mexico and includes the country’s second-largest metropolis, Guadalajara, remained unclear.

After the shooting in Jalisco, local officials said some of the suspects confessed to two other shootouts in the area, including one that left seven people dead, all part of the continuing feud by rival cartel members.

The ATF declined to discuss the matter; officials said they are still compiling an inventory of all the lost firearms for a complete account of the Fast and Furious operation.

Instead of being tracked, almost all the weapons were lost as they flooded across the border into Mexico. In all, some 211 people were killed or wounded by Fast and Furious weapons in Mexico, according to Mexican authorities. And on this side of the border, a Fast and Furious weapon was found at the Arizona scene where U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was slain in 2010.

Terry’s slaying set off a number of investigations in Washington into Fast and Furious. It led to the firing or demotion of many ATF officials, including the agency’s acting director, who stepped down. It ultimately prompted the GOP-controlled House to vote Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over a number of Fast and Furious records sought by the House Oversight Committee.

'Israel needs friendly Egypt ties'

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An Israeli minister has urged maintaining friendly relations with Egypt following the ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi by the Egyptian military.

“It is really important for Israel to keep Egypt as its friend and to maintain a peaceful border,” Israeli Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich said on Saturday.

He also said that Tel Avivâ„¢s intelligence sources had good cooperation with Egypt under Morsi.

Earlier, former Israeli minister of military affairs, Gabi Ashkenazi, downplayed the developments in Egypt, saying Morsi’s ouster did not pose any immediate danger to Tel Aviv.

“I think the Egyptian army is too busy [with domestic issues] to deal with anything that is outside of Egypt, so I don’t think there’s any danger at the moment,” he said.

He also said the Morsi government was “reasonable” in its ties with Tel Aviv as it did not renege on the Camp David Accords and launched a crackdown on underground supply tunnels between the Sinai Peninsula and the blockaded Gaza Strip.

On July 3, the Egyptian Army ousted Morsi and suspended the country’s constitution.

The army announced new parliamentary elections and declared the head of Supreme Constitutional Court, Adly Mansour, as the interim president of Egypt.

Israel, which signed a peace accord with Egypt in 1979, has refused to comment on the crisis in North African country.

MRS/AS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

ElBaradei appointment as PM hits snag

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The appointment of prominent Egyptian politician Mohamed ElBaradei as the countryâ„¢s interim prime minister has hit a snag.

Egyptian state media and several senior officials said on Saturday that interim Egyptian President Adly Mahmud Mansour had decided to appoint pro-reform leader and Nobel Peace prizewinner ElBaradei as the interim prime minister of the country and that he would take oath on Saturday evening — three days after the army removed President Mohammed Morsi from power in a military coup and suspended the constitution.

However, on Saturday night Mansour backtracked on the decision.

Mansourâ„¢s spokesman Ahmed al-Muslimani said ElBaradei was not appointed to be the next prime minister, adding that there were several options for the job and the president had to take account of opposition to ElBaradei.

“Interim President Adly Mansour met today with Dr. ElBaradei but so far there has been no official appointment,” Muslimani told reporters in Cairo just before midnight.

However, he added that ElBaradei was “the logical choice” among a list of names being considered for the post.

Within a couple of hours of the news that ElBaradei would be named, the Muslim Brotherhoodâ„¢s the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and al-Nour Party — two main political parties in the country — rejected ElBaradeiâ„¢s appointment.

“We reject this coup and all that results from it, including ElBaradei,” an official from the Freedom and Justice Party said.

Ahmed Khalil, the deputy leader of al-Nour Party, said that the party would withdraw from the militaryâ„¢s roadmap if ElBaradei was confirmed in his post.

“The nomination of ElBaradei violates the roadmap that the political and national powers had agreed on with General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi,” he said, referring to the chief of the army.

On Friday, tens of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood activists and their supporters took to the streets across the country to protest against the military coup. Clashes between the security forces and opposition protesters left 36 people dead and more than 1,000 injured.

Earlier on Friday, Muslim Brotherhood supreme leader Mohammed Badie said the military coup against Egyptâ„¢s first democratically elected president is illegal and millions will remain on the street until Morsi is reinstated as president.

Badie made the remarks during a speech to tens of thousands of Brotherhood supporters gathered at Rabia al-Adawiya Mosque in Cairo.

He vowed to “complete the revolution” that toppled the Western-backed regime of former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

Badie repeatedly referred to Morsi as the president, who was removed from power after millions of people protested over his leadership, saying Morsi “is my president and your president and the president of all Egyptians.”

He vowed Morsi would return to the office soon. “God make Morsi victorious and bring him back to the palace,” Badie stated. “We are his soldiers we defend him with our lives.”

On Wednesday, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ousted Morsi, who took office in June 2012, and dissolved the country’s constitution in a move aimed at resolving the countryâ„¢s political crisis.

The Egyptians launched the revolution against the pro-Israeli regime on January 25, 2011, which eventually brought an end to the 30-year dictatorship of Mubarak on February 11, 2011.

GJH/AS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Airplane Crashes at San Francisco Airport While Trying to Land: 2 Dead and 10 Critically Injured (VIDEO)

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July 6, 2013
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A Boeing 777 operated by the Korean airline Asiana crashed at San Francisco airport while trying to land today.

According to the New York Times:

Images and video posted on social media by eyewitnesses to the crash showed the plane laying on the ground, its nose pointed slightly upward, apparently on fire and billowing smoke. The crash could be seen from some distance. The images appeared to show that the plane had lost its tail.

Stefanie Laine, one of those who posted on Twitter that she had witnessed the crash, said that the “plane came in at a bad angle, flipped, exploded.”

Firefighters on the scene, but there were no reports yet of the extent of casualties. It was not clear how many people were on board. The F.A.A. said it could not immediately provide further details.

We’ll be updating this space.

Updated 3:56 p.m. eastern:

Boston Globe reporter Wesley Lowery quoted a passenger who was on the flight:

Correction: Lowery was not on the flight, as this space previously reported.

And here’s video:

Updated 3:59 p.m. eastern:

 

Updated 4:21 p.m. eastern:

KTVU has reported that all access to the airport has been cut off. The flight was coming in from Seoul when:

According to a witness, the plane was just about to land – its landing gear had come down – when the tail of the plane came off.

After wobbling for a minute, it appeared that the aircraft flipped upside down, coming to a stop on runway on it’s back, according to witness Kathy Muhler.

Chopper footage from over the crash showed that the wings were still attached, contradicting the possibility that it rolled over on its back.

Updated 4:27 p.m.:

USA today reports that there were 291 people aboard.

Passengers who got off the plane told reporters they did not believe there were any fatalities. Images from the scene showed smoke billowing from the plane and emergency exits open from the plane’s fuselage, with the tail separated from the aircraft. Gaping holes could be seen in the roof of the plane’s body, blackened by fire.

Updated 4:40 p.m.:

Quoting an unnamed aviation official, the New York Times reports that the situation was “entirely normal” until the crash.

Updated 4:44 p.m.:
Tweeted by Los Angeles Times reporter Andrew Blankstein:

Updated 4:54 p.m.:

Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg was supposed to be on the plane. Here’s what she wrote on the site:

Taking a minute to be thankful and explain what happened. My family, colleagues Debbie Frost, Charlton Gholson and Kelly Hoffman and I were originally going to take the Asiana flight that just crash-landed. We switched to United so we could use miles for my family’s tickets. Our flight was scheduled to come in at the same time, but we were early and landed about 20 minutes before the crash. Our friend Dave David Eun was on the Asiana flight and he is fine.

Thank you to everyone who is reaching out — and sorry if we worried anyone.

Serious moment to give thanks.

Updated 5:02 p.m. eastern:
As of now neither Boeing nor Asiana appear to have released a statement on their Web sites.

Updated 5:04 p.m. eastern:

Updated 5:10 p.m. eastern:

According to the ASN Aviation Safety Database the 777 has been involved in 8 “occurences” i.e. incidents since 1997. If there are any fatalities from the SFO crash they would be the first in-flight fatalities that the plane model has experienced. A British Airways 777 experienced the planes only other “loss of hull” incident during a landing at London’s Heathrow Airport in 2008. There are additional details of that flight at Airsafe.com.

Republished with permission from: AlterNet

70m-yr-old fossil found in northeast Iran

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The photo shows a 70-million-year-old fossil discovered in northeastern Iran.

An Iranian farmer has found a 70-million-year-old fossil in the city of Shirvan in the northeastern province of North Khorassan.

Morteza Hemmati stumbled upon the Ammonite fossil while digging around his farm.

The fossil, which weighs about fifteen kilograms, belongs to the second geological period or the Mesozoic Era. It fits in the category of Cephalopods and octopuses.

Ammonites are a group of marine invertebrate animals, which became extinct along with most dinosaurs over 60 million years ago.

Ammonites are excellent index fossils, and it is often possible to link the rock layer in which a particular species or genus is found to specific geological time periods.

NN/NN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

‘Muslim Brotherhood can run in election’

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]A spokesman of interim Egyptian President Adly Mansour says the Muslim Brotherhood can run candidates in the upcoming elections that are supposed to be held according to the military’s roadmap.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

‘ElBaradei not appointed Egyptian PM’

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]A senior advisor to new Egyptian President Adly Mahmud Mansour says Mohamed ElBaradei has not been appointed to be the next prime minister.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

‘Iran not seeking war with any country’

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Iran not after war with any nation, but maintaining military vigilance: Iran Cmdr.

In March, Iranâ„¢s Army Ground Forces held a military drill, codenamed Bait-ul-Muqaddas 25, in the central Iranian province of Isfahan.

A top Iranian military commander says Iran does not seek war with any nation, but will stay alert against potential threats.

Å“The Islamic Republic of Iran has no intention of launching a military strike against any country, but it is important for us to enhance our defense capabilities, and to that end, the development of our military might is a step toward national development and progress,” said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Iranian Army Brigadier General Mohammad Hossein Dadras.

The top commander said Iran would remain vigilant against possible threats.

Å“We will maintain our military vigilance as this issue is among our religious teachings and Qurâ„¢anic precepts,” he underlined.

Both Iran and its enemies are well aware that the development of defensive products in the country has brought Å“real security” to the Islamic Republic, said the senior commander.

Å“The Israeli regime and enemyâ„¢s fear shows that this deterrence [power] has been effective, and should a crisis arise at some point in time, our military might can be effective [in tackling the crisis],” the general highlighted.

The joint chiefs chairman stated that the Iranian Armed Forces rely on indigenously developed defense equipment which has made the nation self-sufficient in the military sector.

Security also contributes to economic development in the country as making investment needs a stable environment, he said, adding that is why the enemy seeks to slap sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

Å“Security provides an [suitable] atmosphere for economic investment, and thatâ„¢s why the enemy is trying to divert us from our path by [exerting] pressure and [slapping] sanctions [on us],” the high-ranking military commander underscored.

He further said sanctions have, ironically enough, made Iranâ„¢s defense sector independent of foreign countries.

Over the past few years, Iran has held several military drills to enhance the defense capabilities of its armed forces and to test modern military tactics and equipment.

The country has repeatedly clarified that its military might is merely based on the nation’s defense doctrine of deterrence and poses no threat to other countries.

NN/AS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Iran, China stress fighting cyber crimes

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Iran and China call for serious fight against cyber crimes.

Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar and Director of Shanghai Public Security Bai Shaokang have underlined the need for serious fight against cyber crimes.

In a meeting in the Chinese city of Shanghai on Saturday, Mohammad-Najjar pointed to his constructive talks with high-ranking Chinese security officials as well as the signing of an agreement between the two countries.

He said the important security deal urged the cooperation between the police of the two countries, describing security in Iran, China and the region as highly significant.

Å“Cooperation between the police of the two countries in the exchange of information and experience as well as serious campaign against cyber crimes… is among the issues that need to be taken into consideration,” Mohammad-Najjar said.

The Chinese official, for his part, hailed the security agreement signed between the two countries.

Underlining the significance of fight against organized crimes, he said given the growing Iran-China economic ties on the one hand, and the rise of cyber crimes in business transactions on the other, the security and law-enforcement bodies of the two countries need to have a closer cooperation.

Heading a delegation, the Iranian minister arrived in China on Thursday for an official four-day visit.

On Thursday, Mohammad-Najjar and Chinese Minister of Public Security Guo Shengkun inked a cooperation agreement in various security issues in an effort to enhance stability throughout the region.

Under the deal, Tehran and Beijing will work together closely in fighting organized crime, transnational crimes, narcotics, gunrunning, human trafficking, and money laundering, the Iranian minister noted.

He also said that that Tehran and Beijing agreed to step up their fight against extremism and terrorism, which threaten both countries and other regional nations.

AR/AS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Nour Party rejects ElBaradei as interim PM

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]A senior member of the conservative al-Nour Party has said al-Nour rejects the appointment of Mohamed ElBaradei as Egypt’s new prime minister and may withdraw from the Egyptian military’s roadmap.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

ElBaradei Heads Egypt's Interim Government

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ElBaradei Heads Egypt’s Interim Government
by Stephen Lendman
It’s official. He’s Washington’s man in Cairo. More on that below.
Ousting Morsi unleashed widespread violence. Pitched battles erupted. Both sides clashed with each other. 
On July 6, Russia Today reported Friday’s toll caused 36 deaths. One or more others followed. Over 1,100 were injured. Unknown numbers were arrested.
Neither side’s yielding so far. Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) is notoriously brutal. Mercy isn’t in its vocabulary. It conspired with Washington against Morsi. 
Popular outrage made him damaged goods. He’s gone. He’s under house arrest. So are other Freedom and Justice party members. 
Dozens are detained. Warrants are out for hundreds more. Egypt remains a tinder box. Civil war’s unlikely but could happen. Anything’s possible going forward. Things are far from resolved.
Friday through overnight, street battles raged. They did so across Cairo. Alexandria reported some of the worst violence. Muslim Brotherhood officials urged a “Friday of Rage.”
On Saturday, Reuters first headlined “Egypt counts dead after Islamist protest violence.” It changed to “New Leader starts work as Egypt counts dead.”
He held talks with SCAF generals and political leaders. Both sides remain encamped in different parts of Cairo. SCAF chose Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court chief justice Adly Mansour as interim president. 
He’s an establishment figure. He’s a convenient apparatchik. He’s appointed to do what he’s told.
So is former IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei. He’s Egypt’s interim prime minister. His spokesman confirmed it. State television announced it. 
The New York Times, Reuters, and other news services reported it. He’ll form a caretaker cabinet. He, Mansour, and appointed ministers will oversea affairs of state.
ElBaradei heads the so-called National Salvation Front. He does so jointly with former Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa and Egyptian Popular Current leader Hamdeen Sabahi.
It’s an anti-Morsi umbrella group. It’s pro-Western. It defends privilege against populism. It assures business as usual. Mansour ElBareidei, and appointed ministers will govern until parliamentary elections are held. 
They represent what Egyptians deplore. A previous article explained. On July 4, The New York Times headlined “Prominent Egyptian Liberal Says He Sought West’s Support for Uprising.” 
ElBaradei’s no liberal. He lobbied to be Washington’s man in Cairo. He’s no populist. He’s cutting deals. Reports say he’ll maintain good relations with Israel. He’ll collude against Palestinian rights. He’ll contest Hezbollah.
He’ll back Washington’s war on Syria. He’ll be hardline against Iran’s peaceful nuclear program. He’ll enforce neoliberal harshness.
“In an interview,” said The Times, ElBaradei “defended the widening arrests of Mr. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood allies and the shutdown of Islamist television networks that followed the removal of Mr. Morsi on Wednesday by Egypt’s generals.”
“The security people obviously are worried – there was an earthquake and we have to make sure that the tremors are predicted and controlled,” he said.
“They are taking some precautionary measures to avoid violence; well, this is something that I guess they have to do as a security measure.”
“But nobody should be detained or arrested in anticipation unless there is a clear accusation, and it has to be investigated by the attorney general and settled in a court.”
He vowed to ensure “everybody who is being rounded up or detained, it is by order of the attorney general – and being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood is no crime.”
He said one thing. He means another. Washington rules matter. ElBaradei’s on board to obey. His words ring hollow. 
“(I)t’s deja vu all over again,” he added. (H)opefully this time we will get it right,” he said. He left unexplained what he means. 
More blood in the streets is likely. Things haven’t subsided by any means. SCAF’s complicit with Pentagon commanders. Israel’s IDF is kept informed. So are Netanyahu and top Israeli officials.  
A state of emergency exists. Martial law was declared. Egypt’s constitution was suspended. Junta power rules. It’s beholden to monied interests. Washington ones matter most.
In 2011, Egyptians ousted Mubarak. They did so for progressive change. They challenged Morsi for the same reason. They acted in vain. Neoliberal harshness remains policy. Washington rules run things.
Reuters, Haaretz and other news services reported attacks on Egyptian Coptic Christians. Sinai border areas could erupt.
On July 5, Mossad-connected DEBKAfile (DF) headlined “Israeli military alerts prompted by Islamist mutiny threat from Sinai and first attacks.”
SCAF raised its own alert. Israel suppressed news from the region. Gaza’s Rafah border crossing was closed. It connects Gaza with Egypt. 
Orders came after reported attacks on SCAF Sinai checkpoints and installations. Al-Arish, its airport, Sheikh Zuweid and Rafah were targeted. Hamas is wrongfully blamed. Rafah’s border crossing remains closed.
Doing so exacerbates humanitarian conditions. It comes when Israel imposed tighter restrictions. Fuel constraints deprive households, businesses, farmers, hospitals and other public services with too little. 
Gazan gas distributors have too little to supply. Some people wait weeks for allocations. Israeli rules are imposed punitively. Egypt’s crisis ups the stakes on all sides. Other vital services are denied.
SCAF targets Gaza’s tunnel economy. It helps enforce Israel’s blockade. It causes enormous human suffering. It continues unabated.
DF lied claiming Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood wants Sinai turned “into an area of revolt and a base for attacking Israel.” Expect follow-up reports against its ousted regime. DF’s credibility too often is sorely lacking.
Morsi maintained good relations with Israel. Despite popular opposition, its Cairo embassy remains open. It’s protected. 
Israel v. Egypt isn’t the issue. It’s Washington/Israel/SCAF against social, political and economic justice. Egyptians demand what they won’t get. Their liberating struggle continues.
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 

Republished with permission from: Stephen Lendman

The Protest Movement in Egypt: “Dictators” do not Dictate, They Obey Orders

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Egypt is currently at a dangerous crossroads which could evolve towards a civil war.

It is important to understand Washington’s role, which is carried out by Pentagon and the US intelligence.

While the Armed Forces have cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood, the Coup d’Etat is ultimately intended to manipulate the protest movement and prevent the accession of a “real people’s government”.

The overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi by the Egyptian Armed forces was not carried out against US interests, it was instigated to ensure “continuity” on behalf of Washington. Defense Minister General Abdul Fatah Al-Sisi who instigated the Coup d’Etat directed against President Morsi was in permanent liaison by telephone with US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel (from the very outset of the protest movement. Press reports confirm that he consulted him several times in the days leading up to the Coup d’Etat. It is highly unlikely that General Al Sisi would have acted without a ‘green light” from the Pentagon.

The Muslim Brotherhood government was supported by the US from the outset. At the same time important sectors of the protest movement directed against the Brotherhood were also supported by the US, through US foundations, including the National Endowment for Democracy and Freedom House. The Kifaya movement, which organized one of the first protests directed against the Mubarak regime in late 2004, and which is currently involved in the movement against the Brotherhood is supported by the US based International Center for Non-Violent Conflict.

These actions by US foundations linked to the US State Department ensure that the US funded civil society opposition will not address the broader issue of foreign interference in the affairs of a sovereign state.

The US supports both sides with a view to creating division and political chaos.

The puppet masters so to speak support the protest movement against their own puppets. Its called “political leveraging”: support the Muslim Brotherhood as well as the opponents of the Morsi government, as a means to manipulating the mass movement, creating social and sectarian divisions and preventing the emergence of a sovereign national government.

Meanwhile the Western media has skillfully portrayed the Egyptian military as anti-American, following the recall of the US ambassador to Egypt Ann Patterson.This is a smokescreen, the instigators of the Coup d’etat take their orders from the Pentagon.

The following article first published in January 2011 provides a background on the 2011 protest movement as well as Washington’s role in manipulating the “Arab Spring” movement.

Michel Chossudovsky, July 6, 2013


by Michel Chossudovsky, January 2011

The Mubarak regime could collapse in the a face of a nationwide protest movement… What prospects for Egypt and the Arab World?

 ”Dictators” do not dictate, they obey orders. This is true in Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria.   

Dictators are invariably political puppets. Dictators do not decide.

President Hosni Mubarak was a faithful servant of Western economic interests and so was Ben Ali.

The national government is the object of the protest movement.

The objective is to unseat the puppet rather than the puppet-master.

The slogans in Egypt are “Down with Mubarak, Down with the Regime”. No anti-American posters have been reported… The overriding and destructive influence of the USA in Egypt and throughout the Middle East remains unheralded.

The foreign powers which operate behind the scenes are shielded from the protest movement.

No significant political change will occur unless the issue of foreign interference is meaningfully addressed by the protest movement.

The US embassy in Cairo is an important political entity, invariably overshadowing the national government. The Embassy is not a target of the protest movement.

In Egypt, a devastating IMF program was imposed in 1991 at the height of the Gulf War. It was negotiated in exchange for the annulment of Egypt’s multibillion dollar military debt to the US as well as its participation in the war. The resulting deregulation of food prices, sweeping privatisation and massive austerity measures led to the impoverishment of the Egyptian population and the destabilization of its economy. The Mubarak government was praised as a model “IMF pupil”.

The role of Ben Ali’s government in Tunisia was to enforce the IMF’s deadly economic medicine, which over a period of more than twenty years served to destabilize the national economy and impoverish the Tunisian population. Over the last 23 years, economic and social policy in Tunisia has been dictated by the Washington Consensus.

Both Hosni Mubarak and Ben Ali stayed in power because their governments obeyed and effectively enforced the diktats of the IMF.

From Pinochet and Videla to Baby Doc, Ben Ali and Mubarak, dictators have been installed by Washington. Historically in Latin America, dictators were instated through a series of US sponsored military coups. In todays World, they are installed through “free and fair elections” under the surveillance of the “international community”.

Our message to the protest movement:

Actual decisions are taken in Washington DC, at the US State Department, at the Pentagon, at Langley, headquarters of the CIA. at H Street NW, the headquarters of the World Bank and the IMF.

The relationship of “the dictator” to foreign interests must be addressed. Unseat the political puppets but do not forget to target the “real dictators”.

The protest movement should focus on the real seat of political authority; it should target (in a peaceful, orderly and nonviolent fashion) the US embassy, the delegation of the European Union, the national missions of the IMF and the World Bank.

Meaningful political change can only be ensured if the neoliberal economic policy agenda is thrown out.

Regime Replacement

If the protest movement fails to address the role of foreign powers including pressures exerted by “investors”, external creditors and international financial institutions, the objective of national sovereignty will not be achieved. In which case, what will occur is a narrow process of “regime replacement”, which ensures political continuity.

“Dictators” are seated and unseated. When they are politically discredited and no longer serve the interests of their US sponsors, they are replaced by a new leader, often recruited from within the ranks of the political opposition.

In Tunisia, the Obama administration has already positioned itself. It intends to play a key role in the “democratization program” (i.e. the holding of so-called fair elections). It also intends to use the political crisis as a means to weaken the role of France and consolidate its position in North Africa:

“The United States, which was quick to size up the groundswell of protest on the streets of Tunisia, is trying to press its advantage to push for democratic reforms in the country and further afield.

The top-ranking US envoy for the Middle East, Jeffrey Feltman, was the first foreign official to arrive in the country after president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ousted on January 14 and swiftly called for reforms. He said on Tuesday only free and fair elections would strengthen and give credibility to the north African state’s embattled leadership.

“I certainly expect that we’ll be using the Tunisian example” in talks with other Arab governments, Assistant Secretary of State Feltman added.

He was dispatched to the north African country to offer US help in the turbulent transition of power, and met with Tunisian ministers and civil society figures.

Feltman travels to Paris on Wednesday to discuss the crisis with French leaders, boosting the impression that the US is leading international support for a new Tunisia, to the detriment of its former colonial power, France. …

Western nations had long supported Tunisia’s ousted leadership, seeing it as a bulwark against Islamic militants in the north Africa region.

In 2006, the then US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, speaking in Tunis, praised the country’s evolution.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton nimbly stepped in with a speech in Doha on January 13 warning Arab leaders to allow their citizens greater freedoms or risk extremists exploiting the situation.

“There is no doubt that the United States is trying to position itself very quickly on the good side,…” ” AFP: US helping shape outcome of Tunisian uprising emphasis added

Will Washington be successful in instating a new puppet regime?

This very much depends on the ability of the protest movement to address the insidious role of the US in the country’s internal affairs.

The overriding powers of empire are not mentioned. In a bitter irony, president Obama has expressed his support for the protest movement.

Many people within the protest movement are led to believe that president Obama is committed to democracy and human rights, and is supportive of the opposition’s resolve to unseat a dictator, which was installed by the US in the first place.

Co-optation of Opposition Leaders

The co-optation of the leaders of major opposition parties and civil society organizations in anticipation of the collapse of an authoritarian puppet government is part of Washington’s design, applied in different regions of the World.

The process of co-optation is implemented and financed by US based foundations including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and Freedom House (FH). Both FH and the NED have links to the US Congress. the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and the US business establishment. Both the NED and FH are known to have ties to the CIA.

The NED is actively involved in Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria. Freedom House supports several civil society organizations in Egypt.

“The NED was established by the Reagan administration after the CIA’s role in covertly funding efforts to overthrow foreign governments was brought to light, leading to the discrediting of the parties, movements, journals, books, newspapers and individuals that received CIA funding. … As a bipartisan endowment, with participation from the two major parties, as well as the AFL-CIO and US Chamber of Commerce, the NED took over the financing of foreign overthrow movements, but overtly and under the rubric of “democracy promotion.” (Stephen Gowans, January « 2011 “What’s left“

While the US has supported the Mubarak government for the last thirty years, US foundations with ties to the US State department and the Pentagon have actively supported the political opposition including the civil society movement. According to Freedom House: “Egyptian civil society is both vibrant and constrained. There are hundreds of non-governmental organizations devoted to expanding civil and political rights in the country, operating in a highly regulated environment.” (Freedom House Press Releases).

In a bitter irony, Washington supports the Mubarak dictatorship, including its atrocities, while also backing and financing its detractors, through the activities of FH, the NED, among others.

Under the auspices of Freedom House, Egyptian dissidents and opponents of Hosni Mubarak were received in May 2008 by Condoleezza Rice at the State Department and the US Congress. They also met White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, who was “the principal White House foreign policy adviser” during George W. Bush’s second term.

Freedom House’s effort to empower a new generation of advocates has yielded tangible results and the New Generation program in Egypt has gained prominence both locally and internationally. Egyptian visiting fellows from all civil society groups received [May 2008] unprecedented attention and recognition, including meetings in Washington with US Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, and prominent members of Congress. In the words of Condoleezza Rice, the fellows represent the “hope for the future of Egypt.”

Freedom House, http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=66&program=84 (emphasis added).

Political Double Talk: Chatting with “Dictators”, Mingling with “Dissidents”

The Egyptian pro-democracy delegation to the State Department was described by Condoleezza Rice as “The Hope for the Future of Egypt”.

In May 2009, Hillary Clinton met a delegation of Egyptian dissidents, several of which had met Condoleezza Rice a year earlier. These high level meetings were held a week prior to Obama’s visit to Egypt:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised the work of a group of Egyptian civil society activists she met with today and said it was in Egypt’s interest to move toward democracy and to exhibit more respect for human rights.

The 16 activists met with Clinton and Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman in Washington at the end of a two-month fellowship organized by Freedom House’s New Generation program.

The fellows raised concern about what they perceived as the United States government distancing itself from Egyptian civil society and called on President Obama to meet with young independent civil society activists when he visits Cairo next week. They also urged the Obama administration to continue to provide political and financial support to Egyptian civil society and to help open the space for nongovernmental organizations which is tightly restricted under Egypt’s longstanding emergency law.

The fellows told Clinton that momentum was already building in Egypt for increased civil and human rights and that U.S. support at this time was urgently needed. They stressed that civil society represents a moderate and peaceful “third way” in Egypt, an alternative to authoritarian elements in the government and those that espouse theocratic rule. (Freedom House, May 2009)

During their fellowship, the activists spent a week in Washington receiving training in advocacy and getting an inside look at the way U.S. democracy works. After their training, the fellows were matched with civil society organizations throughout the country where they shared experiences with U.S. counterparts. The activists will wrap up their program … by visiting U.S. government officials, members of Congress, media outlets and think tanks.” (Freedom House, May 2009, emphasis added)

These opposition civil society groups —which are currently playing an important role in the protest movement— are supported and funded by the US. They indelibly serve US interests.

The invitation of Egyptian dissidents to the State Department and the US Congress also purports to instil a feeling of commitment and allegiance to American democratic values. America is presented as a model of Freedom and Justice. Obama is upheld as a “Role Model”.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks with Egyptian activists promoting freedom and democracy, visiting through the Freedom House organization, prior to meetings at the State Department in Washington, DC, May 28, 2009.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks with “Egyptian activists promoting freedom and
democracy”, prior to meetings at the State Department in Washington, DC, May 28, 2009.

Compare the two pictures 2008 delegation received by Condoleezza Rice versus 2009 delegation
meeting  Hillary Clinton in May 2009.

Hillary Clinton and Hosni Mubarak in Sharm El Sheik, September 2010

Condoleezza Rice chats with Hosni Mubarak? ” Hope for the Future of Egypt”.

Condoleezza Rice addresses Freedom House. 4th from left

The Puppet Masters Support the Protest Movement against their own Puppets

The puppet masters support dissent against their own puppets?

Its called “political leveraging”, “manufacturing dissent”. Support the dictator as well as the opponents of the dictator as a means of controlling the political opposition.

These actions on the part of Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy, on behalf of the Bush and Obama administrations, ensure that the US funded civil society opposition will not direct their energies against the puppet masters behind the Mubarak regime, namely the US government.

These US funded civil society organizations act as a “Trojan Horse” which becomes embedded within the protest movement. They protect the interests of the puppet masters. They ensure that the grassroots protest movement will not address the broader issue of foreign interference in the affairs of sovereign states.

The Facebook Twitter Bloggers Supported and Financed by Washington

In relation to the protest movement in Egypt, several civil society groups funded by US based foundations have led the protest on Twitter and Facebook:

“Activists from Egypt’s Kifaya (Enough) movement — a coalition of government opponents — and the 6th of April Youth Movement organized the protests on the Facebook and Twitter social networking websites. Western news reports said Twitter appeared to be blocked in Egypt later Tuesday.” (See Voice of America, ,Egypt Rocked by Deadly Anti-Government Protests


The Kifaya movement, which organized one of the first protests directed against the Mubarak regime in late 2004, is supported by the US based International Center for Non-Violent Conflict. Kifaya is a broad-based movement which has also taken a stance on Palestine and US interventionism in the region.

In turn, Freedom House has been involved in promoting and training the Middle East North Africa Facebook and Twitter blogs:

Freedom House fellows acquired skills in civic mobilization, leadership, and strategic planning, and benefit from networking opportunities through interaction with Washington-based donors, international organizations and the media. After returning to Egypt, the fellows received small grants to implement innovative initiatives such as advocating for political reform through Facebook and SMS messaging.

http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=66&program=84 (emphasis added)

From February 27 to March 13 [2010], Freedom House hosted 11 bloggers from the Middle East and North Africa [from different civil society organizations] for a two-week Advanced New Media Study Tour in Washington, D.C. The Study Tour provided the bloggers with training in digital security, digital video making, message development and digital mapping. While in D.C., the Fellows also participated in a Senate briefing, and met with high-level officials at USAID, State [Department] and Congress as well as international media including Al-Jazeera and the Washington Post.http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=115&program=84&item=87 emphasis added

One can easily apprehend the importance attached by the US administration to this bloggers’ “training program”, which is coupled with high level meetings at the US Senate, the Congress, the State Department, etc.

The role of the Facebook Twitter social media as an expression of dissent, must be carefully evaluated: the civil society bloggers are supported by Freedom House (FH), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the US State Department.

BBC News World (broadcast in the Middle East) quoting Egyptian internet messages has reported that “the US has been sending money to pro-democracy groups.” (BBC News World, January 29, 2010). The April 6 Youth Movement is supported covertly by Washington. According to a report in The Daily Telegraph, quoting a secret US embassy document (Jan 29, 2011):

“The protests in Egypt are being driven by the April 6 youth movement, a group on Facebook that has attracted mainly young and educated members opposed to Mr Mubarak. The group has about 70,000 members and uses social networking sites to orchestrate protests and report on their activities.

The documents released by WikiLeaks reveal US Embassy officials [in Cairo] were in regular contact with the activist throughout 2008 and 2009, considering him one of their most reliable sources for information about human rights abuses.” (emphasis added)

The Muslim Brotherhood

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt constitutes the largest segment of the opposition to president Mubarak. According to reports, The Muslim Brotherhood dominates the protest movement.

While there is a constitutional ban against religious political parties Brotherhood members elected to Egypt’s parliament as “independents” constitute the largest parliamentary block.

The Brotherhood, however, does not constitute a direct threat to Washington’s economic and strategic interests in the region. Western intelligence agencies have a longstanding history of collaboration with the Brotherhood. Britain’s support of the Brotherhood instrumented through the British Secret Service dates back to the 1940s. Starting in the 1950s, according to former intelligence official William Baer, “The CIA [funnelled] support to the Muslim Brotherhood because of “the Brotherhood’s commendable capability to overthrow Nasser.”1954-1970: CIA and the Muslim Brotherhood Ally to Oppose Egyptian President Nasser, These covert links to the CIA were maintained in the post-Nasser era.

Concluding Remarks

The removal of Hosni Mubarak has, for several years, been on the drawing board of US foreign policy.

Regime replacement serves to ensure continuity, while providing the illusion that meaningful political change has occurred.

Washington’s agenda for Egypt has been to “hijack the protest movement” and replace president Hosni Mubarak with a new compliant puppet head of state. Washington’s objective is to sustain the interests of foreign powers, to uphold the neoliberal economic agenda which has served to impoverish the Egyptian population.

From Washington’s standpoint, regime replacement no longer requires the installation of an authoritarian military regime as in the heyday of US imperialism, It can be implemented by co-opting political parties, including the Left, financing civil society groups, infiltrating the protest movement and manipulating national elections.

With reference to the protest movement in Egypt, President Obama stated in a January 28 video broadcast on Youtube: “The Government Should Not Resort to Violence”. The more fundamental question is what is the source of that violence? Egypt is the largest recipient of US military aid after Israel. The Egyptian military is considered to be the power base of the Mubarak regime:

“The country’s army and police forces are geared to the teeth thanks to more than $1 billion in military aid a year from Washington. … When the US officially describes Egypt as “an important ally” it is inadvertently referring to Mubarak’s role as a garrison outpost for US military operations and dirty war tactics in the Middle East and beyond. There is clear evidence from international human rights groups that countless “suspects” rendered by US forces in their various territories of (criminal) operations are secretly dumped in Egypt for “deep interrogation”. The country serves as a giant “Guantanamo” of the Middle East, conveniently obscured from US public interest and relieved of legal niceties over human rights.” (Finian Cunningham, Egypt: US-Backed Repression is Insight for American Public, Global Research, January 28, 2010).

America is no “Role Model” of Democratization for the Middle East. US military presence imposed on Egypt and the Arab World for more than 20 years, coupled with “free market” reforms are the root cause of State violence.

America’s intent is to use the protest movement to install a new regime.

The People’s Movement should redirect its energies: Identify the relationship between America and “the dictator”. Unseat America’s political puppet but do not forget to target the “real dictators”.

Shunt the process of regime change.

Dismantle the neoliberal reforms.

Close down US military bases in the Arab World.

Establish a truly sovereign government.

Republished with permission from: Global Research

Boeing 777 crashes on runway at San Francisco intl airport

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Firefighters are at the scene of a plane crash on the runway of San Fransisco International Airport. Thick clouds of black smoke are billowing from the grounded aircraft as people escape on emergency slides.

The plane was a Boeing 777 operated by Asiana Airlines flying in from Taipei. People are reportedly trapped inside the aircraft according to a police scanner.

Republished with permission from: RT

Scores Missing after Oil-Laden Train Explosion Rocks Small Town

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A train car continues to burn hours after the crude-fueled explosion rocked the small Quebec town.(Photo: Mathieu Belanger/ Reuters)A massive explosion followed the derailment of a train carrying crude oil through Quebec early Friday morning, engulfing a town in flames as scores of residents remain missing–confirming, once again, the massive threat posed by the transportation of volatile fossil fuels.

The explosion occurred at roughly 1:20 AM as the train derailed while passing through the small downtown of Lac-Mégantic.

According to a spokesperson for Quebec’s Environment Ministry, the train’s 73 rail cars were filled with crude oil and at least four of the cars erupted in a series of explosions which engulfed the town in a cloud of black, thick smoke and a fire that continues to burn.

Reportedly, there was no one on board the train as the oil-laden cars were being “remotely operated.” Further, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports that a “large but as-yet undetermined amount of fuel is also reported to have spilled into the Chaudière River,” with residents reporting that the water has turned to shades of orange.

“It’s dreadful,” said Lac-Mégantic resident Claude Bédard. “It’s terrible. We’ve never seen anything like it.”

Over 60 individuals still remain missing and authorities estimate some 30 buildings have been “affected” with several completely “flattened” by the blast.

Many proponents of oil and gas drilling have argued that shipment by rail poses a ‘safe’ alternative to the proven dangers of oil pipelines though repeated tragedies such as this provide a further reminder of the risks of petroleum transport, in any form.

The derailed train belongs to Montreal Maine & Atlantic, which owns nearly 500 miles of track throughout Maine, Vermont, Quebec and New Brunswick, according to the company’s website.

This video, taken at 1:20 am EST shows the fireball engulfing the small town:

_____________________

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

Republished with permission from: Common Dreams

Missouri Governor Vetoes Bill Nullifying Federal Gun Grab

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Governor Jay Nixon declared his independence from the Missouri state legislature on July 5 by vetoing a bill passed overwhelmingly by that body.

With the issuing of a terse, constitutionally confused letter, Nixon notified the secretary of state of Missouri that he refused his assent to HB 436 and why he made that decision. HB 436 was titled the “Second Amendment Preservation Act” and would have denied to the federal government the authority to enact any statutes, rules, regulations, or executive orders “which restrict or prohibit the manufacture, ownership, and use of firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition exclusively within the borders of Missouri.”

Now, one supposes, the federal government is free to impose its unconstitutional control of the God-given right to keep and bear arms within the formerly sovereign borders of the Show Me State.

In fairness, though, Nixon cannot be blamed too harshly for vetoing the bill. The constitution of the state of Missouri separates the state government into three distinct branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. In similar fashion to the federal Constitution, the Missouri constitution balances the powers of government, checking one against the others so that no one branch “shall exercise any power properly belonging to either of the others.”

In light of that fact of constitutional construction of the Missouri charter, Nixon was within his rights to reject the Second Amendment Preservation Act, regardless of the level of legislative support the measure enjoyed.

Going forward, the true test of the state legislature’s commitment to the principles set forth in HB 436 will be whether it can muster the will to exercise another article of the state constitution: Article III, Section 32.

That provision of the state constitution provides that if two-thirds of both houses of the general assembly vote to pass the bill, “the objections of the governor thereto notwithstanding,” then the bill becomes law, regardless of the veto.

Both the state Senate and the state House of Representatives passed the Second Amendment Preservation Act by majorities greater than the two-thirds required to override the governor’s veto.

For his part, in his veto notification letter, Governor Nixon lists his objections under two headings: Supremacy Clause violation and First Amendment free speech clause violations. The explanation given under the second section is such a stretch as to obviate any need to deconstruct. As to the first, it demonstrates a common constitutional misunderstanding and thus merits correction.

The Supremacy Clause (as some wrongly call it) of Article VI does not declare that federal laws are the supreme law of the land without qualification. What it says is that the Constitution “and laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof” are the supreme law of the land.

Read that clause again: “In pursuance thereof,” not in violation thereof. If an act of Congress is not permissible under any enumerated power given to it in the Constitution, it was not made in pursuance of the Constitution and therefore not only is not the supreme law of the land, it is not the law at all.

Constitutionally speaking, then, whenever the federal government passes any measure not provided for in the limited roster of its enumerated powers, those acts are not awarded any sort of supremacy. Instead, they are “merely acts of usurpation” and do not qualify as the supreme law of the land. In fact, acts of Congress are the supreme law of the land only if they are made in pursuance of its constitutional powers, not in defiance thereof.

Alexander Hamilton put an even finer point on the issue when he wrote in The Federalist, No. 78, “There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the constitution, can be valid.”

Once more legislators, governors, citizens, and law professors realize this fact, they will more readily and fearlessly accept that the states are uniquely situated to perform the function described by Madison above and reiterated in a speech to Congress delivered by him in 1789. “The state legislatures will jealously and closely watch the operation of this government, and be able to resist with more effect every assumption of power than any other power on earth can do; and the greatest opponents to a federal government admit the state legislatures to be sure guardians of the people’s liberty,” Madison declared.

To the credit of the authors of HB 436, the bill opens with a brief recitation of the history of the creation of the federal government, a recounting that resounds with a firm grasp on the proper, constitutional relationship between state and federal governments, as well as the legal basis for nullification:

Acting through the United States Constitution, the people of the several states created the federal government to be their agent in the exercise of a few defined powers, while reserving to the state governments the power to legislate on matters which concern the lives, liberties, and properties of citizens in the ordinary course of affairs;

The limitation of the federal government’s power is affirmed under the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which defines the total scope of federal power as being that which has been delegated by the people of the several states to the federal government, and all power not delegated to the federal government in the Constitution of the United States is reserved to the states respectively, or to the people themselves;

Whenever the federal government assumes powers that the people did not grant it in the Constitution, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force;

The several states of the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their federal government. If the government created by the compact among the states were the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers granted to it by the Constitution, the federal government’s discretion, and not the Constitution, would be the measure of those powers.

Something a vast majority (again, a veto-proof majority) of Missouri lawmakers understands is that the federal government is the creature of the states, not their creator. The states provisionally delegated a portion of their sovereignty to the federal government and they specifically enumerated that authority in the Constitution.

Federal exercise of power, as understood by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, is legitimate only if those powers were granted to the federal government by the people and listed specifically in the Constitution.

In the Virginia Resolution, Madison described any attempt by the federal government to act outside the boundaries of its constitutional powers as a “dangerous exercise,” and reminded state legislatures that they were “duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil.”

Considering, then, that the Second Amendment to the Constitution explicitly forbids the federal government from infringing on the right of citizens to keep and bear arms (“shall not infringe …”) any movement by Congress or the White House in that direction certainly passes Madisonian muster for state nullification.

The only question remaining, it seems, with regard to the future of the right to keep and bear arms in Missouri is whether the people’s representatives in the state legislature will assert their constitutional authority and pass the bill a second time, thus making it the law, despite the governor’s misunderstanding of the Supremacy Clause and states’ rights to rule.

On that point, a story published by CNN reports:

State House Speaker Tim Jones, a Republican, reacted with shock to the veto and vowed to override it. The governor “generally has been an ardent supporter of the Second Amendment. I think he made a political, calculated move to veto House Bill 436,” Jones said in an interview with St. Louis Public Radio. “I really don’t know what got to him other than special interest groups on the left.”

Missourians will now be watching to see whether this “shock” will be enough to prod the legislature to do the right thing and protect the Second Amendment in the state of Missouri.

 Photo of Gov. Jay Nixon: AP Images

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

California Senate Committee Unanimously Passes Anti-NDAA Bill; Flaws Remain

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A California state Senate committee recently passed a bill that purports to prevent the federal government from enforcing key provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2011 and 2012.

On June 25, the California State Senate Public Safety Committee unanimously (7-0) approved AB 351, the California Liberty Preservation Act. Although it passed the bill, the committee did add a requirement that the measure be re-submitted to the Appropriations Committee. That re-hearing is scheduled for August 12.

The bill’s primary sponsor is current gubernatorial candidate Assemblyman Tim Donnelly (R-33rd District). Donnelly’s bill specifically guarantees the right of citizens of California to be free from any federal law, including the NDAA, that would authorize their indefinite detention in violation of habeas corpus.

Known as the California Liberty Preservation Act, AB 351 is backed by a politically diverse coalition, including Taxpayers for Improving Public Safety; the Bill of Rights Defense Committee; the Tenth Amendment Center; the California American Civil Liberties Union; San Francisco Board of Supervisors President, David Chiu; The Libertarian Party of California; and the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors.

Specifically, if enacted, the bill would shield from federal assault several fundamental constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties, “including the right of habeas corpus, the right to due process, the right to a speedy and public trial, and the right to be informed of criminal charges brought against him or her.”

Relying on the 10th Amendment’s reservation to the states and the people all powers not specifically delegated to the federal government in the Constitution, the bill is a constitutionally sound expression of state sovereignty.

In a press release issued by his office after the committee approved his bill, Assemblyman Donnelly recognizes his duty to resist attempts by Washington, D.C., to deny Americans of their most basic freedoms.

“The NDAA gives the executive branch – under not only President Obama, but also every future president – unprecedented power to detain US citizens without due process. This runs counter to the very principles that make America great, and violates our nation’s commitment to the rule of law,” said Assemblyman Donnelly.

He continued, “We have a moral duty to protect Californians from the disastrous consequences made possible by NDAA. When Constitutional protections are ignored, racist hysteria allows vulnerable groups to be targeted. It was not long ago we memorialized the tragedy of Japanese American internment camps on the floor of the California State Assembly. I am grateful for today’s committee vote, which shows Californians that their representatives are serious about ensuring similar violations of freedom and human rights abuses never happen again within our State.”

While text of the bill lays out specific ways in which the NDAA denies citizens many of the most basic constitutionally protected civil liberties, the surprising scope of the NDAA is still unfamiliar to most Americans.

President Barack Obama signed the latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law on January 2, renewing the power to apprehend and detain Americans indefinitely granted in the previous year’s version.

The Fiscal Year 2014 version of the bill is currently working its way through Congress. At this time, many amendments that would have stricken some of the most pernicious provisions from the act have been defeated.

As for the most unconstitutional parts of the NDAA 2012 that remain in effect, a bit of history is in order. 

On December 31, 2011, with the president’s signing of that law, the writ of habeas corpus – a civil right so fundamental to Anglo-American common law history that it predates the Magna Carta – is voidable upon the command of the president of the United States. The Sixth Amendment right to counsel is also revocable at his will.

One of the most noxious elements of the NDAA is that it places the American military at the disposal of the president for the apprehension, arrest, and detention of those suspected of posing a danger to the homeland (whether inside or outside the borders of the United States and whether the suspect be a citizen or foreigner). The endowment of such a power to the president by the Congress is nothing less than a de facto legislative repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the law forbidding the use of the military in domestic law enforcement.

Furthermore, a key component of the NDAA mandates a frightening grant of immense and unconstitutional power to the executive branch. Under the provisions of Section 1021, the president is afforded the absolute power to arrest and detain citizens of the United States without their being informed of any criminal charges, without a trial on the merits of those charges, and without a scintilla of the due process safeguards protected by the Constitution of the United States.

Further, in order to execute the provisions of Section 1021 described in the previous paragraph, subsequent clauses (Section 1022, for example) unlawfully give the president the absolute and unquestionable authority to deploy the armed forces of the United States to apprehend and to indefinitely detain those suspected of threatening the security of the “homeland.” In the language of this legislation, these people are called “covered persons.”

The universe of potential “covered persons” includes every citizen of the United States of America. Any American could one day find himself or herself branded a “belligerent” and thus subject to the complete confiscation of his or her constitutional civil liberties and nearly never-ending incarceration in a military prison.

On the face of the bill, it would seem that Assemblyman Donnelly and the members of the Public Safety Committee are determined to protect their citizens from being seized and imprisoned under the provisions of the NDAA.

While AB 351, as well as Section 1029 of the current version of the NDAA purport to buttress the right to a trial for citizens and permanent residents, it does nothing to prevent their apprehension. Denial of habeas corpus (or a trial) comes later; it is the delirium, not the fever, in a manner of speaking.

Put simply, Californians would not need to worry about being held without charge if the president was not authorized in the same act to deploy the armed forces to round up the “suspects” and detain them indefinitely. Being apprised of the laws one is accused of having violated is important, but it’s the detention and the manner of it that must be of more immediate concern to those who are alarmed about the new world order being defined by the NDAA.

Dan Johnson, the founder of People Against the NDAA (PANDA), also recognizes the holes in the California bill that could prove large enough to allow all sorts of tyranny to pass through.

“The NDAA is much bigger than the suspension of habeas corpus,” Johnson wrote in a statement to The New American.

In that statement, Johnson discussed additional deficiencies in the California bill:

While AB351 is much stronger than other state laws passed in opposition to the NDAA, since it includes both the AUMF and any other federal law, it does not include the laws of war. In order to fix the root issue of the NDAA, and not just chop at the limbs, the Law of War must be countered in any true piece of anti-NDAA legislation.

Note: Executive Order 9066, which was used to detain 110k Japanese-Americans w/o trial, never said a thing about detention. It only allowed the law of war to be applied to a certain area, and gave the military jurisdiction over the same.

Finally, Johnson wrote:

Overall, we appreciate the effort. The very fact that California is introducing a law like this shows the willingness of the people and Assembly of California to stand up for the Constitutional rights of the people of their state.

However, this law will do nothing to protect those rights. It abdicates the responsibility of the state to stand in, not stand down, and leaves far too many loopholes….

Assemblyman Donnelly seems to understand this. In a press release he wrote, “This is not an issue of partisanship, but of freedom, which we must be vigilant to protect. Our Constitution affirms that no government is responsible for bestowing our rights; they are only entrusted with securing them.”

 Photo: California capitol dome

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

MB rejects ElBaradei as new Egypt PM

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A senior member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has rejected the appointment of prominent opposition figure, Mohamed ElBaradei, as Egyptâ„¢s new prime minister.

“We reject this coup and all that results from it, including ElBaradei,” an unnamed official in the Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing, said on Saturday.

ElBaradei was scheduled to be sworn in as the interim prime minister later on Saturday, three days after the Egyptian army overthrew Mohamed Morsi.

“ElBaradei will take an oath as prime minister in front of President Adly Mansour at 8 p.m. local time (1800 GMT),” al-Dostour Party, which is chaired by the former UN nuclear chief, announced.

Meanwhile, Egyptian Health Ministry has announced that at least three dozen people were killed and hundreds other injured after Morsiâ„¢s supporters staged mass rallies against his ouster.

Mohammad Sultan, deputy head of Egyptâ„¢s ambulance authority, said in a statement on Saturday that at least 36 people were killed and over 1,100 more wounded in the violence across the North African country on Friday.

The casualties came after skirmishes and violent clashes broke out in the capital city of Cairo, Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast, and the Sinai Peninsula.

On July 3, Egypt’s army chief ousted Morsi and suspended the country’s constitution.

General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said new parliamentary elections will be held, and declared head of Supreme Constitutional Court Adly Mansour as the caretaker leader.

MP/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Iran to hold nationwide cyber maneuver

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Director of Iranâ„¢s Passive Defense Organization Brigadier General Gholamreza Jalali (file photo)

Director of Iran’s Passive Defense Organization has announced plans for staging a nationwide cyber maneuver in the near future.

Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali made the announcement at a conference held on the occasion of Iranâ„¢s Cyber Defense month in Tehran on Saturday.

“The cyber maneuvers bylaw has been prepared and will be circulated among relevant organizations” in a bid to enhance the countryâ„¢s passive defensive objectives in cyberspace, said the commander.

He said his organization also plans to set regulations for the country’s vital infrastructure so that complete cyber safety is achieved.

Å“First layers of [cyber defensive] infrastructure are the critical layers for the country, which are managed by special software and if they stop functioning, it will create threats for national security…,” he added.

Iran has been the target of several cyber attacks over the past few years.

In late 2011, Iran launched a cyber defense headquarters tasked with preventing computer worms from breaking into or stealing data from the country’s maximum-security networks, including nuclear facilities, power plants, data centers and banks.

In July 2010, media reports claimed that a virus called, Stuxnet, had targeted industrial computers around the globe, with Iran being the main target of the attack. They said the country’s Bushehr nuclear power plant was at the center of the cyber attack.

On June 1, 2012, The New York Times revealed that Stuxnet was part of a wave of sophisticated digital attacks codenamed Å“Olympic Games,” which US President Barack Obama had ordered against the computer systems that run Iranâ„¢s main nuclear enrichment facilities.

The paper also confirmed that the Stuxnet virus was created with the help of a secret Israeli intelligence unit.

Iranian experts, however, detected the worm in time, averting any damage to the country’s industrial sites and resources.

PG/HGH

Republished with permission from: Press TV

'NAM offers guide to weathering crises'

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NAM provides guide to weathering crises: Iran pres.

Iranâ„¢s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (R) and Nepalâ„¢s ambassador to Iran, Bharat Raj Paudyal, July 6, 2013

Iranâ„¢s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the organization of Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) provides a roadmap for weathering crises and insecurities.

In a meeting with the newly appointed ambassador of Nepal to Iran, Bharat Raj Paudyal, on Saturday, Ahmadinejad said NAM provides a roadmap to achieve a justice-based and peaceful society.

In August 2012, Iran assumed the rotating presidency of NAM for a three-year term during the movementâ„¢s 16th summit in the Iranian capital, Tehran.

Describing ties between Iran and Nepal as deep and historic, Ahmadinejad called for the expansion of bilateral relations between the two countries.

The Nepali envoy, for his part, said his country attaches great importance to bilateral cooperation and relations with Iran.

Referring to the success of the 16th summit of NAM in Iranâ„¢s capital, Tehran, the Nepali official described as significance Iranâ„¢s role in regional and international disputes particularly in the NAM organization.

NAM, an international organization with 120 member states, is considered as not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. It represents nearly two-thirds of the UN members.

In another meeting with the new Australian ambassador to Iran, Paul Foley, Ahmadinejad praised the bilateral relations between the two countries, calling for expansion of bilateral cooperation.

MYA/HGH

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Calls for Peace, Inclusion in Cairo as Tension Runs High in the Streets

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Groups for and against ousted President Mohammed Morsi clashed on a bridge in Cairo Friday evening, July 5.(Photo: Hassan Ammar/ AP)UPDATE: 1:46 PM EST

According to sources close to the presidency, former UN nuclear watchdog chief and Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei was chosen as Egypt’s interim prime minister and will be sworn in later Saturday.

Al Jazeera reports:

The Tamarod (rebellion) campaign had nominated ElBaradei to represent the movement in transition negotiations with the military.

A senior official in the Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing, said he rejected ElBaradei’s appointment.

EARLIER

After a night of fierce fighting during which the Egyptian military opened fire on crowds of supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi, the former ruling Muslim Brotherhood party announced another day of protests Saturday despite growing calls for peace.

“The masses will continue their civilized protests and peaceful sit-ins in Cairo until the military coup is reversed and the legitimate president is restored,” announced the Islamist coalition in a statement Saturday.

Clashes between the military and the Morsi supporters across the country Friday evening left 30 dead and more than 1,100 injured.

Reporting from Cairo, Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous writes that the military’s crackdown on the Brotherhood, in the wake of what many are calling a coup d’etat, recalls elements of Egypt’s former Mubarek.

Though many are calling for the Muslim Brotherhood’s inclusion in a new coalition government, the group released a statement denouncing the “military coup staged against the elected president,” adding: “We refuse to participate in any activities with the usurping authorities.”

In his report on the increasingly tense situation in Cairo, Kouddous notes:

With the largest political group in Egypt thrust outside of the political scene, and fears of a violent backlash from more militant Islamist groups, many fear a return to an entrenched authoritarianism. “They’re clamping down on Islamists, and once they are firmly in power they will go after anyone else who speaks out,” said the leading Brotherhood member. “They took advantage of the people’s opposition to Morsi to return Mubarak’s regime.”

If recent history is any indication, continued authoritarianism in Egypt will only be met with more mass mobilizations and revolutionary calls for change.

A spokesman for the United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon quoted him saying, “There is no place for retribution or for the exclusion of any major party or community,” Al Jazeera reports.

Egyptian military standing guard atop armored personnel carriers outside Maspero, Egypt’s state tv and radio station, in Cairo Saturday, July 6.(Photo: Hiro Komae/ AP)According to media outlets, Friday evening a crowd of Morsi supporters marched from Nasr City, in Cairo, to the Maspero state TV building and “clashed with anti-Morsi protesters”on the 6th October Bridge.

Gun shots were heard and “people were seen throwing rocks as the two sides advanced and retreated in turn on the bridge near Tahrir Square.”

Other skirmishes between the two groups sprang up throughout both Cairo and Alexandria. As AFP reports:

At least 12 people were killed in Alexandria as Morsi’s supporters and opponents fought in the streets, the official MENA news agency said.

In Cairo’s Tahrir Square, at least two people were killed when Morsi supporters traded fire with his opponents, state television reported.

[…]

Four protesters were killed outside the Republican Guard headquarters after breaking away from a pro-Morsi demonstration, MENA reported.

MENA also said that 12 people were killed in Alexandria.

“Tension is running high again in downtown Cairo, especially in Tahrir Square after a festive 48 hours following the ousting of former president Mohammed Morsi, with a lot of Egyptians, perhaps in the opposition, thinking that the Islamist camp was done with,” writes Gallagher Fenwick, AFP’s correspondent in Egypt.

“But the Islamists have proved that they are very determined and that they will follow through with their promise to stay in the streets until their president returns,” he added.

The youth-led Tamrod, or Rebel, movement is reportedly urging their supporters to take to the streets again on Sunday to defend what they call the “gains of June 30,” referring to the start of the massive protests which led to the eventual ouster of President Morsi.

Facing a fiercly divided nation, the country’s acting president Adly Mansour held a number of meetings Saturday with military and government leaders–including army chief and Defense Minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi as well as Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim, who is in charge of the police–as well as leaders of Tamrod, AP reports.

See below for live tweets on the developing situation:

_____________________

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

Republished with permission from: Common Dreams

Militants fight each other in N Syria

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Syria foreign-backed militants clash with government forces in northeastern city of Deir Ezzor on July 1, 2013.

The Syrian army troops have made gains in battle against foreign-backed militants, while violent infighting took place among militant groups in northern Syria.

People in al-Dana town in Idlib Province said the infighting occurred between several militant groups, including the al-Qaeda-linked the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), on Friday.

Dozens of foreign-sponsored militants were killed, wounded or imprisoned in the incident.

Reports say that the beheaded bodies of one commander and his brother were also found in the town.

Militants from the ISIS group have been beating, executing and firing at locals who defy or protest against them.

This came as the Syrian government forces advanced in the militant-infested parts of the western city of Homs, and killed dozens of militants.

The Syrian forces also restored security in industrial area of Qaboun near the capital Damascus, killing a number of militants there.

Officials say the army forces also seized dozens of Israeli-made rockets inside the militants’ hideout during the mop-up operation.

Reports also said that army soldiers made advances against the militants in the al-Hujaira area near Damascus.

The Syrian army has conducted successful operations against the foreign-backed Takfiri militants over the past weeks, with the army establishing control over the strategically important town of Qusayr, near the Lebanese border, in early June.

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

SAB/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Ahmadinejad calls for just world order

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Iranâ„¢s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (R) meets with new Brazilian Ambassador to Tehran Santiago Irazabal Mourao on July 6, 2013.

Iranâ„¢s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says independent governments and nations are tasked with establishing a just world order to help eliminate discrimination, insecurity and division.

President Ahmadinejad made the remarks in a Saturday meeting with new Brazilian Ambassador to Tehran Santiago Irazabal Mourao.

He said the Islamic Republic of Iran and Brazil are two friendly countries, adding, Å“Tehran-Brasilia relations are deeply rooted and extensive and there is no negative point in the relations of the two countries.”

Å“We have joint viewpoints, interests and enemies and there are those who do not want countries like Iran and Brazil to make progress and be powerful; therefore we need to expand our ties to the highest possible level,” President Ahmadinejad said.

He added that there is no obstacle to the expansion of bilateral ties and welcomed the development of all-out relations with Latin American country.

He said the global hegemony seeks to devise a new plot against Latin America and to transfer its economic woes to other parts of the world. He added, however, that South American leaders will thwart such plots through vigilance.

In the meeting, the new Brazilian ambassador submitted his credentials to President Ahmadinejad and stressed the need for the further enhancement of relations in different sectors, including political, trade, scientific and technological cooperation.

Iran and Brazil have a wide range of common international and political viewpoints, which can help to improve ties.

AR/HGH/SL

Republished with permission from: Press TV

IRS Pays 201 Employees to Do Full-time Union Work

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Americans are paying the salaries of over 200 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees not to process tax returns or to assist confused taxpayers but to perform labor-union tasks, and two congressional Republicans are trying to pry the details of this legal-but-shady arrangement out of the agency.

Last month, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, Americans for Limited Government (ALG) obtained documents from the IRS showing that the agency has on its payroll 201 employees who, while they have job titles indicating that they do IRS work, actually spend all their time on the job taking care of union business. (The IRS has other employees who do union work only part of the time, but ALG did not inquire about them.)

“A lot of people are not aware that under federal law, a federal agency is allowed to enter into a collective bargaining agreement with a union that has provisions where employees of the agency, in this case the IRS, are allowed to do union work on the taxpayer’s time and get paid for it,” ALG president Nathan Mehrens told the Daily Caller.

The practice, known as “official time,” was added to the U.S. Code as part of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 – not coincidentally, a year in which Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency.

“Official time is seen by supporters as compensation for the fact that unions are required to handle labor issues related to all employees, not just union members,” Fox News explained in 2011. “When union officials negotiate with federal managers over work rules, like appropriate attire and other human resource requirements, those functions are carried out under official time.”

Opponents, however, consider official time to be an affront to taxpayers.

“It is a subsidy to a private entity to do the private entity’s job,” Mehrens told the Daily Caller. “Why should we as taxpayers be paying for this? It is not as if taxpayers are paying to subsidize my organization.”

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) agree. In a letter to acting IRS commissioner Daniel Werfel, they wrote: “While the IRS continues to request more funding to further close the … tax gap, especially under the current budget crunch and sequestration, it makes little sense to use taxpayer resources to pay for union work. This kind of practice takes place only in the government – in the private sector, union work and staff are paid for by union dues.”

“The IRS has shut down on certain days, and required employees to take unpaid furloughs, due supposedly to the effects of sequestration,” the legislators observed. “However, the IRS is also planning to pay out $70 million in employee bonuses, and pays more than 200 employees to work for the union, instead of fulfilling the duties described in their positions of record.”

Coburn and Gingrey pointed out that “more than 40 of these employees … are paid over $100,000 a year.” One, according to the documents obtained by ALG, makes over $138,000 annually.

The two lawmakers asked Werfel to provide them with specifics on the IRS’ “100 percent official time” employees and the agency’s policies with regard to them. They are seeking such things as the number of such employees over the last decade, what these employees actually do, how the IRS gets these employees’ government work done, and how it evaluates their performance.

“Are any employees on 100 percent official time involved in the processing of refunds?” they ask, following up with an even more pointed question: “How many taxpayer refunds for the 2012 tax year were late?”

They also request a tally of all official time for which the IRS has paid over the last 10 years – and its total cost.

Official time in all federal agencies over the past decade is estimated to have cost taxpayers $1.3 billion, according to Gingrey’s blog. “The Office of Personnel Management revealed that in 2011 – the most recent report available – bargaining employees at all federal agencies spent a total of 3,395,187 hours performing representational work, at a cost of approximately $155 million,” the Daily Caller reported.

The Veterans Administration (VA), to take just one more egregious offender, has over 250 full-time official-time employees, among them at least 85 nurses and dozens of other medical and security personnel. The VA, meanwhile, is trying to fill open nursing positions and has a backlog of nearly 900,000 disability claims. (Coburn, along with Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), is also trying to get some answers about these 100-percent official-time employees from VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.)

Gingrey, for his part, isn’t merely interested in discovering the details of federal employees’ official-time activities; he wants to put a stop to them altogether. In January he introduced the Federal Employee Accountability Act, which would repeal the portion of the 1978 law that permits official time. That bill remains in committee.

If he can’t end official time, however, Gingrey at least wants to force the government to inform taxpayers of how much union activity they are being fleeced to fund. To that end, he is cosponsoring a bill introduced in February by Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) – who, as it happens, cosponsored Gingrey’s bill – to require the Office of Personnel Management to submit an annual report to Congress detailing the number of employees engaged in official time, how much time they spent on it, and how much they cost taxpayers. That bill, the Official Time Reporting Act, has made it out of committee and is awaiting a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives.

“At a time when our country is more than $16 trillion in debt, we need to ensure that we are cutting all wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars, no matter for which political side the union employees are advocating,” Ross said in a press release at the time he introduced his bill.

“Addressing government-wide use of official time would improve oversight of taxpayer dollars and create more efficiency in the federal workforce,” Gingrey said in the same release. The bills he and Ross introduced, he argued, “will help restore fiscal responsibility, increase transparency, and end the union practice of draining public coffers for political gain.”

One or both of these bills might pass the House, but getting either one past the Democrat-dominated Senate and a Democratic president is considerably less likely. Still, it’s worth a try if only to expose the scam that is official time.

Republished with permission from: The New American

Even More Reasons to Hate Obamacare

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Tick, tick, tick. That’s the sound of the clock ticking down to when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPAACA) – the monstrosity known as Obamacare – will go into effect. If you think there are good reasons to detest this legislation now, just wait until you actually have to begin obeying it.

As we celebrate this Independence Day weekend, I’ve got a suggestion on how the House of Representatives could take a giant step toward gaining our independence from this massive government takeover of our healthcare system. More on that later in this column. But first, let’s look at some additional reasons why we must drive a stake through the heart of this beast.

Remember when then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said we had to pass Obamacare to find out what’s in it? At the time, the bill was more than 2,700 pages long. You can bet your bottom dollar that not a single member of Congress had read the darned thing, much less understood what implementing it would mean for this country.

Since then, more than 20,000 pages of new regulations have been issued by the federal government to interpret and enforce the legislation’s new requirements. That’s more than twice as many pages as the Internal Revenue Service tax code – and you know how easy it is to understand and comply with that federal juggernaut.

Speaking of the IRS, it should send chills up and down your spine to realize that this is the agency that will be responsible for enforcing many of the provisions of Obamacare. The IRS says it will have to hire 17,000 new agents to insure compliance. Oh, boy. I can hardly wait.

Meanwhile, we’re starting to get a better idea of just how expensive this federal takeover of our healthcare system will be. This past Monday, the lead story in The Wall Street Journal carried the headline, “Insurance Costs Set for a Jolt.” The first sentence began: “Healthy consumers could see insurance rates double or even triple when they look for individual coverage under the federal health law later this year.”

Don’t say we didn’t warn you. The article adds that many of the most cost-effective plans currently available may disappear: “The exchanges, the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s health-care law, look likely to offer few if any of the cut-rate policies that healthy people can now buy, according to the Journal’s analysis.”

Many businesses did a catch break earlier this week, when the Obama Administration announced that it would delay for a year enforcement of one of the law’s most onerous provision: the requirement that any business with 50 or more full-time employees offer healthcare benefits starting Jan. 1, or face fines of $2,000 per employee or more.

That means this provision won’t kick in until after the November 2014 elections, when one-third of the Senate seats and all of the House seats will be up for grabs. Just an eerie coincidence, I’m sure.

Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.), one of the legislators who helped draft the original legislation, said of the bill’s implementation, “I just see a huge train wreck coming down.” The veteran politician, who currently serves as chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, has decided to head for the hills before the damage becomes obvious to everyone. He’s announced that he will retire at the end of next year, rather than face the voters in Montana another time.

No wonder some potential endorsers of the legislation are also saying “no thanks.” Last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius proudly announced that the NFL was “enthusiastically engaged” in talks with the Administration about how it could help promote the new health-insurance options mandated by Obamacare.

It turns out she was a bit premature. After hearing about the Administration’s plans to line up celebrity endorsements for Obamacare, Senate Republican leaders Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) sent the five major professional sports leagues a letter urging them not to do so.

The NFL promptly issued a statement saying it “currently [has] no plans to engage in this area.” And the NBA also denied plans for any such promotional efforts, saying there is “nothing we plan to announce at this point.”

So we may be spared hearing a millionaire athlete telling us how good Obamacare will be for us. But Investors Business Daily has the details of an even more nefarious scheme to gain support for Obamacare. The newspaper says that over $1 million bucks is being spent in California to turn students into advocates for socialized healthcare. Tell me this doesn’t make your blood boil:

The goal is to train millions of student messengers statewide to sell the idea of government-subsidized health insurance to parents and relatives at home and to get more people enrolled in Obamacare.

Taxpayer-paid public school staff will also be used to phone students’ homes urging enrollment under Obama’s Affordable Care Act. And they will be used to consume precious class instructional time to teach the students all about the healthcare program that the Democrat Congress did not read before passing in 2010.

Now, I realize that California is the most liberal State in the country. A friend of mine who lives there likes to refer to it as “the People’s Republic of California.” But I can’t believe there won’t be a ton of parents furious at these plans to turn their children into miniature propagandists for Obamacare.

By the way, if you think the new healthcare exchanges will be a train wreck, just wait until the Independent Payment Advisory Board is fully operational. This is the outfit that Sarah Palin referred to as a “death panel.” Although she was lambasted unmercifully at the time for that description, it turns out the former Alaska Governor was, if anything, understating the case.

David B. Rivkin Jr., the lawyer who led the legal challenge to Obamacare in the courts, has warned of the “god-like powers” the PPAACA bestowed on this powerful group.

In an article for The Wall Street Journal, Rivkin and Elizabeth Foley, a professor of Constitutional law, wrote:

The bottom line is that the Independent Payment Advisory Board isn’t a typical executive agency. It’s a new beast that exercises both executive and legislative power but can’t be controlled by either branch. Seniors and providers hit hardest by the board’s decisions will have nowhere to turn for relief—not Congress, not the president, not the courts.

How could this possibly be?

“The Obamacare law also stipulates that there ‘shall be no administrative or judicial review’ of the board’s decisions,” Rivkin and Roley report.

How could Congress vote to create such an obviously unconstitutional group? Remember that statement by Pelosi? Clearly, they didn’t know they were doing it. And clearly, the bill’s supporters planned it that way.

So what can we do about it? There’s no point asking the House of Representatives to pass another repeal bill. Been there; done that. Nothing will change here until we get a conservative majority in the Senate (hopefully in 2014) or a new occupant in the White House (hopefully not Hillary Clinton in 2016).

But here’s something the House could do tomorrow: Cut off funding to implement the darned thing.

Yes, I know. For the past umpteen years, the attitude in Washington has been that once a program has been approved, of course it has to be funded. But does it? The Constitution doesn’t say so. In fact, it states very clearly that every spending bill, every time, must originate in the House of Representatives.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see the House refuse to vote the funds to pay for those 17,000 new IRS agents or a bunch of the other mandates in the badly misnamed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act?

How about defunding the unconstitutional National Labor Relations Board or the outrageous edicts emanating from the Environmental Protection Agency? In fact, how about defunding enough federal programs to end deficit spending? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

This is a battle I’d love to see us wage. So how about it, Congressmen? Isn’t it high time to stop signing all of those checks? Especially when you have to borrow the money to pay for them?

Until next time, keep some powder dry.

Chip Wood was the first news editor of The Review of the News and also wrote for American Opinion, our two predecessor publications. He is now the geopolitical editor of Personal Liberty Digest, where his Straight Talk column appears weekly. This article first appeared in PersonalLiberty.com and has been reprinted with permission.

Republished with permission from: The New American

A Message from Lynne Stewart. Federal Bureau of Prisons Denied Lynne Stewart’s application for compassionate release

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Update from Ralph Poynter:

July 2, 2013 – The Federal Bureau of Prisons has DENIED Lynne Stewart’s application for compassionate release. Director Charles E. Samuels, Jr. took this action despite recommendations for compassionate release from Federal Medical Center, Carswell Warden Jody R. Upton and South Central Regional Office Director J.A. Keller, as well as the vetting of Stewart’s release plans by the Federal Probation Office in New York. The struggle to free Lynne Stewart continues on many fronts. First and foremost, each and every one of us must increase the number of people worldwide who sign the petition.

Lynne Stewart’s condition is deteriorating rapidly. Medical treatment to arrest the cancer that is metastasizing in her body has been halted because she is too weak to receive it. She remains in isolation, as her white blood cell count is so low that she is at risk for generalized infection.

We shall not stand by idly while the Federal Bureau of Prisons murders Lynne Stewart. The Bureau of Prisons can and must reverse its decision.

A message from Lynne Stewart:

Disappointed but Not Devastated

My Dear Friends, Supporters, Comrades:

I know we are all disappointed to the marrow of our bones and the depths of our hearts by the news that the Bureaucrats, Kafka like, have turned down my request for compassionate release.

Let me say, that we are planning ahead. The letter from the BOP is flawed, to put it mildly. Both factually and medically it has major problems. We intend to go to court and raise these in front of my sentencing Judge Koeltl. At the first sentencing he responded to a query by one of the lawyers that he didn’t want me to die in prison – we’ll see if he can now live up to that. He is of course the same Judge who increased my sentence to 10 years – but this IS very different and we can only hope that we can prevail. Stay tuned for what we need from you. We will never give up. In the meantime, once again, I grieve for my children and grandchildren who love me so much and had such great expectations of enjoying life together again in our beloved NYC and not just trying to, in the prison visiting room. My Ralph, too, whose dedication and love are only exceeded by the work he does on my behalf – but he is a born fighter and although he hurts, it all comes more naturally to him.

But for everyone else, I hope that your affront at this crass bureaucratic denial of the request, which you by your signatures and letters and phone calls, demanded – How far can we let this go? when a 73-year old woman who IS dying of cancer (maybe not on their timetable,) her life of good works ignored, be shunted aside … “she does not present circumstances considered extraordinary and compelling … at this time.” We must show them that I cannot be ignored, that YOU cannot be ignored.”

Fight On – All of Us or None of Us. An affront to one is an affront to all.

Love Struggle,

Lynne Stewart

Sign the petition at IACenter.org/LynneStewartPetition or at LynneStewart.org 

Keep the pressure on!
Rallies for Lynne:

July 9, Tuesday

New York City
Foley Sq, Lower Manhattan Courts, 4-7pm

And march to. 500 Pearl St

July 12 Friday

Washington DC – 5:30 to 8pm
at Columbia Heights Civic Plaza
14th St & Park Rd. NW

International Action Center
c/o Solidarity Center
New Address:
147 W. 24th St. 2nd Fl.
New York, NY 10011
212-633-6646
iacenter@iacenter.org
www.iacenter.org

Republished with permission from: Global Research

MB rejects interim prime minister

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]A senior member of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has rejected the appointment of prominent opposition figure, Mohamed ElBaradei, as Egypt’s new prime minister.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Rodney ‘unlawfully killed’ by UK police

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ËœNo lawful justificationâ„¢ for Azelle Rodney killing, inquiry finds.

An official inquiry into death of 24-year-old black boy Azelle Rodney, who was shot by police in 2005, has found that there was Å“no lawful justification” for firing the shots.

Rodney was killed by an armed police marksman known as E7 in Edgware, London over suspicions that he was involved in an armed robbery. According to reports, he was brutally shot, once each in the arm and back and four times in the head moments after the police officer stopped his car.

An official report by the retired high court judge Sir Christopher Holland rejected the policemanâ„¢s claim that he feared Rodney had been armed, saying that he had no reason to fire the shots.

The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said, Å“As a result of the finding that the firearms officer known to the inquiry as E7 had no lawful justification for killing Mr Rodney, the Independent Police Complaints Commission [IPCC] has informed the MPS [Metropolitan police service] it will refer this case to the Crown Prosecution Service [CPS].”

It is not exactly clear why the officer that shot Azelle thought he was a threat, and there are speculations that the intelligence behind the shooting and the surveillance methods were at least partly to blame.

The shooting left Rodneyâ„¢s 8-month pregnant partner with a baby daughter she raised without a father.

MOS/HE

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Turkish police fire tear gas at protesters

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Demonstrators help one another as Turkish riot police use tear gas to disperse them during a protest against the demolition of Taksim Gezi Park in Istanbul (file photo)

Turkish police have fired tear gas to disperse thousands of anti-government protesters demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul.

Police on Saturday fired volleys of tear gas at protesters gathered at the city’s landmark Taksim Square who were trying to enter the nearby Gezi Park, which has been cordoned off.

Earlier, Istanbulâ„¢s Governor Huseyin Avni Mutlu, warned that the demonstration was illegal and participants would be dispersed.

Organizers of the Saturday protest had planned to serve notice to authorities of a court decision that has annulled redevelopment plans for Taksim and to break through police cordons.

An Istanbul court in June ruled against the redevelopment plans. The court’s decision however, is not final and is expected to be appealed at a higher administrative court.

Istanbul has been the epicenter of anti-government demonstrations since May 31, when the police broke up a sit-in staged at Taksim Square to protest against the redevelopment plan which involved the demolition of Gezi Park.

The Turkish protesters said Gezi Park, which is a traditional gathering point for rallies and demonstrations as well as a popular tourist destination, is one of Istanbulâ„¢s last public green spaces.

The protests soon spread to other cities across the country and turned into calls for the resignation of the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had strongly backed the project.

Erdogan opponents say he has become increasingly authoritarian since coming to power a decade ago.

Several people have been killed in the violent crackdown on peaceful protesters, who Erdogan has described as foreign-backed extremists and terrorists.

On June 24, Erdogan praised the Å“legendary heroism” of police forces in quelling anti-government protests.

PG/HGH

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Militants kill 42 in Nigeria school attack

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Nigerian troops patrol the streets of the town of Baga in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno. (File photo)

At least 42 people have been killed and dozens more injured after extremist militants attacked a boarding school in the Western African country.

Survivors say gunmen launched a pre-dawn attack on a secondary school in Mamudo village, near the city of Potiskum, in the northeast of the country.

The causalities come after unidentified gunmen gathered their victims in a hostel and threw explosives and opened fire.

Local health officials say they have received more than forty dead bodies following the deadly attack.

“We received 42 dead bodies of students and other staff of government secondary school (in) Mamudo last night. Some of them had gunshot wounds while many of them had burns and ruptured tissues,” said Haliru Aliyu of Potiskum General Hospital.

Medical sources said the death toll is expected to rise as some of the injured are reported to be in critical condition

Some of the students were burnt alive as the assailants set the school on fire.

The survivors say dozens of children who escaped into the bush remain missing.

No group has claimed responsibility for the deadly attack.

JR/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

'37 Egyptians killed in Friday protests'

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Egypt Health Ministry says at least 37 people have been killed and over 1,400 injured after supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi staged mass rallies against his removal.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

UK police seeks Murdoch secret tape

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British police seeks to track down a secret recording of media mogul Rupert Murdoch admitting he was aware of bribing public officials.

British police has sought to track down a secret recording of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, in which he admits that he was aware of the practice of making payments to public officials.

Murdoch was caught on tape during a meeting with Sun Journalists who had been arrested over allegations of bribing public officials to get first time news reports.

In the recording, obtained by the Exaro investigative website and broadcast by Channel 4 News, Murdoch indicated that bribing is widespread across national newspapers in the country, saying that payments to public officials were part of Å“the culture of Fleet Street”.

Å“We’re talking about payments for news tips from cops. That’s been going on a hundred years, absolutely,” he said.

The scale of the long-running phone hacking scandal in the UK has led to dozens of arrests, the resignation of several senior police officers, and the closure of Murdochâ„¢s 168-year-old British newspaper The News of the World.

The scandal involved allegations of illegal snooping on celebrities, crime victims and politicians among others.

MOS/HE

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Wisconsin Latest State to Implement Pro-Life Law

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Wisconsin has become the latest state to implement a law to protect the unborn. On July 5 Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (shown) signed SB 206, also called “Sonya’s Law,” which will require women seeking an abortion to first get an ultrasound, as well as require doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital near the facility where they perform the procedure. Planned Parenthood said that the new law will force the closure of some of its Wisconsin abortion facilities, and has announced a lawsuit to stop the bill.

“What the Legislature has done is to set up a system where the ability to provide abortions is contingent on the decision of a private institution and that’s unconstitutional,” complained Planned Parenthood attorney Lester Pines.

In its statement Planned Parenthood insisted that the new Wisconsin law “will jeopardize women’s health by shutting down two abortion health centers and decreasing capacity by at least 50 percent in one of the two remaining abortion health centers in Wisconsin. In a subsequent press release the national abortion company called the bill “part of a nationwide effort by opponents of women’s health to end access to safe and legal abortion by requiring unnecessary hospital admitting privileges for physicians who provide abortion.” The abortion giant expressed confidence that a federal judge would overrule the law as unconstitutional.

The Wisconsin bill is part of an aggressive push by pro-life groups across the nation to make it increasingly difficult for abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood to ply their grisly trade. Early this year South Dakota passed the nation’s most restrictive abortion law, banning the procedure after the sixth week of pregnancy. Similarly, Arkansas passed a law banning abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy. And in April, Alabama’s conservative legislature passed a measure similar to Wisconsin’s, requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. In each case, Planned Parenthood has pulled out all the legal stops, filing suits to block implementation of the laws.

In a statement following Walker’s low-key signing of the bill, the governor’s office said the ultrasound section of the new law “improves a woman’s ability to make an informed choice that will protect her physical and mental health now and in the future.”

Susan Armacost of Wisconsin Right to Life, which lobbied the legislature for the bill’s passage, thanked the governor for helping to protect the unborn. “Sonya’s Law will empower women to make truly informed decisions regarding how they will proceed with their pregnancies and will protect the lives of women who experience complications after their abortions,” Armacost explained.

She said that Planned Parenthood’s announced lawsuit “is no surprise to anyone,” noting that the legal challenge will focus on the requirement that doctors have local hospital admitting privileges. “Apparently, Wisconsin’s abortion clinics don’t believe their abortionists need to have hospital privileges at a hospital located within 30 miles of their clinic – or anywhere at all,” she said. She recalled that prior to the law’s passage, when a woman experienced complications following an abortion in a Wisconsin clinic, she would be loaded into an ambulance and sent to a hospital alone, where she would be required to explain her medical issues to an emergency room doctor. “The abortionist who performed the abortion is nowhere to be seen” in such a situation, Armacost explained. She said the new law will remedy this “deplorable situation.” She noted that thus far nine other states have passed laws requiring abortion doctors to have hospital admitting privileges.

As for the ultrasound portion of the bill, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel explained in a June 1 article that it is named after a Wisconsin woman known as Sonya, who “learned she was pregnant with her third child in November…. Sonya worried about how she could handle another child, emotionally and financially. She seriously thought about abortion.” But then the young woman saw an advertisement for a free ultrasound and decided to have one. “She learned she was seven weeks pregnant,” the Journal-Sentinel recounted. “Once she saw her child and realized his heart was beating, Sonya made an emotional connection with her baby and made the decision to carry him to term. Sonya will deliver a baby boy in July.”

Wisconsin Right to Life noted that after seeing her baby’s heartbeat on the ultrasound, “Sonya fell in love with her baby and knew she had to give birth. Sonya is a true hero for women like her and the babies that will be saved.”

Photo of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker: AP Images

Republished with permission from: The New American

Breastfeeding Viewed as Potential Terrorist Activity by New York Country Club

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Sarah
The Health Home Economist
July 6, 2013

[…] [Metropolis Country] Club employees permitted the family to dine on the terrace despite the fact that they weren’t members, whereupon [Roseline] Remans began to discreetly breastfeed her daughter Luka at the table.

[Husband Tom] Neijens, first secretary of the Belgium Mission to the UN, told the New York Post that a female employee of the club quickly interrupted Roseline’s perfectly legal and proper feeding of her baby with this sharp rebuke:

“Please leave immediately, you are disturbing the members!”

When Neijens protested and said it would only take a few minutes, the female staffer insisted that Remans finish in the restroom.

[…] The Greenburgh Police Department arrived minutes later with Detective Scott Harding apparently yelling, “Close the doors!” with two other diners ordered to leave the terrace.

[…] The officer warned the couple that they were trespassing despite the fact that country club staff had given them specific permission to dine. He also said that some fearful members thought Mr. Neijens’ black backpack indicated they were terrorists.

Most laughable if not actually true, is what the officer came out with next when a tearful Ms. Remans asked why terrorists would breastfeed at a ritzy club:

“In Sri Lanka, babies are used by terrorists.”

Read full article

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Republished with permission from: Infowars

This Is What Border Enforcement Actually Looks Like

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Border Patrol.(Photo: CBP Photography / Flickr)Right-wing media have repeatedly distorted the Obama administration’s record on border enforcement to claim that the border is not secure and that, in fact, the government has failed “to secure the states against invasion,” as Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin has put it.

On Fox News’ Hannity, Malkin claimed that “this current administration has done everything in its power to sabotage immigration law,” and asked: “Why would you trust them one iota with the job that they will not do – that they refuse to do?” Host Sean Hannity added: “I want that border secure and I think we’ve got to get it done for our national security.”

As the House prepares to debate the issue following the Senate passage of a bipartisan immigration reform bill that includes enhanced border measures, conservative media figures have used border security as a sticking point against which to derail reform.

But here are the facts on border enforcement.

Deportations Are At Historic Highs

The Obama administration has deported a record number of undocumented immigrants, which has angered immigrants rights’ activists who argue that the rise in deportations has impacted families of those deported.

In FY 2012, deportations totaled 409,849 – the highest they’ve ever been.

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In the past four years, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has deported a record number of immigrants the government classifies as “priority removals,” which includes those who have been convicted of crimes or are a threat to public safety.

In fact, 55 percent of those deported were classified as “convicted criminals,” an increase of nearly 20 percent from 2009.

Apprehensions Are At An All-Time Low

At its peak, U.S. Border Patrol data show that apprehensions of undocumented immigrants nationwide and along the Southwest border routinely topped 1 million. For example, in FY 2004, the Border Patrol counted nearly 1.2 million apprehensions along the Southwestern border. By FY 2009, that number had declined to 540,865.

In FY 2012, the Border Patrol apprehended 364,768 individuals nationwide, 98 percent of whom were caught on the Southwestern border.

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According to the Arizona Daily Star, as of April 2, “192,298 people have been detained this fiscal year, compared with 170,223 during the same period last year, unofficial data shows.” The Star added: “Apprehensions in the Tucson Sector – the busiest section of the border — are down 1 percent so far this year to 64,514. But the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, arrests are up 53 percent to 59,147.” The Star went on to report that “the recent growth in apprehensions is due to more Central Americans attempting to cross.”

There Are Record Numbers of U.S. Border Patrol Agents

Since FY 2001, the U.S. Border Patrol has steadily increased its number of agents from 9,821 agents nationwide — the bulk of whom (93 percent) were stationed on the Southwestern border — to more than double today at 21,395 agents. Eighty-six percent of those agents today are located on the Southwestern border.

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The Border Patrol Tuscon sector in Arizona boasts the most agents at 4,176, which is more than double the number of agents in 2003. More than half of the agents on the Southwestern border are located in the following sectors:

·        Tuscon: 4,176 agents

·        El Paso: 2,718 agents

·        San Diego: 2,623 agents

·        Rio Grande Valley: 2,546 agents.

The Rio Grande Valley has added more Border Patrol agents in the last fiscal year than any other sector nationwide.

There Are Record Numbers of ICE Agents

According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data provided to the Immigration Policy Center*, there is a record number of ICE agents in the field tasked with enforcement and removal operations.

As of FY 2012, there are about 6,338 agents in the Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division, which is double the number the program had in 2003 at 2,710, according to the organization’s estimates.

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Spending On Border Enforcement Has Doubled

The total budgets for CBP and ICE have doubled in the decade since the inception of the Homeland Security Department in 2002, with CBP’s budget totaling about $11.7 million in FY 2012.

In FY 2012, ICE’s budget stood at about $5.9 million.

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The budgets for CBP and ICE have increased to such a degree that they now comprise 31 percent of DHS’ total spending in FY 2013. CBP’s budget alone has risen from 15 percent of Homeland Security’s total spending in FY 2005 to 21 percent today – the most for any agency under DHS’ purview.

CBP’s budget eclipses that of the U.S. Coast Guard and the Transportation Security Administration, which comprise 17 percent and 13 percent of DHS’ total spending respectively. By contrast, the U.S. Secret Service, the agency tasked with protecting the president and vice president, is a mere 3 percent. 

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Fence On U.S.-Mexico Border Stretches 650 Miles

The U.S. border with Mexico stretches 1,954 miles from California to Texas, according to the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission. As the U.S. Government Accountability Office has noted, however, the “length of the land border is 675 miles, while the length of the border along the Colorado River and Rio Grande is 1,279 miles.”

On October 26, 2006, President George W. Bush signed into law the Secure Fence Act, which authorized $1.2 billion for the building of 700 miles of fencing along the Southwestern border. Before 2006, according to GAO, there were about 120 miles of fencing on the U.S.-Mexico border.

That number has grown to 651 miles of fencing, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection:

As of February 10, 2012, CBP has completed 651 miles of pedestrian and vehicle fencing along the Southwest Border. CBP has constructed a total of 352 miles of primary pedestrian fence and 299 miles of vehicle fence. CBP has approximately one mile left to be completed for the Pedestrian Fence (PF225) project. This will bring the total to 652 miles of fence along the Southwest Border.

As this Washington Post graphic makes clear, the bulk of the fencing on the U.S.-Mexico border is situated on land, with California, Arizona, and New Mexico almost completely fenced off. As the Post further notes, the “Rio Grande creates a natural partition” along the remaining border miles in Texas:

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Senate Immigration Reform Bill Militarizes Border In Afghanistan-Style Surge

The comprehensive immigration reform bill that passed the Senate on June 27 includes a drastic increase in border enforcement measures, which has led even conservative think tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute to claim it ushers in “military-style mobilization” on the U.S.-Mexico border. CEI wrote on June 26 that the bill’s border provision “is not simple ‘border security’ — personnel-wise, it’s a mobilization proportional to the one in Afghanistan.”

Discussing the border provisions — which were added in an amendment authored by Sens. Bob Corker (R-TN) and John Hoeven (R-ND) — on CNN on June 25, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said the bill would turn the Southwestern border into the “the most militarized border since the fall of the Berlin Wall”:

McCAIN: I think that, first of all, the legislation concerning beefed up border security removes any validity to the argument that border security is not sufficient. I mean, this is not only sufficient, it is well over sufficient. We’ll be the most militarized border since the fall of the Berlin Wall so that’s why I think this amendment was very important.

In addition to fortifying the border in each sector between ports of entry, the amendment provides for the following:

1)      Adds Another 17,000 Border Patrol Agents

The bill allocates $30 billion in additional funding for “no fewer than 38,405 trained full-time active duty U.S. Border Patrol agents” to be “deployed, stationed, and maintained along the Southern Border” over the next decade.

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As Bill Maher noted, the addition of that many agents “is going to make the Border Patrol bigger than the FBI — you could put one agent every 250 feet.”

2)     Calls For No Less Than 700 Miles Of Fencing

The Senate bill calls for no less than 700 miles of total fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border:

[T]he Secretary will certify that there is in place along the Southern Border no fewer than 700 miles of pedestrian fencing which will include replacement of all currently existing vehicle fencing on non-tribal lands on the Southern Border with pedestrian fencing where possible, and after this has been accomplished may include a second layer of pedestrian fencing in those locations along the Southern Border which the Secretary deems necessary or appropriate.

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3)     Fortifies Border Surveillance

The Senate bill allocates $3.2 billion for additional air and marine support across the Southwestern border, including:

·        4 unmanned aircraft systems

·        6 VADER radar systems

·        17 UH-1N helicopters

·        8 C-206H aircraft upgrades

·        8 AS-350 light enforcement helicopters

·        10 Blackhawk helicopter 10 A-L conversions,

·        5 new Blackhawk M Model

·        30 marine vessels.

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Reminder: Border States Account For More Than Half Of Total U.S. Trade With Mexico

Mexican officials have reportedly criticized the enhanced border measures in the Senate bill. The Washington Post reported on June 27:

[T]he $46 billion in additional security measures offered by the amendment prompted Mexican officials to break their silence this week, when Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Meade told reporters here that “fences don’t unite.”

“Fences are not a solution to the migration phenomenon, and they are not congruent with a safe and modern border,” Meade said. “They don’t contribute to the development of a competitive region that both countries are trying to build.”

Additionally, The Hill reported on July 2 that Rep. Filemon Vela, a Democrat who represents the southernmost tip of Texas, quit the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in protest over the border provisions in the Senate bill. According to the article, Vela stated in a speech on the House floor:

“Erecting more border fence would chill the robust economic relationship that our country and our states enjoy with that country. … Rather than constructing new hurdles to trade with Mexico, we should be tearing down trade barriers in order to promote and strengthen our relationship with our neighbor country.”

Indeed, what is often lost in the debate over border enforcement is the fact that Mexico is the United States’ third-largest trading partner behind Canada and China. Mexico accounted for about 13 percent of total U.S. trade in 2012, totaling about $494 billion. That was up from $461 billion in 2011.

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As of April 2013, Mexico’s share of total U.S. trade is 13.3 percent, and remains the U.S.’ third-largest trading partner.

The border states account for a disproportionate share of U.S. trade with Mexico. In all, the four states that border Mexico — Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas — generate $271 billion in U.S. trade with Mexico, which is 55 percent of all U.S. trade. 

Texas is by far Mexico’s largest state trading partner with $194.4 billion in 2012, which accounts for nearly 40 percent of total trade.

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Arizona and Texas count Mexico as their largest import and export partner, with the exception of California and New Mexico. California’s top importers are China and Japan, while New Mexico’s top exporter is Israel and importer is China.

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

Finally, Some Good News About US Education

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Classroom.(Photo: United Way of Massachusetts Bay & Merrimack Valley / Flickr)It’s been awhile, but it looks like U.S. schools are finally doing something right. According to the 2012 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) – also known as “The Nation’s Report Card” – minority students are making gains and shrinking the learning gap between them and white students.

The improvement in scores is all the more notable as English-language learners and students with disabilities are now being included, as Peggy Carr, the head of testing for the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics, notes to USA Today. About 50,000 students take assessments in reading and mathematics at the ages of 9, 13 and 17.

The Department of Education first began to track reading in 1971. Based on the results of testing from 2011- 2012, African-American 9-year-olds have decreased the reading gap with white students from 44 points to 23 points, scoring 206 on a 500-point scale in 2012; the average score for white students was 229.

Hispanic students have lessened the gap between them and white students from 34 points to 21 points – their score was 208 —since 1975 when the Department of Education started tracking their scores.

As Washington D.C.-based Education Trust, which advocates for low-income and minority students, says, the latest NAEP results “put to rest any notion that our schools are getting worse.”

What Should We Do To Maintain These Gains?

The latest statistics show great gains among students. But we need to keep in mind that the scores minority students receive now were those of white students in 1971. In addition, the gains in testing scores for reading were not seen in older students. 13-year-olds scored higher in both reading and mathematics than students in their groups in the 1970s. But 17-year-olds showed no change in their scores in reading and math, though the lowest-performing did improve their scores.

The Education Trust points out that education in the U.S. is not moving fast enough to keep up with changing demographics. In 1978, 80 percent of U.S. students were white; 13 percent were black, 6 percent were Hispanic and 1 percent were Asian. But in 2012, 56 percent of students were white, while 15 percent were black, 21 percent were Hispanic and 6 percent were Asian. The U.S. Census Bureau predicts that, by 2020, more than half of Americans under 18 will belong to a racial or ethnic minority group. Already in Texas, the majority of students are from what can really not be called “minority” groups anymore.

The Education Trust emphasizes that we need to keep doing what have been to keep reducing the learning gap rather than seeing it widen again. We must keep schools accountable for students’ academic performance, provide a “rich curriculum” and quality teaching teachers. We also need to keep funding public schools, especially in lower-economic districts. And, of course, we really need to target issues like disproportionately higher rates of suspension and expulsion for African-American and Hispanic students and look into issues like special education, which minorities are overrepresented in. Are too many minority students receiving a label of, for example, ‘behavior problems,” rather than something like an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis?

One final point made in the report regards readings for pleasure. At age 9, 53 percent of students say they read for fun at home almost every day. However, by age 13, only 27 percent did, and at the age of 17, only 19 percent still read for pleasure at home. Notably, while the number of 9-year-olds who report reading for fun has stayed the same since 1984 (when the question was first asked), it has decreased over time for 13- and 17-year-olds.

As the NAEP comments, “at all three ages, students who reported reading for fun almost daily or once or twice a week scored higher than did students who reported reading for fun a few times a year or less.” Even if it’s not to raise test scores, it certainly does help to read a book.

Now the question is, in the digital age that we live in, how can we motivate students to continue to read as one way to help them maintain the educational gains they’ve been making – and even improve on them?

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

What We Can Learn From America's First Tea Party About Countering Corporate Power

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Boston Tea Party.(Image: Wikimedia)Before there was Citizens United, a modern Tea Party movement, or national momentum to ban corporate personhood, Thom Hartmann shows that resistance to corporate power is just as patriotic as Boston’s original Tea Party.

On a cold November day, activists gathered in a coastal town. The corporation had gone too far, and the two thousand people who’d jammed into the meeting hall were torn as to what to do about it. Unemployment was exploding and the economic crisis was deepening; corporate crime, governmental corruption spawned by corporate cash, and an ethos of greed were blamed. “Why do we wait?” demanded one at the meeting, a fisherman named George Hewes. “The more we delay, the more strength is acquired” by the company and its puppets in the government. “Now is the time to prove our courage,” he said. Soon, the moment came when the crowd decided for direct action and rushed into the streets.

That is how I tell the story of the Boston Tea Party, now that I have read a first-person account of it. While striving to understand my nation’s struggles against corporations, I came upon a first edition of Retrospect of the Boston Tea Party with a Memoir of George R.T. Hewes, a Survivor of the Little Band of Patriots Who Drowned the Tea in Boston Harbor in 1773, and I jumped at the chance to buy it. Because the identities of the Boston Tea Party participants were hidden (other than Samuel Adams) and all were sworn to secrecy for the next 50 years, this account (published 61 years later) is the only first-person account of the event by a participant that exists, so far as I can find. As I read, I began to understand the true causes of the American Revolution.

I learned that the Boston Tea Party resembled in many ways the growing modern-day protests against transnational corporations and small-town efforts to protect themselves from chain-store retailers or factory farms. The Tea Party’s participants thought of themselves as protesters against the actions of the multinational East India Company.

Although schoolchildren are usually taught that the American Revolution was a rebellion against “taxation without representation,” akin to modern day conservative taxpayer revolts, in fact what led to the revolution was rage against a transnational corporation that, by the 1760s, dominated trade from China to India to the Caribbean, and controlled nearly all commerce to and from North America, with subsidies and special dispensation from the British crown.

Hewes notes: “The [East India] Company received permission to transport tea, free of all duty, from Great Britain to America…” allowing it to wipe out New England—based tea wholesalers and mom-and-pop stores and take over the tea business in all of America. “Hence,” he told his biographer, “it was no longer the small vessels of private merchants, who went to vend tea for their own account in the ports of the colonies, but, on the contrary, ships of an enormous burthen, that transported immense quantities of this commodity … The colonies were now arrived at the decisive moment when they must cast the dye, and determine their course … ”

A pamphlet was circulated through the colonies called The Alarm and signed by an enigmatic “Rusticus.” One issue made clear the feelings of colonial Americans about England’s largest transnational corporation and its behavior around the world:“Their Conduct in Asia, for some Years past, has given simple Proof, how little they regard the Laws of Nations, the Rights, Liberties, or Lives of Men. They have levied War, excited Rebellions, dethroned lawful Princes, and sacrificed Millions for the Sake of Gain. The Revenues of Mighty Kingdoms have entered their Coffers. And these not being sufficient to glut their Avarice, they have, by the most unparalleled Barbarities, Extortions, and Monopolies, stripped the miserable Inhabitants of their Property, and reduced whole Provinces to Indigence and Ruin. Fifteen hundred Thousands, it is said, perished by Famine in one Year, not because the Earth denied its Fruits; but [because] this Company and their Servants engulfed all the Necessaries of Life, and set them at so high a Rate that the poor could not purchase them.”

After protesters had turned back the Company’s ships in Philadelphia and New York, Hewes writes, “In Boston the general voice declared the time was come to face the storm.”

The citizens of the colonies were preparing to throw off one of the corporations that for almost 200 years had determined nearly every aspect of their lives through its economic and political power. They were planning to destroy the goods of the world’s largest multinational corporation, intimidate its employees, and face down the guns of the government that supported it.

The Queen’s Corporation

The East India Company’s influence had always been pervasive in the colonies. Indeed, it was not the Puritans but the East India Company that founded America. The Puritans traveled to America on ships owned by the East India Company, which had already established the first colony in North America, at Jamestown, in the Company-owned Commonwealth of Virginia, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi. The commonwealth was named after the “Virgin Queen,” Elizabeth, who had chartered the corporation.

Elizabeth was trying to make England a player in the new global trade sparked by the European “discovery” of the Americas. The wealth Spain began extracting from the New World caught the attention of the European powers. In many European countries, particularly Holland and France, consortiums were put together to finance ships to sail the seas. In 1580, Queen Elizabeth became the largest shareholder in The Golden Hind, a ship owned by Sir Francis Drake.

The investment worked out well for Queen Elizabeth. There’s no record of exactly how much she made when Drake paid her share of the Hind’s dividends to her, but it was undoubtedly vast, since Drake himself and the other minor shareholders all received a 5000 percent return on their investment. Plus, because the queen placed a maximum loss to the initial investors of their investment amount only, it was a low-risk investment (for the investors at least–creditors, such as suppliers of provisions for the voyages or wood for the ships, or employees, for example, would be left unpaid if the venture failed, just as in a modern-day corporation). She was endorsing an investment model that led to the modern limited-liability corporation.

After making a fortune on Drake’s expeditions, Elizabeth started looking for a more permanent arrangement. She authorized a group of 218 London merchants and noblemen to form a corporation. The East India Company was born on December 31, 1600.

By the 1760s, the East India Company’s power had grown massive and worldwide. However, this rapid expansion, trying to keep ahead of the Dutch trading companies, was a mixed blessing, as the company went deep in debt to support its growth, and by 1770 found itself nearly bankrupt.

The company turned to a strategy that multinational corporations follow to this day: They lobbied for laws that would make it easy for them to put their small-business competitors out of business.

Most of the members of the British government and royalty (including the king) were stockholders in the East India Company, so it was easy to get laws passed in its interests. Among the Company’s biggest and most vexing problems were American colonial entrepreneurs, who ran their own small ships to bring tea and other goods directly into America without routing them through Britain or through the Company. Between 1681 and 1773, a series of laws were passed granting the Company monopoly on tea sold in the American colonies and exempting it from tea taxes. Thus, the Company was able to lower its tea prices to undercut the prices of the local importers and the small tea houses in every town in America. But the colonists were unappreciative of their colonies being used as a profit center for the multinational corporation.

Boston’s Million-Dollar Tea Party

And so, Hewes says, on a cold November evening of 1773, the first of the East India Company’s ships of tax-free tea arrived. The next morning, a pamphlet was widely circulated calling on patriots to meet at Faneuil Hall to discuss resistance to the East India Company and its tea. “Things thus appeared to be hastening to a disastrous issue. The people of the country arrived in great numbers, the inhabitants of the town assembled. This assembly, on the 16th of December 1773, was the most numerous ever known, there being more than 2000 from the country present,” said Hewes.

The group called for a vote on whether to oppose the landing of the tea. The vote was unanimously affirmative, and it is related by one historian of that scene “that a person disguised after the manner of the Indians, who was in the gallery, shouted at this juncture, the cry of war; and that the meeting dissolved in the twinkling of an eye, and the multitude rushed in a mass to Griffin’s wharf.”

That night, Hewes dressed as an Indian, blackening his face with coal dust, and joined crowds of other men in hacking apart the chests of tea and throwing them into the harbor. In all, the 342 chests of tea–over 90,000 pounds–thrown overboard that night were enough to make 24 million cups of tea and were valued by the East India Company at 9,659 Pounds Sterling or, in today’s currency, just over $1 million.

In response, the British Parliament immediately passed the Boston Port Act stating that the port of Boston would be closed until the citizens of Boston reimbursed the East India Company for the tea they had destroyed. The colonists refused. A year and a half later, the colonists would again state their defiance of the East India Company and Great Britain by taking on British troops in an armed conflict at Lexington and Concord (the “shots heard ’round the world”) on April 19, 1775.

That war–finally triggered by a transnational corporation and its government patrons trying to deny American colonists a fair and competitive local marketplace–would end with independence for the colonies.

The revolutionaries had put the East India Company in its place with the Boston Tea Party, and that, they thought, was the end of that. Unfortunately, the Boston Tea Party was not the end of that. It was only the beginning of the power of corporations in America.

The Birth of the Corporate “Person”

Fast forward 225 years.

The American war over corporate power is heating up again. A current struggle centers on the question of whether corporations should be “people” in the eyes of the law.

In October 2002, Nike appealed a lawsuit against it to the Supreme Court, asking it to rule that Nike’s letters to newspapers about treatment of workers in Indonesia and Vietnam are protected by the First Amendment.

In Pennsylvania, several townships recently passed laws forbidding corporate-owned farms. In response, agribusiness corporations threatened to sue the townships for violation of their civil rights–just as if these corporations were persons.

Imagine. In today’s America, when a new human is born, she is instantly protected by the full weight and power of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Similarly, when papers called articles of incorporation are submitted to governments in America (and most other nations of the world), another type of new “person” is brought forth into the nation.

The new corporate person is instantly endowed with many of the rights and protections of personhood. It doesn’t breathe or eat, can’t be enslaved, can live forever, doesn’t fear prison, and can’t be executed if found guilty of misdoings. It is not a human but a creation of humans. Nonetheless, the new corporation gets many of the Constitutional protections America’s founders gave humans to protect them against governments or other potential oppressors. How did corporations become persons?

After the Revolutionary War, Thomas Jefferson proposed a Bill of Rights with 12 amendments, one of which would “ban commercial monopolies,” forever making it illegal for corporations to own other corporations, to do business in more than one specific product or market, and thus forever preventing another oppressive commercial juggernaut like the East India Company from arising again in North America to threaten democracy and oppress the people.

But Jefferson’s amendment failed and the corporations fought back. Now those corporations use the club of the amendments that did pass to influence elections and legislation favoring them–in the name of their rights as persons.

An Historic Goof?

What most people don’t realize is that this is a recent agreement–and it is based on an historic error. Only since 1886 have the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment been applied explicitly to corporations. For 100 years people have believed that the 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad included the statement “Corporations are persons.” But looking at the actual case documents, I found that this was never stated by the court, and indeed the chief justice explicitly ruled that matter out of consideration in the case.

The claim that corporations are persons was added by the court reporter who wrote the introduction to the decision, called “headnotes.” Headnotes have no legal standing.

It appears that corporations acquired personhood by persuading a court reporter and a Supreme Court judge to make a notation in the headnotes of an unrelated law case. In Everyman’s Constitution, legal historian Howard Jay Graham documents scores of previous attempts by Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field to influence the legal process to the benefit of his open patrons, the railroad corporations. Field, as judge on the Ninth Circuit in California, had repeatedly ruled that corporations were persons under the 14th Amendment, so it doesn’t take much imagination to guess what Field might have suggested Court Recorder J.C. Bancroft Davis include in the transcript, perhaps even offering the language, which happened to match his own language in previous lower court cases.

Alternatively, Davis may have acted on his own initiative. This was no ordinary court reporter. He was well-connected to the levers of power in his world, which in 1880s America were principally the railroads, and had, himself, served as president of the board of a railroad company.

Regardless of how it happened, an amendment to the Constitution, designed to protect the rights of African Americans after the Civil War, passed by Congress, voted on and ratified by the states, and signed into law by the president, was re-interpreted in 1886 for the benefit of corporations. The notion that corporations are persons has never been voted into law by the people or by Congress, and all the court decisions endorsing it derive from the precedent of the 1886 case–from Davis’ error.

Other legal errors have been corrected with time. The notions that women aren’t persons under the law, (affirmed, for example, in the 1873 Bradwell v. State case) and that blacks aren’t entitled to equal protection (decided in the Dred Scott and Plessy cases) were superseded by court cases affirming the full rights of African Americans and women under the law. The establishment of corporate personhood, on the flimsy foundation of a court reporter’s insertion of a phrase into a legal summary, may be the next mistake to be corrected, particularly if grassroots efforts continue to challenge the legitimacy of corporate personhood.

(Adapted from Thom Hartmann’s book Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and The Theft of Human Rights)

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

Risky Business of Morsi's Ouster

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Morsi Mural.(Image: thierry ehrmann)The military ouster of elected Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi was cheered by some anti-Islamists as a repudiation of Morsi’s autocratic rule and his Muslim Brotherhood. But the coup could further radicalize the region’s Islamists with dangerous implications for the U.S. and the world, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

Amid the fast-moving political drama in Egypt, we should think about larger messages the events there are sending, to those outside as well as inside Egypt, that may prove more important than who is in the presidential palace in Cairo next month or even next year.

Egyptian dissatisfaction with Mohamed Morsi was grounded primarily in the dismal state of the Egyptian economy. But national leaders in many other countries have presided over economic failure without getting overthrown by military coups. Morsi was freely and fairly elected, just as much as many of those other leaders were.

In this respect, the action the Egyptian military took this week is quite different from its ouster two years ago of Hosni Mubarak, whose entrenched position in power was the result of a rigged system in which no opposition leader ever had a fair chance to displace him.

Because Morsi bears the Islamist label, his election resurrected old phobias about whether democratically elected Islamists would respect democracy once in power. Some of the histories of fascist and communist parties may provide a good basis for asking such a question, although no one ever persuasively made the case as to why Islamists per se should be any more prone than those of other political stripes to put a nation into a “one man, one vote, one time” situation.

The fear nonetheless has been widespread. It underlay international (including U.S.) acquiescence when the Algerian military in 1992 aborted an electoral process in which, after the first round of what was supposed to be a two-round national election in Algeria, it was apparent that the Islamic Salvation Front was going to win an overwhelming victory.

Similar fears persist today, as reflected in Islamophobically-enhanced characterizations of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood as “a secretive, ideological Islamist underground movement” that “methodically engineered a takeover of Egypt’s political system.” That is a grossly inaccurate description of what has happened in Egypt over the past year. Morsi and the Brotherhood never came close to “taking over” the Egyptian system, as demonstrated in recent days especially by the postures of the police and the military.

Jonathan Steele in The Guardian, while making no apologies for Morsi’s overall performance, goes into more detail about how his conduct during his one year in the presidency gives scant evidence for making an argument that he was knavishly taking Egypt in an undemocratic direction. Morsi quickly retreated, for example, when decrees expanding presidential power proved unpopular. The Brotherhood-heavy composition of the cabinet was a result largely of opposition parties’ refusal to participate in it.

The Muslim Brotherhood was necessarily an “underground” organization during the many years under Mubarak and before, when it was legally banned. When it was given the opportunity to play by democratic rules, it did so.

That leads to what ought to be our main concern about this week’s events in Egypt, which is nicely articulated by Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. Husain also is no apologist for Morsi, saying that he is “not a fan of the Muslim Brotherhood” and opposes “their politicization of my religion.”

But he observes that given the Brotherhood’s prominence among Islamist organizations in the Middle East, what has happened to the democratically elected Morsi will lead extremist Islamists in the Arab world to say, “We told you so. Democracy does not work. The only way to create an Islamist state is through armed struggle.”

Those who, out of their distaste for anything Islamist, are welcoming the Egyptian military coup, ought to be careful what they wish for. They may wind up with something that is not just distasteful but dangerous.

As for near-term U.S. policy, President Obama ought to ignore advice for the United States to try to stage-manage the next chapter in the Egyptian political story. The futility of doing so is reflected in the negative reactions from different sides to just about anything the able American ambassador, Anne Patterson, has said that can be interpreted as weighing in on internal Egyptian politics.

U.S. military aid to Egypt, however, provides some leverage over the generals. That leverage ought to be used to encourage a prompt return to a democratic process – which would not be telling Egyptians what sort of government they ought to have but instead would be help in enabling Egyptians to determine themselves what sort of government they should have. Existing U.S. law providing for suspension of military aid after a coup ought to make the exertion of such leverage easier.

After the military coup in Algeria two decades ago, militant Islamists took up arms and the country was plunged into civil war. Over the next several years as many as 200,000 Algerians were killed. The same demonstration to Algerian Islamists that they would not be allowed to participate successfully in democratic politics was not lost on Islamists elsewhere in the region.

It was in the early and mid-1990s that violent Egyptian Islamists conducted most of their ultimately unsuccessful terrorist campaign in Egypt. Back in Algeria, the civil war finally concluded around 2002, when the Armed Islamic Group was vanquished. An even more radical splinter of the AIG called the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat survived. It continues to operate today across much of western Africa under the name it later adopted: Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

Oregon Takes a Step Towards Debt-Free Degrees

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You are not a loan.(Image: S. MiRK)I got a check from the U.S. Treasury in the mail this week. It was both a surprise and a mystery. It was a surprise, because I wasn’t expecting any checks, least of all from the federal government. At first the reason why the government sent me a check was a mystery. It turned out the mystery went all the way back to my college days. 

I was reminded of my (as yet un-deposited)  check when I read the news that Oregon has taken a step towards making tuition free at the state’s public universities.

On college campuses across the United States, the eternal optimism of youth has been throttled out by a fear of crushing student debt. That’s certainly the case in Oregon, where the cost of tuition has soared as public funding for higher education has declined.

But the state Legislature this week approved an idea that might ease the economic dread for future philosophy and art history majors. The concept — called Pay It Forward — calls for students to attend public universities tuition free and loan free. In exchange, students would have 3 percent deducted from their post-graduation paychecks for about a quarter-century. The money would go into a fund to pay for future students.

The bill, which passed unanimously and is expected to be signed this month by Gov. John Kitzhaber, directs the state’s Higher Education Coordination Commission to develop a Pay It Forward pilot project for consideration by the 2015 Legislature. One question that must be resolved is how to fund the program’s start-up costs, estimated at $9 billion, since the initial students who attend tuition-free would be years away from entering the labor force.

Though the timing was coincidental, the bill won final approval on Monday, the same day that federal student loan interest rates doubled from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent.

I only wish something light that had been in place when I was in college. 

That brings me back to the check I got in the mail this week. I knew before I opened it that it was a check from the federal government, because recognized the familiar greenish paper used for such checks. I opened it to find the government had cut me a check for $12 and some change.

The mystery was why would the federal government would send me a check, let alone for such a small, unusual amount. Then I saw read the information on the check stub, and it all became clear. In a box on the check stub, after all the other information, was typed: “FED STUDENT LOAN REFUND.” It was enough to jog my memory. 

More than  year ago, I wrote about the experience of finally paying off my student loans at the age of 43, after going into debt to finance my education at the age of 18. That is, I paid off the federally-insured student loans, serviced, processed, and collected by SALLIE MAE. Those loans comprise the bulk of my student loan debt.

However, I still had a small direct loan from the federal government, that I’d used to get me through the very last part of my senior year of college. I wouldn’t have graduated without it. Around the time I paid off my SALLIE MAE loans, I set up a direct withdrawal from my checking account to take care of the federal student loan. 

I then forgot about the automatic withdrawal, perhaps because I was no longer receiving bills and payment envelopes in the mail. I guess I must have overpaid via automatic withdrawal, to the tune of a little over $12. 

In the quarter century or so it I spent acquiring and paying off my student loans, plus the interest that accrued over the years – including the times when I employed deferments and forbearances, because of economic hardship – I’m sure I ended up paying far more than 3 percent of my paycheck. I attended a public university.  If something like what’s been proposed in Oregon had been in place when I went to college, it would have saved me thousands of dollars over the years. 

I think I’d have felt good about having 3 percent of my paycheck deducted, in lieu of a loan, if I knew that it would go into a fund to pay for the education of future students, rather than padding the pockets of private lenders, and graduating without a huge debt hanging over my head. It not only eliminates student-debt, but it reinforces the idea that we all have something invested in more people having access to higher education.

This week Congress let student rates double, and went home for the 4th of July holiday. While Members of Congress spent the holiday glad-handing with donor and constituents at patriotic-themed cookouts, millions of students had their debts increase practically overnight, ostensibly for the purpose of deficit reduction.

If the Oregon bill is signed into law, as seems likely, future students in Oregon will have access to debt-free degrees, and no student loans, or interest rates subject to increase as If Congress lacks the political will to do anything about it. Here’s hoping more states will follow Oregon’s example.

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

Harvest of Empire, Part 2

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It’s not just jobs and prosperity that draw immigrants to the United States. Many Latin Americans were brought here, or forced to come by dangerous or deadly conditions-which the US often helped create. On this edition, part two of “Harvest of Empire” a documentary film written and narrated by Democracy Now’s Juan Gonzalez. Today, in excerpts from the film, Gonzalez traces the history of Nicaraguan and Salvadoran migration to the United States.

Also See: Harvest of Empire, Part 1

Featuring:

Juan Gonzalez, Democracy Now co-host and Harvest of Empire author; Anastosio “Tachito” Somoza, former Nicaraguan president; Maria Hinojosa, journalist; Robert White, former US Ambassador; Sister Pat Murray, former missionary in Central America; Luis Enrique; Grammy Award winning singer and composer; Father Roy Bourgeois, School of the Americas Watch founder; Maria Guardado, Salvadoran immigrant and torture survivor; Sister Terry Alexander, Maryknoll missionary; John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter & Ronald Reagan, former presidents of the United States; Dan Rather & Tom Brokaw, TV news anchor; Melvin Goodman, Former CIA division chief.

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

DOMA's Demise

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When not being shooed off the courthouse steps by police, the crowd sang “God Bless America” and “Goin’ to the Chapel.”

I arrived at the Supreme Court a half hour before decision time, only to wade into a sea of rainbow, red, white, and blue.

The last time I was here was in March. Bundled into my coat and scarf, I joined a demonstration outside the court as opening arguments were heard in Windsor vs. United States and Hollingsworth vs. Perry. They’re also known as the anti-DOMA and Anti-Prop 8 cases.

This time, the crowd dripped with sweat as we waited in frenzied anticipation for the decisions to be handed down.

Signs ranged from admonishing, (“SCOTUS, Try to Be Less Wrong Today”) to comically threatening, (“If I Can’t Marry My Boyfriend, I’ll Marry Your Daughter”) to simply powerful (“Gay Rights ARE Human Rights” and “Love Conquers All,” among others). One man carried an actual closet door on which he’d painted, “This Used to Oppress Me. Down with DOMA – No More Shut Doors.”

Not all the demonstrators supported marriage equality. One man stood behind a giant “Repent or Perish” sign. Another booed us from a passing trolley.

But these bigoted voices were drowned out by honking cars and cheering people of all kinds: Ministers and rabbis, Democrats and Republicans alike held pro-marriage signs.

The sun beat down, minutes crept damply by, and we waited. When not being shooed off the courthouse steps by police, the crowd sang “God Bless America” and “Goin’ to the Chapel,” or chanted “Equality now!”

In the shuffle of the crowd, I ended up next to a woman named Mary, who had driven down here the night before from New York, along with her partner, to be at the court to witness history.

Suddenly, a wave of cheering and screaming broke over the assembled masses. Like nearly everyone at the court, Mary’s partner had SCOTUSblog on her phone, which was how I learned that DOMA was declared unconstitutional. Mary cried and kissed her partner. I got goosebumps and screamed my throat raw.

Mary’s partner translated the legalese of the opinion into plain English for us – the Supreme Court has declared DOMA unconstitutional, by a ruling of 5 to 4, on the basis of the Fifth Amendment.

The majority opinion says, “DOMA singles out a class of persons deemed by a State entitled to recognition and protection to enhance their own liberty.”

The crowd was ecstatic, and with good reason. Many feared that the decision would be drawn narrowly, striking down DOMA, but declaring marriage equality a state issue. But now, the justices actually recognized LGBT people as a minority being persecuted by hateful legislation.

We were hardly deflated when, as expected, the court also ruled that the plaintiffs in Perry didn’t have standing to challenge Prop 8. Let it go back to the lower court! DOMA is dead!

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

The GOP's Endless War on Obamacare and the White House Delay

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The official reason given by the Administration for delaying, by one year, the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that employers with more than 50 full-time workers provide insurance coverage or face fines, is that employers need more time to implement it. The unofficial reason has more to do with the Republicans’ incessant efforts to bulldoze the law.

Soon after the GOP lost its fight against Obamacare in Congress, it began warring against the new legislation in the courts, rounding up and backstopping litigants all the way up to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, House Republicans have refused to appropriate enough funds to implement the Act, and have held a continuing series of votes to repeal it. Republican-led states have also done what they can to undermine Obamacare, refusing to set up their own health exchanges, and turning down federal money to expand Medicaid.

The GOP’s gleeful reaction to the announced delay confirms Republicans will make repeal a campaign issue in the 2014 midterm elections, which probably contributed to the White House decision to postpone the employer mandate until after the midterms. “The fact remains that Obamacare needs to be repealed,” said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, on hearing news of the delay.

Technically, postponement won’t affect other major provisions of the law – although it may be difficult to subsidize workers who don’t get employer-based insurance if employers don’t report on the coverage they provide. But it’s a bad omen.

The longer the Affordable Care Act is delayed, the more time Republicans have to demonize it before average Americans receive its benefits and understand its importance. The GOP raged against Social Security in 1935 and made war on Medicare in 1965. But in each case Americans soon realized how critical they were to their economic security, and refused to listen.

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

Should Obamacare Provision Be Delayed?

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The Obama Administration announced that one of the major provisions in the Affordable Care Act will be delayed for one year. Under the law, starting in 2014, businesses with over 50 employees would have been required to provide healthcare to workers or pay a fine. That provision will now not take effect until 2015, after next year’s midterm elections. Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Mazur said, “We have heard concerns about the complexity of the requirements and the need for more time to implement them effectively.”

The change will not effect people who buy insurance individually, or small businesses planning to purchase healthcare through new insurance exchanges. It will also spare large employers a $3,000 per-worker fine for failing to provide workers with coverage. However, during the 2014 transition period, the Treasury Department will encourage employers to maintain or expand insurance coverage, and ensure businesses follow all other requirements under the law.

The majority of Obamacare will go into effect as planned, and is scheduled to start on January 1st of next year. Americans without healthcare coverage will be able to access affordable care, and small businesses will gain access to lower cost plans in states that have established insurance exchanges.

Valerie Jarrett, a White House Senior Adviser, said healthcare exchanges will be in place on October 1st, and “small businesses and ordinary Americans will be able to go to one place to learn about their coverage options and make side-by-side comparisons of each plan’s price and benefits before they make their decisions.” However, even those who support Obamacare question whether the exchanges are on schedule as a direct result of Republican obstruction in GOP-led states.

Originally posted at ThomHartmann.com.

Republished with permission from: Truth Out

MB deputy leader detained in Egypt

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Egyptian troops have arrested Muslim Brotherhood’s deputy leader, Khairat el-Shater, and his brother as political turmoil flares up across the North African country.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Turkish police fire tear gas at protest

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Turkish police have fired tear gas to disperse thousands of anti-government protesters demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Genetic Engineering: The Global Food and Agricultural Crisis

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In 2012, Professsor Seralini of the University of Caen in France led a team that carried out research into the health impacts on rats fed GMOs (genetically modified organisms) (1). The two-year long study concluded that rats fed GMOs experienced serious health problems compared to those fed non GM food. Now comes a new major peer-reviewed study that has appeared in another respected journal. This study throws into question the claim often forwarded by the biotech sector that GMO technology increases production and is beneficial to agriculture.

Researchers at the University of Canterbury in the UK have found that the GM strategy used in North American staple crop production is limiting yields and increasing pesticide use compared to non-GM farming in Western Europe. Led by Professor Jack Heinemann, the study’s findings have been published in the June edition of the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability (2). The research analysed data on agricultural productivity in North America and Western Europe over the last 50 years.

Heinemann states his team found that the combination of non-GM seed and management practices used by Western Europe is increasing corn yields faster than the use of the GM-led package chosen by the US. The research showed rapeseed (canola) yields increasing faster in Europe without GM than in the GM-led package chosen by Canada. What is more, the study finds that it is decreasing chemical herbicide and achieving even larger declines in insecticide use without sacrificing yield gains, while chemical herbicide use in the US has increased with GM seed.

According to Heinemann, Europe has learned to grow more food per hectare and use fewer chemicals in the process. On the other hand, the US choices in biotechnology are causing it to fall behind Europe in productivity and sustainability.

The Heinemann team’s report notes that incentives in North America are leading to a reliance on GM seeds and management practices that are inferior to those being adopted under the incentive systems in Europe. This is also affecting non GM crops. US yield in non-GM wheat is falling further behind Europe, “demonstrating that American choices in biotechnology penalise both GM and non-GM crop types relative to Europe,” according to Professor Heinemann.

He goes on to state that the decrease in annual variation in yield suggests that Europe has a superior combination of seed and crop management technology and is better suited to withstand weather variations. This is important because annual variations cause price speculations that can drive hundreds of millions of people into food poverty.

The report also highlights some grave concerns about the impact of modern agriculture per se in terms of the general move towards depleted genetic diversity and the consequently potential catastrophic risk to staple food crops. Of the nearly 10,000 wheat varieties in use in China in 1949, only 1,000 remained in the 1970s. In the US, 95 percent of the cabbage, 91 percent of the field maize, 94 percent of the pea and 81 percent of the tomato varieties cultivated in the last century have been lost. GMOs and the control of seeds through patents have restricted farmer choice and prevented seed saving. This has exacerbated this problem.

Heinemann concludes that we need a diversity of practices for growing and making food that GM does not support. We also need systems that are useful, not just profit-making biotechnologies, and which provide a resilient supply to feed the world well.

Despite the evidence, governments capitulate

Given the mounting evidence that questions the efficacy and safety of GMOs (3,4,5,6,7), it raises the issue why certain governments are siding with the biotech sector to allow GMOs to be made available on commercial markets. It is simply not the case that country after country is accepting GMOs on the basis of scientific evidence, as scientists-cum-lobbyists for the GM sector often state (8). If scientific evidence were to be determining factor, few if any countries would have sanctioned GMOs.  

Part of the answer lies in the fact that the powerful US biotech sector continues to forward its agenda that GMOs are a frontier technology that will save humanity from famine and hunger. This is despite evidence that most of the world’s hunger is the product of profiteering industrial chemical agriculture and the global structuring of food production and distribution under the banner of ‘free trade’ and ‘structural adjustment’ (9,10), or as many of us know it brow beating and structural dependency.

Yet, the mantra of GM as the saviour of humanity persists courtesy of the GM sector’s puppet politicians and regulatory bodies (11). The US is pushing for lop-sided bilateral trade agreements with other countries not only to generally tie economies into US economic hegemony in an attempt to boost its ailing economy and flagging currency, but more specifically to get nations to ‘accept’ GMOs. Through behind-closed-door deals (12,13) coercion (14) or the hijack of regulatory bodies (15), there has been some success, and many think it could be just a matter of time before other countries, not least India, capitulate to allow GM food crops onto the commercial market.

In fact, regardless of any legal statute, it may be and probably is already happening in India, not least via contamination (16). However, if contamination by means of illegal planting and open field ‘testing’ fails to get GMOs on to the commercial market via the back door, the GM sector is attempting to cover all angles. Immediately after a moratorium on BT Brinjal was announced in 2010, a Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill suddenly emerged. The BRAI Bill could not be passed in 2010 and 2011 because of objections, but it has surfaced again as a 2013 Bill. Environmentalist Vandana Shiva argues that it not so much constitutes a Biotechnology Regulation Act, but a Biotechnology Deregulation Act, designed to dismantle the existing bio-safety regulation and give the green-light to the GM sector to press ahead with its agenda in the country.

By highlighting the GM sector interests behind the proposed legislation, Shiva says that the goal is to give the sector’s corporations immunity by freeing them of courts and democratic control under India’s federal structure. For those who follow such developments in India, it doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to appreciate that the future of Indian agriculture is in the wrong hands. Certain key scientists and top politicians have already been ideologically (or otherwise) ‘bought and paid for’ by proponents of the ‘Green Revolution’ and more recently the GM sector (7).

On a global level, with reports of wheat (17), rice (18) and maize (19) having been widely contaminated with GMOs, there seems to be a conscious ploy to contaminate so much of the world’s crops so that eventually GMOs take over regardless and render the pro/anti GM debate almost academic (20).

It seems that secretive trade deals, the hijack of official bodies designed to ensure the ‘public interest’ and bullying or intimidation are not enough. Contamination strategies are but one more way of achieving through closed and non-transparent methods what could not be possible by transparent and democratic means — simply because hundreds of millions of people do not want GMOs.

A generation down the line (or much sooner), will we looking at the health and environmental consequences of GMOs in the same way we now regard the impacts of the original ‘Green Revolution’?

“There are very good reasons why we have never introduced a Green Revolution into Africa, namely because there is broad consensus that the Green Revolution in India has been a failure, with Indian farmers in debt, bound to paying high costs for seed and pesticides, committing suicide at much higher rates, and resulting in a depleted water table and a poisoned environment, and by extension, higher rates of cancer.” Paula Crossfield, food policy writer/activist (21).

We don’t have to take Paula Crossfield’s word for it, though. Punjab was the ‘Green Revolution’s’ original poster boy, but is fast becoming transformed from a food bowl to a cancer epicenter and now reels under an agrarian crisis marked by discontent, debt, water shortages, contaminated water, diseased soils and pest infested cops (22,23,24).

In the meantime, big ‘ag’ in collusion with big pharma will continue to control our food and define our healthcare by pushing their highly profitable ‘miracle solutions’ for the health and environmental problems which they conspired to create in the first place. It is all part of the wider corporate-elite agenda to colonise and control every facet of human existence.  

Notes

1) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512005637

2) http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14735903.2013.806408#tabModule

3) http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/new-study-confirms-wheat-autism-link-0

4) http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/it-time-acknowledge-roundup-herbicide-contraceptive

5) http://www.responsibletechnology.org/gmo-dangers

6) http://vidarbhatimes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/maharashtra-reports-btcotton-failure-in.html?m=1

7) ) http://www.globalresearch.ca/india-genetically-modified-seeds-agricultural-productivity-and-political-fraud/5328227

8) http://www.deccanherald.com/content/311963/ban-gm-crops-imperil-indian.html

9) http://www.globalresearch.ca/our-hunger-games/5302603

10) http://cchronicle.com/2010/10/focus-on-hunger-interview-with-vandana-shiva/

11) http://rense.com/general33/fd.htm

12) http://www.global-sisterhood-network.org/content/view/799/76/

13) http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-eu-free-trade-agreement-a-corporate-stitch-up-by-any-other-name/5339789

14) http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/20/us-retaliation-list-gm-crops-cablegate/

15) http://www.globalresearch.ca/stench-of-eu-corruption-in-monsanto-gmo-whitewash/5316294

16) http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-death-of-rice-in-india/9562

17) http://rt.com/news/monsanto-wheat-japan-exports-026/

18) http://www.gmcontaminationregister.org/index.php?content=nw_detail2

19) http://www.scidev.net/global/gm/news/mexico-confirms-gm-maize-contamination.html

20) http://www.nwrage.org/content/2005-was-very-good-year-biotech-food-industry

21) http://civileats.com/2009/07/10/g8-promises-15-billion-in-agricultural-aid/

22) http://www.deccanherald.com/content/309654/punjab-transformation-food-bowl-cancer.html

23) http://sagarmediainc.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/punjab-indias-grain-bowl-now-reels-under-agrarian/

24) http://www.amazon.com/The-Violence-Green-Revolution-Agriculture/dp/0862329655

Republished with permission from: Global Research

Pro-Morsi rally held in Cairo

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Thousands of supporters of Egypt’s ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, have staged a fresh protest rally in Cairo’s Nasr City area, demanding his reinstatement.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Catastrophic Events, Mass Traumatization and the Body Politic

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A long-held desire of the technocratic worldview involves manipulation and control of a national and even international body politic. “This planetary consciousness,” Zbigniew Brzezinski observes, brings into closer view a single indivisible humanity united by the soft tyranny of depersonalized and omnipresent coercion. “The sense of proximity, the immediacy of suffering,” he wrote at the height of the Cold War, “the globally destructive character of modern weapons all help to stimulate an outlook that views mankind as a community.”[1]

In the perceived absence of such a powerful monolithic threat, mass-mediated tragedy and terror increasingly fulfill a similarly unifying purpose and means to conjure and augment broader political projects.

More so than ever the population witnesses major catastrophic events such as the recent mass shootings in Tucson Arizona, Aurora Colorado, and Newtown Connecticut, and the Boston Marathon bombing through the two-dimensional (audio-visual) lens of major news outlets and social media platforms. A less-examined aspect of this development is how United States law enforcement and intelligence agencies operating under the Department of Homeland Security utilize such media to create and promote news of designer tragedies capable of generating a potent emotional response from the citizenry.

Moreover, the vicariously imagined trauma of such events provides a window of public acquiescence wherein government officials may shape popular sentiment and introduce restrictive legislative programs (stricter gun control in the case of Tucson, Aurora and Newtown) or forthright militarized oppression (the rescinding of posse comitatus and Fourth Amendment protections in the case of the Boston Marathon Bombing) that under normal circumstances would be rejected by the citizenry.

In addition to providing the basis for introducing unpopular policies and practices, mediated spectacles and a digitally interconnected population allow for the precise measurement of public sentiment and reaction to such crises, thereby producing information that is essential for the police state’s continued roll out and effective operation. As social scientist Armand Mattelart argues, such interconnectivity brings to fruition the long held ambition among modern social engineers to regiment the population—a pursuit that can be traced at least to the crude practices of phrenology and anthropometry.[2]

In this vein, the government’s manufacture of tragedy or terror to manipulate the mass mind is hardly a new phenomenon. For example, Operation Gladio sought to control Europe’s political landscape throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and the military and intelligence entities behind it targeted the civilian population with mass shootings and bombings to further their vision. Such projects arguably laid the groundwork for Western governments’ more recent operations including 9/11 and the London 7/7/2005 bombings used to propel the “war on terror.”[3]

With a broadly credulous public increasingly bound to the system of digital networked communication and the 24-hour corporate-driven news cycle, conveying the impression of catastrophe and terror is easily achieved. Indeed, the development and fine tuning of a uniquely-conceived apparatus in this regard has been underway for decades in the US, having come into more formal public view over the past several years.

Digital Emergency Alert System

In 2006 President George W. Bush signed Executive Order 13047,[4] mandating the DHS to develop a new national emergency alert system for the digital era that would further streamline an already centralized communication network. This new framework encompasses traditional broadcast communication with newer cellular transmission and web-based platforms. The system’s design was delegated to the Federal Emergency Management Agency which in 2011 announced the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAzRjEeqKhI

In times of crisis IPAWS “provides public safety officials with an effective way to alert and warn the public about serious emergencies using the Emergency Alert System, Wireless Emergency Alerts, NOAA Weather Radio, and other public alerting systems from a single interface,” the FEMA explains. The new infrastructure “embodies a modernization and integration of the nation’s alert and warning infrastructure and will save time when time matters most, protecting life and property.”[5]

IPAWS was introduced alongside the deployment of a digital transmission architecture that was largely the initiative of the US public broadcasting industry. Indeed, behind the relentless move toward digital broadcast was an intricate and far-reaching apparatus under which the body politic may be united in temperament and purpose through crisis and catastrophe, and where a hierarchized network of information dissemination among officials and major media has made possible designer events that are perceived as real by the broader public at the lower reaches of this communicative pyramid.

In contrast to its analog forebear the digital transmission framework possesses the “dual use opportunity” envisioned by the Bush administration in 2006. John Lawson, President of the Association of Public Television Stations oversaw the $1.1 billion fundraising campaign undertaken by public broadcasting outlets for the transition to digital. His observations are especially revealing in terms of recognizing the system’s capacities and scope.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2WYmSmXcPs

Our infrastructure is becoming the backbone of a network of networks that can deliver instant warnings to people wherever they are or whatever they’re doing. Initially this will be a government to government and government to media system. [author’s emphasis] Eventually it will be a warning system for all hazards that can reach practically all devices. You can receive some form of alert on your cell phone or your Blackberry at your kid’s soccer match, or while you’re listening to satellite or broadcast radio, or surfing the net, or watching any of the 500 channels on TV. You’ll be able to receive al–some [sic] form of emergency message almost simultaneously.

…We can send data packets–it’s called data casting. This system, because it’s broadcast, is completely bottleneck-free. It’s totally scalable. It avoids the congestion we saw here and in New York on 9/11 with phone calls and cell phone calls. It can reach a million receivers just as easily as it can reach one receiver, no matter what you’re doing …

Here’s the other point about Digital EAS [Emergency Alert System] and it speaks to the interoperability that the White House has embraced. In the pilot project these packets, these data files, these messages that originated from DHS, were sent out over the air by WETA. They were received by other networks— cellphone companies, pager companies, other broadcasters, cable companies–and retransmitted simultaneously.

Once it’s all packets you can do that–you can move this content around seamlessly. Testing that concept was one of the key goals of the DEAS project. And we established here in the national capital region proof of performance that the concept worked. We had numerous partners in the test in the commercial and television and radio industries, and we plainly established an interoperability was possible which in turn supported one of the key components of the President’s Executive Order. [author’s emphasis]

Lawson’s overview of the DEAS suggest how such a system, used in conjunction with FEMA’s IPAWS, provides the basis for a multifaceted real time orchestration of a mass casualty event that includes careful synchronization with major news media.  Indeed, as discussed further below, National Public Radio is among the IPAWS nework’s 22 “dissemination groups” that includes an array of electronic broadcast outlets and consortia. [6]

As a principal element of its “interoperability” IPAWS uses a Common Alerting Protocol–”a digital format for exchanging emergency alerts that allows a consistent alert message to be disseminated simultaneously over many different communications systems.”[7] This may be used in conjunction with the Geo-Targeted Alert System, another component of IPAWS that can issue alerts and warnings targeted to specific geographic areas. Alongside “Smart 911” and “Reverse 911” technologies capable respectively of profiling individuals and distributing emergency and crisis information to networks of first responders, media outlets, hospitals, and the broader public on a “need to know” basis, the IPAWS system is an all-inclusive network for orchestrating and broadly publicizing staged or authentic crisis events.

Notes

[1] Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era, New York: Viking, 1970, 59, 60.

[2] Armand Mattelart, The Globalization of Surveillance: The Origin of the Securitarian Order, trans. by Susan Gruenheck Taponier and James A. Cohen, Cambridge: Polity, 2010.

[3] With regard to gun control specifically, the poorly investigated and dubious circumstance surrounding the Dunblane Scotland school massacre and Port Arthur Australia mass shooting–both occurring in the spring of 1996–suggest events that were intended to prompt sufficient public sentiment and calls to further restrict gun ownership.

[4] US President George W. Bush Executive Order 13407: Public Alert and Warning System (PDF), June 26, 2006.

[5] “Integrated Public Alert and Warning System,” Federal Emergency Management Agency, fema.gov, lasted updated June 13, 2013.

[6] “IPAWS Partner Organizations” (PDF), FEMA.gov, n.d.

[7] “Common Alerting Protocol,” FEMA.gov, last updated June 18, 2012.

Republished with permission from: Global Research

‘Morsi failed to meet Egyptian demands’

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Thousands of anti-government protesters gather in Tahrir Square in Cairo on June 30, 2013.

A senior Iranian lawmaker says the ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsiâ„¢s failure to meet public demands was the main reason for his downfall.

Member of the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Esmail Kowsari said Saturday that Morsiâ„¢s wrong and ill-timed decision-making in some of the issues led to his removal from office.

Å“People, who were supporting Morsi, wanted him to sever relations with the United States and Zionist regime [of Israel], but he pursued a different path,” the lawmaker added.

On Wednesday, Egypt’s army chief ousted Morsi, who took office in June 2012, and dissolved the country’s constitution after millions of people protested his leadership.

General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said that new parliamentary elections would be held, and declared head of Supreme Constitutional Court Adli Mansour as the caretaker leader. Mansour has dissolved the parliament and appointed the new head of the general intelligence.

Morsi is reportedly being held Å“preventively” by the military. Senior army officials say he might face formal charges over accusations made by his opponents. Several arrest warrants have been issued for members of Morsiâ„¢s Muslim Brotherhood party.

Egypt remains the scene of intensifying political tension following the ouster of former president, Mohamed Morsi, whose supporters have taken to the streets nationwide to demand his reinstatement.

Thirty people were killed and over 300 injured across Egypt on Friday in clashes between opponents and supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi and in clashes between pro-Morsi protesters and security forces, according to Egyptian Health Ministry officials.

PG/HGH

Republished with permission from: Press TV

SNC elects Saudi-linked Jarba as leader

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]The foreign-backed Syria opposition has elected a Saudi-linked member, Ahmad Assi Jarba, as its new president during its latest meeting in the Turkish city of Istanbul.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

South African government denies Mandela is ‘vegetative’

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Zaheer Cassim and Catherine Featherston
USA TODAY
July 6, 2013

As former South African president Nelson Mandela remains on life support in a Pretoria hospital, family members continue to fight over burial details.

Mandela, who was hospitalized on June 8, remains in critical but stable condition, according to the office of President Jacob Zuma, who visited the anti-apartheid leader Thursday. The president’s office also said doctors denied reports that Mandela, 94, is in a ”vegetative state.”

A court paper filed June 27 concerning Mandela family graves said affidavits would be provided from his physicians to show that Mandela “is in a permanent vegetative state.” A later filing dropped that phrase. Both court filings, however, said that Mandela’s breathing was machine-assisted.

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French PM Ayrault says spy program claims ‘inexact’

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BBC
July 6, 2013

French officials have rejected reports its intelligence agencies are running a vast spying operation on its citizens.

A spokesperson for Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the claims in the French daily Le Monde were “inexact”.

Le Monde reported that computer and telephone data were being stored on a supercomputer at the offices of the DGSE foreign intelligence service.

The programme operated “outside the law” and could be accessed by all domestic agencies, the paper said.

‘Big brother’

“Several services conduct monitoring operations for security reasons,” an official from Prime Minister Ayrault’s office was quoted as saying by Agence France Presse.

The official said the information could only be accessed “if the prime minister so decided after advice from the CNCIS,” the National Commission of Security Interceptions Control.

Le Monde stood by its story on Friday with an editorial in which it said: “Bin Laden has nourished Big Brother”.

It said there needed to be judicial and parliamentary oversight “to restrain the immense power the government has acquired over our private lives”.

In its Thursday edition, the newspaper quoted an unnamed intelligence source as saying that all communication inside France and between France and other countries was being monitored.

The information is being stored in three basement floors of the Paris building of the DGSE, the French equivalent of Britain’s MI6.

The paper alleged that the DGSE analyses the “metadata” – not the contents of e-mails and other communications, but the data revealing who is speaking to whom, when and where.

The operation was designed, said experts, to uncover terrorist cells. But the scale of it meant that “anyone can be spied on, any time”, Le Monde said.

There is a continuing international furore over revelations that the US has been systematically seizing vast amounts of phone and web data.

The French government has sharply criticised the US activities, which allegedly included eavesdropping on official EU communications.

The scale of surveillance by America’s National Security Agency (NSA) emerged from classified intelligence documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The UK spy agency GCHQ is reported to run a similarly vast data collection operation, co-operating closely with the NSA.

Fall of Morsi Paves Way for Radical Islam in Egypt

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Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
July 6, 2013

The removal of Mohamed Morsi from the Egyptian presidency has set the stage for the ascension of an Islamic sect more radical than the Muslim Brotherhood.

Secular political parties backed by the Egyptian military will likely lose out to the Nour Party in the coming elections. Described as “ultraconservative” by the corporate media in the West, the religious party led by Nadar Bakar is considered the Taliban of Egypt.

“The Nour Party embodies Wahhabism, the fanatical interpretation of Islam that is the sole official religious doctrine in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” writes Irfan Al-Alawi, the executive director of the Islamic Heritage Research Foundation. “The media have tiptoed around the authentic character of the Nour Party, with leading sources noting only that the Nour Party’s program is derived from or influenced by Saudi Wahhabism. But the Nour Party reproduces Wahhabism — the ideology that inspired Osama Bin Laden — in its entirety.”

Like the Taliban, the Nour Party embraces a strict version of Shariah law. It is fanatically and murderously opposed to Shia Muslims and Christians. Nour’s Abdel Moneim Al-Shahat has called for the Pharaonic statues that are a part of Egypt’s pre-Islamic cultural legacy to be covered with wax because they were once worshipped as idols, Al-Alawi notes. This is the same philosophy that resulted in the Taliban destroying the Bamiyan statues of Buddha in Afghanistan.

Religious fanaticism of the sort practiced by the Taliban is a form of social control considered acceptable by government and the financial elite, as Nazi fascism was in Germany of the 1930s.

“The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did,” John Pilger quotes a U.S. diplomat as stating prior to the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. “We can live with” the persecution of women and religious minorities, the official added.

Taliban fanaticism, however, ultimately became an obstacle to the exploitation of Afghanistan as an oil pipeline route. “Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs,” Pakistani representative Niaz Naik quoted U.S. representatives as stating in discussions with the Taliban prior to the invasion in October, 2001.

Egypt’s al-Nour is also willing to engage in business deals with the financial elite and their international loan sharking operation, the IMF.

“A delegation from the International Monetary Fund met Saturday with opposition figures Mohamed ElBaradei and Hamdeen Sabbahi, as well as with representatives of the Salafi-oriented Nour Party,” Egypt Independent reported in April.

Despite an opposition to usury and loan schemes, the Nour leadership and clergy “signaled it would not oppose such a loan in principle, citing arguments that allow Muslims flexibility in interpreting Islamic law when they have no alternative or face severe conditions,” The Globe and Mail reported in February.

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Confirmed: Spiders Are Even More Terrifying Than Previously Thought

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Megan Garber
The Atlantic
July 6, 2013

Spider webs are architectural marvels. Their silks are similar in tensile strength to alloy steel. Their adhesive properties adjust to movements of prey ensnared in them. Yet they are, for many of the spiders that weave them, edible.

And spider webs, it turns out, may be one more thing, too: actually attractive to the very prey they’re meant to lure. New research suggests that the webs may be effective at their primary jobs – catching prey for the creatures that wove them – not only because of their stickiness, and not only because of their strength, and not only because of their unique shape … but also because of their responsiveness to electricity itself.

Yes. According to the research, the webs and positively charged objects – like, say, insects flying by – seem to be attracted to each other. Electrically attracted to each other. Unavoidably attracted to each other. Insects’ wings, after all, don’t simply keep their owners in the air as they’re flapping; they also, in the process, generate electrical charge. Honeybees can generate enough charge – up to 200 volts – to detach pollen from flowers. And spider webs may take advantage of that in a way that is both evolutionarily ingenious and totally insidious at the same time, capturing prey by essentially sucking their victims in. Talk about animal magnetism.

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Child’s rape revives Chile abortion debate

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France 24
July 6, 2013

The case of an 11-year-old Chilean girl who became pregnant after being raped by her mother’s partner has brought back a national conversation about abortion in one of Latin America’s most socially conservative countries.

State television reported on Friday that the girl, who is now 14 weeks pregnant, was raped several times over the last two years. Doctors, meanwhile, say the girl’s life and that of the fetus are at high risk.

But in Chile, ending the pregnancy is not an option.

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Municipal workers protest in Greece

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Municipal workers chant slogans during a demonstration against austerity measures in Athens on November 30, 2012.

Greek municipal employees have held demonstrations against the governmentâ„¢s plans to cut the number of civil servants.

The protests were held for a second day in the Greek capital, Athens.

On July 5, the municipal workers protested in front of the Administrative Reform Ministry in Athens.

The demonstration was held after Greek officials reportedly approved that some 4,000 municipal officers be transferred to the police force.

The job cuts are part of the conservative-led governmentâ„¢s effort to enable it to receive rescue loans, as Athens is in talks with the troika of the countryâ„¢s international lenders.

Last December, municipal workers staged a similar protest.

The protests started days after the troika of international lenders — the European Union (EU), the European Central Bank (ECB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed to release a total of 43.7 billion euros of aid to Greece.

Greece has been at the epicenter of the eurozone debt crisis and is experiencing its fifth year of recession, while harsh austerity measures have left about half a million people without jobs.

The record high unemployment level stands at 27 percent and 62.5 percent of youths are without work.

One out of every five Greek workers is currently unemployed; banks are in a shaky position, and pensions and salaries have been slashed by up to 40 percent.

In April, the Greek parliament passed a bill to cut 15,000 state jobs by the end of 2014. The law was a condition for debt-stricken Greece to receive rescue loans from its European partners.

SZH/SS

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Wisconsin governor signs abortion law, faces court challenge

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Brendan O’Brien
Reuters
July 6, 2013

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed into law on Friday new abortion restrictions that opponents said could lead to the closing of two of the state’s four abortion clinics.

Opponents of the law, which goes into effect Monday, July 8, filed a federal lawsuit challenging it.

The law requires women to undergo an ultrasound before they get an abortion and doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of their clinics.

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Syria warplanes bombard outskirts of Damascus: NGO

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AFP
July 6, 2013

Syrian warplanes launched a series of strikes on the outskirts of Damascus Saturday as President Bashar al-Assad’s regime pressed a bid to drive back rebels, a monitoring group said.

Fresh fighting meanwhile erupted in several flashpoint areas around the capital, while the army renewed its shelling on besieged rebel areas of the central city of Homs, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“Warplanes carried out several air strikes on the edges of Assali (in the south) and Qaboon (east),” said the Britain-based group, referring to areas on the outskirts of Damascus.

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Majlis to look into UAE Iranian expulsions

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An Iranian lawmaker says the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee will pursue the expulsion of Iranian nationals from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Vahid Ahmadi, a member of the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, on Saturday criticized the UAE for the expulsion of Iranian nationals residing in the Arab country without providing a reason.

Å“This measure [taken by UAE authorities] is currently under investigation by relevant officials and naturally the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee will … investigate the matter,” Ahmadi said.

In recent months, the UAE has expelled dozens of Iranians, some of whom had been living in the country for 25 years, without providing a reason.

In a meeting with UAE Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid in April, Iranâ„¢s Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar had 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.

The latest figures released in 2008 showed that some 500,000 Iranians were residing in the UAE and thousands of Iranian companies were also working in the country.

AR/HGH

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Abu Qatada to be deported to Jordan

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Jordanian cleric Abu Qatada will be deported from Britain in early hours of Sunday morning.

Jordanian cleric Abu Qatada will be deported from Britain in early hours of Sunday morning, ending years of Britainâ„¢s Home Office efforts to send him to his home country, where he could face allegations of plotting bomb attacks.

Qatadaâ„¢s deportation comes after the UK and Jordan ratified a treaty ensuring that the Jordanian cleric will face a trial without the use of evidence obtained by torture.

Earlier in May, Abu Qatadaâ„¢s lawyer previously told a London court that his client will return to Jordan voluntarily if the countryâ„¢s government ratifies a treaty with Britain that ensures he will receive a fair trial.

According to reports, the 51-year-old will be driven from Belmarsh prison in southeast London to RAF Northolt around midnight tonight, without his family travelling with him.

Abu Qatada won an appeal against his deportation to Jordan in November last year after the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) announced the cleric would not get a fair trial in Jordan because evidence obtained via torture could be used against him.

Home Secretary Theresa May called the ruling Å“deeply unsatisfactory” and told MPs in the House of Commons that she will contest it.

Britainâ„¢s justice system has accused Qatada of being linked to al-Qaeda and threatening the countryâ„¢s national security. No charges, however, have been introduced against the Muslim cleric yet.

MOS/HE

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Poll: Parents Still Don’t Want Children Going Into Politics

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Rebecca Ballhaus
Wall Street Journal
July 6, 2013

Despite the last few years’ plummeting government approval ratings, the percentage of parents who want their children to go into politics when they grow up has remained remarkably steady, according to a new Gallup poll released on July 4.

According to the survey, 64% of Americans don’t want their child to become a politician, with 31% saying that they do. That’s similar to 1995, when 32% of parents were in favor for their boys and 34% for their girls.

The steady numbers come amid broad public disdain for political institutions. In a June Gallup poll, for instance, Congress had a job approval rating of just 17%. That’s been on a sharp downward trend in recent years, from approval ratings in the 40s as recently as 2005.

But it would appear that regardless of Americans’ approval of the way its government operates, a strong majority have never wanted their children to enter the field. Other than a 1965 peak of 36%, the percentage of parents who said they wanted their son to become a politician has not surpassed 30%, Gallup said.

Despite these numbers, respondents to a separate Gallup poll remained overwhelmingly proud to be an American. According to the survey, 85% said they are proud, with only 3% saying they are “only a little proud” and 1% saying they are not proud. Conservatives were 13 percentage points more likely than liberals to say they were extremely proud to be Americans, at 89% compared to liberals’ 76%.

But respondents do not believe that the country has remained loyal to its founders’ beliefs. A full 71% said the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be disappointed at how the U.S. has turned out. Democrats were more than three times as likely than Republicans to say the founders would be pleased, with 42% compared to Republicans’ 12%.

These numbers are based on two Gallup surveys taken in June. The first surveyed 1,529 adults from June 1-4, and the second surveyed 2,048 adults June 20-24. Both have a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Train accident kills 16 in E Pakistan

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The mangled wreckage of a motorcycle rickshaw lies on the ground after a train hit it near Khanpur village in the Shaikhupura district of Punjab Province, Pakistan, on July 6, 2013.

At least sixteen people, including women and children, have been killed when an express train struck an overloaded motorcycle rickshaw in Pakistanâ„¢s eastern province of Punjab.

According to local sources, the high-speed train — traveling from the countryâ„¢s largest and most populous metropolitan city of Karachi, located 1,146 kilometers (712 miles) east of the capital Islamabad, to the provincial capital of Lahore — hit the rickshaw at a an unmanned railway crossing, which had no barrier.

Senior police officer Himayun Tarar said the crash happened near Khanpur village in the Shaikhupura District of Punjab province on Saturday.

District civil administration stated that the mishap took place as the rickshaw driver drove onto the train track moments before the Lahore-bound train approached.

The rickshaw driver did not notice the train and tried to cross the track, but the vehicle’s engine broke down in the middle of the track.

The train could not stop and rammed into the rickshaw and pushed it up to one kilometer away. Parts of rickshaw and human limbs were strewn on both sides of the railway track.

Twelve out of the total 16 passengers onboard the rickshaw died on the spot, while four others later succumbed to their serious injuries at hospital.

All the victims reportedly belonged to the same family, and were heading to a local shrine for pilgrimage.

Local residents staged a protest rally in the aftermath of the deadly accident, and asked authorities to erect a safety gate at the crossing to save people’s lives. They argued that a couple of similar accidents have already occurred at the same spot in the past.

Pakistan maintains a poor railway system based on the British-era track and old coaches.

Fatal train crashes routinely take place in Pakistan as there are hundreds of unmanned rail crossings in the Asian country, and motorists speed through tracks without looking for oncoming trains.

MP/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Iran futsal team wins Asian tourney

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Members of the Iranian menâ„¢s futsal team win the gold medal at the final match with Japan at the Songdo Global University Campus Gymnasium in Incheon, South Korea, on July 6, 2013.

The national Iranian menâ„¢s futsal team has beaten Japan, winning the gold medal at the 2013 Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games in South Korea.

Iranians trounced the Japanese 5-2 at the Songdo Global University Campus in South Koreaâ„¢s northwestern city of Incheon on Saturday and clinched the gold medal.

Ali-Reza Vafayi scored two goals while Ali Asghar Hassanzadeh, Mohammad Taheri and Vahid Shafiee each managed to scores once for their team.

Iran advanced to the final match by trouncing Iraq, the UAE, China and Thailand.

With this victory, the Iranian menâ„¢s futsal team has won its fourth consecutive victory at the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games.

This comes as the national Iranian womenâ„¢s futsal team also snatched the silver medal at the 2013 Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games in South Korea on Friday. They lost the final match to powerhouse Japan.

The Iranian women’s futsal team had advanced to the final by defeating Indonesia 4-0 in a semifinal match on Wednesday.

AR/HGH

Republished with permission from: Press TV

UK astronomers to co-ordinate their search for alien signals

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Jonathan Amos
BBC
July 6, 2013

British scientists are to make a concerted effort to look for alien life among the stars.

Academics from 11 institutions have set up a network to co-ordinate their Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (Seti).

The English Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees, will act as patron.

The group is asking funding agencies for a small — about £1m a year — sum of money to support listening time on radio telescopes and for data analysis.

It would also help pay for research that considered new ways to try to find aliens.

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China urges close security ties with Iran

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Iran’s Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar (L) and Meng Jianzhu, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, China, July 5, 2013

Senior Chinese official Meng Jianzhu has stressed the necessity of expanding cooperation with Iran in the field of counterterrorism and fighting drug trafficking.

In a Friday meeting with Iranâ„¢s Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar in Chinaâ„¢s capital, Beijing, Meng Jianzhu called for further cooperation with Iran on counterterrorism and drug control issues.

Meng, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, hailed the development of relations as well as the productive cooperation between Tehran and Beijing.

On Thursday, Mohammad-Najjar and Chinese Minister of Public Security Guo Shengkun inked a cooperation agreement in various security issues in an effort to enhance stability throughout the region.

Describing the accord as a turning point in mutual security cooperation, Najjar said under the deal, Tehran and Beijing would work together closely in fighting organized crime, transnational crimes, narcotics, gunrunning, human trafficking and money-laundering.

The Chinese minister, for his part, hailed the relations between Beijing and Tehran, describing Iran as a friendly country. He added that the very presence of Mohammad-Najjar in China is indicative of the significance of ties between the two countries.

Mohammad-Najjar arrived in Beijing for an official four-day visit at the head of a delegation on Thursday.

MYA/HGH

Republished with permission from: Press TV

India exports to Iran up by 40 percent

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Indiaâ„¢s exports to Iran have increased by 40 percent over the past year, despite US-engineered sanctions imposed on the Islamic RepublicPress TV reports.

Indian trade analysts expect exports to Iran to increase by about six billion dollars in the current fiscal year, which began in April, as New Delhi makes a number of changes in its policies to encourage exports to the Islamic Republic.

Å“India did not bend to America on Oil [sanctions] from Iran, if we can make some concessions yes,… we serve our own interest, our interest means that one refinery functions on Iran oil…, Å“ Mohan Guruswamy, an Indian political analyst said in an interview with a Press TV correspondent on Saturday.

Last month, India along with China, Malaysia, South Korea, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Taiwan won a 180-day waiver from the US sanctions targeting oil trade with Iran.

India is among Asiaâ„¢s major importers of energy, and relies on the Islamic Republic of Iran to satisfy a portion of its energy requirements.

Indiaâ„¢s exports include rice, cereals, pharmaceutical products, machine tools, automobile parts and steel. Rice and textile exports have witnessed the biggest increase during the past year.

On May 4, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi and his Indian counterpart Salman Khurshid have signed four Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) to expand cooperation between the two countries.

The West, led by the United States, has imposed a series of sanctions on the Islamic Republic on the pretext that Iran may be pursuing a military program under the cover of its nuclear energy activities.

Iran rejects the allegation, maintaining that as a committed signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

SJS/PG/HGH

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Whales flee from military sonar leading to mass strandings, research shows

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Damian Carrington
Guardian.co.uk
July 6, 2013

Whales flee from the loud military sonar used by navies to hunt submarines, new research has proven for the first time. The studies provide a missing link in the puzzle that has connected naval exercises around the world to unusual mass strandings of whales and dolphins.

Beaked whales, the most common casualty of the strandings, were shown to be highly sensitive to sonar. But the research also revealed unexpectedly that blue whales, the largest animals on Earth and whose population has plummeted by 95% in the last century, also abandoned feeding and swam rapidly away from sonar noise.

The strong response observed in the beaked whales occurred at noise levels well below those allowed for US navy exercises. “This result has to be taken into consideration by regulators and those planning naval exercises,” said Stacy DeRuiter, at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, who led one of the teams.

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Researchers Create ‘Bionic Ear’ with 3-D Printer

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Terry Parris, Jr.
Penn Live
July 6, 2013

I can’t help but think: “Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better…stronger…faster.”

We’re not exactly there yet but researchers at Princeton University have some of that technology, sort of.

With a 3D printer, which has been in the news recently because it has the ability to print a functioning gun, these researchers have printed out a “bionic ear.”

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Problem-plagued missile defense system fails in $214-million test

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W.J. Hennigan
L.A. Times
July 6, 2013

The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency once again missed hitting its desired target during flight test of an interceptor missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base, northwest of Santa Barbara.

The failure of the $214-million test Friday involved a ground-based defense system, designed by Boeing Co., to defend the U.S. from long-range ballistic missile attacks.

The Missile Defense Agency now has a testing record of eight hits out of 16 intercept attempts with the “hit-to-kill” warheads. The last successful intercept occurred in December 2008.

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Illnesses prompt Whole Foods cheese recall

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UPI
July 6, 2013

U.S and state regulatory agencies say they are conducting a multistate investigation of Listeria contaminated cheese that may be responsible for one death.

The soft Brie-style cheese manufactured by Crave Brothers Farmstead Classics has been linked to a death of an older adult in Minnesota and the miscarriage of a baby, Food Safety News reported. The others infected were in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Minnesota.

Early testing by the Minnesota Department of Health and Agriculture indicated the presence of Listeria in cheese samples. Further confirmation is being awaited.

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Gut Bacteria Influences Our Gut Reactions Our Entire Lives

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Douglas Cobb
Guardian Express
July 6, 2013

Researchers reported on Thursday that our gut bacteria can affect our gut reactions our entire lives. Our gut bacteria can affect our weight, risk of disease, how our bodies process the calories we consume and how easy or difficult it is for us to lose or gain weight. In short, our gut bacteria may be shaping our health throughout our entire lives.

According to the researchers, though the study that they undertook didn’t reveal if it’s possible to change one’s gut microbiome to lose weight, it suggests that a once-a-year stool test might become part of your regular checkup.

The researchers conducted in-depth, long-term studies on the bacteria living inside several dozen volunteers and found very little change over the years, with one notable exception: in women who lost a lot of weight suddenly.

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Graphene, An Advanced Strategic High Tech Material

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Special Report by Outsiderclub.com

You might’ve seen graphene in the news lately because of the incredible advances it’s bringing about in the medical field, the energy sector, defense, and so on.

And here’s why: It’s 200 times stronger than steel, thinner than a sheet of paper, and more conductive than copper.

Researchers at the UK’s University of Manchester note it’s “almost one million times thinner than a human hair.”

“It is not only the thinnest material in the world,” says the New York Times, “but also the strongest: a sheet of it stretched over a coffee cup could support the weight of a truck bearing down on a pencil point.”

Bloomberg adds: ”Lighter than a feather, stronger than steel, a superior electrical conductor to copper: According to its champions, graphene could unlock a new era of super energy-efficient gadgets, cheap quick-charge batteries, wafer-thin flexible touchscreen computing, and a sturdier light-weight automobile chassis.”

Bottom line: Graphene has the potential to completely revolutionize entire industries, creating bendable phones and touch screens… tiny self-powered oil and gas sensors… even synthetic blood that can be used in any person on the planet.

Incredible, isn’t it?

And because of its possible future applications in technology, it has been generating significant buzz among scientists worldwide since its discovery.

Strategic metal experts are already calling graphene the “… most important substance created since synthetic plastic a century ago!”

It’s no wonder the two Russian scientists who discovered it were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics – as well as knighthoods.

“Graphene doesn’t just have one application,” says Andre Geim, the Russian scientist who made the find along with Konstantin Novoselov.

“It is not even one material. It is a huge range of materials. A good comparison would be to how plastics are used.”

I’d say plastics is a conservative comparison. Graphene has far more high-tech uses than plastic – and is poised to be much more lucrative…

Scientists are hailing it as a miracle cure for industries ranging from fiber optic data transmission to nuclear energy to lithium-ion batteries.

Since graphene has a high strength-to-weight ratio, it’s the perfect material for use in automobiles, rockets, boats, turbine blades, airplanes, and more.

Take a look at what hundreds of researchers, companies, and governments are already doing with the strongest, thinnest, most conductive material ever discovered…

Engineers at Northwestern University have a made a graphene electrode that allows lithium-ion batteries to store 10 times as much power and charge 10 times faster.

MIT Engineering Professor Jeffrey Grossman believes solar cells made from graphene could produce 10,000 times more energy from a given amount of carbon than fossil fuels.

University of Manchester researchers have created a device that “could help detect the presence of drugs or toxins in the body or dramatically improve airport security.”

According to the Daily Mail: “A graphene credit card could store as much information as today’s computers,” and that “will lead to gadgets that make the iPhone and Kindle seem like toys from the age of steam trains.”

The BBC says: “It could spell the end for silicon and change the future of computers and other devices forever.”

Amazingly, the Israeli Army is even using the material to make invisible missiles.

Fact is graphene makes:

Solar — 50x-100x more efficient

  • Semiconductors — 50x-100x faster
  • Aircraft — 70% lighter

The applications for this “wonder material” appear endless.

This Super Material “Will Change the World.” – Huffington Post

I’m extremely bullish on graphene’s future prospects, and so is one of the men who discovered it, Nobel recipient Konstantin Novoselov:

“I don’t think it has been over-hyped… It has attracted a lot of attention because it is so simple – it is the thinnest possible matter – and yet it has so many unique properties. There are hundreds of properties which are unique or superior to other materials. Because it is only one atom thick it is quite transparent – not many materials that can conduct electricity are transparent.”

And speaking of transparent, scientists at the University of Texas, Dallas have made a graphene invisibility cloak by heating up a sheet of the material with electrical stimulation.

Again, this isn’t science fiction. This is happening right now.

Novoselov says, “It’s a big claim, but it’s not bold. That’s exactly why there are so many researchers working on it.”

So many, indeed: Over 200 companies are pursuing graphene opportunities, and it’s been the subject of thousands of peer-reviewed research papers.

Just recently, Bloomberg reported: “University-led research projects to investigate graphene won $1.35 billion in European Union funding.”

That’s a true testament of faith in this “wonder material.”

“Analysts say the first graphene-intensive products should come to market within 18 months,” says Businessweek, “with IBM, Samsung, and Nokia among those racing to be first.”

And now the global race is on – with a huge increase in patents filed to claim rights over different aspects of graphene…

The BBC reports: “A surge in research into the novel material graphene reveals an intensifying global contest to lead a potential industrial revolution.”

Graphite’s “Rare Earth” Situation

Yet only a few companies around the world have access to mineral graphite, which is the resource required to make graphene…

And up to this point, China has had a tight grip on the worldwide graphite supply, controlling over 70% of it.

ea-graphite-piechart

Like it did with rare earths, China is limiting graphite exports with quotas – imposing a 20% export tariff and a 17% value added tax (VAT), causing graphite prices to rise. What’s more, due to environmental concerns, China has just ordered restrictions on any further graphite mines in two of its largest graphite producing regions.

All this has set the stage for non-Chinese based production of graphite to explode in a big way…

Leaving the door wide open for graphite mining operations in other parts of the globe – like our massive Alaskan discovery – as most of the world’s major economies perceive the mineral as being necessary for technological and industrial progression.

“China has a stranglehold on natural graphite supply,” says Simon Moores of Industrial Minerals. “This, together with a generation of under-investment in mines around the world, is creating a very tight supply situation.”

Already, Future Markets, Inc. reports a 4,000% increase in demand for graphene-based materials…

Which could send graphite prices soaring as demand for this mineral starts outpacing supply next year.

ea-graphite-chart1

That’s why graphite has been named a “supply critical mineral” and a “strategic mineral” by the United States and the European Union.

Starting next year, the world will demand more graphite than is available…

And the supply/demand imbalance will only be worsened as these new sources of demand from graphene applications come online.

It’s no wonder prices have more than doubled since 2006, from $700 to $1,500 per tonne.

And that’s where our play on Northern Graphite Corp. (TSX-V: NGC) or (PK: NGPHF) comes in… We’re buying it below $1.00.

Background

We’ve all seen what the commodity supercycle has done to copper, gold, and many other resources.

Copper traded between $0.50 and $1.00 per pound for decades. And then, because of the commodity supercycle, it went over $4.00.

Same with gold. It used to sell for between $250 and $500 per ounce. Now it’s $1,600 per ounce.

That isn’t inflation. That’s the commodity supercycle.

Many things have caused this change, the big one being China, with India soon to follow.

And in the mining industry, the deposits we’ve lived off for years have been the big, low-cost, easy-to-find mines. Just like with oil.

But those mines are all getting deeper and older, so costs are increasing. Engineering and environmental standards have gone up and there’s been capital and cost inflation.

So gold can’t go back to $400 per ounce. And copper can’t go back to $1.00 per pound.

Graphite has been one of the last minerals to respond to this commodity supercycle. And the reason for that is there was excess production capacity from China. From 1990 until 2005, prices were in the tank.

Then, gradually, the growth in automobile and steel demand began to eat up that spare capacity and prices began to rise, and they steadily grew through 2008. But valuations of companies and deposits were slow to catch up.

When Northern Graphite got going in 2008, it only had a market cap of $2 million. Today, it’s valued around $50 million, but that’s still tiny compared to the +$1 billion resource it has in the ground.

CEO Greg Bowes was smart enough to see the commodity supercycle was slowly taking hold in the graphite industry. He knew the same thing that’s happened to copper, nickel, gold, wheat, and corn… would soon happen to graphite.

And it wasn’t on anyone’s radar yet.

He was correct. And graphite is starting to take off globally as the new hot commodity.

Graphite Prices

The price of graphite is up sharply in recent years thanks to a number of factors.

For starters, graphite is kind of in a “rare earth” type situation because 70% of supply is controlled by China. Industrialization in that country, as well as in India and other emerging markets, have led to increased demand for graphite in its traditional use as an additive to steel.

The 30% of supply that comes from outside of China is typically used in full by the country where it’s mined. There are only three graphite mines in North America.

So take a look at what all those various market factors have done to graphite prices in the last five years:

Graphite Price Chart 2013

Why Northern Graphite?

Northern Graphite’s Bissett Creek mine is the closest to production of any public North American company. There is a 98 million tonne resource with 1.69 million tonnes of indicated graphite.

Graphite is different than copper or gold — where my copper is the same as your copper or your gold is the same as my gold.

With industrial minerals you have to look also at the physical and chemical properties of the product.

With graphite, the two main things to look for are flake size and carbon content. For flake size, larger is better, and you get a higher price for it. Graphite is pure carbon — the more impurities, the lower the price.

For example: If you produce a large flake concentrate that’s 90% carbon, you’re going to get, for example $1,400/tonne.

If you produce a large flake concentrate that’s 95% carbon — which doesn’t sound like a big difference — you’ll get double the price, about $2,800. You can see the large flake Northern Graphite has in this picture I took when I toured the property:

Large Flake Graphite

So when you look at a graphite mine, the first thing everybody focuses on right away is grade. And if you look at Northern Graphite, its grade is between 2% and 2.5%. There are graphite deposits in the world that are 10% to 15% — a significantly higher grade — but you have to look at what the mix of flake size and carbon content is, and the products it can produce.

Generally, the amount of large flake remains fixed and small, and if you have a higher grade it tends to be smaller, finer, and less valuable graphite that makes up the larger percentage.

For example, Focus Metals, a competitor, has a mine with a grade of 15%, but only 20% of that is large flake, 20% is medium flake, and 60% is powder, which is a low-value product.

Northern Graphite has a grade between 2 and 2.5%, but it’s nearly 100% flake. And 80%-90% of that is large flake. And much of it is nearly 98% carbon. A January 2012 pilot plant study proved how much large flake is there and that it contained over 97% carbon. I held some flake in my hand while i was there:

Nick with Large Flake Graphite

So the grade is lower, but the final product is much more valuable. In fact, Northern’s flake is so large, there aren’t really existing prices for it. It’s assumed they’d be somewhere near $3,000/tonne.

Using the conservative 80% figure, the company is looking at a 1.35 million tonnes of large flake, high carbon graphite. (1.69 million tonnes x .80).

Multiply that by a conservative $2,500/tonne (prices are only expected to rise), and you get a $3.37 billion resource. There will be costs for sure, including permitting, building the mine, extraction, consulting, etc.

But when an $0.89 company with a $33.4 million market cap is sitting on a $3.37 billion resource, I think the stock implications are clear.

The Mine

For this section, I’d like to turn to the thorough analyses done by Union Securities, Byron Capital Markets, and Mackie Research Capital.

From Union: The Bissett Creek project is located 100km east of North Bay, Ontario, and is easily accessible by a 17km gravel road from the Trans-Canada highway. The project area currently consists of 18 mineral claims and one mining lease, covering a total of 2,990 hectares. Northern Graphite has 100% interest in the Bissett Creek property with royalties of $20.00/t of concentrate on net sales.

From Byron: The Bissett Creek deposit is just 70 km east of Mattawa, Ontario. It is accessible by 17 km of well-maintained logging roads to the site, and the road is an easy turn off from Highway 17. The deposit is close enough to towns that the company does not have to construct a camp for its workforce. A natural gas pipeline and electric power also run along Highway 17, which Northern Graphite can tap into to run its operations. The location is an enviable one, as the company is costing three power scenarios to determine the most economic: 1) connect to the nearby natural gas pipeline; 2) connect to the closest substation; or 3) construct a new substation closer to the property. Low capital costs due to the deposit’s proximity to infrastructure will shorten the payback for the company and enhance shareholder value.

The resource is sufficient for over 35 years of production at 20,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) using a 1.5% graphitic carbon cut-off grade. The deposit is associated with larger flake material with all material expected, after processing, to remain at greater than 100 mesh size while being over 94% carbon concentrate.

From Mackie: A total resource amounting to 14.7 million tonnes of indicated resources was identified and 18 million tonnes of inferred resources, at a cut-off of 1.5%. The technical report also concluded a base-case IRR of 24% at an extremely low, outdated price for large flake graphite of $1,700/tonne. Since publication of the technical report, comparable large flake prices have nearly doubled.

We calculate that these identified resources should be adequate to allow for a mine life of 20 years at an approximate graphite production rate of 40,000 tonnes per year. A PEA has been completed by SGS that contemplated an operation producing 20,000 tonnes of graphite per year for 20 years. However, NGC plans on doubling the production rate in the first few years of operating to produce at this 40,000 tonne per year rate.

 The Plan

A pilot plant test has been done and the results are in. A report in January 2012 showed:

The pilot plant has confirmed the technical viability and operating performance of the Company’s process plant design for the production of high purity, large flake graphite. Furthermore, results indicate that 50% of the graphite concentrate produced will be jumbo size, +48 mesh flake with a very high carbon content averaging 97.7% graphitic carbon (“Cg”). This is an exceptional product that will attract a premium price. The pilot plant test was designed, built and operated by SGS Minerals Services (“SGS”) in Lakefield, Ontario.

According to CEO Greg Bowes, “The pilot plant results have confirmed that the Bissett Creek deposit will produce entirely large flake, high carbon concentrates from flotation alone, without chemical or thermal treatment. As a result, we believe that Bissett Creek concentrates will have the highest average value per tonne in the industry and that this will also result in the highest margin in the industry. We will have the option of selling them into current high value markets, or using them to produce spherical graphite for Li ion batteries if it is financially advantageous to do so. Based on our review of publicly available information, it appears that over 50% of the production from most other graphite deposits will be very fine, -150 mesh lower carbon material, and it is generally not suitable for Li ion batteries or other high growth markets.”

A mine closure permit is expected in 2013, as well as an upgraded resource estimate that will make the project even more economic.

Production is expected in 2014.

Conclusion and Recommendation

From Mackie: We value Northern Graphite with a 12-month target price of $2.10 based on a 20-year DCF. Over 34 million indicated and inferred tonnes have been identified at the project to date. Based on our calculations, this is an adequate resource number for 20 years of production with a 2-year ramp-up period, whereby the peak production rate of approximately 5,000 tpd is achieved in 2016. A base-case 12% discount rate has been assumed to account for the pre-production, pre-bankable feasibility study stage of the project. As the project reaches milestones to bring it closer to production, it is likely that we would reduce the discount rate to account for decreased risk. NGC is currently conducting engineering and investigative work on the construction of a plant that would produce anode material for the lithium-ion battery market. The timeline for a construction decision is not expected until early in 2012, and although details on this prospect are scant, high-level cash-flow modeling indicates that this venture has the potential to deliver value many times over that of NGC’s current stock price. We do not currently include the Anode Plant in our valuation. However, we note that this project has the potential to increase our target price by approximately $1.00/share.

We view Northern Graphite Corporation as a very unique resource development opportunity within the Strategic Metals sector. We initiate coverage on Northern Graphite Corporation with a SPECULATIVE BUY recommendation and a 12- month target price of $2.10, based on our DCF calculation.

From Byron: We estimate that the capital costs to build the mine will be $70 million with half of the capital costs being financed with debt at 10% for a duration of 10 years with the remaining $35 million through raised equity. Production will begin in 2013 at a rate of 19,000 tpa of graphite, with 70% sold at +48 mesh size at an average price of $2,200/tonne while the -48+100 mesh size graphite would be the remaining 30% being sold at $1,800/tonne graphite. On the cost side, we have taken operating costs to approximately $1,100/tonne graphite produced. This takes into consideration the simple flow sheet of mine, crush, grind, float and re-float while achieving 95% yield, which is in- line with previous metallurgical work and should be confirmed again in September 2011. Additionally, we have taken into consideration the $20/tonne royalty on graphite produced. Given our expectation that graphite demand growth will continue, especially for larger flake graphite used in Li-ion batteries, and Northern Graphite’s ability to scale up the project, we expect the company to double production in 2016 to meet that surging demand, mainly from the automotive sector. We have used conservative pricing for Northern Graphite’s large flake 94% carbon content material. Thus, less conservative graphite pricing can dramatically increase the value of the project.

Northern Graphite is a late stage graphite mine developer that should have a producing mine by selling high-value graphite flakes in 2013 into the growing lithium-ion battery market. The company has begun the permitting process and given that the project flow sheet is simplistic and infrastructure is nearby, construction time should be about one year. We believe Bissett Creek’s deposit size will also allow for Northern Graphite to more than double its production while maintaining over 20 years of resource.

Graphite prices have exploded over the past year, as China dominates the market with over 70% of market share and imposing a 20% export duty and a 17% value added tax on its graphite. Northern Graphite’s ability to come to market quickly and cheaply will allow the company to take advantage of the situation as well as continue to deliver continued news flow to the investor.

With known metallurgy, infrastructure in place, a relatively low capex and a short time to production, risk is minimized for the Bissett Creek project that is expected to have $19.5 million per year in gross profit in 2013, with the potential to generate $39 million in gross profit by doubling production to meet demand from growing battery production. We are initiating coverage on Northern Graphite with a speculative buy rating and $1.90 target price based on 1.0x NAV using a 14% discount rate.

From Union: We have assumed that Northern Graphite will have the required permits in hand and begin construction in early 2012 with production commencement in Q1 2013. Similar to the current PEA, we have assumed the mill will have a nameplate capacity of 2,500tpd. Based on our start-up schedule and reserve assumptions, we have modeled a 30-year mine life for Bissett Creek. Given the higher grade of targeted initial pit upon commencement, the grade will be greater in the mine’s early years. However, at this time we have assumed that the head grade at Bissett Creek will be an average grade of 2.24% graphitic carbon throughout the project’s mine life.

We estimate that Northern Graphite’s NAV is $2.62 per share. We are initiating coverage on Northern Graphite Corp. with a $2.00 target price and a Strong Buy recommendation. Our target price is based on a 0.8x multiple of our Net Asset Value estimate for the company. Despite Northern Graphite’s strong management team, and positive fundamentals of the graphite market, we believe that the target multiple is justified given the stage of development of Bissett Creek. We believe that the Company has the required technical and managerial capacities to meet its permitting and construction goals, and will ultimately succeed in bringing Bissett Creek into production. As Northern Graphite demonstrates this in the short and medium term, this will be reflected in the target price going forward.

Outsider Club, Copyright © 2013, Angel Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

Republished with permission from: Global Research

Fed Spreads Confusion With Efforts to ‘Clarify’ Bernanke’s Remarks

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Nick Summers
BusinessWeek
July 6, 2013

Not so long ago, the Federal Reserve tried to obscure its operations behind a fog of jargon and euphemisms. As Beltway legend has it, when a senator told Alan Greenspan that he understood one of his points, the longtime Fed chairman replied, “Then I must have misspoken.”

Greenspan’s successor, Ben Bernanke, has pushed the central bank and its members to be more direct. Bernanke held the Fed’s first-ever press conference in 2011, and in his testimony to Congress he’s tried to demystify the bank’s extraordinary efforts to boost the economy, which currently take the form of buying $85 billion of bonds each month and keeping short-term rates near zero. It was at one of those hearings, in May, that Bernanke first talked about the possibility that the purchases could wind down sooner than expected. The reaction was violent: Stocks, bonds, gold, and other assets sold off sharply at the prospect of the Fed’s fuel drying up, and a key measure of volatility surged 44 percent.

Bernanke and his central bank colleagues took to podiums and airwaves to calm the markets with comforting everyday imagery. Or tried to. “To use the analogy of driving an automobile,” Bernanke said in a prepared statement on June 19, “any slowing in the pace of purchases will be akin to letting up a bit on the gas pedal as the car picks up speed, not to beginning to apply the brakes.” Bernanke set the standard for muddled metaphors when he parried reporters’ questions that day. Certain economic data, he said, “are guideposts that tell you how we’re going to be shifting the mix of our tools as we try to land this ship on a, you know, on a–in a smooth way onto the aircraft carrier.”

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Across America 2013: Solar Impulse Prepares For Final Leg To New York

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Lawrence LeBlond
RedOrbit.com
July 6, 2013

The Solar Impulse team of Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg are now preparing for the final flight of their HB-SIA zero-fuel airplane in the Across America 2013 campaign. Borschberg will take control of the solar-powered airplane for this final leg of the journey from Washington, DC to New York.

Borschberg is scheduled to take off from Washington Dulles International Airport on Saturday, July 6 at around 5:00 am EDT. The estimated landing time is 2:00 am at JFK International Airport on July 7. The NY landing will be the culmination of an epic journey that began in San Francisco, California on May 3.

The ambitious Across America 2013 journey was not only taken on to show off the capabilities of an airplane that can fly both day and night solely on the power of the sun’s energy, but also to inspire governments and the public to take a broader stance on clean technologies. During the Washington, DC layover, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz met with the Solar Impulse team. The highlights of the meeting were to emphasize how Solar Impulse aligns with four key DOE priorities: solar energy, energy storage, energy efficiency and advanced materials.

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Traditional Herbal Remedies Proven to Increase Breast Milk Production

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Traditional Herbal Remedies Proven to Increase Breast Milk Production

Research on herbal remedies for increasing breast milk production have found that several natural compounds have the ability to safely stimulate an increase in milk production and thereby increase infant weight and growth.

Researchers from the University of Illinois recently reviewed the evidence for herbal galactogogues — those traditional herbs that can stimulate more milk production, also called lactation. Their review found that several traditional remedies may well have clinical application — given that the herbs were found by clinical research to increase milk production among those tested.

Multiple studies have shown that the traditional Indonesian remedy called Torbangun increases milk production. In one four-week study, mothers receiving the remedy produced an average of 65% more breast milk during the last two weeks of supplementation. Torbangun is a plant with the name Coleus amboinicus Lour — also referred to as Plectranthus amboinicus or Country Borage in Western herbalism. This herbal remedy is typically used in Sumatra by placing fresh leaves of the plant into a soup or stew. The effects of Torbangun were confirmed in animal studies as well.

One of the most widely used herbs to increase lactation among mothers is Fenugreek (Trigonella foenumgraecum). This herb has been shown to increase breast milk production significantly, albeit possibly more moderately as shown in the above study when tested against Torbangun — where it increased lactation by 20%.

Fenugreek contains phytoestrogens, which appear to bind with estrogen receptors and thereby increase not only breast milk production but also sweat gland activity.

Estrogenic activity may also be suspected in another traditional herb used to increase lactation. This Ayurvedic herb, called Shatavari (Asparagus racemosus wild.) — has been used for increasing lactation along with helping regulate other female issues for over a thousand years. Shatavari has been found to contain steroidal saponins — which have been shown to have estrogenic activity in other settings.

Yet another herb that has been used traditionally to increase lactation among mothers is Milk Thistle (Silybum marianum). This herb, also used to promote liver health, contains silymarin. Silymarin has been shown to increase milk production among cows — by five to six liters a day in one study.

And in a human clinical study of Silymarin from Italy in 2008, 50 healthy lactating mothers were given either 420 milligrams a day of Silymarin or a placebo for 63 days. The women who took the Silymarin had an average lactation increase of 85%.

While the University of Illinois researchers found minor faults among some of these studies, they failed to see the bigger picture — that traditional clinical application of an herbal remedy over centuries comes with its own set of controls: That is, each time an herbal remedy is prescribed or passed down to the next generation, it undergoes a clinical evaluation among the patients that have taken the remedy. A traditional healer could not readily retain his or her position among the community if he or she was not able to clearly provide viable treatment. And with the passing down of a remedy from one generation to the next comes a necessary proving among that next generation of patients.

This gradual yet time-tested manner for clinical evaluation of natural remedies has resulted in an almost-perfect record as traditional remedies have met with modern clinical research. Those rare failures have typically been the result of a misapplication of the herb as an extract or otherwise weakened set of active constituents. An in practically every case, the herbal remedy has proven to be safe and easily tolerable by those using it.

Mortel M, Mehta SD. Systematic review of the efficacy of herbal galactogogues. J Hum Lact. 2013 May;29(2):154-62. doi: 10.1177/0890334413477243.

Damanik R, Wahlqvist ML, Wattanapenpaiboon N. Lactagogue effects of Torbangun, a Bataknese traditional cuisine. Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 2006;15(2):267-74.

Capuco AV, Ellis SE, Hale SA, Long E, Erdman RA, Zhao X, Paape MJ . Lactation persistency: insights from mammary cell proliferation studies. J Anim Sci. 2003;81(Suppl 3):18-31.

Cassidy A . Potential risks and benefits of phytoestrogen-rich diets. Int J Vitam Nutr Res. 2003;73(2):120-126.

Gupta M, Shaw B. A double-blind randomized clinical trial for evaluation of galactogogue activity of Asparagus racemosus wild. Iranian J Pharm Res. 2011;10(1):167-172.

Di Pierro F, Callegari A, Carotenuto D, Tapia MM. Clinical efficacy, safety and tolerability of BIO-C (micronized Silymarin) as a galactagogue. Acta Biomed. 2008 Dec;79(3):205-10.

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

Republished with permission from: Green Med Info

Brazil’s Left Is Eager to Lead the “Swarm”

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Non-party-political young protesters, now in the midst of an ideological battle. (Photo: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS)The street marches in Brazil, initially non-party-political, have begun to take on the hues of leftwing political and social groupings, which are now trying to set the course of the movement that emerged from online social networks.

Augusto de Franco, founder of Escola de Redes, a research group devoted to netweaving, said the movement that originated in large cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro was driven like a “swarm of bees, a manifestation of interactions that could only occur in highly connected societies,” like what has happened in Madrid and other Spanish cities, or in Tahrir Square in Egypt.

The demonstrations were triggered by one specific issue, a hike in public transport fares. But they have grown into the largest protests in the country since 1992, when demonstrations led to the resignation of then president Fernando Collor de Melo.

This time the protests began with 5,000 young people and swelled to 1.5 million in 10 days. And they are innovative in nature, according to Franco.

“They were not centrally organised, they had no formal leadership (although several short-term leaders emerged). They were not masses convened by centralised organisations, but multitudes of people that formed constellations,” he told IPS.

The swarm, without a queen bee, is now in the middle of an “ideological tug-of-war,” according to João Pedro Stédile, leader of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST — Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra) which is now joining the protests.

“Since young people do not have a mass organisation, the social classes have begun an ideological debate. They dispute the young people’s ideas in order to influence them,” Stédile said in an interview with IPS.

“On the one hand is the bourgeoisie that used Globo (Brazil’s largest broadcaster) and other media outlets to put the right’s demands in the mouths of young people and on their placards. On the other hand is the left and the working class, that are trying to get on to the streets to push their own agendas,” he said.

In Stédile’s view, the protests broke out because of an urban crisis resulting from the current stage of “financial capitalism.”

He listed factors like property speculation, which has raised rents and real estate prices by 150 percent over the last three years, and stimulation of automobile sales, which has led to “chaotic” traffic, without effective parallel investments in public transport.

“Young people are not apolitical. They are doing politics in the best way possible, in the streets. But they are not linked to political parties. They do not reject the ideology of the parties, but their methods,” Stédile said.

Sociologist Emir Sader offered other explanations, like utopian ideals, rebelliousness and “healthy disrespect for authority” that he said were characteristic of young people.

Meanwhile teenage demonstrator Rafael Farías told IPS young people have “warmth and intuition, and they heard the call.”

“We are young and we want to be noticed,” said Farías. And their voices were heard by the executive, legislative and judicial branches, which have already come up with some short-term solutions, such as lowering transport fares, creating anti-corruption mechanisms, devoting more resources to health and education and debating a much-postponed political reform.

But the voices of the young have also reached the ears of social organisations and the wide spectrum of leftwing parties, including the governing Workers’ Party (PT) of President Dilma Rousseff. Another PT leader, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011), himself urged it to join the protests.

According to Lula, the right must be prevented from “appropriating” the movement and “pushing” the government to the left in order to “deepen the changes.”

Stédile said “It is not about putting slogans into the mouths of young people. They have their own, and the simple fact of taking to the streets and showing their anger is a political contribution for the whole of society.”

“The problem is how to mobilise the working class, because when it gets going it can achieve structural changes and strike at the interests of capital and the mass media,” he said.

The strategy has already shown results in the most recent demonstrations, which have had more diverse demands and participants, including trade unions and movements for the rights of women, gays, peasants and indigenous people.

“We are trying to mobilise the working class and include issues that are of interest to workers and all Brazilian people,” the MST leader said.

In addition to increased public spending on healthcare and education, they are calling for a 40-hour work week and heavier taxes for the rich and a lighter tax burden on the poor, and for elections campaigns to be fully funded by public financing.

And demands of a less urban nature are being raised, such as speeding up the demarcation of indigenous territories and land reform.

Social movements have different issues on their agendas, such as suspension of mining concessions and oil block auctions.

“In my opinion, the uprising has a social and economic basis,” Stédile said. “Instead of giving the young people political direction, it is necessary to put the working class in motion, in other words, to get poor people and workers also out on the streets. That is the challenge.”

These sectors must regain the representational space on the streets that they lost over the last decade of government by a party led by a trade union leader like Lula, with his long track record and high prestige, with whom they identified but from whom they became gradually distanced.

“The left in general became bureaucratic in its methods, although leftwing groups of young people in many cities were quite influential and were responsible for organising the protests,” Stédile said.

Sader, a PT activist, said “the left has to fight for the leadership and direction of this movement with a clearly popular and democratic orientation.”

This is a well-known strategy in Latin American history, which some analysts doubt is effective, while others support it.

“This movement has an increasingly plural agenda. People are crying ‘enough!’ Although specific political groups are trying to capitalise on the movement, its outcome has yet to be seen,” historian Marcelo Carreiro told IPS.

For his part, economist Adhemar Mineiro said: “The government would do well to depart from the tracks to which it returned with the old discourse of adjustment and competitiveness, and address the masses on the streets to discuss a new development model.”

Trade unions’ and social organisations’ ability to call people out on the streets will be seen on Jul. 11, when they have convened a national day of protests and strikes.

“We are aware that the media and conservative and rightwing sectors are attempting to influence the mobilisations with goals that are opposed to the interests of the majority of the Brazilian people,” said the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT) central trade union, one of the 77 organisations behind the Jul. 11 strike.

That is why “the organised participation of the working class is vitally important in this new scenario, to ensure a positive outcome for this situation,” it said.

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

Republished with permission from: Common Dreams

Ex-UK MP slams ban on Iranian channels

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Former British Conservative MP Derek Conway condemned the decision by the international Satellite providers to take dozens of Iranian channels, including Press TV, off the air.

Speaking on Press TVâ„¢s weekly debate program Comment, Conway said, Å“I just wonder as someone whoâ„¢s been involved in politics for 40 years of my life, how you can preach about freedom of speech, if you donâ„¢t encourage it”.

Å“You donâ„¢t have to like what Iran says. What people have to say is of interest and you listen and maybe you disagree, maybe you go somewhere else for a view, itâ„¢s called freedom of speech”, he added.

Conway, also a TV presenter, denounced the British and US governments for pressurizing satellite companies to close down any sort of broadcast that has Å“an Iranian or Farsi implication”, saying some viewers like to listen to programs in their Mother language.

The removal of Iranian satellite channels has been tied to American sanctions against the Iranian government, passed by US President Obama in 2012.

Iranian officials say they are determined to take legal action against the illegal media ban and are preparing to take the case to the United Nations (UN).

Press TV and other Iranian satellite channels have been taken off the air regardless of mutual contracts and agreements in several Western countries including Britain, France, Germany and Spain.

BGH/MOS/HE

Republished with permission from: Press TV

US airstrike kills 2 in east Afghanistan

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]At least two people have been killed when American forces launched an airstrike in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Paktia, Press TV reports.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Italy consumer spending drops

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Italyâ„¢s consumer spending in 2012 has dropped by nearly three percent, as the European countryâ„¢s economy continues to fight recession, Press TV reports.

According to a recent report by the Italian bureau of statistics, Istat, more than 62 percent of Italian households cut back on food quality or quantity in 2012.

Å“Italians are saving on highly nutritious foods such as olive oil, meat, and fish, and this can be very detrimental to the health of kids and families. Today, paying less is more important than buying quality food,” consumer association Federconsumatoriâ„¢s Sergio Veroli said.

As a result of hard economic times and high living costs, many Italians consumers are now shopping at discount stores.

Å“The widening of the gap between rich and poor in Italy is becoming more evident by the day,” Veroli added.

This is while Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta has introduced anti-crisis measures aimed at improving the countryâ„¢s economy. The package includes more than 80 measures, designed to tackle problems such as Italyâ„¢s growing unemployment.

Italy is suffering from a growing jobless rate, which soared to 12 percent in April. This means that four in 10 people between the ages of 15 and 24 are unemployed.

Italy started to experience recession after its economy contracted by 0.2 percent in the third quarter of 2011 and by 0.7 percent in the fourth quarter of the same year.

The European financial crisis began in early 2008. Insolvency now threatens heavily debt-ridden countries such as Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, and Spain.

The worsening debt crisis has forced EU governments to adopt harsh austerity measures and tough economic reforms, which have triggered massive demonstrations in many European countries.

SZH/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Five killed in Iraq bomb attacks

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Iraqis inspect the site of a car bomb attack in the Al-Haq square in Samarra, north of Baghdad, on July 5, 2013.

At least five people have been killed in two bomb attacks north of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, security and medical officials say.

The incidents came on Saturday, only a day after dozens of people were killed in a string of attacks across the country.

Some four people were killed after a roadside bomb exploded in the northern city of Kirkuk, some 236 km north of Baghdad.

Another bomb attack took place in Tikrit, also north of Baghdad, killing a police officer and injuring two others.

On Friday, some 30 people were killed and several others injured in a wave of violence. The attacks included a car bomb explosion in the Graiat area of north Baghdad, where 15 people lost their lives and 32 others injured.

According to AFP figures citing security and medical sources, at least 160 people have been killed and more than 400 others injured in Iraq attacks since the beginning of July.

Iraq has seen a surge in violence since the start of the year, with the UN reporting that more than 2,500 people were killed from April through June, the highest figure since 2008.

On Thursday, attacks killed five people, including two policemen, and injured 20 others in the country.

Last month, UN Special Representative to Iraq Martin Kobler advised Iraqâ„¢s leaders to hold meetings to address the countryâ„¢s problems, including the car bomb attacks.

SAB/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

If Zimmerman Walks, Media-inspired Riots Anticipated

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The city of Sanford, Florida, already has a secret law-enforcement plan to deal with potential riots and unrest in the wake of a possible acquittal of George Zimmerman. Miami has efforts to keep the peace underway as well.

Across America, pundits and analysts have been warning that a “not guilty” verdict in the controversial case could set off an explosive wave of deadly violence rivaling the mass riots that ensued following the 1992 Rodney King trial. If mayhem does strike, analysts say the establishment media, President Obama, and assorted race-profiteers would bear much of the blame.

Well before the verdict is announced, agitators and provocateurs are already using social-media services to broadcast their intentions to unleash chaos and death. One Facebook page being investigated by authorities, for example, was entitled “RIOT for Trayvon.” In its description, the page read: “They don’t think we will tear this mutha —– [expletive deleted] up! LIKE IF YOU READY TO RIDE! LETS FLEX OUR MUSCLE! WHAT, YOU SCARED?” Other pages brazenly call for murder.

On Twitter, meanwhile, violent messages from self-styled Trayvon Martin supporters have also been calling for violence, mayhem, and killing if the jury refuses to convict Zimmerman of second-degree murder – a prospect that appears increasingly likely as the prosecution’s case implodes. Twichy, a site that compiles tweets related to major news stories, collected a sample of some of the messages, more than a few of which include racist remarks aimed at Zimmerman, whites, and Hispanics.

“If #Zimmerman get off ima shoot the first #hispanic/white i see,” reads one such message. “Trayvon Martin need justice! Gimme me tha pistol ill kill Zimmerman myself!” says another. “If Zimmerman win, I’m gonna go kill a white a kid by mistake,” reads a third. “If #zimmerman get off ima kill him myself since no one wanna take care of his Mexican burrito eatin a** [expletive deleted],” another user tweeted. Countless similar death threats continue to be made.

In Sanford, where Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin last year in what he maintains was self-defense, city officials have been preparing for months. Top local officials interviewed by CNN recently offered some insight into the preparations, showing teams of police officers fanning out across the city to knock on doors and talk to residents prior to the verdict being announced. Local pastors are also being recruited by authorities to help keep the peace.  

“Our worst fear is that we will have people from outside of the community coming in and stirring up … violence in the community,” said Sanford Police Chief Cecil Smith, refusing to offer more details about law-enforcement plans. City Manager Norton Bonaparte said Rodney King-type riots were “certainly a possibility.” Mayor Jeff Triplett had similar concerns, telling CNN that a single person could provoke a firestorm and that Sanford was a “tinderbox” last year.

In Miami, where a 1980 riot following a jury verdict resulted in 18 deaths and $100 million in property damages, authorities are already working feverishly to keep order, too. Last year, before Zimmerman was charged with a crime, dozens of young people looted a business, supposedly as some sort of “Justice for Trayvon” protest. Martin lived in Miami but was in Sanford after being suspended from school. 

Anticipating potential violence surrounding the Zimmerman trial, the so-called “Miami-Dade Community Relations Board” is now reaching out to influential figures throughout the area – pastors, sports figures, and others – in a bid to defuse tensions. Among other strategies, officials are working on a social-media campaign using the Twitter hash tag “#keepcalmfortrayvon.”

“We want people to respond in a positive way,” board member Dr. Walter Richardson told CBS Miami about the efforts to prevent widespread disorder after the verdict is announced. “If they have frustrations they want to vent, we want them to do that in an orderly and organized way. So the message is: Peace for Trayvon…. We want peace for Trayvon.”

Meanwhile, some analysts are predicting massive riots outside of Florida as well. Licensed private detective and former Chicago police officer Paul Huebl, for example, writing in Crime File News, pointed to the danger signs – violent Twitter posts, outrageous media “reporting,” Obama’s half-baked comments about the case, and more – to argue that major unrest was all but inevitable at this point.  

“With today’s social media I fully expect organized race rioting to begin in every major city to dwarf the Rodney King and the Martin Luther King riots of past decades,” he wrote in the widely cited piece. “If you live in a large city be prepared to evacuate or put up a fight to win. You will need firearms, fire-suppression equipment along with lots of food and water. Police resources will be slow and outgunned everywhere.”

Huebl, whose comments went “viral” after being picked up in the alternative media, warned that the looming verdict could spark bigger problems than riots. “America is about to see some combat-related population control like we’ve not seen since the Civil War. Martial Law can’t be far behind complete with major efforts at gun grabbing,” he continued. “This may be a turning point in America. Freedom will either be retaken or lost for our lifetimes and our children’s.”

Whether or not Huebl’s predictions are overblown, as The New American reported last year, white and black racists have been preparing for a “race war” over the killing of Martin since as early as April 2012. The virulently racist “New Black Panther Party” (NBPP) and “National Socialist Movement” (NSM) – both believed to be heavily infiltrated by federal agencies – openly claimed all-out “race war” was coming as the press, Obama, and race profiteers seized on the Zimmerman-Martin case over manufactured “racial overtones,” conveniently ignoring the thousands of other blacks killed in the United States each year, mostly by other blacks. 

Of course, the increasingly discredited establishment media bears most of the responsibility, according to analysts. With its attempts to make the trial about race – even to the point of outright, blatant deception, as in the case of NBC editing Zimmerman’s 911 call – the national press continues to use years-old photos of Martin as an innocent-looking child rather than more recent pictures. Countless analysts and pundits say the media’s pathetic and dishonest coverage of the case is helping to foment potential chaos. That might even be the plan.   

“The media is totally invested in George Zimmerman being convicted as a racist ‘white Hispanic,’” noted conservative talk-radio titan Rush Limbaugh, referring to a recent ABC broadcast that appeared desperate for rioting. “They are totally invested, and it looks like the prosecution’s case is just imploding – and, as such, there’s panic now. So much so, ladies and gentlemen, so much so, that there is now talk and agitating for race riots…. They’re agitating for riots already.”

Race profiteers such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, whose lucrative careers depend on continually fomenting racial division and hatred, have also played a key role in the escalating tensions. Even President Obama, who outrageously injected himself into the case by saying, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” has also been blasted by analysts and commentators for stoking racial unrest.

If and when chaos erupts following the verdict – a distinct possibility even if Zimmerman were to be convicted, some analysts say – it would hardly be the first time in U.S. history that a coalition of race-mongers and the establishment media helped fan the flames. Perhaps the most spectacular example, the 1992 Los Angeles riots, bears remarkable similarities in terms of the deceptive reporting, the paid race agitators, and the explosive cocktail resulting mostly from the ignorance and behind-the-scenes organization. A verdict in the Zimmerman trial is expected in the coming days or weeks.  

Photo of California Highway Patrol officer standing guarding during 1992 Los Angeles riots: AP Images

 Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, politics, and more. He can be reached at
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Related articles:

Anarchy in Los Angeles: Who Fanned the Flames, and Why?

Zimmerman Prosecution Imploding, Analysts Say

Racists Prepare for “Race War” Over Florida Shooting

Star Witness Against Zimmerman Flops Big Time

Amid Controversy, Zimmerman Murder Trial Begins

Judge in Trayvon Martin Case Rules Some Evidence Off Limits

First Anniversary of Florida Shooting Still Raises Questions

Zimmerman Injury Photo Raises Questions About Prosecution, Media

Republished with permission from: The New American

1/3 UK children consider suicide by 16

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Up to one-third of children in Britain have either considered or attempted suicide.

Up to one third of children in Britain have either considered or attempted to commit suicide when they were under the age of 16, a study has found.

According to the latest study for the brand-new mental health charity service MindFull, 32 percent of youths in Britain have thought about taking their own lives.

Moreover, the study found that 29 percent of British teenagers harmed themselves on purpose, while over 12 percent suffered from thoughts of despair, such as feeling like they were failures on almost a daily basis when they were under the age of 16.

The study also found that out of the 850,000 teenagers in Britain with diagnosable mental health issues, nearly 75 percent receive no treatment because of the lack of support for those in need of help.

Founder and chief executive of MindFull, Emma-Jane Cross said, Å“too many children” are let down or simply ignored when they want to speak out about how they feel.

Å“Itâ„¢s unacceptable that so many [young people] are having to resort to harming themselves on purpose in order to cope, or worse still are thinking about ending their own live,” she added.

Earlier in January, figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has shown there were 6,045 suicide attempts in 15 year-olds and over in Britain in 2011, up by 437 to 6,045, indicating an increase of 7.2 percent when compared with the previous year.

BGH/MOS/HE

Republished with permission from: Press TV

From Boardroom to Field: Manufacturing the Global Food and Agriculture Crisis

Countercurrents and Global Research 6/7/2013 and The 4th Media and The Market Oracle 7/7/2013

In 2012, Professsor Seralini of the University of Caen in France led a team that carried out research into the health impacts on rats fed GMOs (genetically modified organisms) (1). The two-year long study concluded that rats fed GMOs experienced serious health problems compared to those fed non GM food. Now comes a new major peer-reviewed study that has appeared in another respected journal. This study throws into question the claim often forwarded by the biotech sector that GMO technology increases production and is beneficial to agriculture.


Researchers at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand have found that the GM strategy used in North American staple crop production is limiting yields and increasing pesticide use compared to non-GM farming in Western Europe. Led by Professor Jack Heinemann, the study’s findings have been published in the June edition of the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability (2). The research analysed data on agricultural productivity in North America andWestern Europe over the last 50 years.  

Heinemann states his team found that the combination of non-GM seed and management practices used by Western Europe is increasing corn yields faster than the use of the GM-led package chosen by the US. The research showed rapeseed (canola) yields increasing faster in Europe without GM than in the GM-led package chosen by Canada. What is more, the study finds that it is decreasing chemical herbicide and achieving even larger declines in insecticide use without sacrificing yield gains, while chemical herbicide use in the US has increased with GM seed.

According to Heinemann, Europe has learned to grow more food per hectare and use fewer chemicals in the process. On the other hand, the US choices in biotechnology are causing it to fall behind Europe in productivity and sustainability.
The Heinemann team’s report notes that incentives in North America are leading to a reliance on GM seeds and management practices that are inferior to those being adopted under the incentive systems in Europe. This is also affecting non GM crops. US yield in non-GM wheat is falling further behindEurope, “demonstrating that American choices in biotechnology penalise both GM and non-GM crop types relative to Europe,” according to Professor Heinemann.
He goes on to state that the decrease in annual variation in yield suggests that Europe has a superior combination of seed and crop management technology and is better suited to withstand weather variations. This is important because annual variations cause price speculations that can drive hundreds of millions of people into food poverty.
The report also highlights some grave concerns about the impact of modern agriculture per se in terms of the general move towards depleted genetic diversity and the consequently potential catastrophic risk to staple food crops. Of the nearly 10,000 wheat varieties in use in China in 1949, only 1,000 remained in the 1970s. In the US, 95 percent of the cabbage, 91 percent of the field maize, 94 percent of the pea and 81 percent of the tomato varieties cultivated in the last century have been lost. GMOs and the control of seeds through patents have restricted farmer choice and prevented seed saving. This has exacerbated this problem.
Heinemann concludes that we need a diversity of practices for growing and making food that GM does not support. We also need systems that are useful, not just profit-making biotechnologies, and which provide a resilient supply to feed the world well.
Despite the evidence, governments capitulate
Given the mounting evidence that questions the efficacy and safety of GMOs (3,4,5,6,7), it raises the issue why certain governments are siding with the biotech sector to allow GMOs to be made available on commercial markets. It is simply not the case that country after country is accepting GMOs on the basis of scientific evidence, as scientists-cum-lobbyists for the GM sector often state (8). If scientific evidence were to be determining factor, few if any countries would have sanctioned GMOs.  
Part of the answer lies in the fact that the powerful US biotech sector continues to forward its agenda that GMOs are a frontier technology that will save humanity from famine and hunger. This is despite evidence that most of the world’s hunger is the product of profiteering industrial chemical agriculture and the global structuring of food production and distribution under the banner of ‘free trade’ and ‘structural adjustment’ (9,10), or as many of us know it brow beating and structural dependency.
Yet, the mantra of GM as the saviour of humanity persists courtesy of the GM sector’s puppet politicians and regulatory bodies (11). The US is pushing for lop-sided bilateral trade agreements with other countries not only to generally tie economies into US economic hegemony in an attempt to boost its ailing economy and flagging currency, but more specifically to get nations to ‘accept’ GMOs. Through behind-closed-door deals (12,13) coercion (14) or the hijack of regulatory bodies (15), there has been some success, and many think it could be just a matter of time before other countries, not least India, capitulate to allow GM food crops onto the commercial market.
In fact, regardless of any legal statute, it may be and probably is already happening in India, not least via contamination (16). However, if contamination by means of illegal planting and open field ‘testing’ fails to get GMOs on to the commercial market via the back door, the GM sector is attempting to cover all angles. Immediately after a moratorium on BT Brinjal was announced in 2010, a Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill suddenly emerged. The BRAI Bill could not be passed in 2010 and 2011 because of objections, but it has surfaced again as a 2013 Bill. Environmentalist Vandana Shiva argues that it not so much constitutes a Biotechnology Regulation Act, but a Biotechnology Deregulation Act, designed to dismantle the existing bio-safety regulation and give the green-light to the GM sector to press ahead with its agenda in the country.
By highlighting the GM sector interests behind the proposed legislation, Shiva says that the goal is to give the sector’s corporations immunity by freeing them of courts and democratic control under India’s federal structure. For those who follow such developments in India, it doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to appreciate that the future of Indian agriculture is in the wrong hands. Certain key scientists and top politicians have already been ideologically (or otherwise) ‘bought and paid for’ by proponents of the ‘Green Revolution’ and more recently the GM sector (7).
On a global level, with reports of wheat (17), rice (18) and maize (19) having been widely contaminated with GMOs, there seems to be a conscious ploy to contaminate so much of the world’s crops so that eventually GMOs take over regardless and render the pro/anti GM debate almost academic (20).
It seems that secretive trade deals, the hijack of official bodies designed to ensure the ‘public interest’ and bullying or intimidation are not enough. Contamination strategies are but one more way of achieving through closed and non-transparent methods what could not be possible by transparent and democratic means – simply because hundreds of millions of people do not want GMOs.
A generation down the line (or much sooner), will we looking at the health and environmental consequences of GMOs in the same way we now regard the impacts of the original ‘Green Revolution’?
“There are very good reasons why we have never introduced a Green Revolution into Africa, namely because there is broad consensus that the Green Revolution in India has been a failure, with Indian farmers in debt, bound to paying high costs for seed and pesticides, committing suicide at much higher rates, and resulting in a depleted water table and a poisoned environment, and by extension, higher rates of cancer.” Paula Crossfield, food policy writer/activist (21).
We don’t have to take Paula Crossfield’s word for it, though. Punjab was the ‘Green Revolution’s’ original poster boy, but is fast becoming transformed from a food bowl to a cancer epicenter and now reels under an agrarian crisis marked by discontent, debt, water shortages, contaminated water, diseased soils and pest infested cops (22,23,24).
In the meantime, big ‘ag’ in collusion with big pharma will continue to control our food and define our healthcare by pushing their highly profitable ‘miracle solutions’ for the health and environmental problems which they conspired to create in the first place. It is all part of the wider corporate-elite agenda to colonise and control every facet of human existence.  
Notes

'36 Egyptians killed in Friday protests'

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The body of a supporter of the ousted President Mohamed Morsi is seen on the ground after he was shot dead, allegedly by police, during the clashes in Cairo on Friday.

Egypt Health Ministry says at least three dozen people have been killed and hundreds other injured after supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi staged mass rallies against his removal.

Mohammad Sultan, deputy head of Egyptâ„¢s ambulance authority, said in a statement that at least 36 people were killed and over 1,100 more wounded in the violence across the North African country on Friday.

The casualties came after skirmishes and violent clashes broke out in the capital city of Cairo, Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast, and the Sinai Peninsula.

Meanwhile, supporters of ousted president Morsi have pledged to stage bigger protests in the country, following what they call a military coup against the overthrown leader.

The pro-Morsi demonstrators have said they would continue their campaign until their leader is restored to power. The protest rallies will be held in response to Muslim Brotherhoodâ„¢s call for continued rallies until the ousted president is brought back to power.

Morsi was unseated on July 3, and the chief justice of Egyptâ„¢s Supreme Constitutional Court, Adly Mansour, was sworn in as interim president of Egypt on July 4.

Morsi is reportedly being held Å“preventively” by the military. Senior army officials say he might face formal charges over accusations made by his opponents.

Several arrest warrants have been issued for members of Muslim Brotherhood.

Egyptian troops and security forces have recently expanded their roundup of top political figures from Muslim Brotherhood that had fielded Morsi for office.

JR/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Bashar Al Assad Interview on Political Islam, The Egyptian Crisis and Foreign Intervention

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“Syria still home for all..what is taking place in Egypt the fall of so-called Political Islam”

President Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to Syrian al-Thawra daily. The following is the full text of the speech.

Interviewer: During this difficult time of crisis, it has often been said that Syria can accommodate everyone, but in reality it has not embraced all of its citizens. What has led us to this point?

President al-Assad: First of all, I would like to welcome you in my office. I am particularly pleased that this interview coincides with the 50th anniversary of Al-Thawra newspaper. This is a momentous occasion for every patriotic Syrian irrespective of their political affiliation.

We often view nations as a group of people occupying a certain territory; whereas in fact a nation is about a sense of belonging and of culture which both ultimately form a collective identity. With a strong sense of belonging, we can ensure a united country that includes everyone. When the colonial powers left Syria, it was not to liberate the country but to reoccupy it through other means.

One of their core strategies was to divide and conquer. By division, I do not mean redrawing national borders but rather fragmentation of identity, which is far more dangerous.

When we live in the same territory but have different identities, we are already a divided country because each group isolates itself from the rest. When this happens, it is right to say that the country does not accommodate everyone.

In this context colonialism has been successful in creating separatist groups that consider their ideologies and values as solely and legitimately representing the country and hence rejecting all other groups. This success has not happened overnight, but rather during several stages.

The first of which was the Omayyad dynasty, where identities were tampered with, chasms created and many common elements destroyed resulting in fragmentation and ultimately the collapse of the Omayyad State. The same also applies for the Abbasid caliphate in ancient history and the fall of Palestine in modern history.

The rifts we have witnessed in modern history have come with the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood and the negative role they have played after the independence of many Arab countries like Syria. They created the first split between Pan-Arabism and Islam, working hard to form a country for Islamists and another for nationalists. These attempts continued when colonist powers in Lebanon attempted to create a country for Muslims and another for Christians. The implications of the Muslim Brotherhood have transpired, the most dangerous of which is the presence of Al Qaeda which was generously supported by the West on the back of the Islamic revolution in Iran. After this revolution, Iran emerged as a firm supporter of the Palestinian cause, the essence of Arab identity. They attempted to incite sectarian strife between Sunnis and Shiites and to damage the relationship between Arabs and Persians. After the 9/11 events and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, these rifts were extended between the takfiris and all other Muslim sects.

The more schism in a country, the less it is able to accommodate its entire people. On the contrary, Syria is still accommodating to all Syrians due to people’s ability to grasp these realities and reject this strife hence preventing it from materializing. Syria remains for all Syrians as long as we can prevent these pockets of extremisms from spreading.

Interviewer: Mr President today is the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of Al-Thawra Newspaper. You first stated that what is happening in Syria is not a revolution; certainly you had a conceptual foundation behind these statements. Here let me reference the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, during his first meeting with the opposition delegation in Moscow when they introduced themselves as revolutionaries; he asked them, “If you are revolutionaries representing a revolution, why do you need the outside world?” There is a historical saying: no state in the world can endure a popular revolution. I personally entirely subscribe to this theory. What made you say that it was not a revolution from the inception?

President al-Assad: From a historical perspective, any genuine revolution is purely internal and cannot be linked externally by any means, as manifested by the Russian, French and even the Iranian revolutions. Real revolutions are intrinsic, spontaneous, and are led by intellectual and ideological elites. What occurred in Syria since the outset of the crisis was flagrant external interference. There were attempts to hide this, but it has become absolutely clear. This is evident by the fact that we continuously hear external extrinsic statements regarding what should and should not be done in Syria.

Secondly, the real revolution of 1963 — which your newspaper is named after — was a revolution that empowered the country, society and human values. It promoted science and knowledge by building thousands of schools, it brought light to the Urban and rural areas of Syria by building electricity lines and networks, it strengthened the economy by providing job opportunities according to competencies. It supported the wider foundations of society including farmers, labourers and skilled-workers. The revolution at the time built an army indoctrinated in national values that fought the fiercest of battles, it stood unwavering in those difficult circumstances and it won in the 1973 war. We are now perhaps enduring the most challenging circumstances in which the army has shown that its revolutionary foundations and ideological values are as strong as ever.

Revolutions are about building countries and societies, not about destroying them; so how can we call what is happening in Syria a revolution? Attempts to package the events on the ground as a part of a revolution have been futile from the beginning.

Interviewer: Mr President, do you not believe that there were some in the country, even a small minority, who believed in the idea of the revolution, and hence contributed to it and embraced it in the beginning?

President al-Assad: Exactly, and this leads us back to the question of identity. What you are depicting happened for one of two reasons, both of which bear extremism. Either because there are some who completely abandoned their identity and embraced a “Western Dream” even with all its flaws or there are those who went in exactly the opposite direction and abandoned their identity and embraced religious extremism, which is inherently more dangerous and potent. Both trends are inflammatory. Without a doubt there are numerous aspects of western civilization and advancements that we should benefit from, but to be dazzled by the West and to drop our own identity, this would just be another category of extremism.

Our original Arab identity represents the amalgamation of civilizations of thousands of years and is hence built on moderation in all aspects: social, cultural, political and religious. When this identity is being torn in any of the two directions I mentioned, the result will be these foci of extremism you mentioned. This is my greatest concern; extremism in following the West is as destructive to our identity as religious extremism and they both lead to turbulence, which is what we are witnessing in Syria and other countries. This is not exclusive to Syria, but perhaps the element of external interference in Syria was stronger than in other countries.

Interviewer: Nonetheless Mr President, do you agree that the concepts and forms of revolutions have changed significantly from previous examples such as the Russian or French Revolution? Is it not possible to consider what is happening in Syria a revolution according to different concepts? Is it necessary for all revolutions in history to follow the same methods and paths?

President al-Assad: Everything in the world changes however, there are fundamental human principles that should remain constant. Religions do not change, although they deal with change. Principles do not change, however mechanisms need to be adjusted to keep up with time.

If for the sake of argument we are to accept the notion that the concept of revolutions change, which would then make what is happening in Syria a revolution, we should then accept that the Israeli acts against Palestinians constitute an Israeli revolution against Palestinian oppression, or that the American invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan was a revolution. To accept the fact that conditions and circumstances are perpetuated or altered should not mean that principles are fundamentally undermined.

The West and all its propaganda have always attempted to realign the facts upside down to serve their agenda. Rights become wrongs and wrongs become rights that then legitimize their political practices. If they do that, it doesn’t mean that we should sleepwalk with them.

Interviewer: Despite this, Mr President, some outside Syria and even inside Syria have called it — and still do — a revolution. This is a real controversy that needs clarification.

President al-Assad: To correct your question, even the western media and statements by western officials hostile to Syria could not ignore that it was not a revolution. The term “revolution’s is no longer used. They have now shifted towards discussing terrorism, adopting the American notion of differentiating between ‘good terrorists’ and ‘bad terrorists.’ So if those hostile to Syria have been able to see that this is not a revolution, it is only natural that most Syrians would be able to see this too.

There are of course those who refuse to see the reality because it serves their own agendas. Some embrace the same doctrines as the terrorists — the takfiri extremist ideology, so it is expected that they would believe this to be a revolution. There are others who suffer from ignorance and lack of judgement, who see through their eyes yet have a mental blackout. These groups bear little significance and are gradually shrinking. In any case, we are not significantly concerned by external factors because the events are more relevant to those inside who directly influence the events. The Syrian people are the ones fighting this battle and they are the ones persevering.

Interviewer: With regards to the external factors, it is well known that there are foreign fighters in Syria, possibly up to tens of thousands according to Western estimates. Mr President, why has Syria turned into a land for Jihad, and how has that transpired in such a short period of time?

President al-Assad: Syria has not turned into a land for Jihad. Jihad usually denotes benevolence; it is about construction, development, defending the country and the messages advocated in religion relating to virtuousness, justice and equality. What is happening in Syria is the complete opposite to the concept of jihad; Syria has turned into a land for terrorism.

This is due to several reasons. Chaos is a fertile environment for terrorism to breed. When the state was weakened in Afghanistan, terrorism flourished. The same happened in Iraq after the invasion. As they attempted to weaken Syria, the ensuing chaos transformed into terrorism.

Additionally, there are countries supporting terrorism in Syria in order to erode its historic characteristics of strength and immunity. These characteristics have always been evident in the international arena through our stances and nationally through our culture and intellectual thought. This attempted erosion is targeting our national unity, our infrastructure, our economy and the services that the state has always provided. Those who are hostile to Syria would happily watch its destruction, even in the long run. Another reason for western countries to support terrorism in Syria is their belief that these terrorist groups, which have been a security threat to them for decades, can be killed in Syria, hence shifting the battleground away from their own countries and destroying Syria in the process.

Interviewer: However, Mr President, not all those fighting in Syria are foreign fighters. We have seen a Syrian eating the heart of another Syrian. What has driven us to this phase?

President al-Assad: Often when discussing the Syrian crisis, I start by defining it as a crisis of morals, before discussing extremism, takfiri ideology and external intervention. All of these could never conceivably penetrate our society if it was protected by strong morals. A moral crisis paves the way for foreign interference in our internal affairs, it paves the way for people to be controlled by money and hatred and it paves the way for mercenaries who have lost their national and patriotic principles. When you lose your moral compass, you lose your humanity and turn into another creature, not even into an animal. Animals do not eat their brothers’ flesh out of hatred; they do so out of hunger. When you lose your morals and your principles, you lose the real value of religion. Religions came to reinforce humanity and cannot by any means be the pretext to behead humans and eat human flesh. When we lose the righteousness of religion, as is happening with some of these groups, religion becomes a mere façade. Religion would never instruct human beings to commit such acts.

Interviewer: When you refer to “eating brother’s flesh out of hatred” does this imply an instinct of hatred?

President al-Assad: Contrary to correct social and religious beliefs that are built on reason, distorted beliefs make humans hostile to others when they differ in doctrine. Hatred, not instinct, makes humans lose their sanity and drives them to behead others and eat human flesh. Human instinct is based on virtue as opposed to hostility. Weak morals and principles, and distorted beliefs are what drive humans away from sanity.

Interviewer: Mr President going back to your definition of jihad in its true meaning, we find unfortunately that the more prevalent form is based on fighting and killing. What can be done about this?

President al-Assad: The solution is to seek guidance from the Quran where the clear words of God resonate. Islam is a religion of mercy and forgiveness; the word “mercy” is cited tens of times in the Quran. Islam came to promote human values, enshrine mercy and love, and prevent killing. Did the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) not say in the Hadith al-Sharif: “The demise of the universe is easier for God to condone than the wrongful killing of a believer?” The Quran and the Hadith are both clear in promoting love, forgiveness, justice and humanity. Those who claim to emulate the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) should remember his behaviour as a human being before and after he became a prophet, they will find that his message was primarily based on human morals and principals.

I would like to pose a question to you and your readers: do these Wahabis and Takfiris and their acts resemble in any shape or form our great Prophet’s conduct throughout his life, either before or after he became a prophet? During my meetings with clerics in Syria and the Levant, I have often said that the Prophet Muhammad’s life should be studied in greater depth at all levels, by clerics and students alike, because the Prophet did not only convey the words of God, he embodied their meaning and practiced what he preached. If we go back to the Quran, the Hadith and the life and conduct of the Prophet, we will see the complete opposite of what these terrorists are practicing.

Interviewer: Who is responsible for this call to return to the Quran and the Prophet’s conduct?

President al-Assad:When a criminal, a thief or an extremist emerges from the fold of society, it is a collective social responsibility led by the government since it is responsible for overseeing all aspects, including religion. The government shares this responsibility with various religious institutions, including the Ministry of Religious Endowments, religious schools and institutes including those that have recently been licensed. These bodies are responsible for ensuring that our religious scholars are qualified to promote the correct religious ideology and focus on its essence rather than on the extremism that has infiltrated areas of our public life.

Interviewer: Some argue that the government carries the greatest responsibility in the sense that this extremist religious environment grew before the eyes of the authorities. They cite examples of religious schools that are not subject to oversight and do not have the proper curricula, or the building of mosques to avoid paying taxes.

President al-Assad: I have heard this many times during various meetings with people in the current crisis, that the government should not have encouraged these religious schools and that we are now seeing the consequences of this policy. This is unequivocally incorrect. In fact quite the contrary, throughout the crisis we have not had a single incident caused by any of the official religious bodies. More importantly, they have understood the genuine reasons behind the crisis and have worked effectively to contain it.

In a previous interview, I discussed the role of religious clerics. As for religious institutions, they have not produced any form of chaos or contributed to spreading sectarianism. The majority of those who emanated from mosques at the beginning chanting “Allah Akbar” did so to incite chaos and hatred whilst knowing nothing of religion. Others attended mosques to protest and chant “Allah Akbar” but in reality they did not know how to pray.

On the other hand, the religious institutions have existed for decades and they have been empowered and supported as far back as the1980’s during the Muslim Brotherhood crisis. The crisis at that time highlighted the importance of nurturing religious belief correctly since many Syrians were misled due to misguided religious awareness. The Muslim Brotherhood exploited these weaknesses in religious clerics and in society propagating themselves as strengthening religion in society against an “atheist” state fighting religion. Consequently, and based on the above, I believe that on the backdrop of this crisis, we need to embrace religion and religious institutions, and certainly not the opposite.

Interviewer: Mr President, decades ago sectarian strife afflicted Lebanon as it did in Iraq following the American invasion. Did we not realize that this would inevitably come to us? What have we done to confront it?

President al-Assad: Certainly, had we not feared this we would not have taken a strong stance against western policies that promoted this anarchy. We staunchly rejected the war on Iraq despite the serious American threats and great incentives at the time. We took this position not only because in principle we are against any aggression on Arab or friendly countries, but also because we were aware of the disastrous consequences that would follow.

Similarly we expressed concerns over the war on Afghanistan, especially during my meetings with American officials after 9/11. They expected us to be pleased that they would be attacking terrorists, especially since Syria from 1985 had repeatedly called for a clear definition of terrorism and the need to form an international alliance against it. This was not taken seriously at the time since terrorism had not yet struck within their borders. I have consistently warned American officials that the war on Afghanistan would promote and spread terrorism. Terrorism is like cancer, when you deal with the consequences rather than the root cause, it will only spread faster. Therefore, terrorism has to be rooted out and not just attacked. This cannot be achieved through war alone, but by education, culture, human interaction and prosperity. They did not pay attention to our concerns and we are still suffering from the consequences of Afghanistan. Again, in Iraq we warned that the situation would develop into sectarian tension and head towards partition, which we are slowly seeing. When we got involved in Lebanon in 1976 it was to protect Lebanon and also to safeguard Syria since that war had consequences on us from day one.

Therefore in answer to your question, we saw the dynamics you mentioned emerging, we stood against them and we intervened when it was warranted. However, you cannot completely isolate yourself from your neighbourhood. We endeavoured to prevent the events in Iraq from affecting Syria. It was possible to delay it but it was not possible to prevent it completely. Since 2004, some extremist elements started to emerge and ferment in Syria which at the beginning were non-Syrians and sadly with time a considerable part of them are now Syrian.

Interviewer: There were attempts before and during the crisis to draw Syria into this sectarian tension. More than two years into the crisis, they have been utilizing the example of Hezbollah to bolster the notion that it came to defend a certain sect. What is your view on this?

President al-Assad: They have used all methods in this region: direct and indirect occupation, threats, intimidation, as well attempts to breach our national security and culture. They have tried everything and Syria continues to be a source of hindrance to their objectives. Recent events in Arab countries were seen as an opportunity to strike Syria and undermine and weaken the axis of resistance in the region. The core of their objective now is redefine who is an enemy and who is an ally; Israel becomes the invisible enemy, even an ally for some, whilst the resistance becomes the enemy. Instead of representing a movement and an actor against Israeli occupation, the attempt is to project the resistance as the enemy, transforming it from a resistance movement to sectarian movement. This has not transpired and will not transpire. The Syrian people are not so easily misled or fooled. For us, the resistance and all our allies, our aims are clear and our route well defined. Regardless of what they propagate, we will achieve our goals in terms of our resistance and our internal wellbeing. We shall do this in our own way and without hesitation. Regardless of what they say, we will always act according to what is best for Syria.

Interviewer: Did we require fighters from Hezbollah?

President al-Assad: This is not the first time I have been asked this question and my answer is clear: the Syrian Army is fighting in several parts of the country, had we needed external support we would have been able to attain it. However, what happened in Al-Qseir is linked more to the resistance movement than the internal crisis in Syria. Al-Qseir is not as strategically important as they portrayed it to be.

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Interviewer: But in the West it was portrayed as the mother of all battles?

President al-Assad: Precisely, that’s because it has a bearing both on the internal crisis in Syria and on the resistance since it is a border town which is the back garden of the resistance. The resistance cannot be strong without an element of strategic depth to it, which is in Syria. Thus the area bears geo-strategic importance in the connection between Syria and Lebanon and specifically the resistance. That is the fundamental reason why the resistance had to join the battle because it affects them as much as it affects Syria. There involvement was necessary and we were completely transparent about this. We will not hesitate to do it again or shy away from it. However, if we needed the resistance as they tried to portray, why did we need it in Al-Qseir but not in Damascus, Aleppo or other key areas? We have a strong army that is supported by large number of National Defence Forces.

Interviewer: Mr President, despite what you have said, there are some in the opposition, most notably those who are outside Syria, who insist that a sectarian struggle is the core issue and that the government has engineered it to augment its own benefits.

President al-Assad: If the government creates sectarian strife in Syria, it would then be leading the country towards division. Our battles across all of Syria are principally to safeguard the country’s demographic diversity and unity, which essentially discredits this notion. Sectarian strife conspicuously negates the interest of the government. The government has an interest in keeping Syria united, strong and prosperous. A sectarian approach would result in us losing the battle not winning it. A government would be ignorant to adopt such a strategy and the Syrian government is certainly not. If a government works for the best interests of the nation, it does its best to ensure society’s unity and consequently ensures its own strength.

Interviewer: Frankly speaking Mr President, there are western accusations that when the protests erupted you subtly signalled to the minorities that they are under threat which drove them to support you. This notion renders you responsible for the schism in Syrian society?

President al-Assad: If there was any truth to this claim then we would have plunged into a civil war and the state would have collapsed. If for the sake of argument we apply the logic of minorities and majorities in Syria — which we completely reject, no minorities can protect the state. The government is maintained by the majority, not necessarily an ethnic, religious or sectarian majority, but by a popular majority.

Our country and our people have persevered because it is the majority that has supported the government and not the minority; this majority constitutes all sects in Syria. These notions of minorities and majorities are purely Western. How did they divide up Syria under the colonial French occupation? They divided it into sectarian based regions: an Alawite state, a Druze state, Damascus, Aleppo etc. Ninety years ago, our ancestors were vigilant and alert to the dangers of such a plan, it is inconceivable that today we less aware or vigilant. Such an attempt is predestined to fail exactly like it failed all those years ago, even when they tried to print new currency. This particular scenario would never transpire in Syria unless the takfiri or Muslim Brotherhood ideology prevails, which would lead to a division empirically similar to the fate of other Arab countries.

Interviewer: But these accusations that the government created a sectarian struggle, are not only from those bearing an extremist ideology but also from intellectuals who claim to be secularists.

President al-Assad: This is regrettably true. Most of the sectarian discourse today is not only by takfiri extremists, but also by those who claim to be secular. There are two groups that advocate sectarianism: the first regard themselves as secular — we have repeatedly stated that secularism is not against religions but rather a form of freedom of confession. The other group are ignorant people who claim to be religious without understanding the essence of religion.

The common element between the first group, which claims to be cultured and secular, and the second — which claims to understand the true essence of religion is ignorance; ignorance of religion leads to sectarianism. In this instance, I am not referring to religious doctrine, which is based on intellectual thought. The old religious scholars provided us with intellectual schools of thoughts that enriched our understanding of religion and religious practice, but did not promote sectarianism. What is important is that the majority of believers who understand the true essence of religion do not promote sectarianism, because they know as we do that sectarianism is the exact opposite of religion. Those who maintain a poor knowledge of religions adopt the concept of sectarianism parallel to those who boast about secularism without comprehending its true meaning or the true meaning of religion.

Interviewer: Taking into consideration these distorted concepts and perverse practices in our society from beheading and slaughtering to sectarianism and fragmentation, are we beginning to see the defeat of Arab Nationalism to the hands of fanaticism and takfiri ideology?

President al-Assad: Arab identity is endangered by three factors: firstly, an absolute deviation towards the West, secondly, the inclination towards extremism and thirdly, the performance of successive Arab governments which has led some to shift away from the core of Arab nationalism. These three deadly threats have dealt severe blows to Pan-Arabism, but Arab nationalism is still alive and this can be felt in the popular mood. Pan-Arabism will not collapse because it is deeply rooted in our Arab identity.

Interviewer:Mr President, since the inception of the crisis, there have been calls from Turkey to specifically engage with the Muslim Brotherhood, while Syria has categorically rejected dealing with them as a political entity. The Syrian government announced its intention to attend the Geneva talks with no pre-conditions. Will we talk to the Muslim Brotherhood?

President al-Assad: We deal with all parties. In fact, we engaged with the Muslim Brotherhood after they were defeated in Syria in 1982. We believe that dialogue is the method to direct parties onto the right track and national position. If we are to discuss Islam, they should refer back to the correct Islam for all Syrians.

This dialogue has never stopped, and there have been several attempts, but every time we realize that the Muslim Brotherhood have not abandoned their hypocrisy. Their main concern remains power and ruling rather than religion or the interests of the country. We engage with them as individuals and not as a political party, since our constitution and legislations ban political parties based on religious ideology.

This should not be understood as being anti-religion; on the contrary, we support religion. Religion is a calling, a higher calling to teach the word of God and should be elevated to a much higher level than ruling people’s daily lives. Religion is for all humanity and not exclusive to a certain group; it has a higher purpose than the details and nuances of our human lives which encompass wrongdoings, sins, perversities and whims. Religion should not be reduced to a political party. Religion augments moral values, which in turn reinforces politics, parties, the economy and prosperity. It is for these reasons that we do not recognise them as a political party. In terms of their practice, they are terrorists who killed thousands of Syrians under the same leadership that still exists outside Syria — we do not forget this.

So we will engage in dialogue with all parties relying on our existing knowledge of their real ideology and knowing that it is extremely unlikely they will — after close to a century of adopting their ideology — suddenly change and become moderate Muslims with national values.

As I mentioned earlier though, we have engaged with individuals within the Brotherhood and they have returned to Syria. They maintain their religious beliefs, which we respect, and have contributed to building the country rather than destroying it. As I have said before, the potential outcome of any dialogue will be subject to a public referendum, which will ensure that the electorate will decide what is right for the country.

Interviewer: Regarding the Muslim Brotherhood, how are you following the unfolding events in Egypt? What is your view of the situation?

President al-Assad: What is happening in Egypt is essentially the fall of political Islam; the type of governing system which the Muslim Brotherhood attempted to advocate regionally. I reiterate that religion should not be deprecated into a particular political practice. Religious preaching should be an independent process, kept away from the specific dynamics and intricacies of political manoeuvring.

This experience has failed quickly because it was founded on a flawed basis. Our perception of the Muslim Brotherhood extends broadly to developments in Egypt. Using religion for politics or a certain political party is inevitably destined to fail anywhere in the world.

Interviewer: Is it that the Muslim Brotherhood deceived the Egyptian people or have the Egyptians suddenly woken up to the reality of the Muslim Brotherhood?

President al-Assad: Countries such as Egypt, Iraq and Syria are strategically located and deeply ingrained in the history of the region and have been for thousands of years. Consequently, the peoples of these lands have a rich reservoir of knowledge, awareness, culture and human civilization, which make them immune to deceitful narratives. As the saying goes: you can deceive some people some of the time, but you cannot deceive everybody all of the time. This especially applies to the Egyptians who represent a civilization of thousands of years and a unique Arab nationalist ideology. What happened a year ago was an untestable consequence of the previous ruling party, now the picture has emerged clearer to the Egyptians, and the performance of the Muslim Brotherhood unveiled the lies they expounded at the start of the revolution. The Egyptians are an ancient people and they were able to quickly discover the reality for what it was.

Interviewer: And in record time.

President al-Assad: Yes, thanks to the Muslim Brotherhood!

Interviewer: Is it fair to say that the Muslim Brotherhood’s experience at governing has failed?

President al-Assad: We envisaged its failure before it even started. This type of governance is destined to fail since it is incompatible with human nature. The Muslim Brotherhood adopts hypocrisy and aims in reality to create schism in the Arab world. They were the first to raise the sectarian strife in Syria in the 70’s. At that time, sectarianism was not common discourse or phenomenon in Syria. Their objective is to create conflicts, however this is not resonant in societies that have a high level of public awareness, which is why we knew they would fail.

Interviewer: Some suggest that part of what is occurring in Egypt now is due to the decision taken to sever relationships with Syria. Reuters quoted a military source stating that the army began to change its stance following Morsi’s statements during his meeting with the Syrian opposition.

President al-Assad: I do not wish to speak on behalf of the Egyptians people, but I can tell you that when Muhammad Morsi severed relationships with Syria a few weeks ago, there were attempts by the Egyptians to reach a compromise. Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem revealed these details in his recent press conference. This implies that not everybody in the Egyptian government endorsed Morsi’s decision because it was effectively an incorrect decision. This was further echoed by criticism of the decision from Egyptian intellectuals and journalists who highlighted the strategic and historic nature of the relationship between the two countries.

The Pharaohs were aware of the strategic importance of military and political relations between Syria and Egypt, hence their battle of Kadesh (near Al-Qseir now) against the Hittites in 1380. The Hittites in Anatolia also realised the importance of their relationships with Syria. The Pharaohs realised that Syria represents Egypt’s strategic depth. The battle ended with no victor, culminating in one of the oldest agreements known to history between the Hittites and the Pharaohs in 1280. Whilst the Pharaohs were aware of the importance of Syria to them then, how could a person living in the 21st century not understand it today? It is shameful ignorance.

Interviewer: We have discussed the dialogue, done the groundwork, initiated the political process and taken some concrete steps, even clarified our position on the Geneva conference. To a large extent all of these measures are part of a wider political process. I would like to touch upon the humanitarian aspect: tolerance, forgiveness and reconciliation. Some have asked, Mr President, how can we reconcile both internally and externally?

President al-Assad: Internally speaking — and this is the most important for me — we mistakenly put all our eggs in the same basket. There are those who have killed, those who have vandalised but did not kill, there are those who carried arms but did not kill and those who facilitated the killing of others. So there are many different roles. In all instances that did not result in killing, the state can be lenient on the condition that offenders return to normal civilian life. In the instances of proven homicide, this is tied to the wishes of the victims’ families and the state cannot act on their behalf. However I have heard a significant number of families of martyrs, saying: “if our son’s or brother’s blood leads to a resolution of the problem then we are ready to forgive.” We must all learn from these families who have lost their children and their loved ones.

Forgiveness is essential in solving national crises, provided it is done at a popular level rather than at an official level in order to ensure its sustainability. It is a sign of strength and patriotism when we can put our national public interests above our own personal interests; this concept needs to be adopted by everybody. Like most other families, my family has been affected by the crisis, we have lost loved ones, but ultimately, similar to any other family, we need to put the interests of the country ahead of our personal loss. This needs to be applied both internally and externally.

The external side is more political. Foreign policy is not based on emotions but national interests. There are principles and interests and they are inextricably intertwined. It is unscrupulous for your principles to be against your interests, either your interests are wrong or your principles. Here, forgiveness is viewed positively as a humane and religious value. When forgiveness serves the relationships with a certain country, and therefore the interests of Syrians, there is no reason not to forgive, since the central focus of the state is the interest of its people. This is what we have done; we have received many politicians and met with several countries that were hostile to us. Our primary aim was always the unequivocal interest of the Syrian people.

Interviewer: Mr President, Syrians today have two primary concerns: one is the prevalence of terrorism and bloodshed on the streets, targeting state institutions, factories and other key locations. The second concern is the increasing cost of living. With regards to the economy, the unprecedented rise in the dollar exchange rate and the disastrous consequences? What do you say to the Syrian citizen on issues relating to the economy?

President al-Assad: In order to give an objective assessment, one has to start from the fundamentals. Firstly, for a citizen to be well off, the economy has to be healthy which requires stability and security. The economy can never flourish in turbulent times and in the absence of security.

Therefore our security threats are directly affecting us irrespective of the performance of any government with the best experts. Secondly, we know that certain countries tried to strike Syria, first through the idea of the revolution — which failed because people didn’t embrace it, and then they tried through supporting terrorism — which also failed because it was countered by the armed forces and local communities. Since they failed in both of those areas, their third attempt was the economy to ensure the greatest suffering against Syrians who supported their country. If we take into account these factors, it is inevitable that there is a heavy price to pay. In these circumstances, the best we can do is to limit the damage, either by dealing with the profiteers of the crisis or with the mistakes of officials.

We have to identify policies that are suitable for the present time and circumstance. Some make the mistake of assessing current policies and government performance in the same manner as before the crisis. This is unrealistic. We are in a completely different situation. It is unfeasible to continue in the same level of consumption as before, since this creates pressure on the economy and most significantly the Syrian pound. We need to change our lifestyle in order to alleviate the pressure and adapt to the circumstances until we can reach a solution based on restoring full security. We have to understand that our economic hardships will not ease until we can restore our stability.

This crisis has affected all Syrians irrespective of their political affiliations; even those who initially supported the alleged ‘revolution’ were struck by increased poverty, which was the catalyst for them to realize that they were losing out. It is unfortunate that there was a limited foci that only started to think objectively after they were struck by poverty. However, we must all collaborate to combat terrorism in order to restore the economy to its former strength.

We must identify the beneficiaries of the crisis and deal with them accordingly. It is paramount that the public cooperates with the state and refrain from relying on others to solve the problem. This is a real problem in our society; everyone relies on somebody else to solve their problems.

Similarly, unless our public officials collaborate with each other and with our citizens the hardship will only increase. We must all take the initiative and innovate in finding the best possible economic solutions to deal with these turbulent circumstances; this is where we must be creative in our solutions otherwise the crisis will force choices upon us. Again, the sooner we fight terrorism, the quicker the economy will recover stronger than before because we are a vibrant and intelligent people. We are a country with an indigenous civilization that was not imported from abroad. Regardless of the difficulties in the past, we built our country with our own money and expertise. Therefore, once we restore security, we can at the very minimum re-boost our economy to its former status.

Interviewer: What are the facts behind the oil and gas resources in the Syrian territorial waters, which have been documented and reported by a number of research centres and experts?

President al-Assad: This is correct, whether in our territorial waters or on Syrian soil. Initial studies have reported large gas reserves especially in the sea. We have seen this stretching from Egypt through Palestine along the coast. It is also reported that these resources are richer in the north. There is a notion that one of the reasons behind the crisis was these gas reserves and the fact that they should not be at the disposal of state opposed to Israeli and American policies. This has never been discussed directly with us, but from a logical perspective it cannot be ignored. It is still early to say.

Interviewer: I would like to discuss living conditions from a different angle. The government has increased salaries twice during the crisis. The first pay rise was expected and some thought that it was needed but the second was surprising and unforeseen to some especially since the government was able to accommodate this increase in the current conditions. Despite the difficulties there is hope in what comes after the crisis. Have we taken steps towards this? What are the plans for the future?

President al-Assad: Since we have been affected most by the destruction, the most vital part of the Syrian economy will be reconstruction. We have started to layout plans and where possible started implementation, though the security situation has hindered this. The necessary legislation has been passed, but again implementation requires better security conditions to facilitate the rebuilding process and ensure workers can operate freely.

Another important point you mentioned was the pay rise. For a country in the situation we are in to be able to continue to pay salaries and provide services — albeit of a lower quality than before, is a huge achievement. There are positive elements to gauge, however our aims are bigger and I believe we can collaborate collectively to achieve these.

Interviewer: Some attribute the responsibility of border control to the government, which contributed ultimately to the current economic situation and the absence of state control over markets and prices for instance. Were we taken by surprise in the crisis or was it caused by negligence from the relevant government bodies?

President al-Assad: Certainly there were deficiencies with regards to the performance of certain state institutions before the crisis, which I regularly mentioned, including corruption, negligence, procrastination and the challenge of finding the right and suitable people. The crisis has unveiled and perpetuated these defects, which is not surprising. However it is not realistic to assess the role of the government and its influence without taking into consideration the extrinsic orientations of the crisis, the crisis is not confined to strictly internal issues of corruption, chaos, and lack of security or the presence of gangs as is the case for other countries. Our situation is completely different as we are facing an external war manifested by internal tools and the government is defending the country. So it would be inaccurate to evaluate it in the same way.

The presence of the state, its influence and power is judged by whether the government has changed its principles. The Syrian government has not changed its principles, neither internally nor externally. Our position towards the resistance movement has not changed, our position on Palestine is the same, we remain committed towards the larger sections of society — labourers and farmers, we continue to pay salaries and provide public services despite the widespread destruction, we have launched new projects and have planned for others; all of this has been achieved within our own means. Therefore our government is not absent but rather in a state of war.

Interviewer: Our state institutions are being vandalised and destroyed. Some perceive that these manifestations are the beginning of the collapse of the Syrian state.

President al-Assad: Their objective was to destroy our infrastructure, undermine our security, drain our economy and create chaos that would all lead to a failed state; none of this has materialised. Day to day life continues, albeit with greater challenges. The economy is still functioning despite severe difficulties, which nobody expected us to withstand. Personal safety is a big issue, but workers, employees and business people still go to work. The Syrian people have proven that they have enormous energy and resilience. After explosions, once the casualties have been evacuated and the debris cleared, daily life continues. We haven’t seen this in Syria before and we didn’t know this about ourselves. People go to work despite the risks of a terrorist attacks, suicide bombings or mortar shelling. They go to work and about their daily business with a strong belief in fate and therefore never fall into a state of despair.

All countermeasures have been deployed against us including the use of economic, military and psychological warfare. The only thing they have not tried is direct intervention, which is beyond their means for various reasons; as I have said before, starting a war is different to ending it. No one can end a war, and no one knows where it will end. This has critical and dangerous bearings, which is why there is a lot of reluctance on the part of many countries. If we have overcome all of these stages with a high level of public awareness and solidarity; there is nothing we should fear. That’s why I am not worried.

Interviewer: So, Mr President, you are optimistic?

President al-Assad: If I was not optimistic I would not have been able to endure the difficulties alongside the Syrian people, and if the Syrian people lacked a profound optimism they would not have persevered. Despair is the beginning and essence of defeat and defeat is primarily psychological.

I often meet people and sense their optimism. They all say that the crisis is coming to an end, God willing. They go on to say “Syria is protected by God” or “we have no fears”. They repeat what the martyred Dr Bouti used to say and his belief that the end of the crisis is near.

There is a genuine belief, from a spiritual and national perspective that the crisis will come to an end. Without optimism there is no faith; without faith there is no optimism.

Interviewer: Mr President, in conclusion, our newspaper is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary since releasing its first issue. May I ask you on this occasion to address a few words to my colleagues at the paper? They have been exemplary in their dedication and hard work. There is a printing worker I know who is not driven by political ambitions but by his sense of patriotism and belonging to this institution. This is what keeps him commuting to and from work after midnight, stopping at numerous checkpoints and risking his life.

President al-Assad: The example of your colleague applies to all those working in our national media, and proves the resilience of the Syrian people. Please convey my warm regards to all your staff especially since your newspaper is one of the oldest national papers in Syria. Its fiftieth anniversary corresponds with the 8th of March Revolution which I mentioned earlier with all the benefits it brought to the Syrian people for decades.

Today this anniversary comes as we live another real revolution; not their so-called ‘revolution’ but the real revolution of our people and army against terrorists. I hope that this anniversary will mark a new beginning for the newspaper so that its name will, in the future, symbolize not one revolution, but two: the revolution of 1963 and the revolution of 2013.

Republished with permission from: Global Research

Europe urges probe into Turkey violence

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Council of Europeâ„¢s Human Rights Commissioner Nils Muiznieks speaks to reporters in Ankara on July 6, 2013.

The Council of Europeâ„¢s Human Rights Commissioner Nils Muiznieks has called for an investigation into Turkey’s excessive use of police force against anti-government protesters.

Muiznieks made the remarks at a press conference in Ankara on Saturday during his five-day visit to Turkey.

“All instances of excessive use of force by the police must be fully investigated and adequately punished,” he said.

His visit came after nationwide demonstrations against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan rocked Turkey for more than a month.

Ankara has been widely criticized by human rights groups and its Western allies for using excessive force against protesters.

Several people were killed and some 8,000 others injured in violent crackdown on protesters.

Muiznieks also criticized the fact that only three police officers were suspended, while there have been numerous accusations of human rights abuses.

The commissioner stressed that the only way to permit a healing process was to Å“conduct independent, impartial, and effective investigations, with the involvement of victims, into all allegations of misconduct by security forces.”

Muiznieks also called on the Turkish authorities to guard against an intimidation campaign against the countryâ„¢s academics, lawyers, doctors and journalists who attended the anti-government demonstrations.

Demonstrations erupted in late May after police broke up a sit-in at Istanbul’s Taksim Square in protest against a proposal to demolish Gezi Park.

The violence turned into nationwide demonstrations against the ruling Justice and Development Party, with police using water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets against demonstrators.

Erdogan, whose government was the main target of protests, has described the demonstrators as foreign-backed extremists and terrorists.

SAB/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

America’s Plan B in Egypt: Bring Back the Old Regime

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The road that has been taken in Egypt is a dangerous one. A military coup has taken place in Egypt while millions of Egyptians have cheered it on with little thought about what is replacing the Muslim Brotherhood and the ramifications it will have for their society. Many people in cheering crowds have treated the Egyptian military’s coup like it was some sort of democratic act. Little do many of them remember who the generals of the Egyptian military work for. Those who are ideologically opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood have also cheered the military takeover without realizing that the military takeover ultimately serves imperialist behaviour. The cheering crowds have not considered the negative precedent that has been set.

Egypt was never cleansed of corrupt figures by the Muslim Brotherhood, which instead joined them. Key figures in Egypt, like Al-Azhar’s Grand Mufti Ahmed Al-Tayeb (who was appointed by Mubarak), criticized the Muslim Brotherhood when Mubarak was in power, then denounced Mubarak and supported the Muslim Brotherhood when it gained power, and then denounced the Muslim Brotherhood when the military removed it from power. The disgraced Muslim Brotherhood has actually been replaced by a far worse assembly. These figures, whatever they call themselves, have only served power and never democracy. The military’s replacements for the Muslim Brotherhood–be it the new interim president or the leaders of the military junta–were either working with or serving the Muslim Brotherhood and, even before them, Hosni Mubarak’s regime.

The Undemocratic Egyptian Full Circle

Unlike the protests, the military takeover in Egypt is a blow to democracy. Despite the incompetence and hypocrisy of the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership, it was democratically elected into power. While the rights of all citizens to demonstrate and protest should be protected and structured mechanisms should securely be put into place in all state systems for removing any unpopular government, democratically-elected governments should not be toppled by military coups. Unless a democratically-elected government is killing its own people arbitrarily and acting outside the law, there is no legitimate excuse for removing it from power by means of military force. There is nothing wrong with the act of protesting, but there is something wrong when a military coup is initiated by a corrupt military force that works in the services of Washington and Tel Aviv.

Things have come full circle in Cairo. The military oversight over the government in Cairo is exactly the position that Egypt’s corrupt military leaders wanted to have since the Egyptian elections in 2012 that brought the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party into power. Since then there has been a power struggle between the Egyptian military and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Expecting to win the 2012 elections, at first the Egyptian military fielded one of its generals and a former Mubarak cabinet minister (and the last prime minister to serve under Mubarak), Ahmed Shafik, for the position of Egyptian president. If not a Mubarak loyalist per se, Shafik was a supporter of the old regime’s political establishment that gave him and the military privileged powers. When Ahmed Shafik lost there was a delay in recognizing Morsi as the president-elect, because the military was considering rejecting the election results and instead announcing a military coup.

The High Council of the Armed Forces, which led Egypt’s military, realized that a military coup after the 2012 elections would not fare too well with the Egyptian people and could lead to an all-out rebellion against the Egyptian military’s leadership. It was unlikely that many of the lower ranking soldiers and commissioned officers would have continued to follow the orders of the Egyptian military’s corrupt upper echelons if such a coup took place. Thus, plans for a coup were aborted. Egyptian military leaders instead decided to try subordinating Egypt’s civilian government by dissolving the Egyptian Parliament and imposing a constitution that they themselves wrote to guarantee military control. Their military constitution subordinated the president’s office and Egypt’s civilian government to military management. Morsi would wait and then reinstate the Egyptian Parliament in July 2012 and then nullify the military’s constitution that limited the powers of the presidency and civilian government after he worked with the US and Qatar to pacify Hamas. Next, Morsi would order Marshall Tantawi, the head of the Egyptian military, and General Anan, the second most power general in the Egyptian military, into resigning–neither one was a friend of democracy or justice.

Was Morsi’s Administration Really a Muslim Brotherhood Government?

Before it was ousted, the Muslim Brotherhood faced serious structural constraints in Egypt and it made many wrong decisions. Since its electoral victory there was an ongoing power struggle in Egypt and its Freedom and Justice Party clumsily attempted to consolidate its political control over Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood’s attempts to consolidate power meant that it has had to live with and work with a vast array of state institutions and bodies filled with its opponents, corrupt figures, and old regime loyalists. The Freedom and Justice Party tried to slowly purge the Egyptian state of Mubarak loyalists and old regime figures, but Morsi was forced to also work with them simultaneously. This made the foundations of his government even weaker.

The situation for the Muslim Brotherhood in 2012 was actually similar to the one Hamas faced in 2006 after its electoral victories in the Palestinian elections. Just as Hamas was forced by the US and its allies to accept Fatah ministers in key positions in the Palestinian government that it formed, the Muslim Brotherhood was forced to do the same unless it wanted the state to collapse and to be internationally isolated. The main difference between the two situations is that the Muslim Brotherhood seemed all too eager to comply with the US and work with segments of the old regime that would not challenge it. Perhaps this happened because the Muslim Brotherhood feared a military takeover. Regardless of what the reasons were, the Muslim Brotherhood knowingly shared the table of governance with counter-revolutionaries and criminals.

In part, Morsi’s cabinet would offer a means of continuation to the old regime. Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr, Morsi’s top diplomat, was a cabinet minister under Marshal Tantawi and served in key positions as Mubarak’s ambassador to the United States and Saudi Arabia. Morsi’s cabinet would only have a few members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party whereas the ministerial portfolios for the key positions of the Interior Ministry, Defence Ministry, and the Suez Canal Authority would be given to Mubarak appointees from Egypt’s military and police apparatus. Abdul-Fatah Al-Sisi, Mubarak’s head of Military Intelligence who has worked closely with the US and Israel, would be promoted as the head of the Egyptian military and as Egypt’s new defence minister by Morsi. It would ironically, but not surprisingly, be Al-Sisi that would order Morsi’s arrest and ouster after extensive consultations with his American counterpart, Charles Hagel, on July 3, 2013.

The Muslim Brotherhood and the Obama Administration: An Alliance of Convenience?

As a result of the Muslim Brotherhood’s collaboration with the US and Israel, large components of the protests in Egypt against Morsi were resoundingly anti-American and anti-Israeli. This has to do with the role that the Obama Administration has played in Egypt and the regional alliance it has formed with the Muslim Brotherhood. In part, it also has to do with the fact that Morsi’s opponents–even the ones that are collaborating with the US and Israel themselves–have capitalized on anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiments by portraying Morsi as a US and Israeli puppet. In reality, both the United States and Muslim Brotherhood have tried to manipulate one another for their own gains. The Muslim Brotherhood has tried to use the Obama Administration to ascend to power whereas the Obama Administration has used the Muslim Brotherhood in America’s war against Syria and to slowly nudge the Hamas government in Gaza away from the orbit of Iran and its allies in the Resistance Bloc. Both wittingly and unwittingly, the Muslim Brotherhood in broader terms has, as an organization, helped the US, Israel, and the Arab petro-sheikhdoms try to regionally align the chessboard in a sectarian project that seeks to get Sunnis and Shias to fight one another.

Because of the Freedom and Justice Party’s power struggle against the Egyptian military and the remnants of the old regime, the Muslim Brotherhood turned to the United States for support and broke all its promises. Some can describe this as making a deal with the “Devil.” At the level of foreign policy, the Muslim Brotherhood did not do the things it said it would. It did not end the Israeli siege on the people of Gaza, it did not cut ties with Israel, and it did not restore ties with the Iranians. Its cooperation with the US allowed Washington to play the different sides inside Egypt against one another and to hedge the Obama Administration’s bets.

The Muslim Brotherhood miscalculated in its political calculus. Morsi himself proved not only to be untrustworthy, but also foolish. Washington has always favoured the Egyptian military over the Muslim Brotherhood. Like most Arab militaries, the Egyptian military has been used as an internal police force that has oppressed and suppressed its own people. Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian military gives far greater guarantees about the protection of US interests in Egypt, Israel’s security, and US sway over the strategically and commercially important Suez Canal. Furthermore, the Muslim Brotherhood had its own agenda and it seemed unlikely that it would continue to play a subordinate role to the United States and Washington was aware of this.

Revolution or Counter-Revolution?

Indeed a dangerous precedent has been set. The events in Egypt can be used in line with the same type of standard that allowed the Turkish military to subordinate democracy in Turkey for decades whenever it did not like a civilian government. The Egyptian military has taken the opportunity to suspend the constitution. It can now oversee the entire political process in Egypt, essentially with de facto veto powers. The military coup not only runs counter to the principles of democracy and is an undemocratic act, but it also marks a return to power by the old regime. Egypt’s old regime, it should be pointed out, has fundamentally always been a military regime controlled by a circle of generals and admirals that operate in collaboration with a few civilian figures in key sectors.

Things have really gone full circle in Egypt. The judiciary in Egypt is being aligned with the military or old regime again. Mubarak’s attorney-general, Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, who was removed from power in November 2012 has been reinstated. The Egyptian Parliament has been dissolved again by the leaders of the High Council of the Armed Forces. President Morsi and many members of the Muslim Brotherhood have been rounded up and arrested by the military and police as enemies of the peace.

Adli (Adly) Al-Mansour, the Mubarak appointed judge that President Morsi was legally forced to appoint as the head of the Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court, has now been appointed interim president by the High Council of the Armed Forces. Al-Mansour is merely a civilian figure head for a military junta. It is also worth noting that the Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court, like much of the Mubarak appointees in the Egyptian judiciary, has collaborated with the Egyptian military against the Muslim Brotherhood and tried to dissolve the Egyptian Parliament.

Mohammed Al-Baradei (El-Baradei / ElBaradei), a former Egyptian diplomat and the former director-general of the politically manipulated International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has been offered the post of interim prime minister of Egypt by the military. He had returned to Egypt during the start of the so-called Arab Spring to run for office with the support of the International Crisis Group, which is an organization that is linked to US foreign policy interests and tied to the Carnegie Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and George Soros’ Open Society Institute. Al-Baradei himself has been delighted every time that the Egyptian military has announced a coup; he supported a military takeover in 2011 and, to his benefit, he has supported it in 2013. Where he could not secure a position for himself through the ballot box, he has been offered a government position undemocratically through the military in 2013.

Many of the Muslim Brotherhood’s supporters are emphasizing that an unfair media war was waged against them. The Qatari-owned Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr, Al Jazeera’s Egyptian branch which has worked as a mouth piece for the Muslim Brotherhood, has been taken off the air by the Egyptian military. This, along with the ouster of Morsi, is a sign that Qatar’s regional interests are being rolled back too. It seems Saudi Arabia, which quickly congratulated Adli Al-Mansour, is delighted, which explains why the Saudi-supported Nour Party in Egypt betray the Muslim Brotherhood. Other media linked to the Muslim Brotherhood or supportive of it have also been censored and attacked. Much of the privately owned media in Egypt was already anti-Muslim Brotherhood. Like Grand Mufti Ahmed Al-Tayeb, many of these media outlets were supportive of Mubarak’s dictatorship when he was in power, but only changed their tune when he was out of power. The point, however, should not be lost that media censorship against pro-Muslim Brotherhood media outlets does not equate to democratic practice whatsoever.

The figures that have supported the military coup, in the name of democracy, are themselves no friends of democracy either. Many of these opportunists were Mubarak lackeys. For example, the so-called Egyptian opposition leader Amr Moussa was highly favoured by Hosni Mubarak and served as his foreign minister for many years. Not once did Moussa ever bother or dare to question Mubarak or his dictatorship, even when Moussa became the secretary-general of the morally bankrupt and useless Arab League.

The Egyptian Coma Will Backfire on the US Empire

Despite the media reports and commentaries, the Muslim Brotherhood was never fully in charge of Egypt or its government. It always had to share power with segments of the old regime or “Washington’s and Tel Aviv’s men.” Key players in different branches of government and state bodies from the old regime stayed in their places. Even President Morsi’s cabinet had members of the old regime. The discussions on Sharia law were predominately manipulated by the Muslim Brotherhood’s opponents primarily for outside consumption by predominantly non-Muslim countries and to rally Egypt’s Christians and socialist currents against Morsi. As for the economic problems that Egypt faced, they were the mixed result of the legacy of the old regime, the greed of Egypt’s elites and military leaders, the global economic crisis, and the predatory capitalism that the United States and European Union have impaired Egypt with. Those that blamed Morsi for Egypt’s economic problems and unemployment did so wrongly or opportunistically. His administration’s incompetence did not help the situation, but they did not create it either. Morsi was manning a sinking ship that had been economically ravaged in 2011 by foreign states and local and foreign lenders, speculators, investors, and corporations.

There was an undeniable constant effort to sabotage the Muslim Brotherhood’s rule, but this does not excuse the incompetence and corruption of the Muslim Brotherhood. Their attempts at gaining international respectability by going to events such as the Clinton Global Initiative hosted by the Clinton Foundation have only helped their decline. Their hesitation at restoring ties with Iran and their antagonism towards Syria, Hezbollah, and their Palestinian allies only managed to reduce their list of friends and supporters. All too willingly the Muslim Brotherhood seemed to let itself be used by the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar to pacify Hamas in an attempt to de-link the Palestinians in Gaza from the Resistance Bloc. It continued the siege against Gaza and continued to destroy the tunnels used to smuggle daily supplies by the Palestinians. Perhaps it was afraid or had very little say in the matter, but it allowed Egypt’s military, security, and intelligence apparatuses to continue collaborating with Israel. Under the Muslim Brotherhood’s watch Palestinians were disappearing in Egypt and reappearing in Israeli prisons. Morsi’s government also abandoned the amnesty it had given to the Jamahiriya supporters from Libya that took refuge in Egypt.

The United States and Israel have always wanted Egypt to look inward in a pathetic state of paralysis. Washington has always tried to keep Egypt as a dependent state that would fall apart politically and economy without US assistance. It has allowed the situation in Egypt to degenerate as a means of neutralizing the Egyptians by keeping them divided and exhausted. The US, however, will be haunted by the coup against Morsi. Washington will dearly feel the repercussions of what has happened in Egypt. Morsi’s fall sends a negative message to all of America’s allies. Everyone in the Arab World, corrupt and just alike, is more aware than ever that an alliance with Washington or Tel Aviv will not protect them. Instead they are noticing that those that are aligned with the Iranians and the Russians are the ones that are standing.

An empire that cannot guarantee the security of its satraps is one that will eventually find many of its minions turning their backs on it or betraying it. Just as America’s regime change project in Syria is failing, its time in the Middle East is drawing to an end. Those who gambled on Washington’s success, like the Saudi royals, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, will find themselves on the losing side of the Middle East’s regional equation…

Republished with permission from: Global Research

Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Waste Dump

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July 1 marks Canada Day when many Canadians celebrate the unification of three colonies into their country on the same date in 1867.

In Ontario, droves of people head off to their summer cottages and vacation get-a-ways on the shores of the Great Lakes for the holiday weekend. Lake Huron’s sandy beaches and beautiful aquamarine waters attract many visitors from all over the world. But this year, many First Nations were not celebrating the stripping of their sovereignty rights and desecration of their lands.

Those heading to the Saugeen Shores area and the town of Southampton this past weekend were greeted Saturday by the second annual “Walk the Talk” peaceful protest march against not one, but two permanent underground nuclear dumps less than a mile away from Lake Huron.

More than 500 citizens from across North America gathered at the Southampton, Ontario, flagpole on High Street by the lake. They gathered to voice their opposition to nuke dumps on these beautiful shores and to the continued production of this dangerous and deadly waste. They walked several kilometers through the town and along the beach to heighten awareness and bring attention to this diabolical plan, orchestrated largely in secret by local and national authorities and a deceitful industry, to bury low level, intermediate and high level nuclear waste underground and less than a mile away from this important fresh water source. They gathered to push back against a corrupt political leadership from the local level to the upper levels of dirty energy frontman Stephen Harper’s disastrous national government. They marched to say no to an industry that has been lying and deceiving the public about the dangers of nuclear energy and radiation exposure for decades. They walked to promote real renewable wind and solar energy alternatives.

Surely the question that comes to many is why on Earth would anyone in their right mind consider the shores of Lake Huron for the first permanent nuclear dump in North America? Lake Huron sits to the north of Lakes St. Clair, Erie and Ontario and the water of this lake flows southward and eastward, eventually connecting to the Atlantic Ocean through the St. Lawrence Seaway. The Great Lakes account for 21 percent of the world’s fresh water resources, or a little over one fifth, and to many native American cultures and First Nation peoples, the Great Lakes are considered the sacred heart of Turtle Island. So, why would anyone consider dumping radioactive poisons that will remain deathly dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years next to such an integral part of the our Great Lakes ecosystem? The answer begins with the human folly of siting what is now the world’s largest nuclear energy producer in this very same location.

The Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, with its eight currently operating reactors, is now the largest operating nuclear power plant in the world and fifth largest operating power producer of any kind. When all reactors are operating, it produces 7,276 megawatts a year. It sits directly on the shores of the lake on a sprawling 2300 acre complex that is also home to the Western Waste Management Facility (WWMF), an above ground interim waste storage area for the low level and intermediate level radioactive waste for all 20 of the nuclear reactors operated by Ontario Power Generation.

WWMF stores tons of radioactive wastes in 11 different buildings and has the capacity to burn thousands of pounds of this waste every day. That’s right, much of this low level and intermediate-level waste is actually being incinerated sending deadly cancer-causing radionuclides into the atmosphere while leaving growing piles of radioactive ash in their wake, and this has been going on for decades. Greenpeace has noted that incineration of low and intermediate-level radioactive waste does not destroy metals or reduce radioactivity of wastes. In theory, all but a small fraction of radioactive and metallic emissions from incinerators can be captured with well-maintained, high efficiency filters. However, the small particles that escape are more readily absorbed by living organisms than the larger ones filtered.

The Canadian nuclear industry, like its counterparts in nuclearized countries around the world, was born promoting the myth that nuclear energy is safe, green and too cheap to meter. A visit to Bruce Power Visitor’s Center is an immersion into the contradictions we are faced with regarding our energy choices and their repercussions. To arrive to the center, you must pass fields of wind generators in every direction. One hundred fifteen wind turbines make the surrounding wind project one of the largest in Ontario, but the turbines are owned by Enbridge–the same Enbridge that pumps tar sands from the scorched earth of Alberta through a web of spill prone pipelines to be refined in Sarnia, Detroit, Toledo and other points south. Solar trackers also dot the landscape as farmers invest more and more into the harvesting of renewables.

The center itself is a series of stations and displays extolling the fairy tale of a happy marriage between nukes and the natural world. There are several large murals, one depicts wildlife, first nations, early settlers and the nuclear reactors all harmoniously existing side by side. Another mural shows people boating and fishing in the shadow of the power plant with the words “Radiation is all around us,” sprawled across the top and manipulative phrases meant to lull people into considering the cancerous reality of radiation exposure as harmless. The Canadian nuclear industry promotes its Canada Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) reactors as a safe, accident proof method of boiling water that is as innocuous as a mother producing milk, with no harmful side effects. The visitor center at Bruce Power employs the best propaganda the industry can muster in several interactive stations promoting nuclear as the safest and most reliable form of energy while devaluing the role renewables could play in a much safer energy economy.

The realities of the dangers posed by the CANDU reactors and the inordinate amount of high-level radioactive fuel they produce are outlined in this May 1 interview with Arnie Gunderson of Fairwinds Energy Education and Dr. Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility titled “Nuclear Contamination Knows No Borders.” CANDU reactors are constantly releasing the known cancer-causing radionuclide tritium into the environment and the levels of tritium in both Lake Ontario and Lake Huron are on a steady increase. Despite a litany of problems with the CANDU design, the industry has done a good job convincing Canadians that they should have no fear of this “fail-safe” reactor design.

With what is now the world’s largest nuclear power plant steaming away on the shores of Lake Huron and a pile of deadly and poisonous radioactive waste that is decades high and growing, Ontario Power Generation is now pushing to transform Lake Huron into a nuclear sacrifice zone. Their plan is to dig out two, what they call Deep Geological Repositories (DGRs), less than a mile away from the Lake and 680 meters below the surface to bury low level, intermediate-level and high-level radioactive waste permanently in shafts carved out of limestone. This is an experiment that has never been done anywhere else in the world and yet just as the nuclear industry tells us that radiation is harmless, we are to believe that this waste will remain safely out of harms way under the Lake for hundreds of thousands of years to come.

Recently, it has come to light that government officials from local mayors all the way up to the current president and CEO of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Michael Binder, held secret meetings with an association of nuclear power companies called the Nuclear Waste Management Organization charged with locating a dump site. The meetings were held under the guise of the Deep Geological Repository Community Consultation Advisory Group, which consists of a quorum of eight mayors of communities in Bruce County, from 2005 to the fall of 2012. Many of these meetings took place before the public was even made aware of the possibility of siting a high-level waste dump in Bruce County and while the process for siting the low and intermediate level waste dump was still ongoing.

According to documents uncovered by the local group, Save Our Saugeen Shores, Binder, who is a political appointment of the Harper government and chairs what is supposed to be Canada’s neutral nuclear watchdog, warned participants at a meeting on September 30, 2009, of environmental and anti-nuclear groups who “have the project on their agenda. You haven’t seen anything yet.” It seems that Binder had already made up his mind about the validity of the low and intermediate level waste dump as well, stating he hoped “their next meeting with him would be at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the low and intermediate-level waste DGR.”

“Secret meetings between industry, government officials and the nuclear oversight commission are a definite slap in the face to democratic transparency, if not downright illegal,” said Jutta Splettstoesser, a resident and farmer from Kincardine.

“The timing of this discussion is troublesome,” says Cheryl Grace, a spokesperson for Save Our Saugeen Shores, the group which accessed the information. “What’s troubling is the secrecy exhibited by the mayors who were elected to serve the public, not the nuclear industry. We can find no evidence that the mayors, meeting as a county council, felt the need to discuss these issues in a public forum. In our own experience with Saugeen Shores council, the council regularly goes around the table and each councillor reports on their activities between council meetings. Mayor Mike Smith, who attended these meetings with the nuclear industry, never saw fit to inform his council and the public about these discussions and meetings. Either that or he did so in a separate secret forum, making all of this even more troubling for our community.”

Fortunately, ground has not yet been broken on either of these ill conceived nuclear waste dumps and resistance is growing as word gets out despite Ontario Power Generation and the Canadian Nuclear industry’s best efforts to keep a lid on the project. Locally, citizens groups plan on challenging the legality of the secret meetings and the collusion demonstrated between the mayors of Bruce County and the nuclear industry prior to public knowledge of the dump siting process.

Any serious political opposition party with a little clout can use the obvious industry bias exhibited by the chair of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to further expose the Harper government’s marriage to dirty energy. Harper already faces sinking popularity and credibility, protecting the nuclear industry’s profit motives in this case has international ramifications for the health and sustainability of the entire Great Lakes region. Even in the U.S., with all its problems of transparency and nuclear malfeasance, an uncovering of such industry bias by an NRC commissioner as was exhibited by Michael Binder would end in his forced resignation or removal, coupled with criminal prosecution.

The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, which is an organization of mayors and other elected officials from more than 100 Great Lakes cities and representing over 16 million people, came out in opposition to the DGR 1 for low-level and intermediate level waste in May. Seventy seven percent of these mayors voted to oppose the dump at this time, stating that, “When dealing with a resource as valuable as the freshwater here, why take the risk of putting the site so close to the shore. Whatever the geology might be in the location, it just seems to make much more sense to have the site as far away as possible from such a major source of fresh water” and concluding “the limited time to review the record and prepare comments, the limited outreach to the broader Great Lakes and St. Lawrence community, and the consideration of only one site that is one kilometer from Lake Huron leads us to conclude that the project should not move forward at this time.”

The Michigan State Senate also recently passed a resolution opposing the low and intermediate level nuclear dump and calling for the U.S. congress to intervene to ensure that international agreements are upheld. The resolution also declared that elected officials in Michigan are more engaged in the process to site a dump and that Michigan standards must be adhered to, declaring no dump site of this nature is to be located within ten miles of “Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, Lake Huron, Lake Erie, the Saint Mary’s River, the Detroit River, the St. Clair River or Lake St. Clair.” Michigan standards also exclude “sites located within a 500-year floodplain, located over a sole source aquifer, or located where the hydrogeology beneath the site discharges groundwater to the land surface within 3,000 feet of the boundaries of the site. We encourage Canada to consider similar siting criteria.” The Macomb County commissioners also passed a resolution opposing the siting of the DGR 1 or any other dump so close to the shores of any Lake in the Great Lakes Basin.

Groups are organizing at the grassroots level and they need your support. The Ontario Power Generation and the Canadian government would like us to think that the DGR 1 for low and intermediate-level waste is a done deal, but it’s not! The time is now to raise your voice on this important issue.

“The only answer to the problem of nuclear waste is to stop producing it, however the nuclear industry is gunning for a deep geological repository as a solution to nuclear waste storage so they can promote nuclear expansion. Activists and residents are working with Indigenous Nations and environmental groups across borders and oceans to call on our governments to stop producing it now,” said Zach Ruiter of GE-Hitachi’s Uranium Secret in Toronto. No safe, permanent solution has yet been found anywhere in the world for the nuclear waste problem.

A petition by the Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump citizens group is circulating via the internet that can be signed to stop the low and intermediate level dump. The following groups provide more information on how to actively participate in stopping these nuke dumps on the shores of Lake Huron: Save Our Saugeen Shores, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, Northwatch and Ontario’s Green Future.

Visit EcoWatch’s NUCLEAR page for more related news on this topic.

Republished with permission from: Global Research

CIA Operatives and the Targeted Assassination of Foreign Leaders

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No one’s safe from America’s long arm. From inception, CIA operatives developed skills to kill.

Fidel Castro survived hundreds of assassination attempts. He knows best how Washington operates.

Other leaders weren’t as lucky. In April 1994, CIA surface-to-air missiles killed Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira.

Downing their plane put Paul Kagame in power. He became Washington’s man in Rwanda. Ethnic slaughter continued what began earlier. It’s longstanding US policy. It advances America’s imperium.

Mobutu replaced Lumumba in Congo. Pinochet followed Allende in Chile. Saddam’s gone. So is Gaddafi. William Blum documented 50 CIA foreign leader assassination attempts. Half or more times were successful. Chavez perhaps was the latest.

He succumbed to cancer. For decades, America experimented with cancer causing substances. Expert technologies exist.

Assassination this and many other ways claimed lives of foreign leaders. Washington eliminated ones it wanted removed. Sometimes it was by unexplained plane crashes. Every time was state-sponsored murder.

Evo Morales had just cause to worry. EU allies yielded to US pressure. They obstructed his safe passage home from Moscow. He made an emergency landing. He had to.

He was running out of fuel. He might have crash landed. He could have died. Perhaps a CIA missile’s planned next time. Chavez knew Washington wanted him dead. Perhaps his final thought was they succeeded.

John Pilger called forcing down Morales’ plane “an act of air piracy and state terrorism.” It reflects flagrant lawlessness. “(G)angsterism” rules the world, said Pilger. Cowards and hypocrites “dare not speak its name.”

Bolivia formally complained to UN authorities. It cited EU aggression. It claimed a high altitude kidnapping. Washington was largely silent.

No explanation worth hearing was forthcoming. State Department spokesperson Jennifer Psaki said:

“We have been in contact with a range of countries that had a chance of having Snowden land or travel through their country but I am not going to outline what those countries were or when (these contacts) happened.”

Obama bears full responsibility. He pressured EU nations to comply. Another article said they operate like US colonies. They do so disgracefully in the process.

On July 3, Bolivia Rising headlined “Faced with US aggression against Bolivian President Evo Morales, UNASUR and ALBA hold emergency meetings,” saying:

France, Spain, Italy and Portugal revoked airspace passage rights.

Morales’ plane was originally routed Moscow — Lisbon. It was done so for refueling. Hours before takeoff, Portugal revoked landing rights.

An alternate route was Moscow — Canary Islands for refueling. Doing so required overflying France and Spain.

While airborne, both countries denied use of their airspace. So did Italy. An emergency Vienna landing followed.

Austrian authorities demanded permission to search Morales’ plane. Doing so violates Vienna Convention international law. It’s fundamental. It’s inviolable. It protects diplomatic immunity.

Morales refused to comply. “I am not a delinquent,” he said. “I am a president and I learned to know and respect international law. It seems that other presidents don’t do so.”

In Vienna, he added:

“We won’t be threatened. We are a small country but with dignity.”

“I tell the European countries, we are not in times of colonization and we won’t be intimidated. This is the time of the peoples.”

Bolivian Vice President Garcia Linera added:

“(W)e saw the most shameful page of the political history of some European countries, not only because they violated international agreements but also because they have violated their own dignity as countries.”

It’s “verified that the colonies are not in America and Africa. Rather sadly, (they’re) in Europe.”

Bolivia’s UN envoy Sacha Llorenti blamed Washington. Orders came from the White House, she suggested.

“By no means should a diplomatic plane with the president aboard be diverted from its route and forced to land in another country.”

On Tuesday, angry peaceful protesters gathered outside France’s La Paz embassy.

Latin American leaders cried foul. Shakespeare explained best. They “doth protest too much, methinks.”

Public anger conceals business as usual. Affairs of state matter most. Bristling comments make good headlines.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua called it “an abuse to have put Evo Morales’ life in danger.”

“We call on all countries, above all those in Latin America and the Caribbean…to make declarations regarding this abuse.”

“The least important thing is if Snowden was on board or not. We’re talking about a presidential plane, with special licenses”

“Portugal and France should take responsibility (for their actions).  They’re a “real violation of all the norms of…immunity of a president of a republic and of the sovereignty of countries and of official flights.”

Venezuela “holds the United States government, and all the governments who have denied flight permission to the presidential plane of brother president Evo Morales accountable, for the life of president Evo Morales, for his dignity as president.”

Snowden faces an “empire which tries to control the world.”

Argentinian President Christina Kirchner called what happened “madness.”

The Havana Times headlined “Cuba Denounces Affront to Evo Morales.” It published a Ministry of Foreign Affairs Statement. It said in part:

Refusal to grant Morales overflight and landing rights “constitutes an inadmissible, unfounded and arbitrary act, an offense to all of Latin America and the Caribbean.”

It “cannot be tolerated for any reason whatsoever, an act which damages all of Our America and deserves international repudiation.”

“Cuba calls on the international community to mobilize against these violations of international law and human rights.”

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro twittered solidarity with Morales, saying:

“(F)rom Venezuela we will respond to this dangerous, disproportionate and unacceptable aggression.”

“I am in contact with Evo. They have violated all the international immunities that protect heads of state, because of the imperial obsession.”

Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said “(w)e will not allow this affront against a Latin American leader.”

Organization of American States (OAS) secretary general Jose Miguel Insulza expressed “profound displeasure.Nothing justifies an action as disrespectful to the highest authority of a country.”

OAS operates out of Washington. Its members include 35 countries. Their deference to America is longstanding. They largely serve capital, not populist interests. They value multilateral trade relations.

They’re beholden to Washington’s economic leverage. It’s eroding. It hasn’t ended. It remains significant. It’s losing influence. Imperial dominance fades slowly.

It’s shelf life has a long way to go. Its markets are too valued to lose. Its capital has divine rights, but less so. Its military might’s too formidable to ignore.

Latin leaders rail about interventionist America. They recall earlier dark times. Despots replaced democrats. Territories were annexed. Nations became colonies.

Latin America no longer is Washington’s back yard. One day perhaps it’ll be entirely free. Maybe later. Not now. Nations able to bully others to comply have power. Changing things take unity to resist.

Breaking free matters. Countries exerting sovereign rights over subservience inspire others. Fidel did and survived. Raul’s 82.

Chavez did. He’s gone. Maduro, Morales, Correa, Cuba’s next generation, and others matter. It’s their job to free Latin America from Washington’s scourge.

Doing so involves more than rhetorical posturing. It takes fortitude. It requires supporting right over wrong. It takes action, not words. Hopefully enough regional leaders are up to the challenge.

Hopefully others will join them. Change requires they do so. Sovereign freedom’s its own reward.

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/targeting-foreign-leaders-longstanding-us-practice/

Republished with permission from: Global Research

Coptic priest shot dead in Egypt

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Unidentified gunmen have shot dead at least one Coptic Christian priest in the Egyptian city of El-Arish in the troubled Sinai Peninsula, security officials say.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Afghan forces kill 9 Taliban militants

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Afghan national security forces have killed nine Taliban militants and captured six others during cleanup operations across the country over the past 24 hours.

Å“Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) conducted a series of cleanup operations in Baghlan, Faryab, Ghazni, Kunar and Paktia provinces, killing nine Taliban militants and wounding two others. Six more armed men were also arrested over the past 24 hours,” the Afghan Interior Ministry said in a statement issued on Saturday.

The statement, however, did not mention whether there were any casualties on the side of Afghan forces.

Moreover, Afghan police forces shot dead two bombers in the southeastern province of Paktika on Friday, leading to one explosion. Two policemen sustained slight injuries in the blast.

Three militants were also killed on Friday evening, when an improvised explosive device (IED) they were planting along a main road in the eastern province of Nangarhar went off prematurely.

In late April, the Taliban announced the start of their annual Å“offensive” against US-led and Afghan forces, vowing a new wave of attacks across Afghanistan.

The militant group said it would use “every possible tactic” to inflict casualties on Afghan and US-led forces. They specifically mentioned insider attacks, and bomb attacks.

The announcement prompted the Afghan authorities to beef up security in major cities across the country, including the capital city of Kabul.

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan as part of Washingtonâ„¢s so-called war on terror. The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but the country is still gripped by insecurity.

MP/SS

Republished with permission from: Press TV

CIA ‘wanted to kill Lockerbie bomber before trial’

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 The Scotsman has just released an important article on the the Lockerbie bombing.

According to the authors, quoting William C Chasey’s autobiography, Truth Never Dies:

THE CIA wanted to assassinate Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi and his co-accused, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, before their trial, a former Washington lobbyist has claimed.

William C Chasey, 73, made the sensational allegation in his autobiography, Truth Never Dies, which is to be turned into a film.

He claims agents tried to convince him to plant homing devices on Megrahi and Fhimah as part of the plot.

However, a former FBI chief has dismissed the claim as “nonsense”.

Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over southern Scotland in 1988, killing 270 people. Megrahi, who died last year in Tripoli, was the only person convicted of the murders. Fhimah was acquitted in the 2001 trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands.

Mr Chasey, president of the Foundation for Corporate Social Responsibility, a non-governmental organisation, became involved with Libya and the Lockerbie investigation when he was a lobbyist in Washington.

“On behalf of business clients, I went on a lobbying mission in 1992 with a US congressman in a bid to stabilise relations between the US and [Muammar] Gaddafi’s hated regime,” he said.

Abdel Basset Ali Al-Megrahi, pictured in 1992. Picture: Getty

Abdel Basset Ali Al-Megrahi, pictured in 1992. Picture: Getty

He told how he was taken to a private meeting with the two Lockerbie accused at a house in Tripoli. “Myself and the congressman and his wife then met Gaddafi and heard his pleas for help within Washington to get sanctions lifted, and heard his claims that Libya was not involved in Lockerbie,” Mr Chasey said.

“He spoke of the death of his daughter in a US air attack on his home and appealed directly to the congressman’s wife, as a mother, to get her husband to use his influence.”

Mr Chasey claims this clandestine meeting raised suspicions at the FBI, which launched a lengthy investigation into him.

Then, in 1995, he wrote a controversial book, Foreign Agent 4221: The Lockerbie Cover-Up, which claimed Libya was not responsible for the bombing. (The Scotsman, July 5, 2013

To read the complete article by GARETH ROSE AND BOB SMYTH , click here

http://www.scotsman.com/the-scotsman/scotland/cia-wanted-to-kill-lockerbie-bomber-before-trial-1-2989568#.UdfoUMvFCBk.email

Copyright the Scotsman, 2013

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Republished with permission from: Global Research

US ABM test failure mars $1bn N. Korea defense plan

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A $214-million test launch of the only US defense against long-range ballistic missile attacks failed to hit its target over the Pacific Ocean, according to the Missile Defense Agency. Interceptor tests have failed eight times since 2008.

In Friday’s test, a ground-based interceptor missile was launched
from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and was expected to
hit its target — a missile launched 4,000 miles away from the
Kwajalein Atoll.

It’s the third consecutive failure involving the interceptor
system managed by Boeing Co.

The military has tested the so-called ground-based midcourse
defense system sixteen times. It has succeeded eight times, with
the last intercept in December 2008.

The recent failure comes several months after the Pentagon
announced plans to spend $1 billion to add 14 new interceptors
along the West Coast in response to threats from North Korea.

The US currently has 26 interceptors deployed at Fort Greely in
Alaska and four at Vandenberg Air Force Base, northwest of Santa
Barbara, in California. Earlier this year the Obama
administration said the number of ground-based interceptors would
reach 44 by 2017. 

“An intercept was not achieved,” the Defense Department
said in a statement, adding that program officials will conduct
an “extensive review” to determine the cause of “any
anomalies which may have prevented a successful intercept”.

Republished with permission from: RT

EU to vote to suspend U.S. data sharing agreements, passenger records amid NSA spying scandal

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The European Parliament on Thursday adopted a joint, cross-party resolution to begin investigations into widespread surveillance of Europeans by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).

In the vote, 483 voted for the resolution, 98 against, and 65 abstained on a vote that called on the U.S. to suspend and review any laws and surveillance programs that “violate the fundamental right of EU citizens to privacy and data protection,” as well as Europe’s “sovereignty and jurisdiction.”

The vote also gave backing to the suspension of data sharing deals between the two continents, should the European Commission take action against its U.S. ally.

Thursday’s plenary session highlights the strained diplomatic relationship between the EU and the U.S. over recent revelations that came to light in June.

The U.S. government faces continued criticism and pressure from its international allies following news that its intelligence agencies spied on foreign nationals under its so-called PRISM program. The U.K. government was also embroiled in the NSA spying saga, after its signals intelligence intercepting station GCHQ tapped submarine fiber optic cables under its own secret program, code named Tempora.

To read complete article click here

http://www.zdnet.com/eu-to-vote-to-suspend-u-s-data-sharing-agreements-passenger-records-amid-nsa-spying-scandal-7000017635/

Republished with permission from: Global Research

'32 Egyptians killed in Friday protests'

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Egypt Health Ministry officials say at least 32 people have been killed and dozens more injured after supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi staged mass rallies against his removal.

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Morsi supporters vow bigger protests

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The supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi hold his pictures as they shout slogans during a demonstration outside the Republican Guards headquarters, Cairo, July 5, 2013.

The supporters of Egyptâ„¢s ousted President Mohamed Morsi have pledged to stage bigger protests in the country, following what they call a military coup against the overthrown leader.

The pro-Morsi demonstrators said they would continue their campaign until their leader is restored to power.

Å“The masses will continue their civilized protests and peaceful sit-ins in Cairo until the military coup is reversed and the legitimate president is restored,” a coalition of pro-Morsi groups said in an early Saturday statement.

Meanwhile, the head of Egypt’s Ambulance Authority said the clashes across the country killed 30 people and injured 1,138 others.

Mohamed Sultan said Saturday that that at least 16 people were killed by gunshots in the head and chest, according to Egyptian Al-Ahram daily.

The most deadly clashes took place in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, where 14 people were killed and 200 wounded.

In separate incidents in the North Sinai town of El-Arish, five policemen were shot dead by unidentified gunmen.

According to security sources, three demonstrators were shot dead early on Friday outside the Republican Guard barracks in Cairo where Morsi is being held. However, the army denied responsibility for the shootings.

Pro- and anti-Morsi protesters also clashed in running street battles in the capital, leaving several more people dead and scores of others injured.

The demonstrators hurled fireworks and stones at each other across a bridge near Cairoâ„¢s Tahrir Square.

In the southern city of Assiut, at least one more person died from gunshot wounds.

The clashes came after Egypt’s army chief ousted Morsi, who had taken office in June 2012, and dissolved the country’s constitution.

General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi also said that new parliamentary elections will be held, and declared head of Supreme Constitutional Court Adli Mansour as the interim president of Egypt.

MR/HJL

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Madrid Filmfest nominates Iranian drama

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Iranian filmmaker and actor Faramarz Qaribianâ„¢s latest directorial project has been nominated for awards at the 2013 Madrid International Film Festival.

Qaribianâ„¢s police drama titled The Sinners was named nominee for two Best Director Award and Best Screenplay Award of the festival.

Written by the directorâ„¢s son Sam Qaribian, the movie is contending for awards with 5 other nominees at the Non-Spanish Language Films section.

The Sinners is Sam Gharibianâ„¢s first experience in screenplay writing, Mehr News Agency has reported.

The film has taken part in several international film festivals such as the Sonoma International Film Festival (SIFF) in the United States.

Madrid International Film Festival presents the films from the smallest independent film maker to the most popular ones and foreign language films in all film types.

This yearâ„¢s edition of the festival kicked off on July 1 and will come to an end today, July 6, 2013.

FGP/FGP

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Pakistan warns US over drone strikes

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A US Predator drone fires a Hellfire missile. (File photo)

The Pakistani government has warned that Islamabad-Washington relations may be adversely affected if the US assassination drone strikes continue in Pakistan, Press TV reports.

Pakistanâ„¢s Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan warned that the continued US drone attacks might lead to a direct standoff between Washington and Islamabad.

Meanwhile, at a news conference, Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesman Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry also said that the use of drones by the US is a major hindrance to the betterment of mutual ties between the two countries.

In a latest attack, the US assassination drones on Wednesday fired four missiles at a house in Miran Shah, in North Waziristan, which killed 17 people and injured six others.

The strike was the second drone strike on Pakistan after Nawaz Sharif was elected prime minister on June 5, 2013.

Premier Sharif recently blasted the US assassination drone strikes in his country, describing them as a violation of international law and the UN Charter.

Sharif has also called a meeting of the heads of political parties in Islamabad next week to evolve a strategy against the continued US drone attacks.

Washington claims that the airstrikes target militants, but reports on the ground show that civilians have been the main victims of the attacks.

US President Barack Obama recently defended the controversial use of the drones as an act of Å“self-defense.”

The aerial attacks, initiated by former US President George W. Bush, have been escalated under President Obama.

The United Nations and several human rights organizations have already identified the US as the world’s number-one user of the Å“targeted killing” methods largely due to its drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

IA/HJL

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Pakistan’s prime minister visits China

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Pakistanâ„¢s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has visited his Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang, inking an agreement to develop an economic corridor connecting China’s far west with the Arabian Sea, Press TV reports.

The visit, which began on Thursday, is Sharif’s first foreign trip since returning to power last month.

Sharif described Pakistan’s friendship with China as Å“higher than the Himalayas, deeper than the deepest sea, and sweeter than honey”.

The two sides signed eight pacts including a broad deal to develop a 2,000-kilometer road to connect the western Chinese city of Kashgar with the Pakistani port of Gwadar.

Last month Sharif called the project a Å“game changer” because of its economic and geopolitical potential.

Pakistan is also seeking Chinaâ„¢s help in tackling its chronic power shortages.

Pakistan Electric Power Company (PEPCO) has already announced that the country will need 15,500 MW of electricity this year, but can only generate 9,500 MW and is short of 6,000 MW of electricity.

Sharif’s visit to China will end on July 8.

On May 22, Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang visited Pakistan and pledged to strengthen partnership with the country.

Trade between the two countries hit an annual USD 12 billion for the first time in 2012, according to Pakistan Foreign Ministry. The two sides have planned to increase the figure to USD 15 billion in the next two to three years.

IA/HN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Egyptians warned against extremism

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Egyptian protesters attend a rally at Tahrir Square, Cairo, November 27, 2012.

An Iranian lawmaker has warned against plots by extremists in Egypt, urging the Egyptian people and officials to take steps to promote stability and avoid extremism in the African country.

Å“The politically motivated killing of Shias in Egypt has led to a rise in seditious moves by Salafis in the country,” said Mehdi Davatgari, who sits on the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of Iranâ„¢s Majlis, on Saturday.

Å“The US and the Zionist regime (Israel) do not favor stability in Egypt because the establishment of stability in the country will prepare the ground for undermining their hegemonic objectives,” Davatgari further said.

He emphasized that the West and the Israeli regime seek to achieve their goals in Egypt by undercutting stability in the African country.

Å“If Egypt moves toward stability, the rights of the Muslims and Arab sects in the country will be observed,” Davatgari stated.

After days of massive anti-government protests in Egypt, the military on Wednesday overthrew the country’s President Mohamed Morsi, who had taken office in June 2012.

Egyptian Army Chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced later on the day that Morsi was no longer in office.

In his late night speech on state television, Sisi declared Head of Supreme Constitutional Court Adly Mansour as the interim president, suspended the countryâ„¢s constitution and announced early parliamentary elections.

Following Sisiâ„¢s speech, police began arresting key presidential aides and the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie said the Å“military coup” against Morsi is illegal and millions will remain on the street until the ousted president is reinstated.

SF/NN/HJL

Republished with permission from: Press TV

Suspected mafia boss nabbed near Bogota

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Domenico Trimboli (C) of Italy, suspected drug trafficker, is escorted by the Colombian National Police at a police base in the capital Bogota on April 26, 2013.

Colombian security forces have arrested the suspected boss of Ndrangheta, Italy’s Calabrian mafia, near the capital city of Bogota, authorities say.

The Colombian Defense Ministry said in a statement that Roberto Pannunzi, known as Europe’s most wanted drugs trafficker, was captured on Friday with the help of the US Drug Enforcement Administration.

When arrested, Pannunzi identified himself with a fake Venezuelan identification card bearing the name Silvano Martino, the statement further said.

Italian prosecutors accuse Pannunzi of setting up the transatlantic cocaine trade between Colombia and Italy.

Pannunzi is suspected of contributing to the imports of up to two tones of cocaine into Europe per month.

He was first caught in Colombia in 1994 and extradited to Italy but was freed when his detention order expired.

In 2004, he was re-arrested and later convicted, but he fled from a clinic in the Italian capital Rome, where he was being treated as a prisoner.

Ndrangheta is considered by Italian authorities as the country’s most dangerous and wealthiest crime syndicate, which has overtaken the Sicilian mafia and become one of the world’s largest criminal organizations.

In April, Colombia arrested another alleged top Italian mafia member, Domenico Trimboli, suspected to be a lynchpin between the Colombiaâ„¢s Medellin drug cartel and the Ndrangheta, based in the Calabria region in southern Italy.

YH/HN

Republished with permission from: Press TV

‘Machinery of Death’: Gas chamber may be revived in Missouri

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Gas chambers could be brought back to life in the state of Missouri, where the state’s attorney general has considered replacing lethal-injection with the long-forgotten and controversial means of execution before the former drug supply runs out.

A return to gas as a means of capital punishment would come at a
cost, as Missouri no longer has such chambers installed in its
penitentiaries.

Previous executions by gas took place at the Missouri State
Penitentiary in Jefferson City. After prisoners were moved out of
the prison a decade ago, it has become a landmark offering tours
of the onetime functional gas chamber.

“Its [gas chamber] use has fallen into disrepute not least in
the Western mind post World War Two. We see gas chambers as
problematic for reasons that don’t need spelling out,”
an
attorney with the Death Penalty Litigation Center in Kansas City,
Joseph Luby, told The Guardian.

“The gas chamber has been dismantled in Missouri, so from a
practical point of view I don’t know how that could be done,”

chairwoman of the board for Missourians for Alternatives to the
Death Penalty Rita Linhardt said.“I would think that would be
a considerable cost and expense for the state to rebuild the
machinery of death,”
she added.

Only two forms of execution are permitted by Missouri law: lethal
injection and death by gas. “The Missouri death penalty
statute has been, in my opinion, unnecessarily entangled in the
courts for over a decade,”
Attorney General Chris Koster
said.

From 1938 to 1965 Missouri used gas to execute 38 men and one
woman. The state resumed administering the death penalty in 1989
after a 24-year break. Since then, 68 men – all convicted
murderers – have been executed in the state, all by lethal
injection, AP reports. After concerns were raised in the courts
about the lethal injection process, Missouri has carried out two
executions since 2005.

Back in 1995 the US court of appeals for the ninth circuit in
California ruled the gas chamber unconstitutional.

Missouri, like other US states with the death penalty, has been
using a three-drug cocktail to execute inmates for decades.
 The drugs, however, are no longer available for executions
after pharmaceutical companies across the world refused to sell
their products to corrections departments for ethical reasons,
and the European Commission introduced restrictions on the export
of anesthetics to the US.

Last year Missouri announced plans to use propofol – the
anesthetic blamed for Michael Jackson’s death. The drug has not
been used to execute prisoners in the US before, calling into
question its potential viability for lethal injection.

In 2012, twenty-one Missouri death row inmates filed a lawsuit in
the US District Court in Kansas City claiming the use of propofol
would be a cruel punishment since it created “an
unprecedented, substantial likelihood of foreseeable infliction
of excruciating pain in the course of executing the
plaintiffs”.

According to Koster, however,
“the
premeditated murder of an innocent Missourian is cruel and
unusual punishment. The lawful implementation of the death
penalty, following a fair and reasoned jury trial, is not.”

Executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center
Richard Dieter in Washington said other proposals have
recently been made for states to use the gas chamber or the
electric chair.

“It’s unlikely that states would go back to these older
methods, and if they did, I’m not sure they would be upheld in
the courts”
, Dieter noted.

Republished with permission from: RT