If you’re ever in Mount Pleasant, Tennessee, don’t complain about the water there. A state official recently warned that an unfounded complaint about water quality could be considered an “act of terrorism,” the Tennessean reported Thursday.

The comment by Sherwin Smith, deputy director of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, came during a May 29 meeting with Maury County residents about a problem in Mount Pleasant, where residents have been complaining for months about the water, the Nashville paper reported, with some claiming their children have become sick from drinking it. Smith said people were making complaints and then turning down the department’s offer to test their water to see what the problem might be.   

“We take water quality very seriously. Very, very seriously,” Smith said in remarks captured on tape by members of Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment (SOCM) “But you need to make sure that when you make water quality complaints you have a basis, because federally, if there’s no water quality issues, that can be considered under Homeland Security an act of terrorism.”

“Wha – Can you say that again, please?” an audience member asked.

“What I’m saying is if you’ve got concerns about your drinking water, that’s very important, we take that very seriously,” Smith said. “But under federal regulation, if you make allegations against the public water supply that are unfounded, then that can be considered under Homeland Security an act of terrorism, because you’re trying to allege things about –”

“And who would the ‘you’ be in this case, Mister Smith?” the questioner interrupted.

“I’m not saying – I’m not making the accusation,” Smith said. “I’m just telling you, so that you understand –”

At that point comments become unclear, as several people are speaking at once. One voice can be heard saying something about a “scare tactic.”

State Rep. Sheila Butt, who organized and attended the event, was among those taken aback by Smith’s comments, as she told Tennessean reporter Brian Haas. “I think that we need to be very careful with how we use the words ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism,'” the Columbia Republican said. “I thought it was out of context. That did not apply to anything that we were discussing at the meeting.” While many in attendance expressed bewilderment at Smith’s words, no one mistook the state official for Dale Carnegie, author of How to Win Friends and Influence People.

“I was sitting there with my mouth open,” Mount Pleasant resident Joycelene Johns told Haas. “I couldn’t believe he was saying that.” His message, she said, amounted to, “Leave us alone. Don’t come back anymore. We’re not going to continue on dealing with whatever problem you may have.”

“I think it’s just to quash us complicating life for them,” said Brad Wright, one of the organizers of the citizens action group.

When asked about the remark, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation took the precautionary measure of making sure Smith would not be available for comment.

“In terms of the comments made by a member of the Water Resources Division at the meeting, we are just receiving the information and looking into this on our end,” spokeswoman Meg Lockhart told the Tennessean. “The department would like to fully assess what was said in the meeting. I am told that the meeting was far longer than the audio clip provided by SOCM and that Mr. Smith actually clarified his remarks. But again, we are looking into it.”

Explaining Sherwin Smith may be a challenge for the department, but one less daunting, perhaps, than the quality of water in Mount Pleasant. Joycelene Johns said the water has been both odd tasting and cloudy in appearance for years. But she drinks by faith, not by sight. 

“I’ll drink it,” she said, “but I pray before the first sip.”

Joycelene Johns, 68, has lived in Mount Pleasant off and on for about 30 years and has put up with cloudy, odd-tasting water for years.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

Steve Wozniak speaking with Piers Morgan this week. (Screenshot)Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has cheered NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and admonished the rise of the surveillance state.

Speaking with CNN‘s Piers Morgan on Thursday, Wozniak expressed support for the whistleblower and said, “I felt about Edward Snowden the same way I felt about Daniel Ellsberg, who changed my life, who taught me a lot with a book he wrote…” He continued:

Read the facts–it’s a government of, by and for the people. That sorta means we own the government. We’re the ones that pay for it, and then we discover something that our money is being used for. That just can’t be, that level of crime.

On the proliferation of computers made possible by geniuses like him that enables widespread surveillance, Wozniak told Morgan:

I actually feel a little guilty about that but not totally. We created the computers to free the people up, give them instant communication anywhere in the world, any thought you could share it freely. That it was going to overcome a lot of the government restrictions. We didn’t realize that in the digital world there are a lot of ways to use the digital technology to control us, to snoop on us. In the old days of mailing letters, you licked it, and when you got an envelope that was still sealed, nobody had seen it. You could have private communication. Now they say because it’s e-mail it cannot be private, anyone can listen.

In another recent interview, however, Wozniak offered a more in-depth look at his thoughts on government snooping.Photo: The DEMO Conference/cc/flickr

A chance run-in with Wozniak at an airport last week offered Spanish language technological news site FayerWayer the opportunity to get the tech giant’s thoughts on the widespread government spying exposed by Snowden. In the interview, Wozniak lamented the current state of surveillance in the U.S..

When asked what he thought about the NSA’s PRISM program, Wozniak said:

I was brought up, for example, and my dad taught me that other countries when they got prisoners in a war, they tortured them. But we Americans didn’t torture them; we gave them good food and clothing and everything. And I was so proud of my country, you know? And now I find out it’s just the opposite, you know.

And I just wish all these things I thought about the Constitution that made us so good as people — they’re kinda nothing. They all disolved with the Patriot Act.

There’s all these laws that say we can just sorta call anything terrorism and do anything we want without all these rights of courts to get in and say we aren’t doing the wrong things. 

There’s not even a free, open court anymore. And I read the Constitution and I don’t know how all this stuff happened. It’s so clear what the Constitution says. It’s extremely clear in the Bill of Rights. One thing after another, after another. It just got overturned, and that’s what a king does. 

The king just goes out and has anyone rounded up, killed, put in secret prisons. 

When I was brought up, I was taught that communist Russia was the ones that were gonna kill us and bomb our country and all this. And communist Russia was so bad because they followed their people, they snooped on them, they arrested them, they put them in secret prisons, they disappeared them. These kind of things were part of Russia.

You know, we’re getting more and more like that. […]

Look at the guy who just turned over the information on what the NSA program was.

He said that anyone like him sitting at a terminal could instantly go and grab all the data of anyone they felt like, with no courts […] no warrants, nobody having to approve it. 

That means there’s a thousand people in the CIA that could just sit and whoever they want … they could just go look at. 

That sort of structure is wrong. But troubles come from the top.

Watch Morgan’s interview with “Woz” below:

Wozniak’s interview with FayerWayer is below:

_______________________

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

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

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This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

After stopping a woman for driving with a broken taillight, a Florida police officer subjected her to a humiliating drug search, ordering the young woman to lift her shirt and shake out her bra.

Zoe Brugger, a young mother and resident of Lakeland, was stopped by police on May 21. She had been driving with a broken headlight and a suspended license after picking up her boyfriend from work, but the officer was convinced that he would also find drugs on the couple.

After speaking with Brugger through her car window, Officer Dustin Fetz asked the 28-year-old woman to step out of the vehicle. While standing outside, the officer asked her to empty her pockets, and then twice requested that she “pull her shirt up, pull her bra out from her breasts, and to shake,” in order to see if she was hiding drugs, according to a report from State Attorney Jerry Hill.

“He made me go through the whole humiliating ordeal with shaking my bra out right there in the middle of this parking lot on Beacon Road,” Brugger told WFLA News. “He told me that he was taking me to Bartow Jail for driving on a suspended license and that they had an x-ray machine there and they were definitely going to find what I had hidden inside me there.”

Video from the officer’s dashboard shows the officer ordering the woman to lift her shift. But Fetz had turned off the camera’s audio, which makes it impossible to know exactly what was said.

The officer also searched the couple’s vehicle, despite their protests — a procedure that is illegal without probable cause.

State Attorney Investigator Mike Brown told The News Herald that if the audio had been on, “there would be little to no speculation as to what occurred during that traffic stop.” At the end of the traffic stop, Fetz allegedly told Brugger, “I’m done scaring you, and now you can go home.”

After the humiliating incident, Brugger filed a complaint against the officer and notified the State Attorney’s Office. Hill sent a letter to Chief of Police Lisa Womack, calling for an internal investigation into the incident and a critical look at how the Lakeland officers are trained.

“First of all, it’s just plain inappropriate. Let’s get that out of the way. It’s just wrong,” Hill told ABC Action News, noting that the officers did not even have a right to search Zoe, her boyfriend or her car without probable cause.

“I think the Lakeland leadership needs to take a really hard look at what they’re providing for the citizens of Lakeland,” he said, referencing a department that has been at the center of numerous other controversies. “Sadly, we’ve spent a disproportionate amount of time on Lakeland issues this year, and it’s not prosecuting Lakeland cases.”

Fetz was suspended for four days with pay, and returned to work on June 18. Lakeland Police Chief Lisa Womack released a statement in which she said that “this type of behavior will be dealt with accordingly, including possible termination.”

The police department has launched its own investigation of the incident.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: ‘You Say What You Like, Because They Like What You Say’ – http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/alerts-2013/731-you-say-what-you-like-because-they-like-what-you-say.html

This article originally appeared on: RT

Paving the way for high-powered flying robot insects and mini medical implants…

Anna Sanders
Daily Mail
June 21, 2013

The revolutionary technology behind 3D-printed car parts, food and guns can also be used to print batteries smaller than a grain of sand.

Scientists have used a 3D printer to make lithium-ion microbatteries that can fit into tiny devices that had previously stumped engineers looking to power them for longer periods.

The batteries were constructed from interlaced stacks of tiny battery electrodes, which conduct electricity, that are each smaller than the width of a single human hair.

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Say your town needs a new bridge. It might turn to Wall Street to come up with strategies to finance the project. This is supposed to be a win-win arrangement, but in the lucrative municipal finance business, one side has turned out to be the big loser. Guess which?

Nearly five years after Wall Street’s shady activities triggered massive funding crises for cities, states, and municipalities, the $3.7 trillion municipal finance cesspool has yet to be dredged. Banks continue to profit from their bad – or even fraudulent – advice that cost billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Meanwhile, the rest of us must tighten our belts, or pay higher taxes, or see services slide.

Let’s take a look at how bankers cooked up scams to drain the public coffers and why they continue to get away with it.

How your community became Wall Street prey

Many municipalities invested in flawed “structured finance” deals on the advice of bankers who said these complex transactions would give them a better deal than simpler, traditional products. So trusting public finance officials lined up to follow their advice – only to be told later that advice was not to be relied upon.

Tellingly, few (if any) corporations used similar structures to meet their funding needs. Nor did the banks themselves. Unfortunately, these products didn’t work as advertised, and public funding costs exploded as a result.

The financial structures bankers inflicted on the public are not easy to understand, but please try and stick with us: Banks rely on this complexity to obscure just how badly cities and states that followed their advice were hosed.

One common structure combined three key pieces: variable rate demand bonds (VRDBs), letters of credit and interest rate swaps. Municipal treasurers were looking to achieve the equivalent of a fixed rate financing– think of a 30-year mortgage–at lower than the market rate. And they signed on the dotted line in record numbers for these deals, with issuances of these complex bonds peaking in 2008.

Bankers realized that many professional investors – such as money market fund managers – cannot hold long-term debt, and instead prefer investments that can be dumped quickly when market conditions change. So bankers created VRDBs, which were “putable”– allowing buyers to get their money back, in most cases, every week, if they chose. Bankers thought these bonds, which in effect came with a money-back guarantee, would appeal to money market fund investors. At first, they did.

Alas, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. A bond that can be returned, with no penalty charges, every week doesn’t sound at all like the long-term infrastructure financing the city or state wanted. So banks promised municipal clients that if investors wanted to return bonds, the bank would find another buyer. Sounds like it might work out okay, right?

But what would happen if no one wanted to buy these returned bonds? To avoid leaving its municipal client and investors in a lurch, the bank created a guarantee, a letter of credit, that would provide alternative financing. Think of this letter of credit as insurance that would allow the city or state to continue to pay its bills if the market for its bonds dried up, while providing assurance to bond investors that the bond could be redeemed on demand.

The final piece of the structured contraption was a complex derivative, an interest rate swap. It was supposed to convert the weekly variable interest rate on the bonds to a fixed interest rate. This was another form of insurance that was meant to protect the public authority if interest rates went up.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

June 21, 2013
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Sometimes girls just want to have fun. And sometimes, they just want to play football. Twelve-year-old Maddy Blythe is one such girl. The middle-schooler was her team’s first-string defensive tackle, with four or five sacks to her credit, when Strong Rock Christian School in Locust Grove, Georgia kicked her off the team.

“Just for being a girl,” Blythe said in an interview with wsbtv.com.

When Maddy and her mother, former cop Cassie Blythe, pressed for further explanation, they said they were told the reasons inlcuded the fact that the boys might have “lustful thoughts,” and that they would likely use “rough language” in the locker room. Other explanations included, “Middle school girls should play middle school sports.” Finally, the head of the school told the Blythes that prayer had informed his decision.

Maddy says: “It’s like taking a dream and throwing it in the trash.” Her deam included being a nigh school football player, and possibly getting a scholarship. Her mother says it’s just”very archaic.”

Maddy and her Mom are now taking their fight to facebook, creating a page called “Let Her Play,” which is devoted to Maddy and all female athletes with a dream.

h/t Raw Story

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

Author’s Note

Millions of people across Brazil have joined one of the largest protest movement in the country’s history. Ironically, the social uprising is directed against the economic policies of a self-proclaimed “socialist” alternative to neoliberalism led by the Worker’s Party government of president Dilma Rousseff.

The IMF’s “strong economic medicine” including austerity measures, the privatization of social programs have been implemented under the “progressive” and “populist” banner of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), in close liaison with the World Bank, the IMF and Wall Street.

The PT government of Dilma Rousseff and her predecessor Luis Ignacio da Silva has been commended by the IMF for:

“a remarkable social transformation in Brazil underpinned by macroeconomic stability and rising living standards”.

The underlying social realities are otherwise. The World Bank’s “statistics” on poverty are grossly manipulated. Only 11 percent of the population, according to the World Bank are beneath the poverty line. 2.2 percent of the population are living in extreme poverty.

The standard of living in Brazil has collapsed since the accession of the Workers Party in 2003. Millions of people have been marginalized and impoverished including a significant part of the urban middle class.

While the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) presents a “progressive” people’s oriented image, officially opposed to “corporate globalization”, the macro-economic agenda has been reinforced. The PT government has consistently manipulated its grassroots, with a view to imposing what the “Washington Consensus” describes as “a strong policy framework”.

The multibillion dollar profit driven infrastructural investments pertaining to The World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016, wrought with corporate corruption, have contributed to a significant increase in Brazil’s external debt, which in turn has reinforced to clutch of the country’s Wall Street creditors.

The protest movement is in large part made up of people who voted for the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT).

The PT government’s grassroots support has been broken. The base of the Workers Party has gone against the government.

History

The Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores) has now been in power for over ten years.

The ongoing social crisis in Brazil is the consequence of the macro-economic agenda launched at the outset of Luis Ignacio da Silva’s accession to the presidency in 2003.

Lula’s election in 2002 embodied the hope of an entire nation. It represented an overwhelming vote against globalization and the neo-liberal model, which has resulted in mass poverty and unemployment throughout Latin America.

The election of Lula in the Fall of 2002 was perceived as a major breaking point, a means to repealing the policy framework of his predecessor Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

While embraced in chorus by progressive movements around the World, Lula’s administration was also being applauded by the main protagonists of the neoliberal model.

In the words of the IMF’s Managing Director Heinrich Koeller: “I am enthusiastic [with Lula’s administration]; but it is better to say I am deeply impressed by President Lula … the IMF listens to President Lula and the economic team, and that is our philosophy.”

No wonder the IMF is “enthusiastic”. The main institutions of economic and financial management were handed over on a silver platter to Wall Street and Washington.

This article was first published by Global Research at the outset of the PT government of Luis Ignacio da Silva. It describes how, from the very outset the presidency of Luis Ignacio da Silva, the leadership of the Worker’s Party betrayed an entire nation.

Michel Chossudovsky, June 21, 2013

by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research

April 3, 2003

The inauguration of Luis Ignacio da Silva (Lula) to the presidency of Brazil is historically significant, because millions of Brazilians saw in the Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores), a genuine political and economic alternative to the dominant (neoliberal) “free market” agenda.

Lula’s election embodies the hope of an entire nation. It constitutes an overwhelming vote against globalization and the neo-liberal model, which has resulted in mass poverty and unemployment throughout Latin America.

Meeting in Porto Alegre in late January at the World Social Forum, Lula’s anti-globalization stance was applauded by tens of thousands of delegates from around the World. The debate at the 2003 WSF, held barely two months before the invasion of Iraq, was held under the banner: “Another World is Possible”.

Ironically, while applauding Lula`s victory, nobody – among the prominent critics of “free trade” and corporate driven globalization— who spoke at the 2003 WSF, seemed to have noticed that President Luis Ignacio da Silva`s PT government had already handed over the reigns of macro-economic reform to Wall Street and the IMF.

While embraced in chorus by progressive movements around the World, Lula’s administration was also being applauded by the main protagonists of the neoliberal model In the words of the IMF’s Managing Director Heinrich Koeller:

I am enthusiastic [with Lula’s administration]; but it is better to say I am deeply impressed by President Lula, indeed, and in particular because I do think he has the credibility which often other leaders lack a bit, and the credibility is that he is serious to work hard to combine growth-oriented policy with social equity. This is the right agenda, the right direction, the right objective for Brazil and, beyond Brazil, in Latin America. So, he has defined the right direction. Second, I think what the government, under the leadership of President Lula, has demonstrated in its first 100 days of government is also impressive and not just airing intention how they work through the process on this huge agenda of reforms. I understand that pension reform, tax reform is high on the agenda, and this is right. The third element is that the IMF listens to President Lula and the economic team, and that is our philosophy, of course, beyond Brazil. (IMF Managing Director Heinrich Koeller, Press conference, 10 April 2003, http://www.imf.org/external/np/tr/2003/tr030410.htm )

Lula appoints a Wall Street Financier to lead Brazil’s Central Bank

At the very outset of his mandate, Lula reassured foreign investors that “Brazil will not follow neighboring Argentina into default” ( Davos World Economic Forum, January 2003). Now if such is his intent, then why did he appoint to the Central Bank, a man who played a role (as president of Boston Fleet) in the Argentinean debacle and whose bank was allegedly involved in shady money transactions, which contributed to the dramatic collapse of the Argentinean Peso.

By appointing Henrique de Campos Meirelles, the president and CEO of Boston Fleet, to head the country’s Central Bank, President Luis Ignacio da Silva had essentially handed over the conduct of the nation’s finances and monetary policy to Wall Street.

Boston Fleet is the 7th largest bank in the US. After Citigroup, Boston Fleet is Brazil’s second largest creditor institution.

The country is in financial straightjacket. The key finance/banking positions in Lula’s administration are held by Wall Street appointees:

• The Central Bank is under the control of Boston Fleet,
• A former senior executive of Citigroup Mr. Casio Casseb Lima has been put in charge of the State banking giant Banco do Brazil (BB). Cassio Casseb Lima, who worked for Citigroup’s operations in Brazil, was initially recruited to BankBoston in 1976 by Henrique Meirelles. In other words, the head of BB has personal and professional links to Brazil’s two largest commercial creditors: Citigroup and Boston Fleet.

Continuity will be maintained. The new PT team in the Central Bank is a carbon copy of that appointed by (outgoing) President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. The outgoing Central Bank president Arminio Fraga was a former employee of Quantum Fund (New York), which is owned by Wall Street financier George Soros.

In close liaison with Wall Street and the IMF, Lula’s appointee to the Central Bank of Brazil, Henrique de Campos Meirelles, has maintained the policy framework of his predecessor (who was also a Wall Street appointee) : tight monetary policy, generalized austerity measures, high interest rates and a deregulated foreign exchange regime. The latter encourages speculative attacks against the Brazilian Real and capital flight, resulting in a spiraling foreign debt.

Needless to say, the IMF program in Brazil will be geared towards the eventual dismantling of the State banking system in which the new head of Banco do Brazil, a former Citibank official, will no doubt play a crucial role.

No wonder the IMF is “enthusiastic”. The main institutions of economic and financial management are in the hands the country’s creditors. Under these conditions, neoliberalism is “live and kicking”: an “alternative” macro-economic agenda, modeled on the spirit of Porto Alegre is simply not possible.

“Putting the Fox in charge of the Chicken Coop”

Boston Fleet was one among several banks and financial institutions which speculated against the Brazilian Real in 1998-99, leading to the spectacular meltdown of the Sao Paulo stock exchange on “Black Wednesday” 13 January 1999. BankBoston, which later merged with Fleet is estimated to have made a 4.5 billion dollars windfall in Brazil in the course of the Real Plan, starting with an initial investment of $100 million.(Latin Finance, 6 August 1998).

In other words, Boston Fleet is the “cause” rather than “the solution” to the country’s financial woes. Appointing the former CEO of Boston Fleet to head the nation’s Central Bank is tantamount to “putting the fox to in charge of the chicken coop”.

The new economic team has stated that it is committed to resolving the country’s debt crisis and steering Brazil towards financial stability. Yet the policies they have adopted are likely to have exactly the opposite effects.

Replicating Argentina

It so happens that Lula’s Central Bank president, Henrique Meirelles was a staunch supporter of Argentina’s controversial Finance Minister Domingo Cavallo, who played a key role under the Menem government, in spearheading the country into a deep-seated economic and social crisis. .

According to Meirelles in a 1998 interview, who at the time was President and CEO of Bank Boston:

The most fundamental event [in Latin America] was when the stabilization plan was launched in Argentina [under Domingo Cavallo] . It was a different approach, in the sense that it wasn’t a control of prices or a control of the flow of money, but it was a control of the money supply and government finances.(Latin Finance, 6 August 1998).

It is worth noting that the so-called “control of the money supply” referred to by Meirelles, essentially means freezing the supply of credit to local businesses, leading to the collapse of productive activity.

The results, as evidenced by the Argentina debacle, was a string of bankruptcies, leading to mass poverty and unemployment. Under the brunt of Finance Minister Cavallo’s policies, in the course of the 1990s, most State owned national and provincial banks in Argentina, which provided credit to industry and agriculture, were sold off to foreign banks. Citibank and Fleet Bank of Boston were on the receiving end of these ill-fated IMF sponsored reforms.

“Once upon a time, government-owned national and provincial banks supported the nation’s debts. But in the mid- Nineties, the government of Carlos Menem sold these off to Citibank of New York, Fleet Bank of Boston and other foreign operators. Charles Calomiris, a former World Bank adviser, describes these bank privatisations as a ‘really wonderful story’. Wonderful for whom? Argentina has bled out as much as three-quarters of a billion dollars a day in hard currency holdings.” (The Guardian, 12 August 2001)

Domingo Cavallo was the architect of “dollarization”. Acting on behalf of Wall Street, he was responsible for pegging the Peso to the US dollar in a colonial style currency board arrangement, which resulted in a spiraling external debt and the eventual breakdown of the entire monetary system.

The currency board arrangement implemented by Cavallo had been actively promoted by Wall Street, with Citigroup and Fleet Bank in the lead.

Under a currency board, money creation is controlled by external creditors. The Central Bank virtually ceases to exist. The government cannot undertake any form of domestic investment without the approval of its external creditors. The US Federal Reserve takes over the process of money creation. Credit can only be granted to domestic producers by driving up the external (dollar denominated) debt.

Financial Scam

When the Argentina crisis reached its climax in 2001, major creditor banks transferred billions of dollars out of the country. An investigation launched in early 2003 pointed not only to the alleged criminal involvement of former Argentinean finance minister Domingo Cavallo, but also to that of several foreign banks including Citibank and Boston Fleet of which Henrique Mereilles was president and CEO:

“Battling to surmount a deep economic crisis, Argentina [January 2002] targeted capital flight and tax evasion, with police searching US, British and Spanish bank offices and authorities seeking explanations from an ex-president about the origins of his Swiss fortune. Claims that as much as 26 billion dollars left the country illegally late last year prompted the police actions. Later in the day, police went to Citibank, Bank Boston [Fleet] and a subsidiary of Spain’s Santander. (…) The various lawsuits in connection with illegal capital transfers name, among others, former president Fernando de la Rua, who stepped down December 20 [2001]; his economy minister Domingo Cavallo; and Roque Maccarone, who quit as central bank chief…” (AFP, 18 January 2003).

The same banks involved in the Argentinean financial scam, including Boston Fleet under the helm of Henrique Meirelles, were also involved in similar shady money transfers operations in other countries including the Russia Federation:

“[A]s many as 10 U.S. banks might have been used to divert as much as $15 billion from Russia, sources said, citing federal investigators. Fleet Financial Group Inc. and other banks are being investigated because they have accounts that belong to or are linked to Benex International Co.which is at the center of an alleged Russian money-laundering scheme.” (Boston Business Journal, 23 September 1999)

The Brazilian Financial Reforms

Everything indicates that Wall Street’s hidden agenda is to eventually replicate the Argentinean scenario and impose “dollarization” on Brazil. The ground work of this design was established under the Plan Real, at the outset of the presidency of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1994-2002).

Henrique Meirelles, who had integrated FHC’s party the PSDB, played a key behind the scens role in setting the stage for the adoption of more fundamental financial reforms:

“In the early 1990s, I [Meirelles] was a member of the board of the American Chamber of Commerce and in charge of an effort to begin lobbying for a change in the Brazilian Constitution. At the same time I was also chairman of the Brazilian Association of International Banks and was in charge of the effort to open up the country to foreign banks and to open the flow of money. I started a broad campaign of approaching key people, including journalists, politicians, professors and advertising professionals. When I started, everyone told me it was hopeless, that the country would never open its markets, that the country should protect its industries. Over a couple of years, I spoke to about 120 representatives. The private sector was fiercely against the opening of the markets, particularly the bankers.(Latin Finance, op cit)

Amending the Constitution

The issue of Constitutional reform was central to Wall Street’s design of economic and financial deregulation.

At the outset of Fernando Collor de Melo’s presidency in 1990, the IMF had demanded an amendment to the 1988 Constitution. There was uproar in the National Congress, with the IMF accused of “gross interference in the internal affairs of the state”.

Several clauses of the 1988 Constitution stood in the way of achieving the IMF’s proposed budget targets, which were under negotiation with the Collor administration. IMF expenditure targets could could not be met without a massive firing of public- sector employees, requiring an amendment to a clause of the 1988 Constitution guaranteeing security of employment to federal civil servants. Also at issue was the financing formula (entrenched in the Constitution) of state and municipal-level programs from federal government sources. This formula limited the ability of the federal government to slash social expenditures and shift revenue towards debt servicing.

Blocked during the short-lived Collor adminstration, the issue of constitutional reform was reintroduced shortly after the impeachment of President Collor de Melo. In June 1993, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who at the time was Finance Minister in the interim government of President Itamar Franco, announced budget cuts of 50 per cent in education, health and regional development while pointing to the need for revisions to the 1988 Constitution.

The IMF’s demands regarding Constitutional reform were later embodied in Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s (FHC) presidential platform. The deregulation of the banking sector was a key component of the Constitutional reform process, which at the time had been opposed by the Workers Party in both the House and the Senate.

Meanwhile Henrique Meirelles, who at the time was in charge of BankBoston’s operations in Latin America (with one foot in FHC’s party the PSDB and the other in Wall Street), was lobbying behind the scenes in favour of constitutional reform:

“Eventually we reached an agreement that became part of the Constitutional reform. When the Constitution was first supposed to be reformed, in 1993, it didn’t happen. It didn’t get enough votes. However, after Fernando Henrique Cardoso took office, it was reformed. That particular agreement I had worked on was one of the first points in the Constitution that was actually changed. I [Meirelles] personally was involved in a change which I think at the end of the day meant the beginning of the opening of the Brazilian capital markets. In Brazil, there were restrictions on the flow of capital, on foreign capital acquiring Brazilian banks and on international banks opening branches in Brazil as mandated by the 1988 Constitution, all of which prohibited the development of the capital markets. ” (Latin Finance, 6 August 1998).

The Plan Real

The Plan Real was launched barely a few months before the November 1993 elections while FHC was Finance Minister. The fixed peg of the Real to the US dollar, in many regards, emulated the Argentinean framework, without however instating a currency board arrangement.

Under the Plan Real, price stability was achieved. The stability of the currency was in many regards fictitious. It was sustained by driving up the external debt.

The reforms were conducive to the demise of a large number of domestic banking institutions, which were acquired by a handful of foreign banks under the privatization program launched under the FHC presidency (1994-2002).

A spiraling foreign debt ultimately precipitated a financial crash in January 1999, leading to the collapse of the Real. (for further details see Michel Chossudovsky, The Brazilian Financial Scam, http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/brazil/economy/financialScam.html , October 1998. This article was published three months before the January 1999 financial collapse. See also Michel Chossudovsky, Brazil’s IMF Sponsored Economic Disaster, 12.February 1999, http://www.heise.de/tp/english/special/eco/6373/1.html )

Cruel Logic of IMF Rescue Loans

IMF loans are largely intended to finance capital flight. In fact this was the logic of the mutlibillion dollar loan package granted to Brazil, immediately following the October 1998 elections which led to the reelection of FHC for a second presidential term. The loan was granted barely a few months prior to the January 1999 financial meltdown:

Brazil’s foreign currency reserves have fallen from $78 billion in July 1998 to $48 billion in September. And now the IMF has offered to “lend the money back” to Brazil in the context of a “Korean style” rescue operation which will eventually require the issuing of large amounts of public debt in G-7 countries. The Brazilian authorities have insisted that the country “is not at risk” and what they are seeking is “precautionary funding” (rather than a “bail-out”) to stave of the “contagious effects”of the Asian crisis. Ironically, the amount considered by the IMF (30 billion dollars) is exactly equal to the money “taken out” of the country (during a 3 month period) in the form of capital flight . But the central bank will not be able to use the IMF loan to replenish its hard currency reserves. The bail-out money (including a large part of the $18 billion US contribution to the IMF approved by Congress in October) is intended to enable Brazil to meet current debt servicing obligations, —ie. to reimburse the speculators. The bailout money will never enter Brazil. (See Michel Chossudovsky, The Brazilian Financial Scam, op cit.)

The same logic underlies the $31.4 billion precautionary loan granted by the IMF in September 2002, barely a couple of months prior to the presidential elections. (See IMF Approves US$30.4 Billion Stand-By Credit for Brazil at http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2002/pr0240.htm ) This IMF loan constitutes “a social safety net” for institutional speculators and hot money investors.

The IMF pumps billions of dollars into the Central Bank, Forex reserves are replenished on borrowed money. The IMF loan is granted on condition the Central Bank retains a deregulated foreign exchange market coupled with domestic interest rates at very high levels.

So-called “foreign investors” are able to transfer (in dollars) the proceeds of their “investments” in short term domestic debts (at very high interest rates) out of the country. In other words, the borrowed forex reserves from the IMF are re-appropriated by Brazil’s external creditors.

We must understand the history of successive financial crises in Brazil. With Wall Street creditors in charge, the levels of external debt have continued to climb. The IMF has “come to the rescue” with new multibillion dollar loans, which are always conditional upon the adoption of sweeping austerity measures and the privatization of State assets. The main difference is that this process is now being undertaken under a president, who claims to be opposed to neoliberalism.

It should be noted, however, that the new multibillion dollar IMF “precautionary loan” granted in September 2002, was negotiated by FHC, a few months before the elections. The IMF loan and the conditionalities attached to it set the stage for a spiraling external debt during Lula’s presidential mandate. (See Brazil–Letter of Intent, Memorandum of Economic Policies, and Technical Memorandum of Understanding, at http://www.imf.org/external/np/loi/2002/bra/04/index.htm#mep , Brasília, August 29, 2002.)

Dollarization

With the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance under the control of the Wall Street establishment, this process will eventually lead Brazil into another financial and foreign exchange crisis. While the underlying logic is similar, based on the same financial manipulations as in 1998-99, in all likelihood it will be far more serious than that of January 1999.

In other words, the macro-economic policies adopted by President Luis Ignacio da Silva could well result, in the foreseeable future, in debt default and the demise of the nation’s currency, leading Brazil down the path of “dollarization”. A currency board arrangement, similar to that of Argentina could be imposed. What this means is that the US dollar would become Brazil’s proxy currency. What this means is that the country looses its economic sovereignty. Its Central Bank is defunct. As in the case of Argentina, monetary policy would be decided by the US Federal Reserve system.

While not officially part of the Free Trade Area of the America’s (FTAA) negotiations, the adoption of the US dollar as the common currency for the Western Hemisphere is being discussed behind closed doors Wall Street intends to extend its control throughout the hemisphere, eventually displacing or taking over remaining domestic banking institutions (including that of Brazil).

The greenback has already been imposed on five Latin American countries including Ecuador, Argentina, Panama, El Salvador and Guatemala. The economic and social consequences of “dollarization” have been devastating. In these countries, Wall Street and the US Federal Reserve system directly control monetary policy.

Brazil’s PT government should draw the lessons of Argentina where the IMF’s economic medicine played a key role in precipitating the country into a deep-seated economic and social crisis.

Unless the present course of monetary policy is reversed, the tendency in Brazil is towards the “Argentina scenario”, with devastating economic and social consequences.

What Prospects under the Lula Presidency?

While the new PT government presents itself as “an alternative” to neoliberalism, committed to poverty alleviation and the redistribution of wealth, its monetary and fiscal policy is in the hands of its Wall Street creditors.

Fome Zero (“zero hunger”), described as a program “to fight misery”, largely conforms to World Bank guidelines on “cost-effective poverty reduction”. The latter require the implementation of so-called “targeted” programs, while drastically slashing social sector budgets. World Bank directives in health and education require curtailing social expenditures with a view to meeting debt servicing obligations.

The IMF and the World Bank have commended President Luis Ignacio da Silva for his commitment to “strong macroeconomic fundamentals.” As far as the IMF is concerned, Brazil “is on track” in conformity with IMF benchmarks. The World Bank has also praised the Lula government: “Brazil is pursuing a bold social program with fiscal responsibility.”

 ”Another World is possible”?

What kind of “Alternative” is possible, when a government committed to “fighting neoliberalism”, becomes an unbending supporter of “free trade” and “strong economic medicine.”

Beneath the surface and behind the Workers Party’s populist rhetoric, the neoliberal agenda under Lula remains functionally intact.

The grassroots movement which brought Lula to power has been betrayed. And the “progressive” Brazilian intellectuals within Lula’s inner circle bear a heavy burden of responsibility in this process. And what this “left accommodation” does is to ultimately reinforce the clutch of the Wall Street financial establishment on the Brazilian State.

“Another World” cannot be based on empty political slogans. Nor will it result from a shift in “paradigms”, which is not accompanied by real changes in power relations within Brazilian society, within the State system and within the national economy.

Meaningful change cannot result from a debate on “an alternative to neoliberalism”, which on the surface appears to be “progressive”, but which tacitly accepts the “globalizers” legitimate right to rule and plunder the developing World.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

Stage performing monkey helps take a bite out of crime

Infowars.com
June 21, 2013

In a scenario that might send people rushing their local exotic pet shop, an unsuspecting Texas police officer was assaulted by the most unlikely of aggressors after administering a speeding ticket to a motorist.

Aransas Pass, TX rookie officer Keith Moore captured the incident on a camera mounted on the side of his sunglasses.

After reaching into the vehicle to ask the driver for his signature, he pulled back swiftly and in surprise after a monkey jumped out of the back seat and bit his hand.

“A monkey bit me,” officer Keith told his sergeant upon returning to his squad vehicle. “His monkey attacked me… He had a monkey and it bit my hand.”

King5 reported the officer sustained only a minor scratch and that the primate in question was actually a traveling performer who apparently didn’t take too kindly to revenue generating public servants violating due process laws.

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 1:14 pm

Tags: domestic news, police state

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Today, Edward Snowden is my hero. More importantly, he is my father’s hero. And he speaks for us both, among others.

In 1976, my father was appointed to the Church Committee, which had been convened to review (and rein in) US intelligence gathering practices. Its findings resulted in the establishment of the secret court system by which the National Security Agency has now obtained — with Patriot Act as lever — so much digital information about Americans’ private lives.

During his time on the Committee, my father was both shocked by what he learned and heartened by the substantive measures taken to guard American citizens’ privacy. And my father was not an easy man to surprise or mollify. He was a student of the unfolding Cold War, a fluent speaker of Russian who had lived in St. Petersburg, where his Vietnamese classmates had scrawled anti-American invective on the blackboards. His closest friends from St. Petersburg eventually undertook a sudden, dangerous defection to the United States. My father knew what the world’s most advanced intelligence gathering apparatuses could do, how arbitrary and vindictive their agendas could be, and how deeply enmeshed their domestic incursions could become with Cold War insecurities and paranoia. Then, he took some comfort in technology’s limits. A friend working for the NSA once reassured him that the technology needed to efficiently gather and review a large volume of broadly-targeted phone records simply didn’t exist. My father was relieved. If that kind of broad intercept were possible, it would strike at the heart of our freedom of association, already grown so frail.

My parents were both liberal DC beltway attorneys of the come-to-do-good variety. I was therefore enrolled in a so-called progressive primary school, which was selective and expensive. The teachers there shared my parents’ professed politics, and the school possessed its trivial emblems of indifference toward mainstream education, a carpeted gym chief among them. But these were the children of the wealthy and influential, their ruthlessness preternatural and imperturbable (mine, within its own lights, was no exception). Only the precocious were liked by their peers: athletes, musicians, children with savant-level math ability. The rest were legitimate targets for harassment that often took on subtle and sinister dimensions, in large part due to the above-average intelligence and sense of entitlement that pervaded our environment.

The occasional African-American student — whose parents were often conspicuously less bourgeois than the rest — was treated with detached disdain, the detachment a feature of adult enforcement: the ‘white’ children knew that any overt criticism of their darker-skinned peers would be considered beyond the pale. But our teachers could only place so many fingers in so many dikes: black students often struggled or left the school, and slur-riddled graffiti showed up on the door of our only black teacher’s classroom, directed toward her black Muslim intern.

Though none of us could articulate it then (and none would dare once we were old enough to understand what had happened), we didn’t care about our peers’ race at all. But in our quietly vicious way, influenced, perhaps, by our parents’ constant articulation of meritocracy — that most hollow of liberal adornments — we knew these children were not marked for success, and we knew that their presence among us signaled our school’s finely tuned sense of guilt about that very fact. In our own childlike way, we resented having our parents’ sense of shame and stratification thrust onto us, who were yet innocent, wealthy and bright.

Today, I understand the good intentions and tremendous financial sacrifice that underlay my parents’ decision to enroll me in that school. And I understand the rewards my expensive education has allowed me to reap. But I still begrudge my parents that decision. Partly because they chose the progressive school over an admittedly less liberal bilingual institution, a choice which robbed me of my fragile Spanish fluency: I had been raised by my Ecuadorian nanny, Matildé, whose hundred-hour-per-week presence in my household was another ambivalent feature of the highly-disciplined system of “middle class” self-sacrifice my parents had to comply with in order to — as David Simon might have put it — get paid, make friends, and have a future.

But above all else, my bitterness about my formative educational experience arises from an ever-sharpening memory of my teachers’ watchfulness, and their concomitant, fundamental dishonesty. The adults saw everything. We saw that they saw. And we saw that, in spite of all the humanistic rhetoric they daily hung on us, they never really spoke. We saw, though we lacked the vocabulary or class consciousness to articulate it, that if our teachers wanted to keep their jobs, they had to avoid the eminently punishable good deed of identifying the futility of their task: using progressive education as a do-as-I-say enjoinder against the pervasive competitiveness and atomization that defined the society we were preparing to join, even in its liberal reaches. In this manner, moral complacency was role modeled for us, as it was for so many children in so many milieus — educational and otherwise — across the country. Since, almost all of us have proven ourselves to be excellent pupils.

I have had this conversation with my parents, and often begrudge my father his complaints — though they aren’t really so numerous — about the time and place where we live. I remind him that it was his generation, in spite of the tremendous momentum generated during the ‘60s and all the resulting moral authority they claim, who are responsible for today’s America. Once, in response, my father laid bare the impatience and naiveté underlying the notion that any one group of people — even an entire generation — could be responsible for something so enormous. “I challenge you,” he said, “to find anyone my age who’s willing to say that today’s world is the one they wanted, or even the one they envisioned.” He was right. The world is not something that happens, much less something that is made to happen. It is something that accrues, as much through an absence of action as through action itself, over the course of history.

After Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, my father was the last Democrat out the door at the Department of Justice. For his non-partisan efforts to facilitate the department’s Carter-to-Reagan transition, he received a framed letter from the Gipper himself, which he managed to restrain himself from burning for as long as it took him to lose track of it. He then joined the ranks of liberal political operatives jockeying to maintain their relevance until Americans voted in another Democrat. This was not a fair, humane or even meritocratic competition, and thus began my father’s disillusionment, whereby he learned how little a professed morality — or a beloved platform of noble goals — means when weighed against the American dream’s unadorned core: who gets what job.

Eventually, he learned to laugh at the more ridiculous moments. For instance, an acquaintance’s blunt refusal — as a guest at my parents’ dinner table — to so much as entertain the notion of helping my father network, so rudely put and so bald-facedly self-interested that her boyfriend later called my parents to apologize and cemented the apology by dumping her. The guest in question was Zoë Baird, later nominated to be Attorney General by Bill Clinton.

At the time, however, such moments severely disoriented my father, who suffered from a sense of fair play learned during a childhood that, for all its imperfections, manifested a social mobility so elusive — and yet so culturally resonant — that, if it were tangible, would probably be in a museum by now. The first in his family to attend college, he transcended his working class background by studying his way into Princeton, and then Harvard Law School. Because he was that rare individual whose life had unfolded accordingly, my father embraced the American mythos that has been used to delude so many people of modest means into neglecting or antagonizing their own political interests. In fact, I believe my father rarely questioned American values as such until his only sibling, who was openly gay, died of AIDS in 1989, adrift in the generous bile so many Americans found it in their hearts to spew while their brothers suffered and perished.

Zoë Baird, by the way, withdrew her 1993 Attorney General nomination after revelations about the nanny and chauffeur she’d hired — both illegal immigrants whose social security taxes she had evaded. The incident, dubbed Nannygate, took on a personal dimension for me: it illuminated the subtle moral differences that separate social strivers like Baird from honest white-collar laborers like my parents, regardless of their common profession. My parents had always been assiduous in assisting Matildé — both legally and practically — with her immigration status, which required borrowing against the time they usually reserved for getting ahead in their jobs. That hard work later resulted in Matildé’s naturalization as an American citizen, a process I participated in by helping her study for her citizenship exam. When Matildé took her oath, my mother and I were the two guests she invited.

Now I, too, am an immigrant, who in turn spends his time working with immigrants. I report on Japan’s tiny African expatriate community for Tokyo’s daily English-language newspaper. Most of Japan’s African immigrants are Nigerian, and most of them are Igbo, which is to say they are members of an ethnicity whose fierce individualism and egalitarianism (traditional Igbo culture recognized no kings or chiefs) was smashed by missionaries who imposed a hierarchical social system, which makes for a much more efficient control mechanism. Today, Igbo people inhabit a nation whose boundaries have been delineated according to the West’s whims, visible in the geopolitical subtexts of the war fought over Biafra — the independent Igbo state declared in 1967.

The resulting nation is cursed with a heart made of oil, and its petrodollars are subject to massive chicanery. Imagine Texas at its oil-producing peak, except 90 percent of the money winds up hidden under an elaborate network of mattresses. American oil companies are deeply embroiled in this state of play. Of these companies’ many thousands of employees, one assumes that at least a small handful are dimly aware of the details, and that their awareness might even vitiate the otherwise unadulterated joy they experience when they punch in.

My Igbo friends with enough historical consciousness (usually the result of education, which is usually the result of affluence) bemoan the contemporary outcome of all this cultural meddling and foreign “investment.” Igbo individualism has been twisted to accommodate the morality of success, thereby producing a culture whose defining characteristic is a fixation with material prosperity. Even better than Americans, the more critically-minded of my Igbo friends are intimately acquainted with the dangers of individualism made slave to self-interest. And they know the two have not always been considered identical.

Recently, an Igbo friend of mine who owns a bar in Tokyo’s red light district walked me to the train station near his home. We had just finished dinner in his apartment, with his Japanese wife and bi-ethnic children, in view of his family’s Buddhist altar. Bullet trains had been visible and audible through the apartment’s screen windows, which looked out onto the other quintessential components of the contemporary Japanese vista: ball fields peopled by playing children, massive apartment buildings looming in the distance, their interior lights flickering to life as the daytime waned.

We talked about his conversion from missionary Christianity to Zen Buddhism. We discussed what had brought us to Japan, and why we wanted to stay. We both possessed vivid memories of wars our respective countries had waged. We both remembered what it was like to walk in the cities of our homeland and not feel safe from the violence that is both a symptom and cause of hopelessness. We could readily agree on three words to describe our own hope, which, to us, felt unimpeachably universal. “A peaceful life.”

My friend’s hope, he said, must have come from his parents. Mine, too. I thought about the moments when my father helped to shape that sensibility in me, and what kind of person I might have become if he instead had told me that I deserved what so many people — influential and otherwise — believe they deserve: to win, even at the expense of others’ rights and dignity. It would have been easy enough for my father to make me — out of casual neglect — into a vessel for his own frustrated ambitions, to see his responsibility toward his children as a matter of cumulative, upward motion. Many parents do. I thought about this while my friend and I walked. And I thought about how, in his own way, in spite of everything, there were moments in my father’s life when he had truly spoken. I thought about how I might try, in spite of inducements toward silence, to someday speak as clearly.

But today, at a moment when we have discovered that technology’s advance has made the seizure and storage of our lives’ every detail a sudden, jarring reality, my father and I find ourselves positioned only for muteness. I have traded the opportunity to live in the nation of my birth for the chance to reside in Japan, where — with history in mind — I almost never wonder if the country where I make my home will pre-emptively invade another nation, and where the women in my life can comfortably walk on a city street at night. And, like everyone else, I make compromises to advance my career. These include the routine dismissal or avoidance of serious ethical questions that I encounter in an inconvenient professional context.

My father is planning for retirement. When I spoke with him last, he explained how American economic analysts have determined that one million dollars of savings is a mere fraction of the advisable amount for a couple to retire on. I am certain my parents legal careers’ (modestly compensated by attorneys’ standards) have not permitted them to save nearly that much, but my father’s incredulity contained a pertinacious undertone. If this was the world’s new demand, he would rise and try to meet it. Even as America’s middle class (which existed meaningfully for the flicker of an instant) is confronted with less and less reasonable expectations — unto annihilation, perhaps — my father is determined to prove himself by earning, saving and forbearing. Amid his ongoing quest for stability, he has misplaced his whistle. That such an outcome has befallen him — a person adventurous and radical enough to direct his formative intellectual energy toward a nation, language and culture whose mere mention took the air out of many American rooms — indicates just how effectively financial anxiety now robs even relatively wealthy people of their impulse toward courage.

In light of all this, neither my father nor I are surprised by the government’s actions. Misconduct by government intelligence agencies has been de rigueur since Hoover. Today’s revelations are more of the depressing same. My father jokes that the only difference between abuses of power in Democratic and Republican administrations is the quality of the prose contained in the accompanying legal memos. Neither can I profess much shock at the notion that this has occurred during a Democratic presidency. Such indignation strikes me as symptomatic of a kind of NPR liberalism, wherein possessing a liberal frame of mind excuses us from making any gestures beyond the purely interpretive: when shit happens, make a documentary.

What is much more alarming — and much more contemporary — is the amount of collective complacency that must have been necessary for this program to remain undisclosed for so long. Not just among lawmakers who occasionally hinted at its disturbing dimensions. But among the hundreds — perhaps even thousands — of private citizens who must have acquired at least partial or circumstantial awareness of the program at some point, in their capacity as employees of the various digital firms who complied with the government’s requests for data. These individuals — and their lack of action — present a portrait of contemporary morality rendered at a much higher resolution, all ugliness laid plain. Their cowardice commands my attention because it is also my own, and it is also my father’s. Some of my primary school classmates work at these firms, most of them avowedly liberal. I wonder if they knew, and how that knowledge affected them. I wonder if knowing — but not saying — reminded them of the many adults who role-modeled practical and exigent behavior for us when we were too young to imagine what kind of wreckage such behavior would leave inside us.

Such reflection is among the luxuries I may claim as a child of relative privilege. But for my parents, the impact of the current domestic spying regime, had it been known to exist when they were young, would have been tangible and ruinous. Having learned that the 4th and 1st Amendments could not protect him, my father might have ceased communicating with his friends in Russia, especially the two who later defected. My mother, who assisted foreign nationals seeking political asylum, would have come under further scrutiny (the FBI had already opened a file on her after she attended campus demonstrations against the Vietnam war). All of their attorney-client contacts would have been caught in an immeasurably broad net. When my uncle was sent to a military prison for his conscientious objection to the Vietnam War in 1970 and commenced a hunger strike, records of the telephone calls my grandfather, who was a World War II veteran, made in an attempt to secure his release would have landed in a government database. None of this was illegal, but much of it would have been chilled if my family members knew the US intelligence apparatus could review it with the click of a mouse.

James Baldwin often said that if one person is prevented from speaking about one thing, soon no one will be able to speak about anything. Today, courage belongs to the one person who has spoken, a person whose affluence did not rob him of moral impetus, and who has not confused individualism with self-interest. I write today to express a coward’s gratitude for his actions. My parents add their gratitude to mine. My Igbo friend who walked me to the train station asks that I thank Edward Snowden on his behalf, as well. I believe that Matildé, had she not died shortly after achieving American citizenship, would thank him, too. Today, our only regret is that Edward Snowden, in spite of his courage, has almost certainly sacrificed any possibility of achieving that which he believes we are all entitled to: a peaceful life.

Dreux Richard is an American writer, journalist and literary translator living in Tokyo.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

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This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

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This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

The US Environmental Protection Agency has dropped its plans to further investigate whether or not fracking led to the contamination of a Wyoming aquifer, and the agency no longer plans to write a report on the matter.

The EPA in 2011 released a draft report, which revealed that hydraulic fracturing fluids used at a shale gas drilling site had likely contaminated groundwater in Pavillion, Wyoming. Oil and gas companies have long argued that fracking poses no water contamination risks, but the EPA’s results demonstrated otherwise.

Critics of the findings, including Wyoming state officials and drilling advocates, argued that the EPA conducted a poor and inaccurate study, which could ultimately harm the industry.

Despite the initial wave of criticism in 2011, EPA officials planned to resume the study and continue making assessments regarding the influence of fracking on groundwater. But the EPA on Thursday abandoned those plans, announcing that state officials will instead take over the investigation into Pavillion’s water pollution and draw up a conclusion in 2014.

“We think this is the most pragmatic, quickest way to help the residents of Pavillion. We’re going to work hand in hand with the state to make sure this investigation moves forward,” EPA spokesman Tom Reynolds announced in Washington, D.C.

Wyoming will receive a $1.5 million grant from Encana Corp.’s US oil and gas subsidiary, which owns the Pavillion gas field in question. The state plans to issue a final report about its findings in late 2014. Industry officials and drilling proponents have praised the decision to hand over responsibility of the study to Wyoming state officials.

“EPA has to do a better job, because another fatally flawed water study could have a big impact on how the nation develops its massive energy resources,” Erik Milito, from the Washington, D.C.-based American Petroleum Institute, said in a news release.

“The EPA has been on a witch hunt to shut down hydraulic fracturing,” Sen. David Vitter, the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, told Reuters.

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead said in a news release that letting state officials run the investigation is “in everyone’s best interest”, since it would lead to “an unbiased, scientifically supportable conclusion.”

But Mead, a known advocate of drilling, has made no attempts to hide his own biases. Last September, Mead asked the Interior Department to abandon fracking rules, claiming that it was unnecessary to request companies to disclose the chemicals they inject down well bores. He has long opposed having any federal fracking rules, and urges lawmakers to let states make their own decisions.

And the Native Americans who live around the fracking site may not even take part in the study, despite the fact that contaminated groundwater has the greatest impact on their tribe. The Northern Arapaho Tribe, which lives on a reservation surrounding Pavillion, has long sought to maintain a role in the investigation. But a tribal official told AP that the EPA has stopped consulting with the community.

“They have a legal duty to consult with the tribe and that didn’t happen as part of their dialogue with the governor,” Ronald Oldman, co-chairman of the tribe’s business council, said in a statement.

It is unclear why the EPA abandoned the study, but with state officials — many of which are fracking proponents — leading the investigation, the results could look very different from the 2011 draft report that linked fracking chemicals to groundwater contamination.  

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: ‘You Say What You Like, Because They Like What You Say’ – http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/alerts-2013/731-you-say-what-you-like-because-they-like-what-you-say.html

This article originally appeared on: RT

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

If the life of Shimon Peres was a play, it would be difficult to classify. A tragedy? A comedy? A tragicomedy?

For sixty years it looked as if he was under a curse of the Gods, much like the curse of Sisyphus, who was condemned to roll an immense boulder up a hill, and every time he approached his goal the rock would roll down again to the bottom.

Disclosure: our lives have run somehow on parallel lines. He is one month older than I. We both came to Palestine as boys. We have both been in political life from our teens. But there the similarity ends.

We met for the first time 60 years ago, when we were 30 years old. He was the Director General of Israel’s most important ministry, I was the publisher and editor of Israel’s most aggressive news magazine. We disliked each other on sight.

He was David Ben-Gurion’s main assistant, I was Ben-Gurion’s main enemy (so defined by his security chief.) From there our paths crossed many times, but we did not become bosom friends.

Already in his early childhood in Poland, Peres (still Persky) complained that his mates in (Jewish) school beat him up for no reason. His younger brother had to defend him.

When he came to Palestine with his family, he was sent to the legendary children’s village Ben Shemen, and joined a kibbutz. But already as a teenager his political acumen was evident. He was an instructor in a socialist youth movement. It split and most of his comrades joined the left-wing faction, which looked more young and dynamic. Peres was one of the few who remained with the ruling party, Mapai, and thereby drew the attention of the senior leaders.

He had to make a much more momentous choice in the 1948 war, a war all of us considered a life-and-death struggle. It was the decisive event in the life of our generation. Almost all the young people hastened to join the fighting units. Not Peres. Ben-Gurion sent him abroad to buy arms — a very important task, but one that could have been carried out by an older person. Peres was considered a shirker at the supreme test and was never forgiven by the 1948ers. Their contempt plagued him for decades.

At the early age of 30 Ben-Gurion appointed him director of the Defense Ministry — a huge advancement, which assured him a rapid rise to the top. And indeed, he played a major role in pushing Ben-Gurion into the 1956 Suez war, in collusion with France and Britain.

The French were struggling with the Algerian war for independence and believed that their real enemy was the Egyptian leader, Gamal Abd-al-Nasser. They got Israel to spearhead an attack to topple him. It was a complete failure.

In my opinion, the war was a political disaster for Israel. It dug the abyss separating our new state from the Arab world. But the French showed their gratitude — they rewarded Peres with the atomic reactor in Dimona.

Throughout this period, Peres was the ultimate hawk, and a central member of a group which my magazine, Haolam Hazeh, branded as “Ben-Gurion’s youth gang” — a group we suspected of plotting to assume power by undemocratic means. But before this could happen, Ben-Gurion was kicked out by the old party veterans, and Peres had no choice but to join him in political exile. They formed a new party, Rafi, Peres worked like mad, but in the end they garnered only 10 Knesset seats. Peres and the boulder were back at the bottom.

Redemption came with the Six-day War. On its eve, Rafi was invited to join a National Unity government. But the big prize was snatched by Moshe Dayan, who became Minister of Defense and a world idol. Peres remained in the shadows.

The next opportunity arose after the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Golda Meir and Dayan were pushed out by an incensed public. Peres was the obvious candidate for Prime Minister. But lo and behold, at the last minute Yitzhak Rabin appeared from nowhere and snatched the crown. Peres was left with the Defense Ministry.

The next three years were a continuous story of subversion, with Peres trying by all available means to undermine Rabin. As a part of this effort, he allowed right-wing extremists to establish the first settlement in the heart of the West Bank — Kedumim. He has rightly been called the father of the settlement movement, as he was earlier called the father of the atom bomb.

Rabin coined a phrase that stuck to him: “Tireless Backstabber”.

This chapter ended with the “dollar account”. Upon leaving his former job as ambassador in Washington, Rabin had left an open account in an American bank. At the time, that was a criminal offense, generally settled with a fine, but Rabin resigned in order to protect his wife.

It was never proved that Peres had a hand in the disclosure, though many suspected it.

At long last, the way was clear. Peres assumed the leadership of the party and ran for elections. The Labor Party was bound to win, as it always had before.

But the Gods only laughed. After 44 years of continuous Labor Party dominance, in the Yishuv and the state, Peres managed to achieve the unthinkable: he lost.

Menachem Begin made peace with Egypt, with Moshe Dayan, Peres’ competitor, at his side. Soon afterwards, Begin invaded Lebanon. On the eve of that war, Peres and Rabin visited him and urged him to attack. After the war went wrong, Peres appeared at a huge peace rally and condemned the war.

In the election before that, Peres had a shattering experience. In the evening, after the ballots were closed, Peres was crowned on camera as the next Prime Minister. On the following morning, Israel woke up with Prime Minister Menachem Begin again.

The elections after that ended in a draw. For the first time Peres became Prime Minister, but only under a rotation agreement. When Shamir assumed power, Peres tried to unseat him in a dubious political plot. It failed. Rabin, caustic as ever, called it “the Dirty Exercise”.

Peres’ unpopularity reached new depths. At election rallies, people cursed him and threw tomatoes. When, at a party event, he posed the rhetorical question: “Am I a loser?” the audience shouted in unison:

“Yes!”

To change his luck, he underwent a cosmetic operation to alter his hangdog look. But his lack of grace could not be remedied by a surgeon. Neither could his oratorical skills — this man, who has delivered many tens of thousands of speeches, has never expressed a truly original idea. His speeches consist entirely of political platitudes, helped along by a deep voice, the dream of every politician.

(This, by the way, disproves to me his pretense of having read thousands of books. You cannot really read so many books without a trace of it showing up in your writing and speeches. One of his assistants once confided to me that he prepared resumes of fashionable books for him, to save him the trouble of actually reading before quoting them.)

In the meantime, Peres the hawk turned into Peres the peacenik. He had a part to play in achieving the Oslo accord, but it was Rabin who garnered the glory. The same, by the way, had happened before with the daring Entebbe raid, when Peres was Minister of Defense and Rabin Prime Minister.

After Oslo, the Nobel committee was about to award the Peace Prize to Rabin and Arafat. However, immense world-wide pressure was exerted on the committee to include Peres. Since no more than three persons can share the prize, Mahmoud Abbas, who had signed the agreement with Peres, was left out.

The assassination of Rabin was a turning point for Peres. He had been standing near Rabin when the “peace song” was sung. He came down the stairs, when Yigal Amir was waiting below, the loaded pistol in his hand. The murderer let Peres pass and waited for Rabin — another crowning insult.

But, at long last, Peres had achieved his goal. He was Prime Minister. The obvious thing to do was to call immediate elections, posing as the heir of the martyred leader. He would have won by a landslide. But Peres wanted to be elected on his own merit. He postponed the elections.

The results were disastrous. Peres gave the order to assassinate Yahya Ayyash, the “engineer” who had prepared the Hamas bombs. In retaliation, the entire country blew up in a tsunami of suicide bombings. Then Peres invaded South Lebanon, a sure means to gain popularity. But something went wrong, artillery fire caused a massacre of civilians in a UN camp, and the operation came to an inglorious end. Peres lost the elections, Netanyahu came to power.

Later, when the feared Ariel Sharon was elected, Peres offered him his services. He successfully whitewashed Sharon’s bloody image in the world.

In all his long political life, Peres never won an election. So he decided to give up party politics and run for president. His victory was assured, certainly against a nondescript Likud functionary like Moshe Katzav. The outcome was again a crowning insult: little Katzav won against the great Peres. (Causing some people to say: “If an election cannot be lost, Peres will lose it anyway!”)

But this time the Gods seem to have decided that enough was enough. Katzav was accused of raping his secretaries, the way was clear for Peres. He was elected.

Since then he has been celebrating. The remorseful Gods shower him with favors. The public, which detested him for decades, enveloped him with their love. International celebrities anointed him as one of the world’s great.

He could not get enough of it. Hungry for love all his life, he swallowed flattery like a barrel without a bottom. He talked endlessly about “Peace” and the “New Middle East” while doing absolutely nothing to further it. Even TV announcers smiled when they repeated his edifying phrases. In reality he served as a fig leaf for Netanyahu’s endless exercises in expansion and sabotaging peace.

The culmination came this Tuesday. Sitting alongside Netanyahu, Peres celebrated his 90th birthday (two months before the real date), surrounded by a plethora of national and international celebrities, basking in their glamor like a teenager. It cost a lot — Bill Clinton alone got half a million dollars for attending.

After all the cruelties they had inflicted on him all his life, the Gods laughed benignly.

(A shorter version of this article was published in Haaretz on June 19, the day after the official birthday.)

URI AVNERY is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch’s book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

A US Predator drone fires a Hellfire missile. (file photo)

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

The conspicuously nonsensical efforts by President Barack Obama and NSA spy chief Alexander to assure Americans massive corporate-government spy operations had prevented terrorist attacks were supported by only a few easily disproved lies. More broadly, the history of recent decades has government spy agencies hiring ‘private’ companies to carry out the activities they are legally prohibited from carrying out. This makes government assertions regarding spying on citizens a game of three-card monte–the testimony of government officials is calculated to be irrelevant to actual activities.

In a narrow sense the implied purpose of the spy program that remains–political-economic domination and control by corporate and government technocrats, suffers from the internal paradox of too many spies having too much spying power. In the effort to ‘monetize’ information gathered through spy operations, which good capitalist will forego using spy capabilities against competitors? Which bureaucratic climber will forego the advantage of catching his / her competitor in flagrante delicto with an under-aged prostitute? Which political Party will forego certain knowledge of the strategies of its ‘competitor?’

But internal paradox doesn’t mean the spy programs aren’t incredibly dangerous–left unstated is why the corporate state feels the need to surveil and control the populace? And like the surveillance technocracy, from the Bill Clinton era to today, Wall Street has gotten absolutely everything it asked for–deregulation, increased leverage, bankruptcy ‘reform,’ freedom from legal culpability, rights of predation through Federal supercedence of local laws, and of course, large and ongoing public subsidies. The result, following its near self-immolation in 2008, is a larger, more inter-connected, and ultimately more fragile financial system than existed before its wish list was fulfilled.

While the idea of ironic justice–the consequences to Wall Street of the next financial meltdown or corporate-government spies turning on one another, has a certain appeal, actual human lives are finite and the unwinding, following from history, will cause harm and misery in inverse proportion to existing social power. The (rapidly) disappearing middle class is evidence of the consequences of political passivity. The (rapidly) disappearing concept of freedom from corporate- government intrusion into, and intermediation of, all social relations is another. And the well-sold notion of corporate-consumer ‘partnership’ is seeing its political fruition as the telecom and Internet companies to whom paying large monthly bills was previously seen as a virtue reveal themselves as child-hipster fronts for unimagined totalitarian power.

That Mr. Obama has apparently lost some of his competence at lying, as illustrated by his domestic spying apologetics, has consequences beyond incrementally awakening the perpetually zombified ‘dismal center’ that constitutes his base. How many fewer citizens this week still imagine a political leader from either Party ever acting in the public interest? How many more charismatic charlatans–Party hacks acting in plutocrat interests against those of the citizenry, can successfully manage the fifth, sixth, seventh… terms of the George W. Bush administration? Americans have always had a genius, possibly our dominant skill, for creating better iterations of bullshit, but how many more times will we dance in the streets, as occurred in Cambridge, MA upon Mr. Obama’s election, knowing the infrastructure of the spy-murder state remains intact?

Put another way, at what point does the abject refusal of the American people to act politically become a liability for the corporate state? It was the relative balance of political-economic power Franklin Roosevelt achieved with the New Deal that saved capitalism from itself. And it was the internal and external threats to the political-economic order that led the plutocracy of that day to give a little to keep a lot — the wisdom to do so was not self-generated by corporate titans and financiers. With all of the political institutions of today dedicated to giving the plutocracy–financiers, corporate executives, and their partners in technocratic totalitarianism, what it wants, where is an FDR to tell it what it needs?

And where does this leave the internal contradictions of the existing corporate-state? Wall Street is a bigger and ‘better’ finance-bomb just waiting to go off. How many more times will a stock market crash leave the citizenry fearful not saving Wall Street is more destructive than saving it? Corporate executives are ever more effectively impoverishing their customers to pay themselves. At what point is the inflection hit where executive self-enrichment leads to diminishing returns for even themselves? And where does that leave a political leadership that perceives itself immune from political retribution because it can always find personal redemption by moving to the ‘private’ sector? Again, the ironic justice of corporate-state cannibalism leaves contrived and real dependencies–the mutual dependence of citizens and corporate state institutions, to drive us down a totalitarian path until a functioning political economy can be recovered from the ruins.

The role of Internet companies in developing the technocracies of totalitarianism provides a different shade of irony. Current framing has the government forcing tech companies to comply with government demands they provide ‘private’ data. But who incubated these tech companies from infancy, delivered products developed in government labs for them to commercialize, subsidized the ‘math and science’ curriculums in their support, subsidized the building of the telecommunications infrastructure on which tech depends and winked and nodded at fraudulent employment schemes to underpay immigrant labor in their service? More directly, who subsidized these companies as they grew? And fundamentally, who built the Internet? From the bowels of the Pentagon to the playground idiocy of Silicon Valley, there exists nary a tech millionaire or billionaire not by degree living on the people’s dime.

So far this framing posits the single direction of government subsidizing tech for its own nefarious intent–paying for the privilege, but extracting its due in blood. But what commercial genius lay behind convincing several generations of children, the dependents whose psychologies aren’t yet developed by history and experience to beware the intentions of cynical technocrats bearing toys, that delivering their life-secrets to self-serving capitalists would leave them safe? Apple Computer’s Steve Jobs thought nothing of using the advantages of history and strategies of planned destitution to squeeze those making ‘his’ computers for everything he could take. The major Internet companies span the globe to find captive workforces to labor in slave conditions to program their technologies of global domination, or more likely, the latest moronic ‘app’ that notifies one of the need to use the toilet. These are the capitalists and capitalist enterprises bravely standing between ‘the government’ and totalitarian intrusion? And who, exactly, do they run to to protect their privilege?

Were ‘the government’ in control, why would all of ‘its’ power and resources be dedicated to making the lives and bank accounts of this technerati, public largess dependent financiers, and the sociopathic tools occupying executive suites, so remunerative and comfortable? There is tension, no doubt, between the self-interest of plutocrat tools in government and their plutocrat masters–the largest neighborhood of the largest houses I ever saw being built was in suburban Washington, DC at the very height of the most recent economic calamity. But given the theorized power of government, why don’t self-interested bureaucrats take what the plutocrats have for themselves? This question is for my friends with anarchist and libertarian tendencies. As Lenin had it, and the late Hugo Chavez understood, the way to restrain totalitarian government is to restrain capitalist imperialism. The NSA and CIA are but tools, aspects, of imperialist capitalism.

Framed differently, it requires improbably separating method from purpose to argue ‘private’ and government data mining and statistical analysis developed from the symbiosis of government and business serve fundamentally different purposes. ‘Private’ data collection and use, e.g. stores that use ‘store cards’ to track and analyze customer purchases, is intended to provide economic advantage. Given the NSA can only give implausible and absurd explanations for why it tracks and uses similar data from the citizenry, what possible explanation, aside from mindlessly squandering public resources, is possible than to gain political advantage from it? Again, if the claim they’ve interrupted terrorist plots is demonstrably bullshit and bluster, what use value does the data they’re collecting have?

If giving self-interested sociopaths–the definition of successful capitalists, everything they wanted the roaring twenties and debt-fueled 2000s would have led to self-sustaining economic outcomes. But they led instead to financial and economic crashes. The move to consolidate political-economic power through the technocratic corporate state is likewise leading to increasing political dysfunction. One of the only political leaders in the U.S. with retained credibility, Barack Obama, appears to be losing his ability to serve as front for plutocrat interests. And technocratic overreach is leading to increasing skepticism of the corporate state nexus. The right-wing revolution started in the 1970s worked by demonizing government to the benefit of global capital. With both government and capital losing credibility, technocratic control and police repression are the tools remaining to sustain corporate state power.

The capacity for FDR style rejuvenation of Western capitalism probably existed when Mr. Obama first entered office as President. The crisis of confidence the financial meltdown and related Great Recession initially caused, if used in conjunction with the delivery of public resources, provided the opening for reframing government as the solution to unstable–and destabilizing, unfettered capitalism. The problem of leadership was, and remains, Mr. Obama and Congress are tools for narrow plutocrat interests when restoring political-economic stability requires understanding plutocrat interests, not serving them. Even were a competent leader to arise, a modern day FDR, the question of what historical opportunity remains is prominent.

The existing corporate state, complete with the infrastructure of totalitarian surveillance and control, is currently one step removed from full-blown fascism. The prevailing wisdom is the corporate-state technocracy has capabilities derived from economic interests overtaking the mechanics of modern democratic governance. This view requires isolating the technocracies of surveillance and control from changes in laws and interpretations of laws designed to consolidate political-economic control behind walls of impermeability. It also presumes the locus of totalitarian control is singularly political when by all evidence the state serves plutocrat (economic) interests. The willingness of top spy agency officials to openly lie about agency goals, intentions and practices suggests perceived vulnerability by those at the top. As history has it, perceived vulnerability by those in power is not necessarily fact and misplaced perceptions rarely lead to socially constructive outcomes.

Rob Urie is an artist and political economist in New York. His book, “Zen Economics,” will be published by CounterPunch / AK Press in 2014.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

The conspicuously nonsensical efforts by President Barack Obama and NSA spy chief Alexander to assure Americans massive corporate-government spy operations had prevented terrorist attacks were supported by only a few easily disproved lies. More broadly, the history of recent decades has government spy agencies hiring ‘private’ companies to carry out the activities they are legally prohibited from carrying out. This makes government assertions regarding spying on citizens a game of three-card monte–the testimony of government officials is calculated to be irrelevant to actual activities.

In a narrow sense the implied purpose of the spy program that remains–political-economic domination and control by corporate and government technocrats, suffers from the internal paradox of too many spies having too much spying power. In the effort to ‘monetize’ information gathered through spy operations, which good capitalist will forego using spy capabilities against competitors? Which bureaucratic climber will forego the advantage of catching his / her competitor in flagrante delicto with an under-aged prostitute? Which political Party will forego certain knowledge of the strategies of its ‘competitor?’

But internal paradox doesn’t mean the spy programs aren’t incredibly dangerous–left unstated is why the corporate state feels the need to surveil and control the populace? And like the surveillance technocracy, from the Bill Clinton era to today, Wall Street has gotten absolutely everything it asked for–deregulation, increased leverage, bankruptcy ‘reform,’ freedom from legal culpability, rights of predation through Federal supercedence of local laws, and of course, large and ongoing public subsidies. The result, following its near self-immolation in 2008, is a larger, more inter-connected, and ultimately more fragile financial system than existed before its wish list was fulfilled.

While the idea of ironic justice–the consequences to Wall Street of the next financial meltdown or corporate-government spies turning on one another, has a certain appeal, actual human lives are finite and the unwinding, following from history, will cause harm and misery in inverse proportion to existing social power. The (rapidly) disappearing middle class is evidence of the consequences of political passivity. The (rapidly) disappearing concept of freedom from corporate- government intrusion into, and intermediation of, all social relations is another. And the well-sold notion of corporate-consumer ‘partnership’ is seeing its political fruition as the telecom and Internet companies to whom paying large monthly bills was previously seen as a virtue reveal themselves as child-hipster fronts for unimagined totalitarian power.

That Mr. Obama has apparently lost some of his competence at lying, as illustrated by his domestic spying apologetics, has consequences beyond incrementally awakening the perpetually zombified ‘dismal center’ that constitutes his base. How many fewer citizens this week still imagine a political leader from either Party ever acting in the public interest? How many more charismatic charlatans–Party hacks acting in plutocrat interests against those of the citizenry, can successfully manage the fifth, sixth, seventh… terms of the George W. Bush administration? Americans have always had a genius, possibly our dominant skill, for creating better iterations of bullshit, but how many more times will we dance in the streets, as occurred in Cambridge, MA upon Mr. Obama’s election, knowing the infrastructure of the spy-murder state remains intact?

Put another way, at what point does the abject refusal of the American people to act politically become a liability for the corporate state? It was the relative balance of political-economic power Franklin Roosevelt achieved with the New Deal that saved capitalism from itself. And it was the internal and external threats to the political-economic order that led the plutocracy of that day to give a little to keep a lot — the wisdom to do so was not self-generated by corporate titans and financiers. With all of the political institutions of today dedicated to giving the plutocracy–financiers, corporate executives, and their partners in technocratic totalitarianism, what it wants, where is an FDR to tell it what it needs?

And where does this leave the internal contradictions of the existing corporate-state? Wall Street is a bigger and ‘better’ finance-bomb just waiting to go off. How many more times will a stock market crash leave the citizenry fearful not saving Wall Street is more destructive than saving it? Corporate executives are ever more effectively impoverishing their customers to pay themselves. At what point is the inflection hit where executive self-enrichment leads to diminishing returns for even themselves? And where does that leave a political leadership that perceives itself immune from political retribution because it can always find personal redemption by moving to the ‘private’ sector? Again, the ironic justice of corporate-state cannibalism leaves contrived and real dependencies–the mutual dependence of citizens and corporate state institutions, to drive us down a totalitarian path until a functioning political economy can be recovered from the ruins.

The role of Internet companies in developing the technocracies of totalitarianism provides a different shade of irony. Current framing has the government forcing tech companies to comply with government demands they provide ‘private’ data. But who incubated these tech companies from infancy, delivered products developed in government labs for them to commercialize, subsidized the ‘math and science’ curriculums in their support, subsidized the building of the telecommunications infrastructure on which tech depends and winked and nodded at fraudulent employment schemes to underpay immigrant labor in their service? More directly, who subsidized these companies as they grew? And fundamentally, who built the Internet? From the bowels of the Pentagon to the playground idiocy of Silicon Valley, there exists nary a tech millionaire or billionaire not by degree living on the people’s dime.

So far this framing posits the single direction of government subsidizing tech for its own nefarious intent–paying for the privilege, but extracting its due in blood. But what commercial genius lay behind convincing several generations of children, the dependents whose psychologies aren’t yet developed by history and experience to beware the intentions of cynical technocrats bearing toys, that delivering their life-secrets to self-serving capitalists would leave them safe? Apple Computer’s Steve Jobs thought nothing of using the advantages of history and strategies of planned destitution to squeeze those making ‘his’ computers for everything he could take. The major Internet companies span the globe to find captive workforces to labor in slave conditions to program their technologies of global domination, or more likely, the latest moronic ‘app’ that notifies one of the need to use the toilet. These are the capitalists and capitalist enterprises bravely standing between ‘the government’ and totalitarian intrusion? And who, exactly, do they run to to protect their privilege?

Were ‘the government’ in control, why would all of ‘its’ power and resources be dedicated to making the lives and bank accounts of this technerati, public largess dependent financiers, and the sociopathic tools occupying executive suites, so remunerative and comfortable? There is tension, no doubt, between the self-interest of plutocrat tools in government and their plutocrat masters–the largest neighborhood of the largest houses I ever saw being built was in suburban Washington, DC at the very height of the most recent economic calamity. But given the theorized power of government, why don’t self-interested bureaucrats take what the plutocrats have for themselves? This question is for my friends with anarchist and libertarian tendencies. As Lenin had it, and the late Hugo Chavez understood, the way to restrain totalitarian government is to restrain capitalist imperialism. The NSA and CIA are but tools, aspects, of imperialist capitalism.

Framed differently, it requires improbably separating method from purpose to argue ‘private’ and government data mining and statistical analysis developed from the symbiosis of government and business serve fundamentally different purposes. ‘Private’ data collection and use, e.g. stores that use ‘store cards’ to track and analyze customer purchases, is intended to provide economic advantage. Given the NSA can only give implausible and absurd explanations for why it tracks and uses similar data from the citizenry, what possible explanation, aside from mindlessly squandering public resources, is possible than to gain political advantage from it? Again, if the claim they’ve interrupted terrorist plots is demonstrably bullshit and bluster, what use value does the data they’re collecting have?

If giving self-interested sociopaths–the definition of successful capitalists, everything they wanted the roaring twenties and debt-fueled 2000s would have led to self-sustaining economic outcomes. But they led instead to financial and economic crashes. The move to consolidate political-economic power through the technocratic corporate state is likewise leading to increasing political dysfunction. One of the only political leaders in the U.S. with retained credibility, Barack Obama, appears to be losing his ability to serve as front for plutocrat interests. And technocratic overreach is leading to increasing skepticism of the corporate state nexus. The right-wing revolution started in the 1970s worked by demonizing government to the benefit of global capital. With both government and capital losing credibility, technocratic control and police repression are the tools remaining to sustain corporate state power.

The capacity for FDR style rejuvenation of Western capitalism probably existed when Mr. Obama first entered office as President. The crisis of confidence the financial meltdown and related Great Recession initially caused, if used in conjunction with the delivery of public resources, provided the opening for reframing government as the solution to unstable–and destabilizing, unfettered capitalism. The problem of leadership was, and remains, Mr. Obama and Congress are tools for narrow plutocrat interests when restoring political-economic stability requires understanding plutocrat interests, not serving them. Even were a competent leader to arise, a modern day FDR, the question of what historical opportunity remains is prominent.

The existing corporate state, complete with the infrastructure of totalitarian surveillance and control, is currently one step removed from full-blown fascism. The prevailing wisdom is the corporate-state technocracy has capabilities derived from economic interests overtaking the mechanics of modern democratic governance. This view requires isolating the technocracies of surveillance and control from changes in laws and interpretations of laws designed to consolidate political-economic control behind walls of impermeability. It also presumes the locus of totalitarian control is singularly political when by all evidence the state serves plutocrat (economic) interests. The willingness of top spy agency officials to openly lie about agency goals, intentions and practices suggests perceived vulnerability by those at the top. As history has it, perceived vulnerability by those in power is not necessarily fact and misplaced perceptions rarely lead to socially constructive outcomes.

Rob Urie is an artist and political economist in New York. His book, “Zen Economics,” will be published by CounterPunch / AK Press in 2014.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

June 21, 2013
 |

A representative for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation told a group of concerned citizens that complaining about water quality could be considered an “act of terrorism,” The Tennessean reports.

Sherwin Smith, deputy director of TDEC’s Division of Water Resources, made the claim during a meeting with residents of Maury County, Tennessee. Organized by State Rep. Sheila Butt, R-Columbia, the gathering sought to address complaints by residents that area water was making their children sick. In audio obtained by The Tennessean, Smith can be heard equating water quality complaints, an act of citizenry, with DHS-defined acts of terrorism:

We take water quality very seriously. Very, very seriously … But you need to make sure that when you make water quality complaints you have a basis, because federally, if there’s no water quality issues, that can be considered under Homeland Security an act of terrorism.

According to The Tennessean, several residents saw the statement as “an attempt to silence complaints.” One 68-year-old woman who says she “prays” before sipping the “cloudy, odd-tasting water,” felt that Smith’s message was, “Leave us alone. Don’t come back anymore. We’re not going to continue on dealing with whatever problem you may have.” An official TDEC spokesperson says the department is investigating the matter:

In terms of the comments made by a member of the Water Resources Division at the meeting, we are just receiving the information and looking into this on our end … The department would like to fully assess what was said in the meeting. I am told that the meeting was far longer than the audio clip provided by SOCM and that Mr. Smith actually clarified his remarks. But again, we are looking into it.

At time of publication, the Department of Homeland Security could not be reached for comment.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

June 21, 2013
 |

A representative for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation told a group of concerned citizens that complaining about water quality could be considered an “act of terrorism,” The Tennessean reports.

Sherwin Smith, deputy director of TDEC’s Division of Water Resources, made the claim during a meeting with residents of Maury County, Tennessee. Organized by State Rep. Sheila Butt, R-Columbia, the gathering sought to address complaints by residents that area water was making their children sick. In audio obtained by The Tennessean, Smith can be heard equating water quality complaints, an act of citizenry, with DHS-defined acts of terrorism:

We take water quality very seriously. Very, very seriously … But you need to make sure that when you make water quality complaints you have a basis, because federally, if there’s no water quality issues, that can be considered under Homeland Security an act of terrorism.

According to The Tennessean, several residents saw the statement as “an attempt to silence complaints.” One 68-year-old woman who says she “prays” before sipping the “cloudy, odd-tasting water,” felt that Smith’s message was, “Leave us alone. Don’t come back anymore. We’re not going to continue on dealing with whatever problem you may have.” An official TDEC spokesperson says the department is investigating the matter:

In terms of the comments made by a member of the Water Resources Division at the meeting, we are just receiving the information and looking into this on our end … The department would like to fully assess what was said in the meeting. I am told that the meeting was far longer than the audio clip provided by SOCM and that Mr. Smith actually clarified his remarks. But again, we are looking into it.

At time of publication, the Department of Homeland Security could not be reached for comment.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

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read more

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

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read more

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

Thousands of President Morsi’s supporters gather in central Cairo on June 21, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Thousands of President Morsi’s supporters gather in central Cairo on June 21, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

The Zionist regime of Israel raises baseless allegations against Iranâ„¢s nuclear energy program to scare Israeli citizens and serve its own domestic political goals, an analyst says.

Å“…[Benjamin] Netanyahu is using that [Iran’s] nuclear issue to threaten Israelis by making them fear the nuclear Iranian [energy] program for his own political purposes,” George Labaki, a professor at Notre Dame University said in an interview with Press TV on Friday.

The analyst noted that Western countries will not heed the recent calls by the Israeli premier to take a more aggressive stance on Iranâ„¢s nuclear energy program, Å“because the US and the EU have expressed their commitment to work with the new Iranian [president] to try to find a peaceful settlement for the Iranian nuclear [energy] program….”

Labaki stated that the US and the EU are trying to find a peaceful solution for the Iranian nuclear issue, Å“because neither Europe, nor the United States are ready for a military confrontation.”

Earlier in the week, the hawkish Israeli premier urged the world not to “be tempted to ease pressure on Iran,” following the massive voter turnout in Iranâ„¢s presidential election on June 14.

In his first press conference on Wednesday, Iranian president-elect Hassan Rohani said, Å“Iranâ„¢s nuclear [energy] program are completely transparent,” but it is Å“ready to show more transparency and make clear for the whole world that the measures taken by the Islamic Republic of Iran are completely within international frameworks.”

The United States, the Israeli regime and some of their allies have repeatedly accused Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.

Tehran strongly rejects the allegation over its nuclear energy activities, maintaining that as a committed signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

PG/SS

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

The corporate media are the megaphones of humanitarian death, as dispensed by the U.S. and its allies. If Obama says “Assad must go,” the high-paid press do all in their power to make the public crave his blood. “The media are loyal to the system, not to their profession, their readers, or their listeners.”

The existence of a compliant media plays a major role in allowing American presidents to create so much violence and chaos around the globe. Far from being a check on officialdom, the press are part and parcel of the machine which crushes so many lives in this country and abroad.

Long gone are the days of the Pentagon Papers, when media outlets competed with one another to break stories which officialdom wanted to keep hidden. Now the press lords work hand in hand with politicians to make certain that they have carte blanche whenever they want it.

President Obama has decided to send weapons to the coalition represented by jihadists, Gulf monarchists and regime opponents working to overthrow Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad. The administration again makes the same claims which always explain away American aggression. A foreign head of state is accused of terrorizing his citizens, spreading said terror to other lands and bringing down modern civilization. We are then told that the foreign leader must be deposed from power for the sake of humanity. The country may be Libya or now Syria but the explanation is the same and so is the media modus operandi.

The press merely repeat what the president says and call it journalism. The public are left in the dark and in the absence of real reporting are forced to read tea leaves to figure out what is really happening.

If Obama and his NATO cohorts are all bellowing loudly that “Assad must go” they think they have him on the verge of defeat. If they propose a peace conference they have acknowledged that Assad’s forces are winning. If they give mixed messages about a peace conference and then claim Assad is using chemical weapons and also announce they are arming the rebels they are in full panic mode because their plans for easy conquest have gone awry.

The Obama administration, and any other presidential administration, ought to be afraid to tell such lies to the public. They should fear that their claims will be thoroughly examined and all facts will be exposed. But like his predecessor George W. Bush, Obama has no reason to feel any such discomfort.

A quick perusal of the major corporate media will show that the very premise of American intervention in Syria or anywhere else is accepted without question. Even worse, America’s role in fomenting war is rarely pointed out. There would be no carnage in Syria absent the machinations of the U.S. and its NATO allies. There are Syrians who want changes in their government, but their wishes alone wouldn’t bring about a civil war. Anyone aware of this important point certainly hasn’t relied upon the major broadcasters or newspapers for information.

The average American believes that the intervention is humanitarian in nature because the government and the corporate media have told them so. News talk shows debate whether the United States should choose sides without mentioning that the entire conflagration is the result of American plans to remake the region into a huge vassal state.

“Assad must go” is the mantra but no one on Meet the Press, the Newshour, MSNBC or the New York Times asks why this is so and why an American president has any right to decide the fate of millions of people. Once again Americans are kept in a state of disinformation, unaware that their government is responsible for the deaths of thousands even as it claims humanitarian motives.

The corporate media obediently recite the administration’s dubious assertions and report them as facts. Administration statements accusing the Syrian government of using sarin gas against the western backed rebels are reported as confirmation. On the other hand, there are quite reliable and easy to find reports showing expert skepticism about the administration’s claims.

The media are loyal to the system, not to their profession, their readers, or their listeners. They are cut from the same cloth, and value access to the people whose professional success depends on subservience to the corporations and individuals who also run the political world. We the people, even those of us who want to be aware of current events, learn nothing except politicians’ talking points. The result is that the government has been allowed to embark upon yet another plan to commit crimes against other nations. We are once again complicit and should never again ask why other countries hate us.

It is best to assume that presidents and members of congress are lying when they make justifications for waging war. The media must also be added to the liars’ list. They have little interest in giving us easily provable facts when there is favor in need of currying. History will judge not only our political leaders harshly, but every institution which aided and abetted them. The corporate media ought to be placed at the top of that ignominious list.

Margaret Kimberley‘s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. 

Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

Exodus International, the prominent Christian ministry which for the past 37 years has helped men and women leave the homosexual lifestyle, announced June 19 that it is closing its doors. The organization’s president, Alan Chambers (shown), also issued an apology to the homosexual community, telling the Associated Press that the organization had inflicted “years of undue suffering” on homosexuals it had reached out to. “The church has waged the culture war, and it’s time to put the weapons down,” Chambers said after announcing at the annual conference of Exodus that the group would cease operation. “While there has been so much good at Exodus, there has also been bad. We’ve hurt people.”

Chambers also appeared June 20 on a special edition of the Oprah Winfrey Network show Our America With Lisa Ling, where he apologized to homosexual men and women who claimed they had been harmed by Exodus International’s ministry.

In announcing the decision to close Exodus, which the organization said in a press release had been under consideration over the past year, Chamber insisted that he still holds “to a biblical view that the original intent for sexuality was designed for heterosexual marriage. Yet I realize there are a lot of people who fall outside of that, gay and straight…. It’s time to find out how we can pursue the common good.”

Chambers said he and others from Exodus would form a new “ministry,” called Reduce Fear, which, he told AP, would seek to dialogue with those who embrace the homosexual lifestyle, and partner with churches to provide “welcoming, and mutually transforming” communities. “We want to see bridges built, we want peace to be at the forefront of anything we do in the future,” Chambers said.

In Exodus International’s official statement, Chambers said that over the years the group had “ceased to be a living, breathing organism. For quite some time we’ve been imprisoned in a worldview that’s neither honoring toward our fellow human beings, nor biblical.” In justifying the group’s decision to stop its original mission of helping people overcome homosexuality, Chamber said that from “a Judeo-Christian perspective, gay, straight or otherwise, we’re all prodigal sons and daughters. Exodus International is the prodigal’s older brother, trying to impose its will on God’s promises, and make judgments on who’s worthy of His Kingdom. God is calling us to … welcome everyone, to love unhindered.”

In a personal blog post entitled “I Am Sorry,” Chambers explained that “my desire is to completely align with Christ, his Good News for all and his offer of peace amidst the storms of life. My wife Leslie and my beliefs center around grace, the finished work of Christ on the cross and his offer of eternal relationship to any and all that believe. Our beliefs do not center on ‘sin’ because ‘sin’ isn’t at the center of our faith. Our journey hasn’t been about denying the power of Christ to do anything – obviously he is God and can do anything.”

While apologizing for causing pain to homosexuals and their families, Chambers emphasized: “I cannot apologize for my deeply held biblical beliefs about the boundaries I see in scripture surrounding sex, but I will exercise my beliefs with great care and respect for those who do not share them. I cannot apologize for my beliefs about marriage. But I do not have any desire to fight you on your beliefs or the rights that you seek. My beliefs about these things will never again interfere with God’s command to love my neighbor as I love myself.”

Predictably, homosexual activist groups applauded the decision by Chambers and Exodus to stop trying to help people who wanted to leave the homosexual lifestyle. “This is a welcome first step in honestly addressing the harm the organization and its leaders have caused,” stated Sharon Groves of the radical Human Rights Campaign. “Now we need them to take the next step of leadership and persuade all other religious-based institutions that they got it wrong.”

Another homosexual group, Truth Wins Out, that for years has been openly antagonistic toward Exodus’ ministry, appeared relieved by Chambers’ apology and announcement. “It takes a real man to publicly confront the people whose lives were destroyed by his organization’s work,” said the group’s associate director Evan Hurst. “We look forward to a day when we can truly consider Alan to be an ally.”

But many individuals and groups who have successfully helped people deal with unwanted same-sex attraction questioned the motives of Chambers and the other Exodus officials. “We do not owe an apology to the gay community,” said Regina Griggs of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, an organization that supports those leaving homosexuality. “Nobody’s ever forced to change. That’s an individual’s right.”

Janet Boynes, a former lesbian who now uses her Christian faith to help people leave homosexuality, recalled how in 2010 she appeared with Chambers on Our America With Lisa Ling, where “we were able to share how our behavior had changed and how we were no longer living the homosexual lifestyle. But just three years later, here we are again, and the message Alan Chambers has for those struggling with same-sex attraction is very different.”

At the time Chambers declared: “Change is possible. I stand by that phrase, and I live by it. The opposite of homosexuality isn’t heterosexuality; it’s holiness.”

Boynes said she was puzzled by what message Chambers could offer homosexuals if not that they need to abandon their lifestyle. “I know many men and women who, with the help of different ministries, have walked away from homosexuality, and their freedom has always come through the truth of God’s Word,” she said. She conceded that leaving homosexuality is not easy, but through faith in God it is possible. “For me, coming out of homosexuality did not happen overnight,” she recalled. “It was a long process, during which I increasingly chose to let go of everything that had the slightest power to drag me back into a lesbian lifestyle. It took the work of a dedicated team that included God (the most important one), the many wonderful people He put in my life, and me as a willing participant. You see, each of us is given a free will, and it is ultimately up to us to decide how we will live our lives.”

R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, told Baptist Press News that Chambers’ apology and the decision to shut down Exodus International appeared to be “a capitulation” rather than a “course correction.” Mohler said the organization’s statement indicated that Chambers and others at Exodus had “lost confidence in both the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The normalization of homosexuality contradicts the Bible’s consistent condemnation of all same-sex sexuality as sin. The rejection of the hope for change for homosexuals … indicates a tragic loss of confidence in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Mohler added that “while Alan Chambers is right when he insists that our beliefs do not center on ‘sin’ because ‘sin’ isn’t at the center of our faith, he seems to have lost sight of the fact that Christ came to save us from our sin. Thus, sin is inseparable from our story of salvation in Christ.”

The Baptist leader expressed deep concern that the ministry’s closing will send the wrong signal to those struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction. “The greatest tragedy” about the closure “is that persons experiencing same-sex attractions or involved in same-sex sexuality will be further confused by the capitulation of Exodus International,” Mohler said.

With the closure of Exodus International, some Christian leaders are recommending a new organization, Restored Hope Network, which formed last year to offer help to those wishing to leave homosexuality. Among those recommending the new ministry were Matthew Barber, president of Liberty Counsel; Dr. Juan Martinez of Fuller Theological Seminary; Dr. Joseph Nicolosi of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality; and Janet Parshall, a conservative commentator and host of the radio talk show In The Market.

Photo of Alan Chambers: AP Images

This article originally appeared on: The New American

British Business Secretary Vince Cable has warned the coalition government against cutting corporation tax in Northern Ireland, saying that it is “an incredibly tricky issue” involving a “lot of problems”.

Cable insisted that there were other ways to help Northern Irelandâ„¢s business community, rather than the Å“emotional issue” of reducing the tax rate within one part of the UK.

The Business Secretaryâ„¢s warning comes during an interview on a television program, the Nolan show, when he explained there would be major difficulties in slashing the tax rate.

Cable, who is due to meet with local companies, was asked whether Northern Ireland deserved special treatment.

“That’s an incredibly tricky issue because it raises the whole issue about whether different parts of the UK should start competing on tax rates,” Cable replied.

“We have to be extremely careful about unleashing tax competition in the UK,” he added.

Supporters of tax reduction, however, argue that Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK, which has a land border to a country [Republic of Ireland] with a much lower rate.

BGH/MOS/HE

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

An Iraqi policeman searches a man as he enters a polling center during the country’s provincial elections in Fallujah, Iraq, on June 20, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

CBS
June 21, 2013

Two brothers who worked as Border Patrol agents were scheduled to be sentenced Friday for smuggling hundreds of immigrants into the United States in one of the highest-profile corruption cases to sting the federal agency in a decade.

Raul and Fidel Villarreal face a maximum of 50 years in prison and at least $1.25 million in penalties when they appear before U.S. District Court Judge John A. Houston in San Diego.

Prosecutors said Raul Villarreal — who made television appearances as an agency spokesman and once played the role of a smuggler in a public service ad -recruited his brother to his ring that smuggled in Mexicans and Brazilians. One Brazilian woman told investigators she paid $12,000 to cross.

Read full article

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 11:48 am

Tags: domestic news

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Taxpayer will foot the bill for George Osborne’s expenses at secret meeting

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
June 21, 2013

The British government has officially responded to a Freedom of Information Act request regarding the Chancellor of The Exchequer’s presence at the 2013 Bilderberg Group meeting.

In a letter penned by the Treasury, James Underwood of the Rights Unit, provides answers to three questions penned by Alexander Baron of the Digital Journal.

In his May 7th letter, Baron asked whether George Osborne, Britain’s head finance minister, would attend the Bilderberg meeting held in Watford from 6-9 June. He also asked in what capacity Osborne would be attending and who would be paying for his expenses.

The Treasury responded AFTER the conclusion of the conference to confirm that Osborne did indeed attend, and that his expenses would be paid for by the Treasury — ie the taxpayer.

While the government’s response claims that the Chancellor attended as a private individual, it also states that “For discussions in the periphery of the Bilderberg meeting, on issues of concern to the UK, the Chancellor acts in an official capacity.”

The letter also states that the Bilderberg meeting “affords the opportunity to meet other Finance Ministers and senior members of International Organisations,” and compares it to EU, IMF and G7 and G20 meetings.

Of course, the difference is that all of those meetings are on the record, where as Bilderberg takes place in total secrecy behind closed doors. The admission that George Osborne held secret discussions at Bilderberg in an official capacity with other finance leaders and the heads of international banking, at the expense of the taxpayer, represents a direct violation of the Ministerial code.

MP’s are not authorised to attend private meetings without disclosing details to the public, and they are also supposed to have a secretary on hand making minutes, which is not the case at Bilderberg. Even if Osborne held some discussions in a personal capacity, rather than an official one, that can still be classed as a conflict of interest given that he is an elected official.

This is not the first time that Osborne has been caught in the act. In 2011, The London Guardian reported that according to the Treasury, Osborne was attending the Bilderberg meeting in Switzerland in an official capacity as the British Chancellor. Despite the fact that this violates the Ministerial code, Osborne faced no repercussions.

Both Osborne and his opposition counterpart, Ed Balls (as well as Prime Minister David Cameron) attended the elite meeting this year. The two are often painted up as bitter political rivals in the British media, yet they have attended several of the secret confabs together in recent years.

Both Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson of Infowars confronted Mr Balls, the shadow Chancellor, when they ran into him at the BBC in London during a live broadcast that Alex was invited to appear on.

Balls refused to discuss his Bilderberg attendance and even denied that he had sworn to uphold the Ministerial code:

Following the conclusion of this year’s meeting, MP Michael Meacher officially requested that George Osborne make a statement regarding Bilderberg. However, the question was answered by Bilderberg steering committee member Ken Clarke, who was forced to embarrassingly claim he had “forgotten” that the organization’s meetings were paid for by funds raised by the Bilderberg Association.

In his FOIA request, journalist Alexander Baron also asked whether the issue of debt-free money was discussed by George Osborne at Bilderberg. The Treasury responded by saying it had no information about what was discussed by the Chancellor at the meeting — again a tacit admission that Osborne violated the Ministerial code.

Mr Baron has written a follow up letter to the Treasury, again addressing the issue of debt free money.

“Hopefully the reply to my second letter will bring a positive response to the issue of debt-free money, for why should the British Government or any government pay interest (your taxes) on something banks create out of thin air, when they can do the same thing themselves?” Baron notes.

Baron states that he awaits a reply to the second letter and will post the correspondence when the Treasury replies to him.

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Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham, and a Bachelor Of Arts Degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University.

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 11:52 am

Tags: bilderberg

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Normally, stocks don’t fall off a cliff unless the economic data suddenly turns south or there are signs of an emerging crisis, like a run on the shadow banking system or threat to Middle East oil supplies. But neither of these played a part in this week’s equities massacre where the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) plunged 560-plus points in just two sessions and indices around the globe dipped deep into the red. What triggered this week’s selloff was an announcement from the Federal Reserve that it was planning to scale down it’s asset purchases (QE) in the latter part of 2013, and probably end the program sometime in the middle of 2014.  Here’s the offending paragraph in the FOMC’s statement that lit the fuse:

“If the incoming data are broadly consistent with this forecast, the Committee currently anticipates that it would be appropriate to moderate the monthly pace of purchases later this year. And if the subsequent data remain broadly aligned with our current expectations for the economy, we would continue to reduce the pace of purchases in measured steps through the first half of next year, ending purchases around midyear. In this scenario, when asset purchases ultimately come to an end, the unemployment rate would likely be in the vicinity of 7%, with solid economic growth supporting further job gains, a substantial improvement from the 8.1% unemployment rate that prevailed when the committee announced this program.” (FOMC)

Now—unless you think that Fed chairman Ben Bernanke is a complete idiot—then you can assume that he knew what the reaction on Wall Street would be. After all, stock prices have more than doubled in the last 4 years mainly due to the Fed’s lavish liquidity spree. So any announcement that the program is “going away” was sure to send traders racing for the exits. Which it did. Traders were not having a “hissy fit” as many in the financial media have said. They were acting rationally. Absent the Fed’s turbo-charged monetary stimulus, stocks will go down, there’s no question about it. Current prices do not reflect fundamentals nor do they reflect the true health of the economy. They reflect a couple trillion dollars worth of UST and MBS purchases that have goosed stock prices dramatically. Traders know this, which is why they cashed in and walked away when Bernanke announced the prospective end of the program. They acted rationally.

But why would Bernanke want to throw a bucket of cold water on the markets now? Is it because he really believes that the economy is gaining momentum and the labor market is steadily improving?

Hell no, that’s pure baloney. Again, Bernanke is not a moron. He sees what everyone else sees, that the headline unemployment number (7.6%) is rubbish that doesn’t reveal the rot beneath the surface; the abysmal participation rate, the sharp uptick in part-time workers, and the lousy starvation-wage positions that have replaced the good paying jobs. Trust me on this; Bernanke knows how to read a freaking jobs report. He knows the economy is crap and that people still can’t find work. Just look at this clip from the SF Fed’s own report on the condition of the economy. It will help you see that Bernanke really doesn’t believe the green shoots hype at all:

“Federal fiscal policy during the recession was abnormally expansionary by historical standards. However, over the past 2½ years it has become unusually contractionary as a result of several deficit reduction measures passed by Congress. During the next three years, we estimate that federal budgetary policy could restrain economic growth by as much as 1 percentage point annually beyond the normal fiscal drag that occurs during recoveries….

CBO projections and our estimate based on the countercyclical history of fiscal policy suggest that federal budget trends will weigh on growth much more severely over the next three years. The federal deficit is projected to decline faster than normal over the next three years, largely because tax revenue is projected to rise faster than usual. …The rapid decline in the federal deficit implies a drag on real GDP growth about 1 percentage point per year larger than the normal drag from fiscal policy during recoveries.” (“Fiscal Headwinds: Is the Other Shoe About to Drop?”, FRBSF)

See? So things are bad and they’re going to get worse. This isn’t a secret. Fiscal policy is DESIGNED to make things worse. It’s deliberate! It’s all there in black and white, read it again.

So what’s really going on here? Why is Bernanke pretending that the future is looking so rosy, when the exact opposite is closer to the truth?  Why is he announcing the end of a program that may never end? Just look at the rate of inflation, fer chrissakes! We are in a deflationary cycle. Inflation has been dropping for 3 straight months and—according to Bloomberg—” is at 53-year low, the lowest inflation since JFK was in office.” That means that the Fed will not hit its 2.5% inflation target and the bond buying will continue indefinitely. Guaranteed. Now, no matter how stupid or incompetent you may feel Bernanke is, I assure you, the Fed watches inflation like a hawk, and when the arrow starts to point down, they do everything in their power to get things going in the right direction again. They are always looking for the sweet spot because that’s the rate at which their constituents can rake in the biggest profits. In other words, they take inflation (or deflation) seriously.

But if that’s so, then why did Bernanke hardly mention inflation in the FOMC’s announcement?

He didn’t mention it because he’s trying to buffalo investors into thinking that QE is going to end sometime in the near future. But how can he end it, after all, unemployment is still high (and likely to go higher when the budget cuts kick in), GDP and output are weak, wages are flatlining, capital investment is non existent, corporations and financial institutions have money piled up around their eyeballs with nothing to invest in, middle class households have seen nearly half their wealth wiped out in the last five years, and the banks have a couple trillion more in deposits than loans because no one in their right mind is borrowing money in the middle of an effing Depression. If any of this sounds like an economic rebound, then maybe Bernanke is actually telling the truth and really plans to terminate QE next year. But I think that’s pretty bad bet, all things considered.

So let’s cut to the chase: The reason Pavlov Bernanke took away the punch bowl on Thursday and put markets into a tailspin, was because stocks are overheating and because his goofy printing operations have generated all kinds of risky behavior. Keep in mind, that it was Bernanke who said that he thought that goosing stock prices would create the “wealth effect” that would lead to a broader recovery in the real economy. Just as it was Bernanke who signaled that he would keep stocks from breaking lower. (The “Bernanke Put”). In other words, investors have just been following their Master’s lead, which is why they loaded up on stocks to begin with. And that’s why junk bond yields dropped to record lows. And that’s why margin debt climbed to record highs. And that’s why all the big corporations have been buying back their own shares hand over fist. And that’s why the financial markets are riddled with bubbles. It’s because Bernanke tacitly implied that he would support rising stock prices with lavish infusions of funny money NO MATTER WHAT.

Well, guess what? Now Bernanke is worried. He’s worried that the real economy is still in the doldrums while bubbles are popping up everywhere in the financial markets; in stocks and bonds, CLOs, CDOs, MBS and every other dodgy debt instrument, derivative or swap. It’s all getting very frothy thanks to the Bernanke.

So, how does the Fed chair intend to “contain” the emergent asset bubble until he retires at the end of the year and returns to blissful academia?

He’s going to keep doing what he’s doing right now; cherry-picking the data so he can rattle Wall Street’s cage every so often and keep stocks from zooming too far into the stratosphere. That’s the plan. Of course, he could just tell the truth—that QE has been great for Wall Street but done jack for anyone else. But I wouldn’t count on that.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. Whitney’s story on declining wages for working class Americans appears in the June issue of CounterPunch magazine. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

File photo shows a French demonstrator holding a sign during a protest against labor agreements in Paris.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
June 21, 2013

Earlier this year, the House Subcommittee on Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities, one of several Armed Services Committees, discussed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2014.

“The main subject of the hearing was Sec. 1061, otherwise known as Enhancement of Capacity of the United States Government to Analyze Captured Records,” writes Stephen Benavides. “This enhancement provision of NDAA 2014 would effectively create a new intelligence agency, one with the authority to analyze information gained under the Patriot Act, FISA, and known spying programs such as PRISM.”

Government continues to insist NSA cannot listen to your phone calls or read your email.

Sec. 1061 authorizes the establishment of a Conflict Records Research Center by the Secretary of Defense. The Center would create a “digital research database” with the ability to “translate” and facilitate research on “records captured from countries, organizations and individuals, now or once hostile to the United States.” Additionally, the Center will engage in research to “increase the understanding of factors related to international relations, counterterrorism and conventional and unconventional warfare, and ultimately, enhance national security.”

In order to work effectively, the Center will require collaboration with the Director of National Intelligence in the coordination of “information exchanges important to the leadership of the United States Government.”

Benavides writes:

That coordination would require participation of all 16 member agencies and departments of the U.S. Intelligence Community. This would leave James Clapper, the man accused of lying to Congress about the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program known as PRISM, in de facto direction of another federal surveillance and data analysis agency. And while the Center would be officially directed and overseen by the Secretary of Defense, without unfettered access to secret and top secret information, the Center would be completely ineffective. These information exchanges would most likely include data and records generated by the mass surveillance of everyday people under PRISM, as well as surveillance of those identified as “potential terrorists” or “high value targets” by any one of those 16 intelligence agencies now in operation.

Benavides notes that because the war on terror is now borderless and permanent — due primarily to the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) — any “captured record” may be used by this new agency, including records collected under the sprawling NSA Stasi surveillance state now firmly in place and a prominent feature of the national security state.

“Thus, any captured document, audio file, video file, or other material could potentially be submitted to this new intelligence agency for research and analysis, all in the name of national security and counterterrorism, as deemed appropriate by a swelling government surveillance class,” Benavides explains.

In other words, the proposed NDAA “enhancement” would further extend the reach of the surveillance state into the private affairs of the American people, a reach significantly more expansive than previous documented, due largely to the recent revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden.

“While the National Security Agency swears that no citizen was spied on under PRISM, the very fact that cell phone metadata and online activity was gathered from millions of individuals guarantees that information was taken illegally from innocent people,” Benavides concludes. “We’re told that the government is attempting to minimize the amount of information captured from Americans, and that all of that information is being kept in specialized and restricted servers in order to protect our constitutional rights. But that’s difficult to believe when the Department of Justice is currently fighting the release of a secret FISA Court opinion that details unconstitutional government surveillance.”

More accurately, the government — including Congress with Dianne Feinstein, Mike Rogers, Lindsey Graham and Saxby Chambliss leading the pack — is lying to the American people and attempting to dismiss and cover up the NSA surveillance apparatus. Most of our supposed “representatives” are fully on board with the effort to turn the United States into the most effective police state ever imagined.

The goal here is obvious — the government has systematically designed and constructed a surveillance apparatus intended to subvert the Constitution and the Fourth Amendment under the bogus pretext of responding to the attacks of September 11, 2001 and engaging in a boundless and open-ended war on terrorism that does not threaten the United States and, as the evidence reveals, is largely nonexistent, but puts forward the policy objectives of the ruling elite.

The end game is not the eradication of al-Qaeda or the protection of the American people from the hyped-up ravages of terrorism, but the installation of a high-tech surveillance mechanism that will effectively result in a panopticon where political opposition to the establishment and the ruling elite will be virtually impossible.

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 11:46 am

Tags: constitution, domestic news, domestic spying, government corruption, police state, technology

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

June 21, 2013
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A representative for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation told a group of concerned citizens that complaining about water quality could be considered an “act of terrorism,” The Tennessean reports.

Sherwin Smith, deputy director of TDEC’s Division of Water Resources, made the claim during a meeting with residents of Maury County, Tennessee. Organized by State Rep. Sheila Butt, R-Columbia, the gathering sought to address complaints by residents that area water was making their children sick. In audio obtained by The Tennessean, Smith can be heard equating water quality complaints, an act of citizenry, with DHS-defined acts of terrorism:

We take water quality very seriously. Very, very seriously … But you need to make sure that when you make water quality complaints you have a basis, because federally, if there’s no water quality issues, that can be considered under Homeland Security an act of terrorism.

According to The Tennessean, several residents saw the statement as “an attempt to silence complaints.” One 68-year-old woman who says she “prays” before sipping the “cloudy, odd-tasting water,” felt that Smith’s message was, “Leave us alone. Don’t come back anymore. We’re not going to continue on dealing with whatever problem you may have.” An official TDEC spokesperson says the department is investigating the matter:

In terms of the comments made by a member of the Water Resources Division at the meeting, we are just receiving the information and looking into this on our end … The department would like to fully assess what was said in the meeting. I am told that the meeting was far longer than the audio clip provided by SOCM and that Mr. Smith actually clarified his remarks. But again, we are looking into it.

At time of publication, the Department of Homeland Security could not be reached for comment.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

United States President Barack Obama is convening with a rarely assembled privacy and civil liberties board Friday in the wake of a series of scandals centered on his administration’s surveillance of US citizens.

In light of the revelations made earlier this month by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, Mr. Obama is meeting Friday with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent agency within the executive branch that has only met previously with the president once during his four-and-a-half years in the White House.

Obama will speak with the oversight panel in Washington and is bringing along James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, as the discussion is expected to focus on the US government’s collection of phone and Internet records.

“Obama is specifically asking Clapper to review possible declassification of opinions from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approves the surveillance efforts,” the Associated Press reported.

The court, established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, has the authority to compel telecommunication companies for the personal information of any user, American or other, in the name of investigating criminal matters. Those orders are done with questionable oversight, however, and are filed and delivered in secrecy. Gag-orders prevent telecoms from telling customers that their records are sought, and The Guardian newspaper published a leaked copy of one of those requests on Friday to show that a single paragraph is all that’s issued to demand the data.

A FISA judge simply “declares that the procedures submitted by the attorney general on behalf of the [National Security Agency] are consistent with US law and the Fourth Amendment,” The Guardian reported earlier this week.

The FISA orders have taken center stage in the media this month after The Guardian began publishing top secret documents two weeks ago exposing the NSA’s practices of accumulating troves of intelligence on US persons using the secret court requests. President Obama and his administration’s leading intelligence officials have adamantly defended the program and have called the surveillance a necessary implement in the war against terror that comes at the cost of what the White House says is only a minor sacrifice of privacy in the name of security.

“I came into office committed to protecting the American people but also committed to our values and our ideals and one of our highest ideals is civil liberties and privacy,” Obama said earlier this week “I am confident that at this point we have struck the appropriate balance.”

The president’s critics say otherwise, though, and his administration was sued earlier this month by the American Civil Liberties Union on allegations of constitutional violations. The ACLU says that the supposed safeguards meant to protect privacy are not adequate and that the surveillance practices break laws established through the First and Fourth Amendments.

Thomas Drake, a former NSA employee who resigned during George W. Bush’s term in office after voicing concern over the surveillance practices, told RT in a conference call this week that “The oversight is simply an artificial mechanism to give the appearance of oversight.”

“They’ve basically unhinged themselves from the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution,” Drake said of the administration.

But while the White House continues to attest otherwise, Mr. Obama’s meeting with the oversight board on Friday is prompting allegations that his administration is simply attempting to conduct damage control. Although the board was established in 2004 in the wake of new practices established following the terror attacks of September 11, its members have convened sparsely since.

“The board was dormant during Obama’s first term and only became fully functional in May, before the NSA programs became public,” the AP reported.

Last year, Mark Jaycox of the Electronic Frontier Foundation acknowledged that the board had been silent for half of a decade but said the Obama administration seemed to be heading in the direction of finally employing the panel.

“The PCLOB could bring much needed transparency to government surveillance actions, legal analyses and procedures. Not only can the board report to the public and recommend revisions to current laws and policies, but it can also ’continually review’ the implementation and creation of policies by issuing proposed corrections and admonitions– all while consulting with the public,” he wrote.

A meeting of the board on Wednesday this week marked the first time the five-person agency has held a full-fledged meeting since the Senate confirmed David Medine as its chairman in May 2013.

According to Reuters, Medine hopes the board will hold a public event next month “to get legal insight from experts, academics and advocates” about the surveillance practices.

“Based on what we’ve learned so far, the board believes further questions are warranted,” Medine told Reuters.

“The president’s direction is that as much information as possible be made public while being mindful of the need to protect sources and methods and national security,” the White House said this week.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: ‘You Say What You Like, Because They Like What You Say’ – http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/alerts-2013/731-you-say-what-you-like-because-they-like-what-you-say.html

This article originally appeared on: RT

But expert’s warning? Females ‘do not have an equal opportunity to survive’

Bob Unruh
WND
June 21, 2013

A new poll reveals that there is widespread support among Americans for women to be included if the U.S. military would resume a draft.

The poll done by CapitalSoup.com and Mason-Dixon Polling and Research said 59 percent of Americans “believe women should be included in a draft, compared to only 38 percent who think they should not.”

However, an expert on the U.S. military and the issues it is facing said there are concerns with such an idea, especially since the military just announced a strategy to “allow” women into combat.

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 11:41 am

Tags: 9/11, terrorism, war

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Photo: takako tominaga/cc/flickrNew details have emerged on ties between U.S. intelligence and the nation’s largest technology firms.

The New York Times reports the online communications giant Skype created a secret program to explore ways of providing the government with easy access to customers’ information. Dubbed “Project Chess,” the program was established to navigate the legal and technical obstacles to enabling government monitoring of Skype calls and chats.

In another new development, the New York Times has also revealed the former chief security officer for Facebook, Max Kelly, has been working for the National Security Agency since leaving Facebook in 2010.  

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (R) receives the UNâ„¢s special envoy to Iraq Martin Kobler at his office in Baghdad on June 20, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Footage shows postal workers rescuing a young girl as she falls from a 5-story building in China on June 21, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Classified top secret documents submitted to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by US Attorney General Eric Holder, published by The Guardian on Thursday, show that US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) judges have approved sweeping general orders authorizing the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor US communications data without individual warrants.

According to the Guardian, the documents–presumably obtained from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden–“show that even under authorities governing the collection of foreign intelligence from foreign targets, US communications can still be collected, retained and used.”

In their defense of the NSA surveillance programs, Obama administration officials–including Obama himself–have frequently and insistently declared that no communications of people in the US are monitored without a warrant. The documents released by The Guardian reveal these claims to be outright lies.

The FISA Court, the administration has claimed, provides oversight and “transparency” over the process. The actual procedures that the secret court has authorized have, until now, remained concealed from the population of the United States and the world.

Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) authorizes the NSA to engage in bulk data collection. Under this authorization, the NSA is supposedly only allowed to obtain communications without a warrant from “non-US persons.” This includes any communications between people outside the US, and any communications from someone outside the US to someone within the US–if it is the “non-US person” who is the target of the snooping.

As previous revelations have shown, the US government has sucked up billions of communications from all over the world under this authorization, rubber stamped by the FISA Court. This global spying operation is separate from another program that collects virtually all phone records on anyone living in the United States through secret subpoenas to telecommunications companies.

The official limitations on NSA communications monitoring, however, have so many loopholes that they effectively allow for the agency and its analysts to spy on anyone, including those in the US, without a warrant–precisely as claimed by Snowden.

According to the documents, NSA personnel, using their “reasonable judgment,” can keep and use “inadvertently acquired” domestic communications if (a) the data contain “significant foreign intelligence information,” (b) the data are encrypted or “reasonably believed to contain secret meaning,” (c) the data contain “evidence of a crime,” or (d) the data contain information related to cyber security.

The court specifically states that encrypted emails can be kept for as long as needed to decrypt them.

According to the Guardian, moreover, while the procedures approved by the court require that interception stop if a communication is determined to involve only US persons, “these circumstances do not apply to large-scale data where the NSA claims it is unable to filter US communications from non-US ones.” These communications can be retained, and presumably accessed, for five years.

In collecting communications, the NSA is allowed to examine a range of data on telephone and internet usage to determine whether a target is located in the US or not. To collect the communication, the individual analyst must have a “reasonable belief” that the target is outside the US.

When the NSA analyst is not able to determine definitively the location of a target, he can simply assume that the target is overseas. “In the absence of specific information regarding whether a target is a United States person,” the FISA Court document states “a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States or whose location is not known will be presumed to be a non-United States person unless such person can be positively identified as a United States person.”

In other words, the presumption is that a communication can be collected and monitored. If the NSA wants to wiretap anyone, anywhere, without a warrant, it merely has to declare–to itself–that it either does not know where the person is or has a reasonable belief that that person is outside the US.

Decisions about whether a person is considered US or non-US are made, according to the documents, on the basis of the “totality of circumstances,” specifically whether “the nature and circumstances of the person’s communications rise to a reasonable belief that such person is a United States person.”

One example of a condition which can be used to assert that someone is a not US person, and therefore all of his communications can be monitored, is if he is in contact with members of a “foreign-based political organization.”

Moreover, in ambiguous cases, NSA analysts are authorized to examine the content of communications in order to determine whether that content qualifies for surveillance: “NSA analysts may analyze content for indications that a target has entered or intends to enter the United States. Such content analysis will be conducted according to analytic and intelligence requirements and priorities.”

US persons are thus “protected” from surveillance by having the content of their communications surveilled, supposedly to determine whether they are US persons.

In its final section, “Departure from Procedures,” the document on procedures for targeting non-US persons includes an escape clause, allowing the NSA to ignore all legal protections under exceptional circumstances, “If, in order to protect against an immediate threat to the national security, NSA determines that it must take action, on a temporary basis, in apparent departure from these procedures and that it is not feasible to obtain a timely modification of these procedures from the Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence, NSA may take such action.”

This is a blueprint for universal accumulation and indefinite retention of all communications of everyone in the world.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

An Indian boy rescued from flood-hit areas waits with others before being sent to relief camps in Dehradun, state capital of Uttarakhand on June 21, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

UK countryside suffers shocking poverty.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

John Upton
grist

June 21, 2013

National Pollinator Week began grimly Sunday when tens of thousands of dead bumblebees, honeybees, ladybugs, and other insects were discovered blanketing a shopping plaza’s parking lot just off Interstate 5 in Wilsonville, Ore.

Bumblebees were the species hardest hit, with an estimated 25,000 dead and 150 colonies lost outside a Target store. “They were literally falling out of the trees,” said Rich Hatfield, a conservation biologist with the nonprofit Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. “To our knowledge this is one of the largest documented bumblebee deaths in the Western U.S. It was heartbreaking to watch.”

It turns out that landscapers had sprayed the lot’s 65 European linden trees on Saturday with the insecticide Safari. The insecticide is marketed by manufacturer Valent as “a super-systemic insecticide with quick uptake and knockdown.”

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 11:18 am

Tags: environment, science

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Global stocks plunged Thursday in the biggest one-day sell-off so far this year, after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the US central bank might consider paring back its cash infusions into the financial markets within the next six months.

The panic in stock and bond markets sparked by the remarks of Bernanke, who on Wednesday suggested the Fed might start winding down its $85 billion per month in asset purchases, was compounded by the release of data on Thursday showing that Chinese manufacturing activity hit its lowest level in nine months.

These developments point to two fundamental facts about the current economic situation: the continuing slump in the real economy and the extreme dependence of global financial markets on virtually free credit from the Federal Reserve and other central banks.

In the United States, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 353 points, or 2.34 percent, in its biggest drop since November 2011. This followed a 206 point drop on Wednesday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell by 2.5 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite Index fell by 2.3 percent. All ten sectors of the S&P 500 fell by more than two percent.

The drop in US financial markets followed a panicky sell-off in Europe and Asia earlier in the day. The United Kingdom’s FTSE 100 index lost 2.98 percent and the German Dax lost 3.28 percent. In Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dropped by 2.88 percent and Japan’s Nikkei fell by 1.1 percent.

Asian markets declined further at their opening Friday morning, with the Nikkei down by 2 percent, the Hang Seng down by 1.75 percent, and the Australian All Ordinaries index down by 0.70 percent in early trading.

All major commodities were hit by Thursday’s sell-off, with gold futures dropping below $1,300 per ounce, the lowest level in two-and-a-half years. Silver dropped by 9.7 percent during the day before recovering slightly, hitting its lowest level since 2010. Prior to Thursday’s sell-off, gold prices were already down by 18 percent, in what may become the first yearly decline in the value of gold since 2000.

Every asset class, including bonds of every duration and quality, fell sharply. Yields on ten-year US Treasury notes went as high as 2.47 percent during the day, up from 1.61 percent in May, before retreating as the stock sell-off intensified.

Emerging market currencies continued to plunge against the dollar. The Indian rupee fell 2 percent to a new low, and the Turkish lira fell 1.8 percent. The US dollar rose more than one percent against the Korean, Russian, Polish and South American currencies.

A preliminary reading of HSBC’s Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for China, a measure of manufacturing activity, fell to 48.3 this month, down from 49.2 in May. This was the lowest reading in nine months. The Chinese economy slowed to a growth rate of 7.7 percent in the first quarter and is expected to continue slowing in the second.

The Markit Flash euro zone PMI, also released Thursday, while slightly improved, nevertheless indicates that the European economy remains stagnant.

The economic slowdown and bond sell-off have sparked a credit crunch in China, where overnight inter-bank lending rates hit 13.1 percent, the highest on record and up from the previous day by 5.98 percentage points.

Data in the United States was little better. The day after Fed Chairman Bernanke reported an improved outlook for the US economy and the jobs market, the Labor Department said initial applications for unemployment benefits rose unexpectedly last week by 18,000, to 354,000.

The plunging bond market hit junk bonds especially hard, raising the prospect of troubled companies becoming insolvent. The iShares iBoxx High Yld Corp Bond, the largest junk bond fund, fell 1.5 percent.

“All these people who lined up to buy high-yield bonds, only looking to get that extra yield and not paying much attention to the credit quality of these companies, are now just trying to get out,” Adrian Miller of GMP Securities told the Financial Times .

Bond prices have been plunging since May 22, when Bernanke indicated in congressional testimony that the Fed might slow asset purchases “in the next few meetings” if economic conditions continued to improve.

In revised economic projections released Wednesday, the Fed’s policy-making Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) lowered its 2013 unemployment rate forecast from 7.4 percent to 7.25 percent and concluded that economic growth would be 2.45 percent in 2013 and 3.25 percent in 2014, significantly higher than current market expectations.

While the Fed’s official projections were upbeat, significant sections of the US ruling class are increasingly concerned about signs of a global slump, particularly in Asia and Europe, and the specter of deflation in the US economy. Wall Street, on the other hand, looks with dread on any significant improvement on economic growth and employment prospects, for fear the Fed will turn off the spigot of limitless and ultra-cheap cash, which is subsidizing super profits and rising executive pay packages.

Behind the Federal Reserve’s hints that it may wind down its asset-purchasing program lie worries that the vast amounts of cash that have been pumped into the financial system have created a speculative bubble of vast proportions, threatening a financial collapse that could dwarf that of 2008.

The fall in global markets on Wednesday and Thursday is an expression of the fear and panic that predominate on financial markets amid mounting concerns that the asset bubble is beginning to burst.

The market panic of the past two days demonstrates that none of the underlying issues that led to the 2008 financial meltdown have been addressed, let alone resolved. Far from engineering any real economic recovery, governments and central banks have merely papered over the contradictions in the global economy while further enriching the financial elite, on the one hand, and brutally attacking the working class, on the other.

The response of the ruling class to the latest eruption of the financial crisis will be to intensify the assault on social programs and workers’ jobs, wages and pensions.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

Sayer Ji.
Green Med Info

The USDA organic label is supposed to protect the consumer against GMOs and avoidable chemical exposures, but the sobering fact is that USDA-certified infant formula manufacturers are not only being allowed to use a pesticide in their formulas, but are advertising it as a ‘healthy’ mineral to unsuspecting consumers.

Unbeknownst to the vast majority of U.S. consumers, the nutritional adequacy of infant formula it not determined by its ability to support and produce health in those who receive it, as would be expected. Instead, it is deemed nutritionally adequate solely by virtue of it containing minimum quantities of a list of 29 nutrients, without specifying or even acknowledging the significant qualitative differences that exist between minerals in the form of nutrients and those in the form of industrial chemicals, e.g. amino acid-chelated forms of iron (iron glycinate) are much safer than relatively inorganic forms (ferrous oxide). Surprisingly, all that regulators do is ensure that those ingredients are there in the amounts deemed necessary, and that some basic quality control measures are followed during the manufacturing process.

A recent review summarized the U.S. rules as follows:

Infant formula, like no other food, is regulated by its own law, the Infant Formula Act of 1980 as amended in 1986. The act sets lower limits on 29 nutrients (so-called “table nutrients” because they appear in table form. U.S. Code of Federal Regulations 21 CFR 107.100). . . . Manufacturers are required to follow “good manufacturing practice,” but no requirement for sterility is specified. . . . Powdered formula is not guaranteed  nor required to be free of pathogenic organisms  (Baker, 2002).

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 11:04 am

Tags: environment, eugenics, food, gmo, health, natural health

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Sayer Ji.
Green Med Info

The USDA organic label is supposed to protect the consumer against GMOs and avoidable chemical exposures, but the sobering fact is that USDA-certified infant formula manufacturers are not only being allowed to use a pesticide in their formulas, but are advertising it as a ‘healthy’ mineral to unsuspecting consumers.

Unbeknownst to the vast majority of U.S. consumers, the nutritional adequacy of infant formula it not determined by its ability to support and produce health in those who receive it, as would be expected. Instead, it is deemed nutritionally adequate solely by virtue of it containing minimum quantities of a list of 29 nutrients, without specifying or even acknowledging the significant qualitative differences that exist between minerals in the form of nutrients and those in the form of industrial chemicals, e.g. amino acid-chelated forms of iron (iron glycinate) are much safer than relatively inorganic forms (ferrous oxide). Surprisingly, all that regulators do is ensure that those ingredients are there in the amounts deemed necessary, and that some basic quality control measures are followed during the manufacturing process.

A recent review summarized the U.S. rules as follows:

Infant formula, like no other food, is regulated by its own law, the Infant Formula Act of 1980 as amended in 1986. The act sets lower limits on 29 nutrients (so-called “table nutrients” because they appear in table form. U.S. Code of Federal Regulations 21 CFR 107.100). . . . Manufacturers are required to follow “good manufacturing practice,” but no requirement for sterility is specified. . . . Powdered formula is not guaranteed  nor required to be free of pathogenic organisms  (Baker, 2002).

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 11:04 am

Tags: environment, eugenics, food, gmo, health, natural health

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Craig Whitlock
The Washington Post

June 21, 2013

The FBI has received clearance from federal aviation officials to conduct drone surveillance operations in the United States on at least four occasions since 2010, according to public records and U.S. officials.

The FBI began seeking permission in 2009 from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly drones domestically and received authorization for its first operations a year later, according to documents released Thursday by the FAA.

The documents provide virtually no detail on where the FBI has operated drones in U.S. airspace, for what purpose or how long the missions lasted. But they shed some additional light on the origins and extent of the FBI’s secretive drone program, which FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III revealed Wednesday in Senate testimony.

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 10:50 am

Tags: 9/11, domestic spying, drones

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

President Obama speaking in Berlin on Wednesday took the first step in his 2nd term to address the world’s nuclear arsenals. He proposed negotiating the reduction of strategic nuclear weapons by up to one-third of its current levels of 1722 as of September 2012 and reducing nuclear weapons in Europe. While any reductions in nuclear arsenals must be applauded and supported, they must be viewed as only the next step in the mandatory elimination of all nuclear weapons. The devastating potential of these reduced arsenals has the ability to inflict catastrophic damage to our world. There is no “acceptable” level of nuclear weapons that is consistent with the ultimate survival of civilization.

A study by Physicians for Social Responsibility showed that if only 300 warheads in the Russian arsenal got through to targets in American cities, 75 to 100 million people would be killed in the first 30 minutes by the explosions and firestorms that would destroy all of our major metropolitan areas, and vast areas would be blanketed with radioactive fallout.

In addition, the entire economic infrastructure on which we depend to sustain our population would be destroyed. The transportation system, the communications network, the public health and banking systems, the food distribution network – all would be gone. In the months after this war, it is probable that the vast majority of the American population who were not killed in the initial attack would die of starvation, exposure, epidemic disease and radiation poisoning.

The global impact of a nuclear war with the reduced number of weapons proposed by the President was defined in a 2007 study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research demonstrating catastrophic climate change due to the release of an estimated 50-100 million tons of soot into the upper atmosphere blocking the sun. This would cause severe drops in global temperatures in a matter of days of up to 36 degrees Fahrenheit, devastating agriculture production throughout the world. The ensuing global famine could result in the death of a majority of the human population.

Thus any reduction in nuclear weapons is an important step to securing our future and we must move to realize these reductions now, but zero is the only acceptable number. Each day that we fail to work toward this goal is one day closer to realizing Albert Einstein’s prophecy from a 1946 telegram: “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

But we can’t stop there. This effort must lead to multilateral negotiations involving all nuclear weapons states, negotiations that will produce a nuclear weapons convention banning these weapons once and for all. These negotiations will not be easy, and the treaty they produce will have to be a hard-nosed agreement that establishes mechanisms to verify and enforce compliance. We don’t have an alternative.

Some say it is unrealistic to think we can eliminate nuclear weapons. But in truth, it is unrealistic to think we can maintain nuclear arsenals indefinitely and still avoid a nuclear conflict. These are critical unexamined assumptions that demand reëvaluation.

As long as nuclear weapons exist we face a real and imminent danger of catastrophe either by design or accident. It is a matter of sheer luck that we survive. Luck is not a long-term viable security policy. We owe it to our children and future generations to abolish all nuclear weapons. The time to act is now.

Robert F. Dodge, M.D., serves on the boards of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Beyond War, Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles, and Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions, and writes for PeaceVoice.

Ira Helfand is a past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility and co-president of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. 

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

UK govt. to face massive protest on NHS takedown

The UKâ„¢s largest trade unions will protest against NHS privatization at this yearâ„¢s Conservative Party conference.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

AFP
June 21, 2013

Pesticides may kill off water insects and other small aquatic life by as much as 42 percent, according to an analysis of German, French and Australian rivers and streams published on Monday.

The study in US journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is the first to compare regional biodiversity in polluted versus less polluted water, said scientists at the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres.

Freshwater invertebrates and aquatic insects were 42 percent less common in strongly contaminated areas in Europe compared to less polluted areas; and in Australia, a difference of 27 percent was found across regions.

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 10:38 am

Tags: environment, science

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (L) and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a press conference in Ankara. (file photo)

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

“Oh no, it wasn’t the airplanes.  It was beauty killed the beast.”

The glitter of gold attracted the operators of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.  It did them in.
Faced with the need to upgrade an old design, SoCal Edison demanded of Mitsubishi (the contractor for the replacement steam generators) too many impossible and conflicting constraints.

Most Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs) have three or four steam generators which, as the name implies, convert water to steam.   San Onofre’s reactors have only two steam generators each, so if one fails, the other has to handle the full task of cooling the reactor.  This was one of many design flaws, but they had lived with it.  The problem came when they tried to get even more output from the replacement steam generators, despite using a new, more corrosion-resistant alloy that was 10% less heat conductive than the original alloy.

They made up for the 10% loss of heat transfer capabilities by adding hundreds more tubes in the same space, packing them all closer together, and increasing their length by an average of about 50 inches.  Additional changes were made as well, usually to prevent corrosion-related problems that had plagued the original steam generators.  These changes may or may not have been successful – we’ll never know because somewhere along the line, they completely miscalculated how much steam would be produced inside the steam generators.  Outside the tubes (but inside the steam generator casing) there was supposed to be about 96% steam and 4% water.  Instead it was over 99% steam, which allowed the tubes to vibrate.  The flow rate was much higher than expected, which also caused, or increased, the vibration.
The damage could probably have been prevented by operating the steam loop at a higher pressure, combined with a higher circulation ratio. (The circulation ratio indicates the number of times the water goes around the steam generator before becoming steam, and should be close to five or more, but it was less than four in the SanO SGs.).  Adjusting these factors would have meant less steam production – and less profit.  But it might have saved the reactors.

The glitter of gold got them.

How greedy was SCE?  Extremely!  About a decade ago, they applied for, and received, a power uprate which allowed them to operate the original steam generators (and later, the replacement steam generators) at higher temperatures and flow rates in order to produce significantly more steam – “pure” profit. The only problem was that doing so accelerated corrosion and fatigue wear in the original steam generators.

Or WAS that a problem, in their view?

Perhaps not, because they planned to bilk the ratepayers for the full cost of the replacement steam generators.  And the sooner that happened the better, as far as the utility was concerned.

What they wanted to avoid was to be replacing the steam generators around the time of the next license renewal, in 2022.  Accelerated wear followed by an early replacement suited them just fine:  That way, they could expect to slide through the license renewal with a “like-new” pair of reactors that they planned to claim was all ready to go for the next 20 or even 40 years.  Never mind the waste problem they were continuing to create for everyone, and never mind all the other components that were also wearing out.
SCE delayed some plant upgrades, and separated out the cost of a few items (such as new reactor pressure vessel heads, new turbine blades, miles of new pipes, new control equipment, etc.) to keep the cost of replacing the steam generators themselves below a billion dollars.  Thus they were able to appease some activists who complained only about the cost.   (Moral:  Never complain only about the cost.)  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the uprate, and the California Public Utilities Commission approved having the ratepayers pay for it, and SCE turned up the steam output, and the power, and the profits, and shortly thereafter, ordered four replacement steam generators from Mitsubishi.

With the new steam generators installed, the license extensions were expected to be a breeze.  The NRC had never denied a license extension and still hasn’t.

Then Fukushima happened, and the opposition to San Onofre in the community swelled.  American ex-pats came back from Japan to California with their young families, with terrifying stories about the incredibly poor way the Japanese government and many of the Japanese people are handling the radiation crises over there.  Highly radioactive rice and vegetables are being downblended with less radioactive products to reduce the dose to “acceptable” levels. Radioactive food is being exported to poor countries as “aid” supplies.  Radioactive waste is being shipped around Japan only to be burned (and thus released to the environment) in cities far from Fukushima.  And worst of all: Thyroid abnormalities are suddenly rampant among Japanese children and there are rumors of excess numbers of stillbirths and deformed babies that can’t survive, of doctors being told not to say anything to the parents – to just say the baby was born dead.

These returning ex-pats did not want the same thing to happen here.  And much of it WILL happen if we have a nuclear disaster.

Less than a year after Fukushima, and less than two years after San Onofre’s new steam generators were installed, with opposition to San Onofre in full swing, one tube inside one steam generator leaked.  Nearly 40,000 tubes had been replaced, but just one leaky tube spelled doom for San Onofre.  They had been hit right between the eyes.

At first, the operators of the plant didn’t – or couldn’t – believe anything serious had happened.  So one tube leaked?  They called it “settling in.”

But then they looked more closely, and the real problem began to reveal itself.  This wasn’t just teething pains.  The steam generators had vibrated excessively, and thousands of tubes had rubbed against tube supports and against other tubes.  There was 90% through-wall wear in one tube in Unit 2, which had been shut down for the first refueling after its steam generator replacement, and more than 90% through-wall wear in numerous tubes in Unit 3, with one, – the one that leaked —, at 100% through-wall wear.

Unit 3 was ruined for sure, at least without yet another billion-dollar steam generator replacement.  But the utility thought Unit 2 could be salvaged somehow. Why they thought this, I’ll never know, but for more than 16 months they held onto the thought, meanwhile charging ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars for upkeep for a broken and inoperable pair of reactors.

Finally,  on June 7th, 2013, the utility gave up and announced they would decommission San Onofre without trying to restart it, blaming “regulatory delay” which was fair enough, insofar as, the NRC would not grant them a license to restart Unit 2 at 70% power as they had asked.  Instead, the NRC came back with dozens of highly technical questions about what assumptions SCE had made in projecting that the reactor could be safely operated at 70% power – or any percent – for a five-month “test” period.  (Note: The word “test” is in quotes because they utility refused to call their restart plan an experiment with 8.7 million people’s lives, but that’s exactly what it would have been.)

Whistleblowers, activists and experts alike were also looking at the available data – which was insufficient in many ways, with much of it held back as “proprietary.”  But from what was available, all were saying it would be unsafe to restart San Onofre.  Even a Senator (Barbara Baxer (D-CA)) and a Congressperson (Ed Markey, D-MA)) got involved, pressuring the NRC to examine SCE’s application very carefully.

But did “regulatory delay” really kill the beast?  Was it the “miracle” of the busted steam generators (without an accompanying meltdown), or were the activists’ campaigns what really killed San Onofre?  We’ll never know for sure, but the activists certainly put enormous pressure on SCE.  Beginning just days after Fukushima, they (we) have been going to local city councils, to schools, political organizations, civic clubs, and to the media, explaining the horrific danger San Onofre presents.  And it was working: we had been getting official letters for – if not outright closure of San Onofre – safer operation, open investigations, and removal of the waste.  Not the brass ring, but good things.  We spoke in front of hundreds of elected officials in dozens of cities.  Only one or two appeared to express a strongly pro-nuclear point of view, and many that did talk (most just listened) were clearly confused about the dangers from nuclear power.  They really did need an education!

The activists brought world-renowned experts to discuss the issues, and many of us spoke without notes, so that we could, with a dozen or more speakers, each telling a three-minute part of the story, offer a very compelling case against nuclear power, complete with pictures, graphs, charts and facts to go along with every claim.  And these activists were respected members of the community: retired government workers, Harvard graduates, lawyers, doctors, business persons, moms, dads and kids.  All understood the issues and spoke eloquently, time and again.  The communities surrounding San Onofre were getting quite an education, and most of these presentations were being broadcast live on the internet.

After a while, one city council would tell another about the group of activists that would come and discuss San Onofre.  We would try to have local residents of whatever city we were in speak first.

Activists pointed out, for example, that the energy San Onofre produced was not vital even during the summer months – there did not need to be blackouts or brownouts.  This was true (and is true) even though SCE has refused to convert SanO’s turbines to synchronous condensers (basically, big flywheels) for voltage support, has failed to distribute nearly a billion dollars in renewable energy funds it has already collected, has failed to implement much “demand response” (which turns off people’s air conditioning and dryers and so forth for an hour or so during peak periods), and has fought all varieties of solar and wind projects tooth and nail to prevent them from hooking in to the grid.

San Onofre will be decommissioned – or so we’re told: I want to see those domes come down before I’ll truly believe it.  And let’s watch out for the radiation that can be released as that happens.

The San Diego daily paper, the Union-Tribune, has always supported nuclear power.   It still does.  Today (6/20/2013) it published two op-eds:  One pro-nuclear by the CEO of General Atomics, and one con by Daniel Hirsch of the Committee to Bridge the Gap.

The CEO’s claims are pathetic, ancient dogma about how we “need” energy and will get it one way or another, that renewables aren’t ready, that the waste problem can be solved, that the next generation of nukes will be cleaner and safer (don’t bet on it).  It was sickening to read.  Right next to it, Dan Hirsch explains the reality.

Although San Onofre is far less likely to have a catastrophic accident now that it is shut down, the magnitude of the disaster it can have has not diminished by much, and won’t diminish much for tens of thousands of years.  What to do with the spent fuel – the used reactor cores – is a terrible problem which has never been solved by the nuclear industry.

Decommissioning will take decades, and that’s not including whatever is done with the reactor cores, which have all been stored on site since the first refueling outage at San Onofre.

Diablo Canyon, a few hundred miles north of San Onofre, is also old and dilapidated , and needs to be closed forever too – and they also have no solution for their nuclear waste problem.  No plant has a solution.Nuclear power has failed the citizens miserably in California.  There has even been a meltdown here – probably worse than Three Mile Island – which was covered up and denied for decades.  (Dan Hirsch uncovered it.)

It’s time to give up on Diablo Canyon too, before something terrible happens there, such as a meltdown.  Such as what was narrowly avoided at San Onofre.

Shut down Diablo.  It’s no better than San O ever was.

Ace Hoffman has been fighting to stop San Onofre for several decades prior to the announcement of its closure.  He is a computer programmer and the author of The Code Killers, a handbook about nuclear issues.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

June 21, 2013
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Goodwill Industries, a non-profit whose mission is to “ enhance the dignity and quality of life of individuals and families” pays disabled workers as little as 22 cents an hour, NBC reports.

Harry Smith’s report, which aired on Rock Center with Brian Williams, probes a loophole in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that allows employers to pay disabled workers far below the federal minimum wage. Section 14 (c) of FLSA grants certificates to certain employers, permitting them to pay adjusted wages to workers “whose earning or productive capacity is impaired by a physical or mental disability.” Qualified employers create “sheltered workshops,” “where employees typically perform manual tasks like hanging clothes.”

According to Labor Department documents obtained by NBC, Goodwill used this loophole to pay disabled workers in sheltered workshops “as low as 22, 38 and 41 cents per hour in 2011,” presenting a stark contrast to charity executives. Via NBC:

In 2011 the CEO of Goodwill Industries of Southern California took home $1.1 million in salary and deferred compensation. His counterpart in Portland, Oregon, made more than $500,000. Salaries for CEOs of the roughly 150 Goodwill franchises across America total more than $30 million.

The National Federation of the Blind, one of the most ardent critics of Section 14 (c), maintains that the law “is, on its face, discriminatory.” In a report, NFB argues “The law does not authorize below-minimum wages for all less-productive workers–only those who have disabilities.” Under the statute, employers base disabled workers’ wages on “time studies.” In this degrading process, Goodwill and other companies pull out stopwatches to determine how quickly their employees can complete company tasks, and adjust wages accordingly.

Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.) introduced a bill in February that would phase out “special wage certificates.” “Meaningful work deserves fair pay,” said Harper in a statement. “This dated provision unjustly prohibits workers with disabilities from reaching their full potential.” The third-term Congressman has a 23-year-old son with an intellectual disability. His bill is currently in the Workforce Protections Subcommittee.

Meanwhile, Goodwill CEO and millionaire Jim Gibbons defended his charity’s practice of underpayment, telling NBC, “It’s typically not about their livelihood. It’s about their fulfillment. It’s about being a part of something. And it’s probably a small part of their overall program.”

NBC also spoke with Harold Leigland, a legally blind Goodwill worker with a different view from the company’s CEO. “We are trapped,” he said. “Everybody who works at Goodwill is trapped.”

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (L) and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a press conference in Ankara. (file photo)

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]At least three people have been killed and several others severely injured in a strike by a US killer drone in Afghanistan’s northeastern province of Kunar.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Damascus.

The boom of outgoing artillery fire no longer makes people in Damascus glance up from their work or interrupt their conversation even for a moment. After a year of fighting, it is a background noise so familiar that nobody refers to the thunderous sounds even though they show that the battle for the capital is not quite over.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

Matt Scuffham and Huw Jones
Reuters
June 21, 2013

Britain’s banks will have to raise 13 billion pounds ($20.4 billion) of extra capital and meet a new cap on lending ahead of international peers as the Bank of England seeks to curb risk in the financial sector.

The combined balance sheet of Britain’s largest banks is five times the size of the economy, despite radical restructuring since the crash in 2008, and the country’s central bank fears some of them are still too big to fail.

Privately bankers complain that higher capital requirements and limits on leverage are hampering their ability to lend, but outgoing Bank of England governor Mervyn King told London’s financial elite this week it was wrong to blame higher capital levels for weak lending.

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 10:21 am

Tags: economics, foreign affairs, money

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Four bipartisan US senators have introduced a bill aimed at prohibiting the administration of President Barack Obama from providing military assistance to militants in Syria

Press TV
June 21, 2013

The legislation was introduced on June 20 by Democrats Tom Udall and Chris Murphy and Republicans Mike Lee and Rand Paul in an effort to bar the US Department of Defense and spy agencies from feeding anti-Syria Takfiri militants.

On June 14, Obama ordered his administration to provide the militants with weapons, which include assault rifles, shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank missiles.

Rand Paul said in a statement that the “president’s unilateral decision to arm Syrian rebels is incredibly disturbing, considering what little we know about whom we are arming.”

Chris Murphy also argued, “We should be extremely wary of allowing the United States to be drawn into a complicated proxy war that could mire our country for years at a potentially incalculable cost to US taxpayers and America’s reputation at home and abroad.”

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 9:58 am

Tags: 9/11, foreign affairs, legislation, terrorism, war

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Tony Lee
Breitbart
June 21, 2013

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) launched a national petition on Thursday to stop the Senate Gang of Eight’s amnesty bill and send Washington a “strong signal” of the grassroots opposition to the bill.

“This is urgent,” Cruz wrote in an e-mail to supporters.

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 9:35 am

Tags: domestic news, legislation

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Gregory Ferenstein
techcrunch.com
June 21, 2013

The Guardian released new details about the National Security Agency’s spying practices, which reveals how analysts can store vast sums of data without a warrant. Specifically, if the NSA “inadvertently” stumbles upon anything related to a potential crime, it can store the data for later investigations.

Quite reasonably, the Supreme Court has declared that law enforcement can charge citizens with a crime if it’s being conducted in “plain sight“—e.g. if cops see pot sitting in the passenger seat of a car during a traffic stop. That is, the presumption of innocence doesn’t apply to if police inadvertent witness a crime. Unfortunately, the scope of the presumption of innocence gets tinier as the government’s eyes get bigger.

According to the documents, the NSA is required to “minimize” any surveillance of U.S. citizens, which is beyond the jurisdiction of the foreign-enemy-facing agency. If communication between telephone records or internet addresses appear to be wholly within the United States or concerning U.S. citizens, data will be “promptly destroyed.”

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 9:01 am

Tags: constitution, domestic news, domestic spying

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Donna Anderson
Infowars.com
June 21, 2013

Buried under the mountain of Obamacare’s rules and regulations is a $54 million slush fund that’s earmarked for hiring “navigators” to help guide average citizens through the new health care maze. One might assume that these “navigators” would be highly-trained individuals who understand both our healthcare needs and the Obamacare requirements. But you know what happens when you assume.

Under the new Affordable Care Act, “navigators” will help consumers understand all the different coverage options being offered on the state exchanges. Some navigators must be affiliated with non-profit groups, but none of them have to be affiliated in any way with an insurance agent or broker or Obamacare.

Supporters of the program say it will benefit consumers in underserved areas who may need expert help choosing a health plan. And according to The Hill, navigators will have to “demonstrate expertise in health insurance and take a 20-30 hour online course on ObamaCare.”

In short, any person, corporation or political interest group who wants to become a navigator and grab a piece of the navigator slush fund need merely apply, take a two or three day course, and start spending taxpayer’s money, and that’s what has some Republican Senators up in arms.

On Thursday, nine Republican Senators sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, asking for more information about the navigator program. Specifically, what are the minimum requirements and what type of training will the receive?

The letter, signed by Finance Committee ranking member Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Sens. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), John Thune (R-S.D.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) said:

“The standards proposed by your Department could result in a convicted felon receiving federal dollars and gaining access to confidential taxpayer information. The same standards allow any individual who has registered with the exchange and completed two days of training to facilitate enrollment, as if the decision to purchase health insurance is similar to the decision of registering to vote,” wrote the Senators. “The unreasonably low standard for becoming a navigator not only undermines the state’s ability to ensure consumers are protected but raises questions about the appropriate use of federal resources and the protection of highly sensitive consumer information.”

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

According to Politico, “Planned Parenthood is among the long list of liberal organizations that are expected to receive taxpayer-funded navigator grants. The navigator grants would further enable Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in America, to continue its misuse of taxpayer dollars to [supplement] their big abortion business,” said Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), who says she wants to eliminate the navigator program – for which $54 million in funds will be made available – even without a Planned Parenthood link because it’s “ripe for fraud and abuse” and violations of privacy.”

But consider the fact that states are already using their healthcare exchanges to push voter registration. According to an article at People’s World, California will be incorporating voter registration in their exchange.

“California’s Secretary of State Debra Bowen is designating the state’s new Health Benefit Exchange, Covered California, as a voter registration agency under the National Voter Registration Act. That means Covered California will be incorporating voter registration into every transaction — online, in-person and by phone — it has with consumers.”

As long as they’re “helping people” with their insurance options, navigators will have unlimited avenues for promoting their liberal agendas — Door-to-door, over the phone, via email and online advertising. Access your local healthcare exchange and you’re likely to see propaganda promoting everything from political candidates to a complete ban on guns, and who knows who’s going to be knocking on your door or running up your cellphone bill.

And let’s not even talk about the fact that all of these navigators will also have unlimited access to all your personal information, including financial and medical records.

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 9:34 am

Tags: domestic news, health, healthcare

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Kris Betts
KVUE News Austin
June 21, 2013

Vinny is German Shepherd with a bullet wound on the back of his neck. On Monday, a Leander police officer shot Vinny when he says the dog and another German Sheppard came running at him while trying to serve a warrant.

“He said they were growling, and closing distance very quickly,” said Lt. Derral Partin, a spokesperson for Leander Police.

However, Vinny’s owners Renata and Chris Simmons, say Vinny has never acted aggressively.

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 9:04 am

Tags: domestic news, police state

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Car’s engine was found 100 feet away from site of crash

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
June 21, 2013

Authorities and media outlets have predictably moved to dismiss claims that Rolling Stone journalist Michael Hastings — who complained of being under investigation by the FBI before his death in a fiery car crash on Tuesday — was murdered as a result of foul play, despite the vehicle’s engine being found 100 feet away from the scene of the blaze.

After Wikileaks reported that Hastings had contacted them in the hours before his death complaining about being under investigation by the FBI, the federal agency denied the claim.

“At no time was journalist Michael Hastings ever under investigation by the FBI,” L.A. Field Office spokeswoman Laura Eimiller told the Burlington Free Press.

However, it would be naive to take the FBI at its word. This is an organization whose agents recently shot an unarmed man six times in the head before lying in claiming Ibragim Todashev, friend of accused Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnev, had lunged at them with a weapon — an explanation later admitted to be false.

The FBI is also an organization that claims every single instance of its agents shooting people over the last 20 years was “justified”.

“Between 1993 and early 2011 FBI agents fatally shot 70 people and wounded approximately 80 others. In no incident, including one that led to a $1.3 million payout for a victim wrongfully identified as a bank robber, was an agent wrong to fire their weapon,” reports RT.

Hastings’ body was identified by the Los Angeles coroner’s office, which announced there were no signs of foul play, by matching fingerprints to prints the FBI had on file, indicating that Hastings must have had some involvement with the federal agency. “It sounded like a bomb went off in the middle of the night. My house shook. The windows were rattling,” said one resident who heard the crash.

Following his role in bringing down Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, Hastings was told by a McChrystal staffer, “We’ll hunt you down and kill you if we don’t like what you write.” The Rolling Stone journalist also “had the Central Intelligence Agency in his sights” and was set to release an article exposing the agency, according to L.A. Weekly.

Despite the fact that investigating whether or not a journalist who had made a number of enemies at the very top of the power structure could have been the target of an assassination is a perfectly legitimate question, news outlets have characterized such inquiry as being insensitive and crass.

An example of this is The Week’s Marc Ambinder, who labels such talk as distasteful “trutherism,” despite acknowledging that Hastings’ death was “unusual”.

“Cars don’t often crash and burst into flames. Especially not cars that are new and well-made, not Mercedes, and especially not cars that are designed to eject their engine blocks when a major compression is detected. So the fact that Hastings’ car burst into the flames on impact is unusual. But it is not impossible. It happens,” writes Ambinder.

Opinions are divided on whether or not the details of Hastings’ “accident” are consistent with a modern car crashing at high speed into a tree and exploding into flames. As Hollywood Reporter notes, The fact that, “The crash was so intense that the car’s engine and transmission were found 100 feet from the main wreckage,” has fueled claims that an incendiary device was used.

As one vehicle expert at The Truth About Cars website noted, “I’ve seen dozens of cars hit walls and stuff at high speeds and the number of them that I have observed to eject their power trains and immediately catch massive fire is, um, ah, zero. Modern cars are very good at not catching fire in accidents.”

“As a Mercedes owner, these are the safest cars in the world,” added a Reddit user. “Explosion … fireball, engine [flies] down the block. Not your typical crash.”

However, Philadelphia attorney Max Kennerly, who has represented numerous plaintiffs in car fires, says such occurrences are routine. “If someone is driving at high speed and hits a very solid object, yeah, you’ll get a fire out of that,” he states. “It wouldn’t be an underestimation to say that every day, a lawsuit is filed over a car fire right after an accident. There are every year 300,000 vehicle fires and a couple hundred deaths and a couple thousand injuries.”

During a report into “conspiracy theories” surrounding the writer’s death, CNN reporter Casey Wian noted that Hastings’ “penchant for unvarnished criticism of military authorities” was the main reason why questions were being asked about the accident. Wian also highlights how the transmission being found so far from the car has prompted claims that “the vehicle could have exploded before impact.”

Debunkers of the assassination theory point out that an exploding car is the most obvious form of assassination and that if the authorities really wanted to silence Hastings they would simply have tracked him to his home and done the deed behind closed doors.

However, this argument is countered by the claim that the assassination was deliberately done in public and meant to look suspicious so as to frighten other prominent journalists and whistleblowers who may be considering releasing sensitive information.

Meanwhile, the New York Times came under fire from Hastings’ widow Elise Jordan, who slammed the newspaper for mentioning a Defense Department investigation into Hastings’ claims of wrongdoing on the part of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal which concluded there was “insufficient evidence” of such charges.

“Jordan’s main contention is that not only did the Times misread the Pentagon report, but they did not bother to include Rolling Stone‘s response, which stated that no sources actually contradicted the facts of Hastings’ piece, not to mention it’s not as if any witnesses would voluntarily admit to saying things that would put their careers on the line,” reports Mediaite.

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

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

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 8:55 am

Tags: domestic news, mainstream media

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Donna Anderson
Infowars.com
June 21, 2013

The recent Supreme Court ruling that genes can’t be patented is a major win for women who have a family history of breast cancer. And after Genae Girard’s interview with Infowar’s David Knight, one has to wonder if Angelina Jolie would still have made the same decision to have a double mastectomy if she hadn’t been manipulated by Myriad Genetics.

Girard’s story is one shared by many woman. In 2006, on the advice of her physician, Girard underwent testing for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes to see if she was destined to develop breast and ovarian cancer.

The test, administered only by Myriad Genetics, came back positive and Girard had a decision to make: Should she play Russian Roulette and do nothing on the slim chance that she’d never develop breast cancer, or should she undergo preventative surgery and have both breasts and her ovaries removed?

Angelina Jolie recently faced the same decision and after considering all the ‘facts’ she chose to have the surgery, removing both breasts because, according to Myriad Genetics Corp., there was a very high probability that she would someday develop breast cancer and die.

Thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling, Myriad Genetics no longer holds a patent on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, which means that other laboratories may administer the test. The most obvious benefit is that now the cost for the test will drop from the $3,500 that Myriad was charging to a more affordable rate of around $150, making it affordable for more women.

But here’s the hidden benefit that may have allowed Jolie and Girard to choose a different path: Now, women will be able to get a second opinion before they go under the knife.

When Jolie made her announcement, women everywhere were applauding her bravery. Not only was she brave for having the surgery, she was brave for announcing it to the world. But if you watch Girard’s interview you’ll see that she and Jolie had little choice.

First, because of a family history of breast cancer, both Girard and Jolie were strongly advised by their physicians to take the Myriad test, a test that cost $3,500.

To further convince her that the test was necessary, Girard says she was forced to watch a manipulative video that would almost guarantee she’d fork over the $3,500 for Myriad’s test.

“Being in the oncology office, they have you watch a video, it’s required before you actually submit your blood sample, and I didn’t quite like it because it was kind of a bullying tactic. It was very dark and scary, and it was very influential to try and get you to make that decision to take the test. I particularly didn’t like that because some people will respond to that, some people will just be scared when they weren’t even at risk.”

According to Girard, once the results came back positive she asked for a second opinion, but no other lab was allowed to perform the test and Myriad refused to run the test a second time. Girard and Jolie were both forced to make a life-altering, highly-personal decision based on one test and a fear-inducing video that essentially gave them no other options.

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 9:25 am

Tags: domestic news, science, technology

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

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This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

On 16 June 2013, after describing the brutal events that took place in Istanbul on the evening of 15 June, which were covered extensively by the international media, Taksim Solidarity–the umbrella group that initiated the Taksim Gezi Park protest on 27 May–said on its website, “The government has committed a crime against humanity.”[1]

This description of the events of 15 June was correct in that what is going on in Turkey can no longer be described as only police brutality. A police force brainwashed for years and trained to hate anyone who does not think like it has been attacking innocent people to wound and kill since 31 May. Four have been killed so far, more than 7,500 have been wounded, and thousands have been detained, during which they have been tortured. Most of the injuries are serious, leaving many disabled or blind for the rest of their lives, and the whereabouts of many of the detainees are not known.

The police brutality has reached unforeseen levels since 15 June, and confrontations between the police and protestors have been going on in more than 60 cities around the country. In a statement right after the brutal police attack on Gezi Park on 15 June, Turkish European Union Minister Egemen Bagis said, “Unfortunately from now, the state will have to consider whoever is in Taksim as a member of a terrorist organisation.” Apparently, Bagis was serious, because even the medical doctors who are attending to the wounded in several districts of Istanbul are now called “terrorists in white shirts” and treated accordingly.

The Islamist Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi; AKP) took power in 2002. Since then, it has won three elections in a row, and it secured about 50% of the vote in the last election in 2011. The AKP now has a more than two-thirds majority in the national assembly, which allows the government to pass any law it desires. It controls the police force, which allows it to arrest or suppress anyone. It controls the justice system, which enables it to prosecute whoever it likes. It controls the military, which allows it to dream of regional hegemony, Ottoman style. Finally, the AKP controls all of the important economic and financial institutions–from the finance ministry to the central bank, which allows the Recep Tayyip Erdogan government to shape economic policies irrespective of the needs of the population.

Government Claims

In an article published at the Guardian on 16 June, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu claimed that while the government views peaceful protests as part of a democratic system, it had to strike a balance between this principle and maintaining public order. And, in a statement on 17 June, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said, “If the events spread, with the request of the governors, the military troops in the regions can also be deployed to ensure public order, following the police and gendarme.” Davutoglu described the happenings as follows.

The protests began as a peaceful environmental movement opposing a government plan for development. Unfortunately, violent extremist groups hijacked their democratic demands. No democratic government would allow any illegal or illegitimate group to undermine public order, attack the police and destroy public and private property. However, there have been some mistakes in the use of force against the protesters, and the government has expressed regret. Investigations into these incidents are under way, and those responsible are already being held accountable.

The people in the streets come from many walks of life, age groups, religions, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and ideologies. There are university and high school students, socialists, anarchists, ecologists, environmentalists, gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals, nationalists, Kemalists, apolitical folk, and even some voters of the AKP. Among the 118 members of Taksim Solidarity are the Unions of Turkish Physicians, Dentists and Pharmacists; many chambers of the Union of the Chambers of Architects and Engineers of Turkey; the Confederation of Revolutionary Workers’ Unions; the Confederation of Public Workers’ Unions; the two main opposition parties, the Republican People’s Party and the Independence and Democracy Party; and many small socialist parties such as the Freedom and Solidarity Party and the Party of Labour.[2] None of these chambers, unions, parties, or other organisations is illegal, except perhaps in the eyes of the governing neoliberal, neo-Ottomanist AKP.

Unlike Davutoglu’s claim, the ongoing Turkish uprising has nothing to do with some illegitimate groups trying to undermine public order, attack the police, and destroy public and private property. This is a spontaneous, civil and politically unaffiliated movement of diverse groups of people who are fighting for human dignity against an increasingly authoritarian party aiming to regulate social, economic, and private life as it pleases. The party is pushing for a conservative Islamic lifestyle, threatening in particular women and youth, and criminalising and imprisoning opposition groups ranging from seculars to Kurds, socialists, and trade unionists. Although the mainstream media argues that this is essentially a secular and amorphous middle-class movement, what connects these diverse groups is that the majority of their members need to sell their labour power to live. Therefore, although it is not possible to identify the movement with the industrial proletariat in a Marxian sense, there is little doubt that the majority of its members belong to a new proletariat that has been emerging since the early 1980s.

AKP’s Economic Model

In search of culprits for the ongoing uprising from below, the AKP has invented many conspiracy theories. The identified conspirators range from the international media to “terrorist” social media organisations such as Twitter and Facebook; a shadowy clique called the “interest rate lobby,” consisting of national and foreign financial institutions, that wants higher interest rates in Turkey; and even the “undemocratic” European Parliament jealous of the AKP’s economic miracle.[3]

Yet, the AKP has not presided over an economic miracle. Its austerity-based economic model has been nothing but the neoliberal speculation and finance-led growth model of development that has been around since the early days of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and is familiar to Indians. Through its economic policies, the AKP has been imposing its neoliberal agenda by increasingly commercialising public services, creating areas of rent for large corporations, and eroding the living standards and security of a significant part of the working people.

The AKP growth model depends on cheap labour, speculative financial capital inflows, and a high trade deficit. The share of industrial production is decreasing, and the country is becoming increasingly dependent on imports of intermediate and capital goods as well as energy. Agricultural production is weak, and meat production is virtually non-existent that even the well-liked Turkish kebabs are now grilled with meat imported from such faraway places as Argentina.

It is usually argued that the AKP significantly raised the national income and the prosperity of the Turkish population. This statement is correct only in the averages. Although there are minor improvements that can quickly reverse if the AKP economic miracle collapses, the income distribution is still skewed. And, the rich tail of income distribution is so fat that it can easily be called obese. If the Gini coefficient is any measure of income equality, India beats Turkey by far, .34 to .40 in 2010 respectively and the lower the Gini coefficient, the lower the income inequality. [4]

It is also argued that the AKP pushed reforms that made housing, education, and healthcare more accessible. True, the construction sector constitutes about 6% of the annual gross domestic product (GDP)–equalling the share of the manufacturing sector–and many cities around the country look like huge construction sites. Many of the new apartment buildings in gated communities with security guards are beyond the reach of the majority of working people, and many of those new apartments are sold on easy credit. The Housing Development Administration’s buildings are of a low quality and are usually made available to AKP supporters. A new shopping mall or another commercial building gets started almost every other day, and many shops in the new shopping malls sit empty with a slowdown in consumption. Debates have been going on about the possibility of a US or Spain-like credit-fuelled real estate bubble in Turkey, with proponents of the AKP denying the possibility.[5]

As for the increased access to education, a new private university pops up almost every other month, taking the quality of higher education further down and increasing the debt burden of families who want to provide their kids with a university education. Most graduates of these universities are not able to find well-paying jobs and the unemployment rate among the youth is above 20%. Further, healthcare is available to anyone who can pay for it, except that a majority of the hospitals are now private, the care they provide is expensive, and the quality of affordable care at the state hospitals is going down due to cost cutting and the increased work load of doctors, nurses, and other personnel.

The AKP economic miracle of the past decade stands on two pillars; first, on the fuelling of consumption through excessive credit. The driving force behind the country’s recent economic growth has been nothing but a spectacular rate of credit expansion, which reached 30% for households and 40% for businesses in 2011. Secondly, rent extraction through privatisation of the commons–from land to public enterprises, and spaces and buildings to natural resources — has been another pillar of the economy under AKP rule. Indeed, Gezi Park that triggered the ongoing rebellion is the latest example of attempted privatisation of the commons.

Neither of these strategies is sustainable. Further, not only are households in significant debt–with a debt to disposable income ratio of about 45% in 2011–but also the corporate sector.[6] Although the AKP takes pride in having paid the last installment of its debt to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Turkey has borrowed increasingly more in the international financial market during its reign, shifting the foreign debt burden from the public to the private sector.

While the total foreign debt stock of Turkey in 2002 was $130 billion with 67% owed by the public sector, the foreign debt stock in 2012 was $337 billion with 67% owed by the private sector. In addition, while only 13% of the total foreign debt stock was short term in 2002, the short-term debt constituted 30% of the total foreign debt stock in 2012. More importantly, 88% of the short-term debt belonged to the private sector, and 66% of it belonged to the private financial sector in 2012.

This effectively turned the Turkish private sector into a shadow bank, which borrows short term in rollover debt markets, leverages significantly, and invests in long-term and illiquid assets, making Turkish corporations in general, and Turkish private banks in particular, vulnerable to currency shocks that may lead to collective bankruptcies. The AKP economic miracle recalls the experiences of Mexico in 1994 and Argentina in 2000 where surging external debt produced short-lived bubbles of prosperity, followed by currency devaluations, and deep slumps.[7] No wonder Prime Minister Erdogan is worried about an imagined “interest rate lobby.”

As the economic miracle of the AKP evaporates, its ability to govern will vanish, and the uprising of 27 May will seem only a dress rehearsal. There has been relative calm in the streets of Istanbul for the last few days and Taksim Square was reopened to the public under heavy police surveillance on 17 June. By 6.30 pm on that day, a man had stood in the middle of Taksim Square for six hours, staring at the flags and a poster of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk on the nearby Ataturk Cultural Centre. Shortly after it became clear that he was staging a protest to oppose the ongoing police brutality and oppression of human rights in Turkey, the hashtag #duranadam, or standing man, hit Twitter and became the number one trending topic worldwide.

Once again, it is kicking off everywhere, and there are now many standing men and women around the world. From Turkey to Bosnia, Bulgaria, and Brazil, people are in a struggle against neoliberal states for real democracy. The world will not be the same after the 27 May uprising in Turkey.

T Sabri Öncü  is a citizen of Turkey, living in Mumbai. He can be reached at: sabri.oncu@gmail.com.

Notes. 

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

I met Charlie Hardy, a former Mary Knoll priest and missionary, in Caracas, Venezuela when I was there as an international accompanier of the Venezuelan elections in April.  When I told my colleague Alex Main that I was going to go with Charlie to see the new socialist city of Ciudad Caribia, Alex said, “oh yes, ‘the barefoot priest,’ you’ll like him.”  And of course, I did.  Indeed, I must say that Catholic priests, as well as former Catholic priests, dedicated to social justice are probably my favorite people in the world — there is something very pure about their dedication.

On the the way to our destination, Charlie explained, as he does very well in his book, that he lived for eight years as a Maryknoll missionary in cardboard hut in Terrace B of the barrio Nueva Tacagua, beginning in 1985.  As Charlie explained to us, and as he explains in his book, Cowboy in Caracas, his first introduction to barrio life was stepping into “a mountain of fecal matter.”  As Charlie relates in his book, “I don’t think there was a square inch of Terrace B that had not been tainted by human or animal excrement at some time. The problem was threefold: lack of running water, lack of toilets, and lack of enclosed sewers.  In front of my door, a stream of black water carried the sewage from my neighbors’ dwelling to the miniature black river behind my house. Soon I would cease to notice the stench. That day I did.”

As Charlie, a native of Wyoming (thus the cowboy part), explains, life in the barrio was hard and inevitably ground people down — even driving some to the point of insanity.  Basic necessities, like water, were hard to come by, and were expensive.  As Charlie explains in his book, “[w]ater arrived on Terrace B in tank trucks with the words ‘DRINKING WATER’ painted on their sides. They were old and dirty and the hoses that carried the water to our barrels were equally disgusting. The price was much, much higher than what the wealthy in other parts of town paid for the same quantity, which they received through their faucets.  . . . We never knew when the trucks would return. Sometimes more than a month passed without water.”

Charlie explains how the grinding poverty in the barrios, combined with the rising price of basic foodstuffs and gasoline — which resulted in the jump in the cost of transportation — led to the spontaneous barrio uprisings, known as the Caracazo, shortly after President Carlos Andres Perez assumed office in February of 1989.  As Charlie writes, during this uprising, which was marked by looting, the police “became assassins, firing indiscriminately into crowds running away from them. . . . The situation became worse when the president ordered the army into the streets.”  According to Charlie:

No one knows the number of deaths that occurred in Venezuela during the tumultuous days of February and March, 1989. (1) I would not be surprised if the number surpassed that of the massacre in Tianamen Square in China three months later.  The China event received extensive press coverage, and the date is still remembered every year. But what happened in Caracas received little coverage and was quickly forgotten.  . . .

Thousands of people had lost family members.  Every barrio of Caracas had felt the repression of the police and the armed forces. Many of those living in the wealthier parts of the city had their business establishments destroyed, but the deaths they witnessed were mostly on television, and they cheered the police who were chasing the barrio dwellers.

Alluding to the ahistorical coverage given to Venezuela and to Hugo Chavez, Charlie writes that “[t]he economic injustices and racial divisions that had existed for years in Caracas and in Venezuela as a whole had surfaced. Ten years later, political opponents of President Hugo Chavez would accuse him of dividing the country. But in 1989 Chavez was just another soldier. Like many Venezuelans, he probably wondered why soldiers should kill hungry people for stealing spaghetti.”

Charlie witnessed the massive military incursion into and repression of his own barrio during the Caracazo, seeing soldiers shoot a man and then throw him down the mountainside. As Charlie explains, “[i]t was like a war movie, a horror show.”  Charlie himself confronted a soldier posted in the barrio, telling him,

‘My name is Charlie.  I am the priest here. The people here are good people.’ I asked him if he was from a barrio, and he replied that he was from the countryside and had been called into action the day before.

I could see tears in his eyes as he looked at us. My neighbors began to gather behind me.  . . .  Here he was, faced with men, women, and children who probably looked like his own family.  But I also knew that if someone threw a rock, he had the power to kill us all.

A lay missionary later wrote to a priest in the United States that she didn’t think I was ever more a priest than that day when I stood between the automatic weapons and the people of the barrio.

I love this scene, and there are many more like it in the book, for it illustrates not only the repression and suffering of the poor of the barrio which would give rise to the revolution led by Hugo Chavez, but it also shows the importance and efficacy of people of good will, like Charlie, standing up for them.  I would submit that there is probably no greater service that one can perform than to accompany the poor in places like Venezuela who are being beset by both their own oligarchies and by the U.S. Colossus.

My favorite vignette from the book, the one Charlie had me read on the bus up to Ciudad Caribia, is entitled “Angels and Shepherds.”  As Charlie writes,

One Christmas Eve, before I had ever heard the name of Hugo Chavez, I was visiting families. I stopped for a moment at the home of Angelica. She told me she was taking care of a little baby who was sick and wondered if I could do her a favor. That afternoon she had gone with the baby’s mother to see a doctor who had given them a prescription for medicine. The doctor’s advice was free. The medicine was not, and they didn’t have enough money to buy it. Her question was: could I get it for her?

It was probably about 9 p.m. and I asked her if she needed it right away. No, in the morning would be ok.

I assisted at midnight Mass in the neighboring barrio and then shared a meal with the local priest and the religious sisters. When I returned to my neighborhood at about 2 a.m., some young people stopped me. ‘Charlie, a baby just died.’ ‘Where,’ I asked. ‘In Angelica’s house.’

* * *

When I returned to my shack, I couldn’t help but reflect on the incident. Two thousand years ago, it is reported that angels announced to shepherds and to the world the birth of a child. After two centuries of ‘civilization,’ a woman with the name of an angel had to announce to the world the death of a child.

Flash forward to today, and we arrive at Ciudad Caribia, the socialist city that Chavez had dreamed of years before and which, as most other public housing projects, bears Chavez’s giant signature.   There, we met Charlie’s former neighbor from the barrio, Luz, a name which means “light” in Spanish.  Luz had lived in the barrio for 40 years without sewage and running water.   Her 16-year old son had been murdered by the police in 1990 (eight years before Chavez was elected President), and she just received some justice with the policeman responsible for the killing recently receiving a sentence of 12 years in prison for the crime.

The barrio which was Luz’s home for 4 decades was recently condemned because, as many of the hill-side barrios lining Caracas, it was built on a land fill and is now sliding down the hill. However, she and her family received four (4) fully furnished apartments in the spanking brand new Ciudad Caribia – they had all shared one tiny dwelling in the barrio. They now have running water, sewage and electricity.  The city has its own health clinic and day care. She doesn’t have to pay for the new apartment because she already paid the government for the old house.  Her other family members have to pay 50 to 100 Bolivars a month (or $8 to $16) for 30 years.

She says thanks to the President for all of this. Luz explains that President Chavez now provides food in all the schools. Now children in Bolivarian schools receive breakfast and lunch, but “they call our President a terrorist in other countries.”  Ciudad Caribia, which already houses thousands of Venezuela’s poor, is still under construction and will ultimately house a total of 88,000 people.

As the Guardian recently reported, Chavez’s mission to build housing for the poor has been a huge success. (2) As the Guardian explains, “[l]ast month marked the second anniversary of Venezuela’s great housing mission, started by the late Hugo Chavez, to tackle the country’s massive housing deficit. The mission was to start by building 350,000 houses in 2011 and 2012 combined — a target exceeded by nearly 25,000 . . .  From now on the annual targets are much tougher — over 300,000 a year.”

As the same article notes, Venezuela “has had three years of steady growth and a longer period of growth in real incomes. Poverty has been halved and the gap between rich and poor is now one of the lowest in Latin America. At 50% of GDP, government debt is high but less than half the level in the UK. Public spending doubled under Chávez, but is still only just over 20% of GDP.  In addition, Venezuela was just one of 18 countries in the world (Cuba, Nicaragua and Vietnam were amongst these as well) which won an award from the UN for dramatically decreasing malnutrition. (3)

While the problems Charlie saw and lived through in the barrio have not been completely eradicated by Venezuela’s democratic revolution, much progress has been made, and this despite the coup against Chavez in 2002, and the crippling oil strikes of 2002-2003 which the oligarchy sponsored to try to fatally undermine Chavez.  This progress is rarely spoken of in the mainstream press but it is very real.  Charlie, the former priest from Cheyenne, Wyoming, knows this as much as anyone.  His story, and the story of Venezuela’s peaceful revolution which he describes, is well-worth reading.

Daniel Kovalik is a human and labor rights lawyer living in Pittsburgh. He teaches International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

Notes. 

(1)  According to the BBC, up to as many as 3,000 were killed in the Caracazo. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12593085

(2)  See, http://www.guardian.co.uk/housing-network/2013/jun/06/public-investment-housing-venezuela?INTCMP=SRCH   

(3)  See,  http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/9716  

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

One incident of racism, though small in relation to the decades of massive, institutionalised discrimination exercised by Israel against its Palestinian Arab citizens, has triggered an uncharacteristic bout of Israeli soul-searching.

Superland, a large amusement park near Tel Aviv, refused to accept a booking from an Arab school on its preferred date in late May. When a staff member called back impersonating a Jew, Superland approved the booking immediately.

As the story went viral on social media, the park’s managers hurriedly offered an excuse: they provided separate days for Jewish and Arab children to keep them apart and prevent friction.

Government ministers led an outpouring of revulsion. Tzipi Livni, the justice minister, called the incident a “symptom of a sick democracy”. Defence minister Moshe Yaalon was “ashamed”. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded that the “racist” policy be halted immediately.

Such sensitivity appears to be a reaction to an explosion of popular racism over the past few months against the one in five Israelis who belong to the country’s Palesinian Arab minority. Some Israeli Jews have started to find the endless parade of bigotry disturbing.

Israeli TV recently revealed, for example, that a group of children with cancer who had been offered a free day at a swimming pool were refused entry once managers discovered that they were Bedouin.

According to another TV investigation, Israel’s banks have a secret policy of rejecting Arab customers who try to transfer their accounts to a branch in a Jewish community, even though this violates banking regulations.

The settlers, whose violence was once restricted to setting fire to the crops of Palestinians or rampaging through their villages in the West Bank, are now as likely to attack Arab communities inside Israel. Torched mosques, offensive graffiti on churches and cars set ablaze in so-called “price-tag” attacks have become commonplace.

Similarly, reports of vicious attacks on Arab citizens are rapidly becoming a news staple. Recent incidents have included the near-fatal beating of a street cleaner, and a bus driver who held his gun to an Arab passenger’s head, threatening to pull the trigger unless the man showed his ID.

Also going viral were troubling mobile-phone photos of a young Arab woman surrounded by a mob of respectable-looking commuters amd shoppers while she waited for a train. As they hit her and pulled off her hijab, station guards looked on impassively.

However welcome official denunciations of these events are, the government’s professed outrage does not wash.

While Netanyahu and his allies on the far right were castigating Superland for its racism, they were busy backing a grossly discriminatory piece of legislation the Haaretz newspaper called “one of the most dangerous” measures ever to come before the parliament.

The bill will give Israelis who have served in the army a whole raft of extra rights in land and housing, employment, salaries, and the provision of public and private services. The catch is that almost all of the country’s 1.5 million Palestinian citizens are excluded from military service. In practice, the benefits will be reserved for Jews only.

Superland’s offence pales to insignificance when compared to that, or to the decades of state-planned and officially sanctoned discrimination against the country’s Palestinian minority.

An editorial in Haaretz this month observed that Israel was really “two separate states, one Arab and one Jewish. … This is the gap between the Jewish state of Israel, which is a developed Western nation, and the Arab state of Israel, which is no more than a Third World country.”

Segregation is enforced in all the main spheres of life: land allocation and housing, citizenship rights, education, and employment.

None of this is accidental. It was intended this way to guarantee Israel’s future as a Jewish state. Legal groups have identified 57 laws that overtly discriminate between Jewish and Palestinian citizens, with a dozen more heading towards the statute books.

Less visible but just as damaging is the covert discrimination Palestinian citizens face every day when dealing with state institutions, whose administrative practices find their rationale in the entrenchment of Jewish privilege.

This week a report indentified precisely this kind of institutional racism when it found that students from the country’s Palestinian minority were confronted by a series of 14 obstacles not faced by their Jewish compatriots that contributed to denying them places in higher education.

The wave of popular prejudice and racist violence is no accident either. Paradoxically, it has been unleashed by the increasingly inflammatory rhetoric of rightwing politicians like Netanyahu, whose constant fearmongering casts Palestinian citizens as disloyal, a fifth column and a demographic threat to the state’s Jewishness.

So why if the state is so committed to subjugating and excluding Palestinian citizens, and Netanyahu and his ministers so determined to increase the weight of discriminatory legislation, are they decrying the racism of Superland?

To make sense of this, one has to understand how desperately Israel has sought to distinguish itself from apartheid South Africa.

Israel cultivates, as South Africa once did, what scholars term “grand apartheid”. This is segregation, largely covert and often often justified by security or cultural differences, to ensure that control of resources remains exclusively in the hands of the privileged community.

At the same time, Israel long shied away from what some call South Africa’s model of “petty apartheid” — the overt, symbolic, but far less significant segregation of park benches, buses and toilets.

The avoidance of petty apartheid has been the key to Israel’s success in obscuring from the world’s view its grand apartheid, most obviously in the occupied territories but also inside Israel itself.

This month South Africa’s departing ambassador to Israel, Ismail Coovadia, warned that Israel was a “replication of apartheid”. The idea that the world may soon wake up to this comparison deeply unnerves Netanyahu and the right, all the more so as they risk being identified as the party refusing to make concessions towards peace.

The threat posed by what happened at Superland is that such incidents of unofficial and improvised racism may one day unmask the much more sinister and organised campaign of “grand apartheid” that Israel’s leaders have overseen for decades.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books).  His new website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

A version of this article first appeared in The National, Abu Dhabi.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

A demonstrator waves a flag aloft outside the country’s national congress in Brasilia Thursday. (Photo: Ueslei Marcelino/ Reuters)Up to a million demonstrators marched on the city of Rio de Janiero Thursday night in an overwhelming statement that the ongoing protests which have rocked the country for the past few weeks are about “more than just 20 cents.”

Similar demonstrations were reported in over 80 cities across the country with a total turnout estimated at roughly 2 million people. According to reports, approximately 110,000 took to the streets of São Paulo, 30,000 in the capital Brasilia, 80,000 in Manaus, 50,000 in Recife and 20,000 in Belo Horizonte and Salvador Thursday. In Rio, reports vary but demonstrators estimate that crowd swelled to a million protesters.

Wielding placards that read “Twenty cents is just the start;” “Stop corruption. Change Brazil”; “Come to the street. It’s the only place we don’t pay taxes”; and “Brazil is waking up,” Brazilians took to the streets in droves.

“There are no politicians who speak for us,” said Jamaime Schmitt. “This is not just about bus fares any more. We pay high taxes and we are a rich country, but we can’t see this in our schools, hospitals and roads.”

Another protester in the city of Belo Horizonte, Nancy Borges, speculated to AFP that the demonstrations “could even bring down the government.”

In anticipation of the rally, Rio’s law enforcement officials increased their numbers by ten-fold after recruiting an additional 8,000 officers and a squadron of 1,000 armed riot police to quell the protesters.

Though the demonstrations were largely peaceful, there were numerous reported instances where a small contingent of demonstrators clashed with police who retaliated against the larger nonviolent crowd. Many shouted “no violence” and “no vandalism” at the renegade protesters.

Police responded by firing volleys of pepper spray and rubber bullets into the crowd,” in Rio, the Guardian reports. Elsewhere, instances of police brutality caused “countless” injuries, as police employed rubber bullets and “percussion grenades.”

“Where we had been tranquil, then suddenly they started firing gas into the crowd. People were scared and appalled,” said protester Alessandra Sampaio. “They are cowards. They wanted to disperse the crowd never mind who it was. I’m very angry. It was a real abuse of power.”

Victor Bezerra, a law student, told the Guardian that the police response ‘was like something from the dictatorship era,’ saying “These are bad days for Brazil. The police were acting just like they did 30 years ago.”

In Brasilia, military police threw a security cordon around the building after protesters attempted to break into the foreign ministry.

Other instances of aggressive police backlash were reported in the cities of Belem, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte, Campinas and Salvador where police “used tear gas, pepper spray and other tools to disperse crowds,” Reuters reports. “They donned riot gear and used horses, trucks and barricades to help channel the crowds and protect buildings.”

According to the New York Times, the protesters have extended their ire to Brazil’s corporate media “which some see as tied to the elite and focused on portraying the violent minority of demonstrators.”

They continue:

As an alternative, some protesters have begun covering the demonstrations themselves, distributing their reports though social media. One group, called N.I.N.J.A., a Portuguese acronym for Independent Journalism and Action Narratives, has been circulating through the streets with smartphones, cameras and a generator held in a supermarket cart – a makeshift, roving production studio.

Initially spurred by a spike in transportation fares, the demonstrations have escalated into a broader protest against police brutality, government corruption, high taxes and the prioritization of tourism and international events such as the upcoming World Cup and Olympic games over basic civic commodities. 

In response to the mass demonstration, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff canceled an upcoming trip to Japan and called an emergency cabinet meeting for Friday to discuss the rapidly growing demonstrations. There is speculation that she will make a national radio address after the meeting.

Demonstrators confront Brazilian police on horseback during a protest in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday, June 20, 2013. (Photo: Silvia Izquierdo/ AP)

Military policemen use pepper stray on demonstrators outside the National Congress in Brasilia. (Photo: Stringer/ Brazil/ Reuters)

A demonstrator in Recife City Thursday, June 20, 2013. (Photo: Ricardo Moraes/ Reuters)

_____________________

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

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

A “feeding chair” in the Guantanamo medical wing where tubes are forced down detainees’ nostrils and throats. (Photo: Sgt. Brian Godette, Army 138th Public Affairs Detachment)Calls from the medical community to address the hunger strikes and tortuous practice of force feeding prisoners at Guantanamo are growing louder.

In an open letter to President Obama published by The Lancet this week, 153 doctors urge the Commander-in-Chief to respond to a letter by hunger-striking prisoners at the notorious prison that called for access to independent medical professionals and for the military doctors at the detention center “to stop actively contributing to the abusive conditions” forced upon them.

The doctors write that they “endorse [detainees’] request, and are prepared to visit them under appropriate conditions, to assist in their recovery and release.”

They continue:

It is clear that they do not trust their military doctors. They have very good reason for this, as you should know, from the current protocols of the Joint Task Force Guantanamo, which those doctors are ordered to follow. The orders they receive are ultimately your orders as their Commander-in-Chief. Without trust, safe and acceptable medical care of mentally competent patients is impossible. Since the detainees do not trust their military doctors, they are unlikely to comply with current medical advice.

That makes it imperative for them to have access to independent medical examination and advice, as they ask, and as required by the UN and World Medical Association.

Cori Crider, Strategic Director and Guantanamo attorney with the UK-based charity Reprieve, responded to the doctors’ open letter saying, “The doctors in Guantanamo are being asked to do terrible things by the US military — things which may haunt them for the rest of their lives.”

“We’re very grateful that independent doctors have stepped forward to help, but fundamentally Barack Obama needs to realize that this is the greatest crisis in Guantanamo of his presidency and start treating it as such. The men who have been cleared for release must go home to their families at once,” stated Crider.

The open letter in The Lancet comes on the heels of a commentary by senior medical professors from Boston University published in the New England Journal of Medicine in which they describe the Guantanamo prison as a medical ethics-free zone. The wrote that “Actions violating medical ethics, taken on behalf of the government, devalue medical ethics for all physicians,” and that any medical professional that participates in the force feeding of prisoners is merely a “weapon for maintaining prison order.”

They continued:

Force-feeding a competent person is not the practice of medicine; it is aggravated assault. Using a physician to assault prisoners no more changes the nature of the act than using physicians to “monitor” torture makes torture a medical procedure. Military physicians are no more entitled to betray medical ethics than military lawyers are to betray the Constitution or military chaplains are to betray their religion.

The American Medical Association also sent a letter to U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in April calling force feeding a violation of medical ethics.

Despite these notable statements against the force feeding of Guantanamo prisoners, the Associated Press reported on Thursday that prison spokesman Navy Captain Robert Durand said that none of the medical professionals had voiced concern over the force feeding.

Nearly all the Guantanamo prisoners are on hunger strike to protest their indefinite detention and over 40 are being force fed, a practice one detainee described as feeling “razor blade [going] down through your nose and into your throat.”

_____________________

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This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/climbing_concern_for_the_caucasus_climate_20130621/

Posted on Jun 21, 2013

This article originally appeared on: TruthDig

A recent decision by communications satellite services provider, Intelsat, to suspend services to Iranian news channels further uncovers the intolerant Westâ„¢s campaign to silence alternative media, Press TV reports.

The European-based company announced the decision on June 19, claiming the measure was taken in recognition of illegal sanctions the United States has declared against the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) – that is the countryâ„¢s national broadcasting corporation.

Å“Intelsat sought a waiver from the US government in order to extend the term of this [IRIBâ„¢s] license. However, the US government has now advised Intelsat that it will not extend the license. Intelsat must therefore stop providing services to you on June 30, 2013, to comply with the US laws and regulations,” the Luxembourg-based company stated.

The decision will especially affect the 24-hour English-language news channel, Press TV.

The suspension of services comes on the heels of a similar decision by Eutelsat and most other satellite operators in taking Iranian TV channels and radio stations off the air in several Western countries including Britain, France, Germany, and Spain.

The Israeli lobby in the United States has openly supported the attempt to silence the voice of Iranian media in Europe.

European companies claim they are abiding by anti-Iran sanctions. However, the European Union Foreign Policy chiefâ„¢s spokesman, Michael Mann, says the restrictions do not apply to media.

Media activists have condemned the attacks on Iranian TV channels as a campaign against free speech, and criticized the West for applying a double standard by silencing the voices of independent news channels.

They also blamed the West for its hypocrisy in stripping the public of its right to freely choosing the media outlets they like.

Å“A new voice that gives alternative views [and] alternative debates with high-caliber critics of the West from the West is a sweat, and thatâ„¢s why they want them to be off the air,” Iranian movie director and media expert, Nader Talebzadeh, pointed out.

Talebzadeh, however, expressed confidence that peopleâ„¢s awareness of the developments in the world – such as the rule of neo-cons on the US and Western media and the policies that have dragged the Western population into bottomless wars – has rendered the Westâ„¢s war on free speech ineffective.

Å“The public knows what is going on, and I think it is an ineffective way to try to silence free speech,” he stressed.

The attacks on Iranian media are in clear contradiction with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which enshrines individualsâ„¢ right to freedom of opinion and expression.

Å“This right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers,” the article reads.

Analysts say the sanctions have revealed the true face of the West and the falsehood of its claims regarding respect for democracy, human rights and free speech, as the West proves it will not tolerate any alterative voices which do not fit in its agenda.

MRS/SS

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_chimerica_dream_20130621/

Posted on Jun 21, 2013

This article originally appeared on: TruthDig

File photo shows young Canadians waiting in line at a job fair.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Jack Kennedy was America’s last peace president. He underwent a spiritual transformation. He changed from cold warrior to peacemaker.

He wanted nuclear weapons abolished. He urged “general and complete disarmament.” He wanted force-fed Pax Americana ended.

He assumed great risk. Nearly all his top advisers disapproved. Pentagon commanders opposed him. So did most congressional members. CIA officials weren’t pleased.

Kennedy was vulnerable. He knew it. He accepted the risk. It cost him his life. He was assassinated weeks after signing the US/Soviet Russia Limited Test Ban Treaty and National Security Action Memorandum Number 263.

It called for removing 1,000 US troops from Vietnam by yearend. It mandated all American forces out by December 1965.

Obama’s no Jack Kennedy. On April 5, 2009, he spoke in Prague’s Hradcany Square. He did so duplicitously. He lied saying “clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

He pledged “concrete steps” never taken. They included:

• reducing nuclear stockpiles enough to matter;

• halting fissile material production;

• preventing nuclear proliferation and use;

• pursuing diplomacy with Iran and North Korea; and

• resolving key security challenges to create conditions for a world without nuclear weapons.

America’s current arsenal includes state-of-the-art nuclear, chemical, biological, and other type weapons of mass destruction.

They’re more advanced, powerful and dangerous than ever. They’re deployed globally. They menaces humanity. America’s preemptive first-strike nuclear posture remains unchanged.

On June 19, Obama urged Russia to join America in reducing strategic nuclear arsenals by one-third.

A White House press release said:

“Today, the President announced new guidance that aligns US nuclear policies to the 21st century security environment.”

“This is the latest in a series of concrete steps the President has made to advance his Prague agenda and the long-term goal of achieving the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

Obama’s so-called “new guidance” includes:

• maintaining “a credible deterrent;”

• aligning America’s military deterrent according to 2010 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) provisions; more on them below;

• strengthening non-nuclear capabilities;

• “reduc(ing) the role of launch under attack (while) retain(ing) a launch under attack capability;”

• achieving “more effective management of the nuclear weapons stockpile;” and

• “maintain(ing) a safe, secure and effective arsenal that guarantees the defense of the US and our allies and partners.”

America “seek(s) negotiated cuts with Russia so that we can continue to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures.”

On December 26, 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved. So-called Cold War friction ostensibly ended. Conditions today are the most perilous in world history.

America bears full responsibility. Wars without end rage. Obama has others in mind. He pursues them recklessly. Humanity’s survival is at stake.

Obama’s no peacemaker. He prioritizes war. He spends more on militarism than the rest of the world combined. He’s developing more powerful weapons of mass destruction.

He’s deploying them globally. He maintains a growing empire of bases. Hundreds are in over 150 countries. They encroach close to Russian and Chinese borders. They do so belligerently. They threaten world peace.

Obama’s nuclear reduction proposal lacks credibility. It does so for good reason. He broke every major promise made. He’s a serial liar. He can’t be trusted.

He’s a war criminal multiple times over. His nuclear policy prioritizes first-strike preemption. It does so against manufactured enemies.

His 2010 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) reflects old wine in new bottles. Rhetoric changed, not policy. NPR 2010 said America “reserves the right” to use nuclear weapons.

Doing so “may be warranted by the evolution and proliferation of the biological weapons threat and US capacities to counter that threat.”

No threat whatever exists. More advanced weapons replace older ones. US nuclear policy menaces humanity. It prioritizes greater deterrent capability.

It unilaterally asserts the right to strike preemptively. It does without cause, justification or consequences.

Obama’s NPR reflects war-making, not prevention. It replicates Bush’s 2005 Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations. It removes the distinction between defensive and offensive deterrents.

It prioritizes upgrading America’s destructive triad. It includes sea-based strategic bombers, land-based missiles, and ballistic missile submarines.

It maintains robust research, development, and industrial infrastructure. It continues to develop, build, and deploy unchallengeable offensive and defensive systems.

It exceeds deterrent. It calls for nuclear and non-nuclear preemption. It does so against unnamed adversaries.

It prioritizes permanent wars on humanity. At issue is resource control and unchallenged global dominance.

It calls for eliminating all independent governments. It wants no rivals. It wants pro-Western puppet regimes subservient to US interests.

On April 8, 2010, America and Russia signed New Start (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty). On February 11, 2011, it became effective.

It’s more smoke screen than substance. Nuclear reduction is illusory. Proliferation continues.

Disarmament isn’t envisioned. America’s arms race continues. Unconscionable amounts are spent. Popular needs go begging. War-making priorities come first.

New Start leaves America unconstrained. It’s global strike capability is uncompromised. Developing upgraded humanity-destroying weapons continues.

Annual budgets include growing amounts to do so. Obama’s brave nuke world is unsafe to live in. He’s got lots more war-making in mind.

He prioritizes state-of-the-art capability to do so. It includes more destructive than ever nuclear weapons.

He asserts the right to use them preemptively. He does so unilaterally. He targets enemies created out of whole cloth.

NPR 2010 changed rhetoric. Policy remains unchanged. NPT’s three pillars are disregarded. They include non-proliferation, disarmament, and peaceful use.

Reinstituting the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty isn’t envisioned. It was in force for 30 years. In 2002, Bush administration rogues unilaterally withdrew. America remains unconstrained to wage war.

The Pentagon’s 2006 Global Strike Command remains policy. It’s for war-making, not prevention. It’s for offense, not defense. It prioritizes first-strike capability.

So does the 2009 Prompt Global Strike initiative. It’s to attack anywhere in the world. It’s to do so on short notice. It’s to use conventional, nuclear and other weapons.

NPR 2010 states America “reserves the right” to use nuclear weapons “that may be warranted by the evolution and proliferation of the biological weapons threat and US capacities to counter that threat.”

It keeps nuclear missiles ready to launch in minutes. It asserts the unilateral preemptive right to do so.

It’s aggressive. It’s lawless. It threatens world peace. It assures permanent wars. It threatens humanity.

Bush’s December 2002 National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 17 (“Weapons of Mass Destruction)” remains unchanged. It states:

“The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force — including through resort to all of our options — to the use (or threatened use) of WMD(s) against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies.”

Launching nuclear war is a presidential prerogative. Theater nuclear operations are at the discretion of commanders. They can use tactical mini-nukes preemptively. They can do so based on falsified threats.

Obama can invent them to wage nuclear war. He can do so globally. He can do it preemptively. Perhaps he’ll take full advantage. No greater threat exists.

On June 19, Ria Novosti headlined “Russia Skeptical Over Obama’s New Nuclear Reduction Proposal.”

Moscow officials distrust him for good reason. They do so “in light of US global missile defense plans and attempts by other counties to boost their nuclear arsenals.”

Obama’s proposed “bold reductions in US and Russian tactical weapons in Europe” don’t wash. According to senior Putin foreign policy advisor Yury Ushakov:

“The situation now is not like in the 1960s and 1970s, when only the United States and the Soviet Union held talks on reducing nuclear arms.”

“Now we need to look more broadly and expand the circle of participants in possible contacts on this matter.”

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin added:

“How can we take seriously this idea about cuts in strategic nuclear potential while the United States is developing its capabilities to intercept Russia’s nuclear potential.”

Arms issues involves offensive and defensive ones, he stressed.

“To show the lack of understanding of this (by proposing further nuclear cuts) — means either openly lying, bluffing and deceiving, or demonstrating a deep lack of professionalism.”

Putin addressed Obama’s proposal, saying:

“We cannot afford to disrupt the balance of the system of strategic deterrence, to reduce effectiveness of its nuclear forces. Therefore, the development of the system of space defense will remain a key direction for the military industry.”

Putin and other Russian officials express great concern about America surrounding Russia with so-called missile defense systems meant for offense.

“These weapons are approaching the level of strategic nuclear arms in terms of their strike capability,” said Putin. “States possessing such weapons strongly increase their offensive potential.”

Putin, Rogozin, Ushakov, and other officials know Obama can’t be trusted. He’s a serial liar. His pledges aren’t worth the rhetoric  explaining them. They’re not worth the paper they’re written on. They’re promises made to be broken.

Independent Russian military experts believe Obama’s proposal “could potentially destroy the existing nuclear parity and ultimately hurt Russia’s national security interests.”

Obama prioritizes it. Russia and China alone challenge America’s dominance. Washington wants both rivals neutralized.

Expect neither to bow to America’s will. They represent humanity’s best chance. United perhaps they’ll thwart America’s imperium. Hopefully they’ll take full advantage and succeed.

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/obamas-nuclear-arms-reduction-hoax/

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

Field trials of genetically-modified (GM) Bt eggplant, also known as Bt talong, have officially ceased in the Philippines following a major ruling by the nation’s Court of Appeals. Representing a massive victory for food sovereignty, the Court found that Bt talong is a monumental threat to both environmental and human health, and has subsequently ordered that all existing plantings of Bt talong in test fields be immediately destroyed and blocked from further propagation.

Like in many other nations across the globe, the biotechnology industry has been craftily trying to sneak its genetic poisons into the Philippines under the guise of improving crop yields, reducing chemical use, and yada yada ad nauseum — all the typical industry propaganda and lies used to convince the more gullible among us that GMOs are some kind of food production miracle. But the Philippines is not buying all the hype. And unlike the U.S., the southeast Asian country is taking a bold stand against a technology that has never been proven safe or beneficial in any way.

According to the non-profit advocacy group Greenpeace, which has been working on behalf of humanity to stem the tide of GMO onslaught all around the world, the Court recently issued a “Write of Kalikasan,” which basically means that all field trials of Bt eggplant in the Philippines must stop. The Court also ordered that the biotechnology aggressors “permanently cease and desist” from conducting further trials, as well as “protect, preserve, rehabilitate and restore” all the land they have destroyed in the process.

“The field trials of Bt talong involve the willful and deliberate alteration of the genetic traits of a living element of the ecosystem and the relationship of living organisms that depend on each other for their survival,” states the ruling. “Consequently, the field trials … could not be declared by this Court as safe [for] human health and our ecology, [since they are] an alteration of an otherwise natural state of affairs in our ecology.”

Everything about this common-sense decision by the Filipino justice system makes perfect sense — GMOs definitively spread their poisonous traits throughout the entire ecosystem, contaminating other crops along the way, and thus have no place in agriculture, period. But sadly, such common sense no longer exists in the U.S., where corporate greed and fundamental corruption have essentially placed profits before people in every aspect of life.

“We commend the Court of Appeals for living up to its constitutionally-mandated role as protector of constitutional rights,” said Greenpeace Southeast Asia Sustainable Agriculture Campaigner Daniel Ocampo about the Philippines rejecting GMOs. “This landmark decision reflects that there are indeed flaws and lapses in the current regulatory process for Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) such as Bt eggplant which exposes our environment and health to unknown long-term consequences and does not establish their safety in any way.”

Meanwhile, millions of acres of uncontested GMO crops in the U.S. continue to ravage both human and environmental health while the hordes of mindless puppets in the U.S. Congress ignore the issue or even pretend that GMOs are not an issue. But this new American pastime of greed and denial about reality will not last forever, as nature will eventually catch up and extinguish this agricultural scourge with “superweeds,” “superbugs,” and disease — that is if the American people do not take action first to forcibly cleanse their nation of GMOs. The question is, what will it take for the people to wake up and take action?

Sources for this article include:

http://www.greenpeace.org

http://www.businessmirror.com.ph

http://www.greenpeace.org

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

In a move likely to renew debate over administration “end runs” around Congress, President Obama is preparing regulations to limit carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants, the New York Times reported Thursday. The administration has already taken steps to limit “greenhouse gas” emissions from newly built power plants, the paper noted, but imposing those limits on plants already built and operating will be far more expensive.

Legislation to limit the emissions has been stalled in Congress, but Heather Zichal, White House coordinator for energy and climate change, said the renewable power and energy efficiency requirements under consideration by the administration will not require legislative approval or congressional funding. The regulations would be promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency, an administrative body created by executive order of President Nixon in 1970 and ratified by Congress later that year.

“The E.P.A. has been working very hard on rules that focus specifically on greenhouse gases from the coal sector,” Zichal told the Times. “They’re doing a lot of important work in that space.”

Apart from the constitutional issue regarding the separation of legislative and executive powers, Republicans have criticized Obama’s policy on climate change and the existing EPA regulations as obstacles to economic recovery. Even some Democrats who are “hawkish about climate action,” the Times noted, fear that new standards on power plants might come at the cost of higher energy prices and fewer jobs, particularly in the industrial Midwest, a region dependent on relatively inexpensive energy from coal. The new regulations are also likely to spark protests from coal-producing states such as Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

In a unanimous 2007 Supreme Court decision, the justices ruled in Environmental Defense v. Duke Energy Corp that the EPA has the power to impose emission standards under the broad authority granted the agency by Congress in the Clean Air Act. But when the executive branch moves unilaterally to impose restrictions that Congress has refused to pass, howls of protest are often heard on Capitol Hill, as happened when the EPA came out with “cap and trade” regulations in 2011.

Early the following year, a group of 16 prominent scientists and engineers issued a statement challenging the widespread notion that scientists are virtually unanimous in sounding the alarm over climate change and calling for drastic legislation to combat it. The signers, including World Federation of Science president Antonio Zichichi, said one reason for their lack of alarm is the absence of any evidence of global warming for the previous 10 years:

The lack of warming for more than a decade, indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections, suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.

Obama did, in fact, cite weather extremes in a speech in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, calling for “bold action” to slow the alleged warming of the planet.

“The grim alternative affects all nations: more severe storms, more famine and floods, new waves of refugees, coastlines that vanish, oceans that rise,” the president declared. “This is the global threat of our time.”

When last October’s “Superstorm” Sandy hit the East Coast, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City were among those who attributed the harsh winds and drenching rains to man-made climate change.

“Anyone who says there’s not a dramatic change in weather patterns, I think is denying reality,” Cuomo said at the time. “What is clear is that the storms that we’ve experienced in the last year or so, around this country and around the world, are much more severe than before.”

“Several weeks ago, Superstorm Sandy gave us a preview of what to expect if climate change is not addressed,” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said in a video message to participants in last fall’s United Nations conference on global warming.

But Martin Hoerling, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, offered a different explanation of Sandy’s wrath: 

Great events can have little causes. In this case, the immediate cause is most likely little more that the coincidental alignment of a tropical storm with an extratropical storm. Both frequent the west Atlantic in October…. So, while it will rain like “black cats and Frankenweenies” over the mid-Atlantic, this is not some spell conjured upon us by great external forces…. unless you believe in the monster flicks of Universal Studios fame!

Citing what was then a new study in the journal Nature, science and environmental writer Andrew Revkin wrote in 2002:

Four times since the last ice age, at intervals roughly 3,000 years apart, the Northeast has been struck by cycles of storms far more powerful than any in recent times, according to a new study. The region appears to have entered a fifth era in which such superstorms are more likely, the researchers say.

Emissions from coal-burning power plants could hardly have been the cause of extreme weather patterns going back to the last ice age, but President Obama had promised long before Sandy’s arrival that he would promote environmental policies that would drive up the cost of energy. Early in his first campaign for the White House, then-Senator Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle:

Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket…. Coal-powered plants, you know, natural gas, you name it, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.

The economy will benefit “over the long term” through “more efficient energy usage and changing light bulbs and more efficient appliances, but also technology improving how we can produce clean energy,” Obama said in that January 2008 interview. Back then, he also said Congress and the American people would have to be sold on that idea.

“The problem is, can you get the American people to say this is really important and force their representatives to do the right thing?” he said. Congress has yet to do the “right thing” by passing the administration’s proposals, but the president no longer sees that as a barrier to his ambitious energy plans.

“The president couldn’t get it done through legislation, so now he’s doing it through regulation, using our tax dollars to make it happen,” pointed out Oklahoma Republican Senator James Inhofe.

Obama administration efforts on behalf of the climate change agenda include working for a United Nations treaty requiring emission controls in the industrialized nations of the world. That effort, Inhofe charged, is not really about the environment. 

“It’s about one thing: spreading the wealth around,” he declared, noting the point made in the following lead paragraph of an Associated Press report on the UN conference on climate change in Doha, Qatar, last November:

As nearly 200 countries meet in oil-and-gas-rich Qatar for annual talks starting Monday on slowing global warming, one of the main challenges will be raising climate aid for poor countries at a time when budgets are strained by financial turmoil.

President Obama, having presided over annual federal deficits of a trillion dollars and more, is familiar with the problem of strained budgets. But his solution to our own “financial turmoil” is energy prices that will “skyrocket.”

Photo of coal-fired Big Bend Power Station near Apollo Beach, Florida

This article originally appeared on: The New American

“#spareathoughtforthekids a genealogy lecture, the Book of Kells, Glendalough, a pub lunch and Bono! What was your worst childhood holiday?”

— Tweet by respectable Irish news broadcaster Bryan Dobson Tuesday, retweeted nearly 300 times

How the mighty have fallen. Eight years ago, the last time the UK hosted the G8, Bono had a podium position in Scotland beside Tony Blair and Bob Geldof, and his embrace of the summit document on global poverty was greeted, according to the New York Times, “with a solemnity worthy of a Security Council resolution”. Indeed that document itself, with a ceremonially signing to conceal its basic emptiness, was Bono’s idea.

This time around, with the G8 event actually taking place on the island of Ireland, just north of the border in Fermanagh, Bono had to make due with meeting Michelle, Sasha and Melia Obama for lunch in a suburban Dublin pub. On a human level this must have been superior to rubbing shoulders with the various war-mongers and austerity-pushers posing villainously by an Irish lakeside. But politically it’s a clear demotion. And worse yet, Bono was depicted, even by people as mainstream as Bryan Dobson, as part of the worthy but boring day of activities that the Obama girls were forced to endure in Ireland.

Another Irish tweeter, Sheamus Sweeney, said of Michelle and the girls’ task with the U2 singer: “It’s a bit like the way someone always had to keep my alcoholic uncle occupied when there was a family function on.” Bono is a potential embarrassment not, of course, because of any drinking problem, but because he has come to symbolise, perhaps a little unfairly, the phenomenon of tax avoidance, one of the topics supposedly up for discussion at the Lough Erne confab. A member of the Irish parliament even called Bono “Mr Tax Exile”; in fact, he and the other members of U2 are apparently still tax resident in Ireland – their controversial tax issues are about corporate offshoring rather than any dubious residency.

Meanwhile, that same night in New York City my own teenage daughter Cara was seeing (at a steep discount) Bono’s show Spider-Man: Into the Dark, and discovering that in its third year on the stage, Spidey can still be left dangling helplessly from the theatre’s ceiling, the show can stop for a half-hour to repair the effects, and the climax can still be ruined by complete web-slinging failure (all without any offer of a refund).

Any sympathy I might have had with Bono over his apparent G8 sidelining, his Broadway catastrophe and the scurrilous things being said about him in Dublin was, however, tempered by the simulacrum of “protest” he cynically whipped up around the G8.

The public activities of his ONE campaign over the last couple of weeks, called (painfully) “agit8”, consisted of a project to assemble a whole lot of mostly good political songs, and get them covered by fairly hip young artists, all in the name of protesting… basically nothing at all. It certainly won’t have discommoded Mrs Obama on their lunchd8. On the contrary, this soothing “protest” soundtrack was designed to ingrati8. But as for what it represents for the tradition of artists who genuinely have something to say about real, vital issues of life and death, the words that come to mind are castr8, denigr8, desecr8 and misappropri8.

ONE’s trivialising, domesticating classification of the music is itself interesting: who knew, for example, that John Lennon’s bitter “Working Class Hero” was an “anti-poverty song”?

Oh, ONE pretended it was busily “protesting”. And the organisation, as is Bono’s wont, declared victory when the G8 summit was over. ONE appears to regard me as a member because I once sent a journalistic query (unanswered) to its website, so I got the l8st celebratory email from the campaign’s European director Adrian Lovett: “What an amazing two weeks — 350,406 ONE members called on world leaders to back Africa’s food revolution and unleash a transparency revolution, and they acted!” The email comes complete with a photo of a suited Lovett himself (no sunglasses and leather pants for this guy) with British prime minister David Cameron, who happily receives the ONE petition demanding that the British government and G8 do exactly what they were planning to do anyway.

Not so much protest, in other words, as “protesty”: “In Paris, President Hollande personally received ONE’s petition, and European Commission President Barroso even took our record of protest songs all the way from Brussels to the summit!”

All that was missing was a Bono-led chorus of “2-4-6-8, Who do we appreci8?!”

It was a faint echo of 2005, when Bono helped turn what should have been a huge protest against war and injustice at the Gleneagles G8 summit into a welcome party for the global elite, led by Bush and Blair and the then-new World Bank president, Paul Wolfowitz. In that year, development organisations accused Bono and Geldof of “hijacking” the Make Poverty History campaign, and declaring victory when the summit outcome conceded little of substance for developing countries.

As George Monbiot explained in two recent pieces for the Guardian, ONE’S underlying agenda nowadays is the new face of imperialism in Africa. With its elite board of directors and sneaky corpor agenda, ONE, wrote Monbiot, “looks to me like the sort of organisation that John le Carré or Robert Harris might have invented”.

Ironically, Bono has previously told a story of how, in 1985, he worked in an orphanage and helped teach Ethiopian children a few songs about how to save seeds for the next planting season. Now, working through ONE alongside companies such as Monsanto, he helps ensure that someday African farmers may be legally forced to buy new seeds every year to grow their crops.

Stating such things about Bono, taking him seriously rather than simply mocking him, has proven to be somewhat difficult in Ireland’s media. My new book on the subject, The Frontman: Bono (In the Name of Power) has had a couple of savage reviews and has not, to my knowledge, been mentioned on RTE, the national broadcaster for TV and radio. In the tabloids my argument has been called “loony” and my book “shameful”. The Irish Times declared: “Unless you really hate the U2 frontman you probably won’t want to spend precious hours on a book that is so negative it almost makes you want to defend him.” However, that review appears to have led to a spike in sales, so perhaps Irish people do hate (or even h8) him.

As for me, the truth is out: I don’t hate Bono. In fact we have lots in common. We’re roughly the same age and height – I am a tad younger and taller, but don’t look it – and we even broke our collarbones in the same week in 1987. As I learned more about him, I found myself looking at him and saying, ‘There but for the grace of God…’

If I’d had anything like his talent and luck I might have ended up so close to the powerful that I started to see the world from their perspective; from where I’m sitting now I can’t imagine a less enviable position.

In the course of researching and writing The Frontman, I confirmed that much of the widespread criticism of Bono, as seen in a thousand internet threads, is ill-informed. I don’t believe, for example and as noted above, that he pays no tax in Ireland; that he shafted other Irish bands to maintain U2’s hegemony; that ONE squanders money on salaries while pretending to be a charity; that he does anti-poverty work just to get publicity for his profitable music; that he is, in short, a fake. I don’t even know or care whether he really merits the label “hypocrite”, such a lame and easy term of abuse anyway. Attacks like these on his character and record are not merely wrong; they distract from his genuine significance.

His significance, however diminished, is as a frontman, witting or not, for those who want to maintain and extend their dominion over the earth, and to make that dominion less and less accountable to the assembled riff-raff. That’s why it’s so important that he is not allowed to take ownership of the protest song in the same way he has previously seized, say, the color red or the idea of making poverty history.

As the great journalist, polemicist and orator Eamonn McCann said at last week’s Dublin launch for my book: “Rock ‘n’ roll is supposed to be the collective joy, the collective effervescence, the collective militancy that people feel when they’re in a vast crowd somewhere…. Bono, Geldof and the rest of them have come close to snuffing it out.”

Harry Browne lectures at Dublin Institute of Technology. email harry.browne@gmail.com, Twitter @harrybrowne

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

If New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (shown) has any thoughts about running for president, he might want to skip the New Hampshire primary. The billionaire mayor, who flirted with the idea of running in 2012, owes Granite Staters an apology, a state Republican leader said after a group representing his Mayors Against Illegal Guns campaign named alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev as a victim of gun violence. 

“It is disgusting that Mayor Bloomberg’s radical out-of-state gun control group came to New Hampshire and honored so many thugs, murderers and terrorists,” said New Hampshire Republican Committee Chairman Jennifer Horn in a statement released Wednesday after Tsarnaev’s name was read at a “No More Names” rally in Concord.

Participants in the rally, including family members of shooting victims, read aloud the names of persons killed by gunfire since the shooting deaths of 20 school children and six adults at the Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Connecticut, last December. The group apologized after the Union Leader reported the inclusion of Tsarnaev’s name. Tsarnaev was killed in a shootout with police after he and his brother Dzhokhar had been identified as suspects in the April 15 bombing s at the Boston Marathon that killed three and wounded dozens. Dzhokhar was wounded and captured by police the next day. 

“Mayor Bloomberg owes every Granite Stater a personal apology for the outrageous conduct of his extremist organization,” Horn said. 

The group later issued a statement saying, “Tsarnaev was absolutely not a victim” and that “his name should not have been read. It was a mistake and it never should have happened and we sincerely apologize.” The Slate.com list the group was using, the Union Leader reported, also included the names of Christopher Dorner, the former Los Angeles police officer accused of several murders in a shooting spree in southern California, and Kevin Bailey, killed in a gun fight with police during a traffic stop in Solon, Ohio.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns claims a membership of more than 900 mayors from around the country. It was organized by Bloomberg, a longtime advocate of strict gun control measures. New York is known to have some of the toughest gun laws in the nation, and Bloomberg and his city’s police department organization have come under fire from both the National Rifle Association and the American Civil Liberties Union for its aggressive “Stop and Frisk” policy of searching for illegal weapons. Bloomberg has committed some of his own personal wealth to the organization’s multi-million-dollar advertising campaign, targeting political figures who oppose gun control measures. The group has run several ads against Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire for her vote against a Senate measure to expand background checks of gun buyers. Ayotte, the state’s junior senator, was the only senator from the Northeast to vote against the bill.

Opponents of expanded background checks have argued that the government is not enforcing gun laws already enacted and that background checks could easily lead to a national gun registration, something currently prohibited by federal law.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

Officials behind baby deaths cover-up are named by NHS watchdog.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

Foreign-backed insurgents fighting the government of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad say they have received new weapons they claim could change the course of the battle.

Å“We’ve received quantities of new types of weapons, including some that we asked for and that we believe will change the course of the battle on the ground,” Free Syrian Army (FSA) spokesman Louay Muqdad said on Friday.

Å“We have begun distributing them on the front lines, they will be in the hands of professional officers,” he added.

Muqdad did not elaborate on the type of weapons or their suppliers.

The spokesperson added that more shipments of other weapons are also on their way to end up in the hands of the militants.

The influx of new arms comes right after British media revealed that Saudi Arabia had sent the first batch of anti-tank missiles to the insurgents in the flashpoint city of Aleppo.

On June 14, US President Barack Obama ordered his administration to provide the militants with more sophisticated weapons, claiming that the Syrian government had used Å“chemical weapons” against the militants and thus crossed Washingtonâ„¢s Å“red line.” Damascus has rejected the allegations as Å“lies.”

Israeli President Shimon Peres and British officials voiced support for Washingtonâ„¢s arming of the Takfiri militants in Syria.

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned other states against providing weapons to the militants in Syria, saying that the arms could end up in Europe one day.

The crisis in Syria began in March 2011. Many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security forces, have been killed in the foreign-sponsored militancy.

Last month, the Syrian president said that militants from as many as 29 different countries were fighting against Syria.

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

MAM/KA

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

A senior cleric has advised Iranian president-elect Hassan Rohani to form a Cabinet of Å“tested” elites and figures loyal to the country’s Islamic establishment.

Addressing worshippers in Tehran, Interim Friday Prayers Leader Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Movahhedi Kermani hailed the voter turnout in the June 14 election, where Rohani secured an outright victory, and praised the nation’s choice as an insightful manager and a revolutionary figure loyal to the leadership of the Islamic Revolution.

The cleric noted that the incoming president yet had to shoulder the burden of naming a cabinet and selecting advisors and deputies.

Å“This is a very difficult task,” he noted, calling on Rohani to pick Å“those who have proved their allegiance to the Leadership and their concern for the [Islamic] Revolution.”

Å“Our brother Mr. Rohani should select such individuals who are compassionate and servants to the nation,” Movahhedi Kermani added.

He stressed that the right choice of ministers is the key to solving the problems, especially the economic hardships, facing the country.

Nearly 50.5 million Iranians, including more than 1.6 million first-time voters, were eligible to participate in the June 14 presidential election. The Interior Ministry put the voter turnout at 72.7 percent.

Rohani won 50.7 percent of the vote to secure an outright victory.

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

MRS/SS

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Turkey has summoned German ambassador over Chancellor Angela Merkel’s criticism of Ankara’s heavy-handed response to anti-government protests and her reluctance to see the country join the European Union.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

You need not suspect the motives of those responsible for NSA surveillance to detest what they are doing. In fact, we may have more to fear from spies acting out of patriotic zeal than those acting out of power lust or economic interest: Zealots are more likely to eschew restraints that might compromise their righteous cause.

For the sake of argument, we may assume that from President Obama on down, government officials sincerely believe that gathering Americans’ telephone and Internet data is vital to the people’s security. Does that make government spying okay?

No, it doesn’t.

“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence – it is force. Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.” Although often attributed to George Washington, that famous quotation was probably was not uttered by him. Nevertheless, its value lies in what it says, not in who said it.

At best, government represents a risk to the people it rules. Even under a tightly written constitution and popular vigilance – both of which are easier to imagine than to achieve – government officials will always have the incentive and opportunity to push the limits and loosen the constraints.

But if their purpose is to protect us, why worry?

It doesn’t take much imagination to answer to this question. A purported cure can be worse than the disease. Who would accept the placement of a surveillance camera in every home as a way of preventing crime? By the same token, gathering data on everyone without probable cause in order to locate possible terrorists should be abhorrent to people who prize their freedom and privacy.

Since we’re assuming pure motives, we’ll ignore the specter of deliberate abuse. In our hypothetical case, no one would use the information in a way not intended to promote the general welfare. Pure motives, however, do not rule out error. So the danger remains that innocent people could have their lives seriously disrupted – or worse – by a zealous agent of government who sees an ominous pattern in someone’s data where none in fact exists. Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb points out that human beings are more likely to see order in randomness than vice versa. As a result, a blameless individual could have his life turned upside down by a bureaucrat who goes the extra mile to ensure that no terrorist act occurs on his watch. Think of the turmoil created for those falsely accused of the bombing at the Atlanta Olympic games and of sending anthrax letters after the 9/11 attacks.

The odds of such an error for any particular individual may be slight, but they are big enough if you put yourself into the picture.

However, that is not the only reason to reject even a well-intentioned surveillance state.

Julian Sanchez, who specializes in technology and civil liberties, points out that a person who has nothing to hide from government officials – if such a person actually exists – would still not have a good reason to tolerate NSA surveillance, because the general awareness that government routinely spies on us has an insidious effect on society:

Even when it isn’t abused … the very presence of that spy machine affects us and poisons us…. It’s slow and subtle, but surveillance societies inexorably train us for helplessness, anxiety and compliance. Maybe they’ll never look at your call logs, read your emails or listen in on your intimate conversations. You’ll just live with the knowledge that they always could – and if you ever had anything worth hiding, there would be nowhere left to hide it.

Is that the kind of society we want, one in which we assume a government official is looking over our shoulders?

Because government is force – “a dangerous servant and a fearful master” – it must be watched closely, even – especially – when it does something you like. But eternal vigilance is hard to achieve. People outside the system are busy with their lives, and politicians generally can’t be expected to play watchdog to other politicians. Therefore, at the least, we need institutional constraints and transparency: No secret warrants. No secret courts. No secret expansive interpretations of laws and constitutional prohibitions.

Sheldon Richman is vice president and editor at The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Va.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

[unable to retrieve full-text content]A senior official says flash floods and landslides triggered by heavy monsoon downpours have killed at least 550 people in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Half of indigenous children in Canada are living in poverty, which is three times more than the national average, a recent study shows.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

“The county planners want to plan our lives and control our property, but they can’t even plan a meeting,” an angry property owner commented at the Kootenai County Planning Commission meeting at the Kootenai County Court House in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Monday evening, June 17. The expressions of anger and exasperation grew as the overflow crowd of nearly 300 tried to pack into a 150-capacity room to comment on the proposed new Unified Land Use Code, a comprehensive rewrite (and vast expansion of) the county’s existing land use regulations, which were already the source of much discontent.

The meeting was the first of a planned four-meeting series that was scheduled to run each evening from June 17-20, with each night covering several chapters of the new 500-page ULUC Draft. Sparks began flying (metaphorically) from the start. The Coeur d’Alene Fire Department came to the rescue a little over an hour into the volatile meeting, informing the Commission that the gathering was over capacity and in violation of the fire code. This spared county officials from more blistering comments from area residents. It also gave Kootenai County residents a reprieve, as Wes Hanson, the planning commission chairman, announced that the meeting would be adjourned and continued in a new series of meetings scheduled at a larger venue.

Much of the concern and outrage expressed at the commission meeting by property owners stems from the fact that the new “comprehensive plan,” the ULUC, is more than double the page count of the existing code, and, as might be expected from that expansion, contains many more regulations, prohibitions, restrictions, mitigations, impact fees, permit requirements, and much more. Another common complaint, both from property owners and professionals who regularly deal with these matters, such as realtors, appraisers, consultants, and attorneys, is that the ULUC is vague and confusing, with many terms undefined or ill-defined, opening the door for county administrators, inspectors, and regulators to cite and fine property owners for many normal activities and uses now permitted under the current code. Still another point of contention is that many (if not most) property owners in the rural areas most affected by the new plan did not even know about the revision and the extent of the changes and the impact it would have until they were presented with a near fait accompli very recently.

Planning commission chairman Wes Hanson opened the Monday meeting by explaining the rules for taking comments from property owners that had signed up to speak, each for three minutes. Grumbles and frustrated comments from the crowd had already begun. Hanson then turned the meeting over to Bret Keast, president and owner of Kendig Keast Collaborative, the Colorado-based company that wrote the new code. Keast began, using a slide presentation, to explain chapters 1-3 of the new ULUC. He didn’t get very far before the grumbles turned into shouts: “You’re wasting our time”; “He’s taking up all our time”; “We didn’t come here for this”; “When does the public get to comment?”

“Out of order” – but on target

One man was making a similar comment when Hanson said, “You’re out of order.”

“I know I’m out of order,” the man retorted, “and I’m exiting, but that’s the whole point. This is typical. You want to wear everybody down with all the time taken up [by Keast] and no seating and no time for us to comment.” 

From the resounding applause and cheers he received, it was clear that the departing dissident was expressing the feelings of the vast majority of those in attendance. Someone from the crowd shouted: “Why didn’t you schedule a larger room, there’re people clear down the halls and outside?” Another person shouted: “This meeting is in violation of the fire code; does the Fire Department know about this?” Someone apparently took a cue from this comment to report the over-capacity crowd to the Fire Department. After taking comments from six property owners, including two representatives of Avista Power Company, and a five-minute recess, the meeting resumed with an announcement by chairman Hanson: Per orders of the Fire Department, all those not occupying chairs would have to leave the room. This created an instant commotion with a welter of angry comments. 

One woman who was seated stood up and shouted: “If you make the people who are standing leave, we’re ALL walking!”  Several people responded instantly with “Yeah!” and  “Just scrap the plan!”

Scrap the plan? Many say yes

Someone shouted out, “Get a bigger room and do this right!” It was clear that folks were not going to go along with any proceeding that would evict half of the property owners who had come to comment and get answers to their questions. Faced with this showdown, Hanson huddled with the rest of the commissioners then returned to the microphone to announce that the series of meetings would be rescheduled to a larger venue at a later date. “Are we going to be legally notified, not railroaded?” someone asked from the audience. “Will we get the legally-required 30-day notice?” someone else asked. Several people called out that they should plan for a thousand or more because the crowd would be even bigger next time. Some called out that they should have scheduled it at the high school auditorium or the county fair grounds.

Hanson assured the crowd that once the commission found an alternative venue that the public would be notified – by newspaper, Internet, and U.S. Postal Service – at least 15 days in advance, which he said was the legal requirement. The county attorney subsequently corrected him, noting that the legal requirement is 28 days advance notice to the public.

Hanson apologized that the seating capacity was inadequate and told the crowd he had had nothing to do with scheduling the venue. He assured the audience that the testimony already given would be entered into the record and the follow-up meetings would be moved “to a date uncertain,” with the deadline for comments extended to the last meeting.

As the meeting broke up, many members of the audience were obviously elated and relieved at the outcome. “We didn’t get it rammed down our throats; we stopped them – at least temporarily,” one man commented to several others. “They need to throw the whole thing out and start over,” said another, expressing a common sentiment of many who were present. 

Gary Mitchell, with the North West Property Owners Alliance (NWPOA) told The New American that the evening’s forced postponement of the ULUC was a victory of sorts, but that his organization is working to make sure an even larger assembly of informed property owners will come out to the next series of ULUC meetings. Mitchell agrees with many others that the ULUC is so fatally flawed that it should be tossed out and a new plan drawn up that would protect property rights and allow rural property owners to genuinely participate in the process. At least one of the members of the county planning commission, John Malloy, told The New American that he too favors scrapping the ULUC and starting over.

The County Commissioners, however, still may not have gotten the message, to judge by their statements the following day. As reported by the Coeur d’Alene Press on June 19, the commissioners did not seem sympathetic to the concerns of the crowd expressed the night before. “We really don’t need more time for reviewing documents,” County Commissioner Dan Green was quoted as saying. 

Commissioner Jai Nelson seems to be convinced that the problem is not with the ULUC itself but with the assumed ignorance of the rural property owners. “I am sure we can make headway there, but we’ll never make it simple enough for everyone,” Nelson said. “I think the real problem is public education.”

“From this process it’s obvious we aren’t going to have a Kumbaya moment,” Commissioner Todd Tondee said. “I don’t think we will be able to educate all of them. Some of them don’t want to be educated.”

Bob Bingham, founder of the North West Property Owners Alliance, finds these kinds of statements from public officials offensive. His group has been holding educational meetings all across the county, he says, and has found that property owners from all walks of life want to know about the ULUC. And they’re not all a bunch of ignorant bumpkins, contrary to what the County Commissioners and out-of-state consultants may think.

Bingham established his credibility and the NWPOA’s growing influence by taking on the County Commission’s new impact fees. Bingham did his research and the County Commission was forced to back down. Rather than face costly lawsuits they were likely to lose, the county decided to return hundreds of thousands of dollars in impact fees improperly assessed on local property owners.

The NWPOA website provides analysis of the Comprehensive Plan and the ULUC, as well as links to official documents and maps. The NWPOA has issued a four-page “Position Paper on the Kootenai County Proposed ULUC” that lists 17 points concerning the ULUC Draft and the process that produced it.

The NWPOA “Position Paper” notes, for instance, that: “Rural property owners were not individually notified by USPS direct mail of the Comprehensive Plan revision process, nor the ULUC formation process until the draft was complete.” The paper also states: 

One of the most offensive observations in the creation of the ULUC draft was the BOCC’s purposeful appointment of dogmatic environmental individuals to lead and formulate the content of the proposed ULUC…. The BOCC authorized the continued decision making involvement of a self described environmentalist activist on the ULUC Technical Committee for the 9 months he was actually a California resident, shaping his vision for Kootenai County at the expense of local property owners. 

The Position Paper states further: 

The current ULUC draft is basically double the size of our current ordinances. Neither has it escaped our attention that at the same time the Kendig Keast consultant is formulating our ULUC, it has been formulating a similar code for a city (McAllen, TX). Yet the McAllen ULUC draft is just 300 pages, or apx. 40% smaller than our rural ULUC draft. It is the judgment of nearly everyone that a rural code would and should naturally be much smaller than a city code simply from the fact that rural property owners have less close-quarter concerns that may need to be addressed…. Rural property owners do not feel the need for such a large and complicated code. 

The NWPOA and other ULUC critics have criticized the disproportionate influence that the Kootenai Environmental Alliance (KEA) and other “Green” activist groups have had in development of the ULUC. The planning commission chairman, Wes Hanson, is a board member of the KEA and other KEA activists served in various capacities on the commission and its technical panels. 

Many locals resent the KEA as an “astro-turf” outfit funded by the Seattle-based Bullitt Foundation and other out-of-state enviro-extremists. Local property owners also have been very critical of Kezziah Watkins, the firm that conducted the survey for the Comprehensive Plan, and Kendig Keast Collaborative, which produced the ULUC Draft. Both firms are heavily involved with the American Planning Association (APA), the principal professional organization promoting “central planning” in the United States. The APA planners have no problem collaborating with their counterparts in Communist China and other socialist countries where protections for property rights are non-existent and where government master planners control all facets of life. The APA also is a major participant in the UN’s notorious HABITAT World Urban Forum, the most recent of which occurred in Naples, Italy, last September. 

The first UN Habitat conference, held in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1976 clearly demonstrated the Marxist orientation of the United Nations, particularly as it relates to land use. The conference caused an uproar among freedom-oriented advocates with its “Action Plan,” which was a frontal Marxist attack on the individual right to own property that appeared to come right out of the Communist Manifesto. The UN Habitat “Action Plan” declared: 

Land … cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals…. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice…. Public control of land use is therefore indispensable.

UN Habitat now moderates its rhetoric somewhat, paying lip service to “market forces”; however, its references to the “market” do not mean “free market” or free enterprise as generally understood by most Americans, but to a market system as defined, for instance, by the Peoples Republic of China in which Communist Party officials and their families are made into instant billionaires as the executive front men for huge state corporations. These Big Government and Big Corporation cronies have no qualms about running roughshod over millions of “little people” who are in the way of their master plans. As reported recently in the U.K. Telegraph, the New York Times, and Bloomberg Businessweek, the Communist Party that runs China plans to remove some 250 million to 650 million Chinese from rural areas over the next 12 years and relocate them (in most cases, forcibly) into densely populated urban centers. This will be the largest forced migration in history. 

A similar relocation program is already underway in Brazil, where the Marxist government of President Dilma Rousseff has dispatched federal troops to relocate rural populations at gunpoint. The APA has been very active over the past several years in Brazil, together with the UN Habitat and the U.S. Department of State (DOS) and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) promoting rural and urban land use planning. APA CEO W. Paul Farmer was a major participant in an urban planning seminar in Rio de Janeiro in 2010, along with DOS and HUD officials. The APA was one of the privileged “Major Groups” accorded special status at the UN’s Rio+20 Earth Summit II held in Rio de Janeiro in 2012, to commemorate and build on the 1992 UN Earth Summit, which birthed Agenda 21 (the UN’s environmental agenda for the 21st Century). To what degree has the APA been involved in developing and/or supporting these totalitarian relocations of rural populations? That would seem to be a fair question, inasmuch as the organization has been very much involved in both countries. We can find nothing on the APA website that condemns or criticizes these tyrannical polices or statements in which the APA disassociates itself from these government programs.

The American Planning Association (which is part of the UN-related Global Planners Network and the World Planners Congress) gives every evidence of supporting the worldwide move toward global central planning, ignoring the fact that individuals have a God-given right to plan their own lives and that the history of government central planning has shown it to be invariably disastrous and always the enemy of prosperity and liberty.

Environmental activists regularly invoke government “planning” as essential to protect the environment from exploitation by private owners. This is particularly ironic since the most massive and destructive environmental impacts have been those carried out by governments, and the socialist and communist governments that have the most onerous central planning have been guilty of the most egregious ecological devastation. China and Russia are two of the prime exhibits. Private property owners have a vested interest in maintaining the value of their property, and by virtue of the limited size of their property – as opposed to a socialist government that owns and/or controls virtually all the real property – can do relatively little damage. The APA does not seem to appreciate this fact.

“The American Planning Association and Its ‘Faulty’ Handbook,” an article by Tom DeWeese, president of the American Policy Center, provides considerable background on the APA’s defective view of property rights and its un-American obsession with government planning of all facets of citizens’ lives. The fact that the consulting firms that produced the Kootenai County Comprehensive Plan and the ULUC are heavily intertwined with the APA and have won numerous APA awards for designing master plans for other cities and counties speaks volumes. It goes a long way toward explaining why the plan they came up with for Kootenai County is so convoluted, intrusive, and oppressive.

It remains to be seen whether groups such as the NWPOA, Kootenai County Citizens for Property Rights, and others will educate and activate a sufficient number of fellow property owners in time to force the County Commissioners to scrap the defective ULUC and start afresh to produce an acceptable land use code.

Related articles:

Your Hometown & the United Nations’ Agenda 21

EPA’s Plans for Implementing UN’s Agenda 21

Federal Judge Rules for Property Rights, Smacks Down Abusive Feds

Judge Blasts Federal Conspiracy; Ranch Family Vindicated – Again!

Sustainable Freedom: Surging Opposition to Agenda 21, “Sustainable Development”

Agenda 21: Conspiracy Theory or Threat?

Bureaucrats “Giddy” With “Newly Minted Power”

This article originally appeared on: The New American

What a difference a month can make. Last month, a majority of Americans said they liked the job President Barack Obama was doing leading this country. Today, that’s no longer true, according to the latest CNN/ORC International poll.

In May, according to the pollsters, 53 percent of Americans said they approved of Obama’s performance, and 45 percent disagreed. Now, 54 percent say our Teleprompter in Chief is doing a poor job, while 45 still support him.

CNN reported:

The overall decline in his approval rating was partially fueled by a plunge in support from younger Americans, a huge base of Obama’s support.

Last month, nearly two-thirds of those in the 18-29 age group gave the president a thumbs up. His approval rating among that bracket fell 17 points in Monday’s poll and now stands at 48%.

And it isn’t just Obama’s personal popularity that has suffered. In every category that was measured, Americans have become more negative about Obama’s leadership:

– The number who thinks he’s doing a good job on the economy fell by 2 points, from 44 percent who supported him in April to just 42 percent today.

– Obama’s handling of foreign affairs has also taken a hit, with his support here dropping from 49 percent in April to 44 percent today.

– Approval of his leadership on immigration is down even more, falling from 44 percent in April to just 40 percent, according to the CNN pollsters.

– Americans have an even lower opinion of Obama’s leadership on our deficits. His approval fell from 38 percent in April to 34 percent today.

– The scandal over the government’s surveillance of Americans’ phone calls and emails has also hurt the president. Just 35 percent say Obama is doing a good job here, while 61 percent disagree.

And it isn’t just Obama’s leadership on important national issues that has taken a hit. Our trust in the man personally has also fallen, according to the poll. Last month, 58 percent of respondents said that Obama was honest and trustworthy. Now, that number has dropped to 49 percent. (Among my friends, the number is closer to zero.)

And here’s what may be the best news of all: Nearly two-thirds of the people who participated in the poll responded affirmatively to the following question: “Do you think the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens, or not?”

Yes, 62 percent of the people surveyed say that the federal government poses “an immediate threat” to our rights and freedoms. Isn’t that wonderful?

Given all of this, you won’t be surprised to learn that a huge majority of Americans now believe that the country is heading in the wrong direction. In the most recent poll by Real Clear Politics, only 31.3 percent of Americans feel the country is on the right track. While almost twice that number, 59.4 percent, says the country is on the wrong track.

Clearly, despite all of the efforts of the mainstream media to defend and excuse the present Administration, the wave of recent scandals is taking its toll – as well it should. When the Justice Department targets respected journalists as potential criminals, the Internal Revenue Service harasses patriotic organizations and the National Security Agency collects billions of phone records and millions of emails from virtually every citizen of the country, no wonder so many fear and mistrust our leaders.

And we get new evidence almost every day to support our position. One of the latest examples concerns the government program to give away free cellphones.

Have you heard about the scandal over the “Obama phones”? It’s a mind-blowing example of how the welfare state has run amok.

It started as one of those ideas that liberals just love: Give poor people access to telephones, to help them look for work and call for assistance in case they face an actual emergency. And thus the Lifeline program was born.

But guess what? Turns out that giving folks something for nothing leads to all sorts of abuse and corruption. And thanks to some conservative activists armed with a video camera, we can see for ourselves just how rotten the program has become. (To see video, click here.)

Investigators for a group called Project Veritas took their hidden cameras along when they applied for some of the free phones. They told the people processing the applications that as soon as they got them, they intended to sell the phones and use the money to buy drugs.

“No problem” was the typical response. One representative even suggested the investigator visit a pawn shop, to find out how much cash he would receive. “Yeah, I don’t care what you do with it,” the clerk can be heard to mutter.

In another encounter caught on tape, one of  Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe’s investigators says she has to sell “a lot of phones” to pay for her Louis Vuitton handbag. The woman dispensing the free cellphones makes it clear that her job is just to give away the phones – not to question what the recipient will do with it.

Oh, one rep did point out that selling the free phones was illegal – but then suggested “pleading the Fifth” if caught. The Project Veritas video illustrates this last point with another knee-slapper – a clip from IRS official Lois Lerner pleading the 5th Amendment in her appearance before a Congressional committee last month.

We have Project Veritas and its founder to thank for this maddening report of how taxpayer funds are being so badly misused. You may remember the group from the exposure it did back in 2009 of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), one of Obama’s favorite “community activist” organizations. ACORN employees were caught on camera promoting child prostitution, human trafficking and tax evasion. (See video here.)

As a result of the scandal, the House and Senate voted to stop all federal subsidies to the group. The U.S. Census, which had provided many of the grants that funded the organization, severed its ties with the organization. Ultimately, ACORN was forced to disband.

We enjoyed a wonderful victory then. Now, we’ll discover what lawmakers will do when presented with undeniable evidence of fraud and deceit in the $2.2 billion Lifeline program.

By the way, if you’re one of the suckers who actually pays for your telephone service, take a closer look at the next bill you receive. You’ll see a “Universal Service Charge” somewhere on it. That’s the fee you pay to help fund this $2.2 billion giveaway.

I’ll grant you, having a majority of Americans say they mistrust and fear big government isn’t the same thing as getting them to vote for candidates who will actually do something about it. Nor is it the same as finding candidates who will keep the promises they made back home once they get to Washington.

But Obama’s plunging popularity means a lot of our friends and neighbors share our concerns. Our job now is to get more of them to agree with us on the solutions.

We’ll find out next November how good a job we’ve done there.

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.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

Let’s be blunt: Anyone who endorses anything remotely resembling the “comprehensive immigration reform” currently bandied about in Congress is either a fool or a liar.

Amnesty – and make no mistakes about it, “comprehensive immigration reform,” “a pathway to citizenship,” and whatever other euphemisms its apologists invoke do nothing to change the fact that it is amnesty that they favor – is a fool’s errand of epic proportions. This becomes obvious once we consider it in light of an analogy from everyday life.

You’re a married woman. Chief among the obligations inherent in marriage is that of fidelity. Now, your spouse has chronically failed to fulfill this most basic of duties. Finally, you’ve had enough. Upon threatening your philandering spouse with divorce, he acknowledges that your marriage is “broken” before swearing to not only to change, but to change radically. Not only will he stop cheating, he promises to transform himself into the epitome of the subservient, loyal, and loving husband.

While you would doubtless want to believe this, you could not do so. 

No one could.

Unfortunately, none of the good sense on display here is present in this debate over amnesty – even though the reasoning for the latter is identical to the reasoning of the unfaithful husband or wife. 

It is among the most basic obligations of a government to secure its country’s borders. As fidelity is essential to preserving the integrity of marriage, so too is border security essential to preserving the integrity of a nation. Indeed, a government that fails to secure its country’s borders is unfaithful to its citizens.

Now, according to the Senate Gang of Eight’s plan, the government will be expected not only to secure the border, but to see to it that a whole lot of other conditions are satisfied by those who are on “the pathway to citizenship.”

There are a few things to note here. 

First, if the government either can’t or won’t fulfill its simplest and most basic of obligations in securing the country’s borders now, there is zero reason to accept its assurances that it will fulfill this duty as well as a bunch of new duties later. As my old martial arts instructor used to say, you’ve got to learn how to walk before you can learn how to run.

With respect to this issue, our government hasn’t yet learned how to walk, or even crawl. But the Gang of Eight and their accomplices in the media would have us believe that with the stroke of a pen, the federal government will instantaneously become a marathon runner. 

Second, border security is as big a non-negotiable in governing as fidelity is a non-negotiable in marriage. The citizens of the United States should no more have to negotiate with their government to secure its borders than spouses should have to negotiate with one another to refrain from engaging in adultery. Spouses owe it to each other to be faithful. Similarly, the government owes it to its citizens to secure their borders.

However, when Marco Rubio or Chuck Schumer or any other politician favoring amnesty tells us that in order to secure the border we must first place millions of illegal immigrants on a “pathway” to citizenship, what they are essentially saying is that we, the people’s elected representatives, the government, will not discharge our constitutional duty unless you go along with what we want. 

Translation: Border security most definitely is negotiable.

And their accomplices in the media, most tragically the so-called “conservative” media, echo this sentiment. 

Finally, when Chuck Schumer, Marco Rubio, and their allies in Washington inform us that our immigration system is “broken,” they admit, albeit unwittingly, that they, Republicans and Democrats alike, broke it. Only now, after decades of breaking the system apart piece by piece, they expect citizens to trust them to construct a new system that is better than ever – a system that will magically solve all our immigration related issues once and forever. 

To take seriously such a claim is to expose oneself as a fool. To get others to take it seriously is to expose oneself as a liar.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

There are more than a few good reasons why “the comprehensive immigration reform” plan advocated by the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” has caused a whirlwind of controversy. To these we can now add one more.

On Tuesday, June 18, by a 54-39 vote, the Senate decided that it would not construct the 700-mile border fence that Congress authorized back in 2006. 

In so doing, it succeeded in further vindicating the concerns of the millions of Americans who remain convinced that so-called “comprehensive immigration reform” is just amnesty by another name. 

Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a high-profile member of the Gang of Eight, has insisted that there will be no “pathway to citizenship” for the more than 11 million illegal immigrants currently residing in America unless and until America’s southern border is secured. He has even gone so far as to try to persuade the rank and file of his own party that his plan is “conservative.” However, at the same time, Rubio told Hispanic audiences that the legalization of illegal immigrants would not be contingent upon the border’s being secured.

Rubio has since tried to prove that he didn’t contradict himself, but for many, particularly those within his own party, this latest decision on the part of the Senate puts his credibility here into question.

Republican Senator John Thune of South Dakota proposed the border fence amendment. Thune’s amendment stipulated two conditions that 54 of his colleagues, and five members of his own party, including Marco Rubio and John McCain, found intolerable. The first called for the erection of a minimum of 350 miles of double-tier fencing before one illegal immigrant could receive legal status. The second demanded that 700 miles of such fencing would need to be built before any illegal immigrants could receive full citizenship.

Rubio justified his decision to reject Thune’s amendment on the grounds that it lacked specificity. He said that while he supports a border fence, Thune’s proposal doesn’t provide “a specific border plan.” Rubio added that his own immigration bill already contains “significant” border security measures. From this point onward, he says that he plans to work with his fellow Republicans on ways by which to improve upon them.

Arizona Senator John McCain, a Republican who is part of the Gang of Eight and who, while running for reelection, featured in a campaign ad in which he demanded of the government that it “build the dang fence,” voted against Thune’s amendment. McCain stated: “I think we should leave that [the border fence] to the best judgment of the Border Patrol.” He also said: “Fencing is important.” But “surveillance is more important.” 

Doubts concerning Congress’ commitment to border security continue to loom large. 

Last week, appearing on Sean Hannity’s television program, conservative columnist Ann Coulter registered a vote of no confidence on the topic of the Gang of Eight’s assurances of border security. 

Calling the immigration bill “amnesty,” Coulter observed that “step one is legalization. Everything after that, all the triggers to citizenship, are phony triggers. There doesn’t have to be a fence, there doesn’t have to be E-Verify. There just has to be Department of Homeland Security assuring us that they have a plan.”

Before the Senate shot down Thune’s border fence amendment, it rejected another amendment proposed the previous week by Republican Senator Minority Whip John Cornyn from Texas. 

The Cornyn amendment included “triggers” for both legal status and citizenship that are far more demanding than those included in the current immigration bill. In addition to a biometric entry/exit system at all sea, land, and air ports to the United States, the Cornyn amendment also required all American employers to implement E-Verify; comprehensive “situational awareness” of our southern border; and “operational control,” i.e. the annual return of 90 percent of immigrants who attempt to cross illegally any and every section of the southern border. 

Cornyn asserted that his amendment would “guarantee the results that Washington has long promised but never delivered” on. 

Yet it would also guarantee that no one could set out on a pathway to citizenship until all of these border security measures were met. 

This, though, is unacceptable to most Democrats and to those Republicans, such as Rubio, McCain, and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, who claim that their colleagues’ amendment is prohibitively costly, a “poison pill.”

It is true that the current immigration plan includes border security measures, but it does not require that they are completed before legal status and eventual citizenship can be granted to illegal immigrants.

Cornyn wasn’t the only Republican senator to have had a rough week. Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley also proposed an amendment that failed to elicit the endorsements from his colleagues that it needed to pass. 

The Grassley amendment called for the Department of Homeland Security to establish “effective control” of the border for six months before illegal immigrants could be granted legal status.

It was struck down by a vote of 57 to 43. Every member of the Gang of Eight voted against it. Grassley’s amendment was then “tabled”: It will never be discussed again. He remarked that while “people support reform,” they support it only “if we have border security first.”  

Thune, Cornyn, and Grassley maintain that their amendments are necessary in order to convince their Republican colleagues – and the American people – that the government is serious about enforcing the border.

According to the Gang of Eight’s bill, illegal immigrants can achieve legal status in as little as six months as long as Homeland Security designs and submits a plan for border security, including more fencing. One hundred percent of the southern border must be under surveillance, and 90 percent of those trying to get into the country illegally must be turned back. If, though, Homeland Security does not attain these objectives within five years, then a border commission, comprised of the governors of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, will be assembled to do the job. 

Formerly illegal immigrants already on the pathway to citizenship will not be sidetracked.

In 2006, Congress – including, interestingly enough, Illinois Senator Barack Obama – voted in favor of building a double-tiered border fence. One year later, however, Congress changed all of this by granting the federal government significantly more discretion to erect or not whatever barriers it deemed necessary.

To date, very little of the fence has actually been built.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

Heavily-armed militants have shot and killed at least two anti-Taliban militia chiefs in Pakistan’s troubled northwest tribal region, security officials say.

Local security officials said on Friday the pair were killed when about a dozen pro-Taliban militants armed with guns and rockets attacked their homes near Khar, the main town in Bajaur, late Thursday.

Several people, including two policemen, were injured in the deadly attack across the lawless region.

Security sources said the attackers managed to flee the scene before the tribal policemen cordoned off the area.

Medical sources said the death toll is expected to rise as some of the injured are reported to be in critical condition.

Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it targeted the leaders for leading armed resistance against militant groups in the troubled region.

The leaders had played a major role in setting up the Lashkar (militia) to drive pro-Taliban militants out of restive northwestern Swat valley and its adjacent areas in 2009.

Despite the Pakistani government’s operations against militants and terrorists, they are still able to spread their influence in various regions of the country.

Thousands of Pakistanis have lost their lives in bombings and other militant attacks since 2001, when Pakistan entered an alliance with the US in the so-called war on terrorism.

Thousands more have been displaced by the wave of violence and militancy sweeping across the country.

JR/KA

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Greece’s Democratic Left Party has pulled out of the ruling coalition government after a dispute over the sudden closure of the state broadcaster ERT, a senior party member says.

Å“On the basis of developments and the prime minister’s policies, the Democratic Left has decided to withdraw its ministers and general secretaries from government,” Dimitris Hatzisokratis said on Friday.

The Democratic Left has 14 deputies in the 300-seat parliament as well as two ministers and two deputy ministers in the Cabinet.

Administrative Reform Minister Antonis Manitakis, affiliated with the Democratic Left, said, Å“I will table my resignation to the prime minister.”

And an opposition party spokesman said, Å“The government comes out weakened from this situation, caused by Samaras’ extreme and undemocratic decisions on ERT.”

Prime Minister Antonis Samarasâ„¢ coalition partners have called for the immediate restoration of ERT broadcasts.

Greeceâ„¢s top administrative court on June 17 ordered the government to restore public broadcasts.

Samaras decided on June 11 to shut down ERT, saying it was part of the governmentâ„¢s unpopular austerity measures to meet requirements from the troika of international lenders.

However, on June 20, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) dismissed the allegations saying it had not given any specific recommendations on decisions involving state companies.

The Greek parliament passed a bill in April to cut 15,000 state jobs by the end of 2014 as a condition for debt-stricken Greece to receive rescue loans from its European partners and the IMF.

CAH/KA

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta says Rome is keen to expand bilateral relations with Tehran and cooperate with the new Iranian President Hassan Rohani.

Addressing a press conference on Thursday, the premier said his government is well aware of the importance of positive relations with the Islamic Republic and he will make every effort to improve bilateral ties.

Letta added that his country plans to cooperate with the new president of Iran with a strong will and determination.

The Italian premier also hailed the massive public participation in Iranâ„¢s 11th presidential election saying the election turnout confirmed role of Iranian people in forming the country’s ancient civilization.

On Sunday, Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino said Italy trusts that with the new government of Iranian President Hassan Rowhani, it will be possible to work at developing bilateral relations and begin, without delay, a season of renewed comprehension and constructive dialogue between Iran and the international community.

In a message on Monday, Italian President Giorgio Napolitano extended his most sincere congratulations to Rohani and called for stronger relations between Rome and Tehran.

Nearly 50.5 million Iranians, including more than 1.6 million first-time voters, were eligible to participate in the June 14 presidential election. The Interior Ministry put the voter turnout at 72.7 percent.

Rohani won 50.7 percent of the vote to secure an outright victory.

PG/SS

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

“Computer commands can derail a train or cause a gas pipeline to burst,” warned former Bush administration counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke in Cyber War, his book on the topic. Until recently, however, such scenarios seemed more like movie plots than foreign policy concerns, and the threat looked more domestic than foreign.

In early 2009, for instance, a 28-year-old contractor in California was charged in federal court with almost disabling an offshore rig. Prosecutors said the culprit, allegedly angry about not being hired full time, hacked into the computerized network of an oil-rig off the coast, specifically the controls that detect leaks. He caused damage, but fortunately not a leak.

After the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico the Christian Science Monitor reported that at least three US oil companies had been targets in a series of cyber attacks. The culprit was most likely someone or some group in China, and the incidents, largely un-reported for several years, had involved Marathon Oil, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. But the companies apparently didn’t realize how serious their problem was until the FBI alerted them.

At the time, federal officials said that proprietary information — email passwords, messages, and information linked to executives — had been flowing out to computers overseas. Chinese government involvement could not be confirmed, but some data did end up on a computer in China. One oil company security staffer privately coined the term “China virus.”

The companies generally preferred not to comment, or even admit that the attacks had happened. But the Monitor persisted, interviewing insiders, officials and cyber attack experts, and ultimately confirmed the details. Their overall conclusion was that cyber-burglars, using spyware that is almost undetectable, pose a serious and potentially dangerous threat to private industry.

According to Clarke, many nations conduct Internet espionage and sometimes even cyber attacks. China has been one of the most aggressive, but Russia and North Korea are also among the players. Spying on defense agencies and diplomats has been a major focus, but strategically important businesses and even other countries have also been targeted.

In 2011, Google claimed that it had evidence of at least 20 companies infiltrated from China. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, logic bombs were being infiltrated into the US electric power grid. If so, they could operate like time bombs.

On oil rigs, the advent of robot-controlled platforms has made a cyber attack possible with a PC anywhere in the world. Control of a rig could be accomplished by hacking into the “integrated operations” that link onshore computer networks to offshore ones. Few experts will speculate that this may already have happened. But there is confirmation of computer viruses causing personnel injuries and production losses on North Sea platforms.

One problem is that even though newer rigs have cutting-edge robotics technology, the software that controls their basic functions can be old school. Most rely on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software, which was created in an era when “open source” was more important than security,

“It’s underappreciated how vulnerable some of these systems are,” said Jeff Vail, a former counterterrorism and intelligence analyst with the US Interior Department who talked with Greg Grant, author of the Foreign Policy article. “It is possible, if you really understood them, to cause catastrophic damage by causing safety systems to fail.”

The name of the article, by the way, was “The New Threat to Oil Supplies — Hackers.” It sounds a lot like “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the US.”

To be fair, the US government’s failure to address private-sector vulnerability to cyber attacks goes back decades. Until recently, however, the Obama administration hesitated to challenge the status quo. Given the vulnerability of crucial infrastructure and much of the private sector, surprisingly little was being done to prepare for what sounds inevitable.

The US Cyber Command attempts to protect federal infrastructure, while various branches of the military have developed their own offensive capabilities. But not even the Department of Homeland Security is officially responsible for protecting the private sector. According to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, legal and privacy issues get in the way of having the government monitor the Internet or business operations for evidence of potential cyber attacks. As you might expect, business interests are wary of the regulations that might accompany government help.

Though cyber attacks have clearly happened, many leave no obvious trace. As Clarke explains, corporations tend to believe that the “millions of dollars they have spent on computer security systems means they have successfully protected their company’s secrets.” Unfortunately, they are wrong. Intrusion detection and prevention systems sometimes fail.

As it stands, no federal agency is responsible for defending the banking system, power grids or oil rigs from attacks. The prevailing logic is that businesses should handle their own security. Yet their experts readily admit that they wouldn’t know what to do if an attack came from another nation, and assume that defense in such a case would be the government’s job.

In 2011, a US Senate bill sponsored by Democrat Jay Rockefeller and Republican Olympia Snowe sought to change that, but became another victim of DC gridlock. It would have required the president to work with the private sector on a comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy, created a joint public-private advisory board, and led to a Senate-confirmed national security adviser position.

Rockefeller said the goal was “unprecedented information sharing between government and the private sector.”

James Fallows argues that the US suffers from “a conspiracy of secrecy about the scale of cyber risk.” His point is that many companies simply won’t admit how easily they can be infiltrated. As a result, changes in the law, the regulatory environment, or personal habits that could increase safety aren’t seriously discussed.  Sooner or later, however, “the cyber equivalent of 9/11 will occur–and, if the real 9/11 is a model, we will understandably, but destructively, overreact.”

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

The United Nations has warned that the number of Syrian refugees in Turkey could double to one million by the end of the year should the unrest in the Arab country not end.

Å“…If things keep going the way they have been going…there may be up to 1 million (Syrian refugees) who would come to Turkey,” Carol Batchelor, representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Turkey, said in a statement on Friday.

The total number of Syrian refugees in the region is expected to reach 3.5 million people by the end of 2013, the statement said.

Batchelor called on Syriaâ„¢s neighboring countries to keep their borders open, saying, Å“They [refugees] all want to go home. They just need safety and conditions in which they can return to their country and rebuild their lives. This is what we are hoping for.”

Official figures provided by the Turkish government show that more than half a million Syrian refugees have already entered Turkey.

Earlier this month, the UN warned against the spillover of the Syrian crisis into neighboring countries.

More than 1.6 million Syrian refugees are sheltered in often squalid camps across Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt.

UN figures show that more than four million Syrians have been internally displaced since the beginning of the unrest more than two years ago.

UNHCR says it has registered close to 1 million refugees since the start of 2013 alone, which amounts to about 250,000 people each month.

The crisis in Syria began in March 2011. Many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security forces, have been killed in the foreign-sponsored militancy.

Last month, the Syrian president said that militants from as many as 29 different countries were fighting against Syria.

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

MAM/KA

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

British Foreign Secretary William Hague has entered the referendum debate in Edinburgh, warning that the independent Scotland cannot operate economically without support mechanisms from the UK.

In an attempt to prevent the growing support for a go-it-alone Scotland, Hague claimed that Scotland is Å“safer in the UK” and that a Scottish exit from Britain would have potential expenses for Scottish taxpayer.

Scotland could face Å“inconvenience and tremendous burden of having to start again in world affairs” if it becomes independent, Hague said, adding that the country currently benefits from Londonâ„¢s political links.

Hague’s remarks, however, were criticized by pro-independence campaigners as “insulting and patronizing”.

A spokesman for Scotland’s External Affairs Minister Humza Yousaf said, Å“There is huge goodwill towards Scotland across Europe and around the globe, and an independent Scotland will be warmly welcomed onto the international stage.”

Moreover, Professor John Kay, a former economic adviser to Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond, noted earlier that Scotland would flourish after a yes vote with Edinburgh acting as its Å“dominant” economic centre.

Kay said Scotland is the wealthiest part of the UK outside London and the south-east of England and that there is not much difference between Scotland and the UK as a whole as far as economy is concerned.

Scotland will hold an independence referendum on September 18, 2014, on whether to stay in the UK or become an independent country.

The referendum will take place in the 700th anniversary year of a military victory by Scots over the English at Bannockburn.

A single question to be asked from voters is: Å“Should Scotland be an independent country?”

Scotlandâ„¢s 2014 independence referendum could result in breaking up of the UK after 305 years.

BGH/MOS/HE

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Iran’s crude oil exports to its top customer, China, have seen nearly a 50-percent increase in May from April on a daily basis, customs data show.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Greece’s Democratic Left Party has pulled out of the ruling coalition government after a dispute over the sudden closure of the state broadcaster ERT, senior party member Dimitris Hatzisokratis says.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

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This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

People gather at a mosque targeted by bomber in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on June 21, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]More than 120 prisoners in Saudi Arabia have gone on hunger strike to express their anger at inhumane prison conditions, human rights activists say.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

An American toddler has been given the chance to hear for the first time in his short life after an implant was placed in his brainstem.

The three-year-old boy, Grayson Clamp, was born completely deaf without cochlear nerves, which carry sounds from the inner ear to the brain.

His parents tried everything they could to help restore his hearing, but nothing seemed to work until one method led to a miracle.

The baby underwent groundbreaking surgery in which an auditory implant that had never been used before on children in the US, was placed in his brainstem in April. And now, the toddler has started to recognize certain sounds, and his parents hope he will learn to speak.

Å“He looked deep into my eyes and he was hearing my voice for the first time. It was phenomenal … to see him take that sound in and try to figure out ‘What in the world is this, I’ve never had this sensation before’,” his father Len Clamp said after the surgery.

For her part, Graysonâ„¢s mother, Nicole Clamp, said, Å“We don’t know exactly what it’s like for him…. His brain is still trying [to] organize itself to use sound.”

Doctors are also confident that he will gain full hearing in the future.

MAM/KA/SS

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

One of the myths of economics is that markets are rational. Theories are based on this assumption, and the belief that markets are rational fuels the argument against regulation. The market response to the Federal Reserve’s June 19 statement that it will taper off its bond purchases if its forecast comes true is unequivocal proof that markets are irrational.  

The Federal Reserve’s statement that it “currently anticipates that it would be appropriate to moderate the monthly pace of purchases [of bonds] later this year” depends on a very big “if.” The ”if” is the correctness of the Fed’s forecast of moderate economic growth and employment gains.

The Fed has not stopped purchasing $85 billion of bonds each month. So nothing real has changed. Indeed, there was no new information in the Fed’s statement. It has been known for some time that, according to the Fed, its bond purchases will gradually cease.

In response to this old information, the stock and bond markets sold off in a major way on June 19-20. This market response to the Fed’s statement indicates that the Fed’s forecast is unlikely to come true. Low interest rates and a high stock market are totally dependent on the liquidity that the Fed is injecting by printing $1,000 billion per year. If this liquidity is not injected, what will sustain the markets? If the markets crash and interest rates rise, how can the Fed expect recovery?

In other words, the participants in the stock and bond markets know that the markets are bubbles created by the printing press. There is no real basis for the high stock and bond prices. The prices are an artificial reality created by the printing press. Rational markets would take into account the printing press element and would price stocks and bonds at a much lower level. 

Zero real interest rates mean that there are no risks. But how can there be no risk in Treasury bonds when the debt is growing faster than the economy?

Normally, high stock values mean strong profits from strong consumer income growth and retail sales. But we know that there is no growth in real median family income and real retail sales. 

I suspect that the reason the Fed made the announcement, which seems to be derailing the Fed’s forecast of recovery on which the announcement depends, is to relieve pressure on the US dollar. For several years the Fed has been printing 1,000 billion new dollars each year. There is no demand for these dollars. So far these dollars have inflated stock and bond prices instead of consumer prices. But the implication for the dollar’s price or exchange value in currency markets is clear. The supply is increasing faster than the demand. If the dollar falters, the Fed would lose control. Rising import

prices would soon drive domestic inflation and interest rates far higher than the Fed’s targets.

Washington has succeeded in getting Japan and the EU to print yen and euros in order to eliminate the likelihood of flight to other large currency alternatives to the dollar. Smaller countries have also had to print in order to protect their export markets. With so many countries printing money, the Fed’s statement implying that the US might stop printing makes the dollar look good, and, indeed, the dollar rose on the currency exchange markets.

Having neutralized the alternative currency threat to the dollar, the Fed and its agents, the bullion banks, the banks too big to fail, are still at work against the gold and silver threats to the dollar. Massive short selling of gold began at the beginning of April. Again on June 20 massive shorts of gold were sold at a time of day chosen to maximize the price decline. Only those who intend to drive down the price would sell in this way. 

Since QE began, the Fed has deprived retirees of interest income and has forced retirees to spend down their capital in order to pay living expenses. Judging from the initial market response, the Fed’s latest policy announcement is adversely impacting bond, stock and real estate investors, and the manipulation of the bullion markets continues to wreak destruction on wealth stored in the only known safe haven.

How can a recovery happen when the Fed is destroying wealth?

The Fed’s irrational behavior could be seen as rational if the assumption is that the Fed’s intent is not to save the economy but to save the banks. As the Fed is committed to saving the banks “too big to fail,” it is likely that the banks know of the Fed’s announcements in advance. With inside information, the banks know precisely when to short the stock, bond, and bullion markets. The banks make billions from the inside information. The billions made help to restore the banks’ balance sheets. 

Guy Lawson’s book, Octopus (2012), shows that front-running on the basis of inside information has always been the source of financial fortunes. In order to save the banks, the Fed now supplies the inside information.

How is this going to play out? I suspect that the recovery, although officially a weak one, does not really exist. However, thanks to statistical artifacts that understate inflation and unemployment and overstate GDP growth, the Fed and the markets think that a recovery of sorts is in process and that the unprecedented money printing by the Fed will succeed in shifting the economy into high gear. 

No such thing is likely to happen. Instead, as 2013 progresses, a further downturn will become visible through the orchestrated statistics. This time the Fed will have to get the printed money past the banks and into the economy, and inflation will explode. The dollar will collapse, and import prices—as globalism has turned the US into an import-dependent economy—will turn high inflation into hyperinflation. Disruptions in food and energy deliveries will become widespread, and a depreciated currency will cease to be used as a means of exchange.

I wouldn’t bet my life on this prediction, but I think it is as likely as the Fed’s prediction of a full recovery that allows the Fed to terminate its bond purchases and money printing by June 2014.

Americans, who have been on top of the world since the late 1940s, are not prepared for the adjustments that they are likely to have to make. And neither is their government.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

One incident of racism, though small in relation to the decades of massive, institutionalised discrimination exercised by Israel against its Palestinian Arab citizens, has triggered an uncharacteristic bout of Israeli soul-searching.

Superland, a large amusement park near Tel Aviv, refused to accept a booking from an Arab school on its preferred date in late May. When a staff member called back impersonating a Jew, Superland approved the booking immediately.

As the story went viral on social media, the park’s managers hurriedly offered an excuse: they provided separate days for Jewish and Arab children to keep them apart and prevent friction.

Government ministers led an outpouring of revulsion. Tzipi Livni, the justice minister, called the incident a “symptom of a sick democracy”. Defence minister Moshe Yaalon was “ashamed”. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded that the “racist” policy be halted immediately.

Such sensitivity appears to be a reaction to an explosion of popular racism over the past few months against the one in five Israelis who belong to the country’s Palesinian Arab minority. Some Israeli Jews have started to find the endless parade of bigotry disturbing.

Israeli TV recently revealed, for example, that a group of children with cancer who had been offered a free day at a swimming pool were refused entry once managers discovered that they were Bedouin.

According to another TV investigation, Israel’s banks have a secret policy of rejecting Arab customers who try to transfer their accounts to a branch in a Jewish community, even though this violates banking regulations.

The settlers, whose violence was once restricted to setting fire to the crops of Palestinians or rampaging through their villages in the West Bank, are now as likely to attack Arab communities inside Israel. Torched mosques, offensive graffiti on churches and cars set ablaze in so-called “price-tag” attacks have become commonplace.

Similarly, reports of vicious attacks on Arab citizens are rapidly becoming a news staple. Recent incidents have included the near-fatal beating of a street cleaner, and a bus driver who held his gun to an Arab passenger’s head, threatening to pull the trigger unless the man showed his ID.

Also going viral were troubling mobile-phone photos of a young Arab woman surrounded by a mob of respectable-looking commuters amd shoppers while she waited for a train. As they hit her and pulled off her hijab, station guards looked on impassively.

However welcome official denunciations of these events are, the government’s professed outrage does not wash.

While Netanyahu and his allies on the far right were castigating Superland for its racism, they were busy backing a grossly discriminatory piece of legislation the Haaretz newspaper called “one of the most dangerous” measures ever to come before the parliament.

The bill will give Israelis who have served in the army a whole raft of extra rights in land and housing, employment, salaries, and the provision of public and private services. The catch is that almost all of the country’s 1.5 million Palestinian citizens are excluded from military service. In practice, the benefits will be reserved for Jews only.

Superland’s offence pales to insignificance when compared to that, or to the decades of state-planned and officially sanctoned discrimination against the country’s Palestinian minority.

An editorial in Haaretz this month observed that Israel was really “two separate states, one Arab and one Jewish. … This is the gap between the Jewish state of Israel, which is a developed Western nation, and the Arab state of Israel, which is no more than a Third World country.”

Segregation is enforced in all the main spheres of life: land allocation and housing, citizenship rights, education, and employment.

None of this is accidental. It was intended this way to guarantee Israel’s future as a Jewish state. Legal groups have identified 57 laws that overtly discriminate between Jewish and Palestinian citizens, with a dozen more heading towards the statute books.

Less visible but just as damaging is the covert discrimination Palestinian citizens face every day when dealing with state institutions, whose administrative practices find their rationale in the entrenchment of Jewish privilege.

This week a report indentified precisely this kind of institutional racism when it found that students from the country’s Palestinian minority were confronted by a series of 14 obstacles not faced by their Jewish compatriots that contributed to denying them places in higher education.

The wave of popular prejudice and racist violence is no accident either. Paradoxically, it has been unleashed by the increasingly inflammatory rhetoric of rightwing politicians like Netanyahu, whose constant fearmongering casts Palestinian citizens as disloyal, a fifth column and a demographic threat to the state’s Jewishness.

So why if the state is so committed to subjugating and excluding Palestinian citizens, and Netanyahu and his ministers so determined to increase the weight of discriminatory legislation, are they decrying the racism of Superland?

To make sense of this, one has to understand how desperately Israel has sought to distinguish itself from apartheid South Africa.

Israel cultivates, as South Africa once did, what scholars term “grand apartheid”. This is segregation, largely covert and often often justified by security or cultural differences, to ensure that control of resources remains exclusively in the hands of the privileged community.

At the same time, Israel long shied away from what some call South Africa’s model of “petty apartheid” — the overt, symbolic, but far less significant segregation of park benches, buses and toilets.

The avoidance of petty apartheid has been the key to Israel’s success in obscuring from the world’s view its grand apartheid, most obviously in the occupied territories but also inside Israel itself.

This month South Africa’s departing ambassador to Israel, Ismail Coovadia, warned that Israel was a “replication of apartheid”. The idea that the world may soon wake up to this comparison deeply unnerves Netanyahu and the right, all the more so as they risk being identified as the party refusing to make concessions towards peace.

The threat posed by what happened at Superland is that such incidents of unofficial and improvised racism may one day unmask the much more sinister and organised campaign of “grand apartheid” that Israel’s leaders have overseen for decades.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His new website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

A version of this article first appeared in The National, Abu Dhabi.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

Tennessee official threatens Homeland Security investigation of unfounded claims

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
June 21, 2013

A bureaucrat caused outrage amongst an audience in Maury County, Tennessee when he warned that unfounded complaints about water quality could be considered an “act of terrorism” under federal laws enforced by the Department of Homeland Security.

The meeting, which was organized in response to claims that children had become ill after drinking the odd-tasting water, was attended by residents, local officials and directors from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC).

Sherwin Smith, deputy director of TDEC’s Division of Water Resources, stunned the audience when he stated, “You need to make sure that when you make water quality complaints you have a basis, because federally, if there’s no water quality issues, that can be considered under Homeland Security an act of terrorism.”

Asked by shocked residents to repeat his statement, Smith reiterated, “Under federal regulations if you make allegations about the public water supply that are unfounded then that can be considered under Homeland Security an act of terrorism because you’re trying to allege things.”

After the story was reported by the Tennessean, TDEC announced it was investigating the issue but that Sherwin Smith would not be available for comment.

Attendees saw Smith’s comments as a crude way of silencing residents.

“I think it’s just to quash us complicating life for them,” said Brad Wright, organizer for the SOCM civic action group.

“I was sitting there with my mouth open,” said long time resident Joycelene Johns, who had previously raised the issue of cloudy, foul-tasting water. “I couldn’t believe he was saying that.”The message she took away was: “Leave us alone. Don’t come back anymore. We’re not going to continue on dealing with whatever problem you may have.”

“I think that we need to be very careful with how we use the words ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism,’ ” said meeting organizer State Rep. Sheila Butt. “I thought it was out of context. That did not apply to anything that we were discussing at the meeting.”

Americans who make complaints about their government or utility providers are increasingly being accused of engaging in “paper terrorism,” a demonization tactic that primarily serves to intimidate other citizens against engaging in dissent or redress of grievances.

The FBI, Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League have also accused so-called “anti-government groups” of engaging in paper terrorism by filing frivolous lawsuits and misusing legal documents.

Smith’s veiled threat that complaints about water quality — set amidst growing national awareness about the dangers posed by fluoride, pharmaceuticals and other contaminants in the water supply — could be considered an act of terrorism — is a shocking indictment of how Americans who use the proper channels to raise important issues in their local community are being treated as extremists.

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

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

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 6:04 am

Tags: government corruption, terrorism

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah has submitted his resignation to Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas two weeks after taking office.

A Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Thursday that Hamdallah made the unexpected move due to a Å“dispute over his powers.”

According to a post on Hamdallah’s Facebook page, the new premier made the decision following Å“outside interferences in his powers and duties.”

Nabil Abu Rdeneh, an advisor to the PA chief, said Abbas had received the resignation and would consider it.

Hamdallah is a British-educated professor of linguistics who has been president of al-Najah University in the occupied West Bank since 1998.

Analysts believe that Hamdallahâ„¢s offer to quit his post signals disarray within the Palestinian Authority.

Following the announcement, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said, Å“Hamdallah’s resignation indicates that unilateral steps remain weak, are useless and do not resolve the internal Palestinian problem … The solution is not in having many governments. It is in the implementing the reconciliation agreement.”

On June 6, Hamdallah replaced Salam Fayyad who resigned in April after a weeks-long row with Abbas’s Fatah party over his economic policies.

The new prime ministerâ„¢s government was expected to remain in office until mid-August, when the Fatah party and the Gaza-based Hamas movement are due to complete long-delayed negotiations to form a unity government of technocrats, and then prepare for new presidential and parliamentary elections.

The Hamas movement, which won the 2006 general elections but was later pushed aside by rival Fatah, said the appointment of a new prime minister without their consultation was not a legal move.

MKA/KA

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Infowars.com
June 21, 2013

Alex is joined by renowned actor Viggo Mortensen to discuss his new movie, the troubles with raising attention to activist causes in this day and age as well as current problems with the current world of the US in reference to economic, political and current controversies.

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 5:11 am

Tags: domestic news, government corruption

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Infowars.com
June 21, 2013

Alex Jones puts to this summers biggest blockbuster and highly anticipated movies to the Paul Revere Liberty Test. Alex recently watched The Man of Steel and he has been privy to early scripts and releases of World War Z. The budgets of these films are close, in the hundreds of millions of dollars, but their themes are galaxies away.

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 5:12 am

Tags: government corruption, police state

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Washington’s Blog
June 21, 2013

Preface: The Bush and Obama administrations both claimed that spying on Americans was justified by 9/11. Specifically, they said that they could have caught one of the 9/11 hijackers living in San Diego if they could have spied on phone calls on American soil.

However — as demonstrated below — that claim is totally false.

Investigative journalist ProPublica notes:

***

Indeed, the Obama administration’s invocation of the Mihdhar case echoes a nearly identical argument made by the Bush administration eight years ago when it defended the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program.

The reality is different.

Initially, an FBI informant hosted and rented a room to Mihdhar and another 9/11 hijacker in 2000.

Investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House.

As the New York Times notes:

Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the White House on Tuesday of covering up evidence ….The accusation stems from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s refusal to allow investigators for a Congressional inquiry and the independent Sept. 11 commission to interview an informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who had been the landlord in San Diego of two Sept. 11 hijackers.

So mass surveillance of Americans isn’t necessary, when the FBI informant should have apprehended the hijackers.

Moreover, the NSA actually did intercept Mihdhar’s phone calls before 9/11.

We reported in 2008:

We’ve previously pointed out that the U.S. government heard the 9/11 plans from the hijackers’ own mouth. Most of what we wrote about involved the NSA and other intelligence services tapping top Al Qaeda operatives’ phone calls outside the U.S.

However, as leading NSA expert James Bamford – the Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings for almost a decade, winner of a number of journalism awards for coverage national security issues, whose articles have appeared in dozens of publications, including cover stories for the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine, and the only author to write any books (he wrote 3) on the NSA — reports, the NSA was also tapping the hijackers’ phone calls inside the U.S.

Specifically, hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi lived in San Diego, California, for 2 years before 9/11. Numerous phone calls between al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi in San Diego and a high-level Al Qaeda operations base in Yemen were made in those 2 years.

The NSA had been tapping and eavesdropping on all calls made from that Yemen phone for years. So NSA recorded all of these phone calls.

Indeed, the CIA knew as far back as 1999 that al-Mihdhar was coming to the U.S. Specifically, in 1999, CIA operatives tailing al-Mihdhar in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, obtained a copy of his passport. It contained visas for both Malaysia and the U.S., so they knew it was likely he would go from Kuala Lumpur to America.

We asked top NSA whistleblower William Binney — a highly-credible 32-year NSA veteran with the title of senior technical director, who headed the agency’s digital data gathering program (featured in a New York Times documentary, and the source for much of what we know about NSA spying) — what he thought of the government’s claim that mass surveillance of Americans would have caught Mihdhar and prevented 9/11.

Binney responded:

Of course they could have and did have data on hijackers before 9/11. And, Prism did not start until 2007. But they could get the data from the “Upstream” collection. This is the Mark Klein documentation of Narus equipment in the NSA room in San Francisco and probably other places in the lower 48. They did not need Prism to discover that. Prism only suplemented the “Upstream” material starting in 2007 according to the slide.

Details here and here.

Indeed, widespread spying on Americans began before 9/11 (confirmed here, here, here and here.

And U.S. and allied intelligence heard the 9/11 hijackers plans from their own mouths:

• -The National Security Agency and the FBI were each independently listening in on the phone calls between the supposed mastermind of the attacks and the lead hijacker. Indeed, the FBI built its own antenna in Madagascar specifically to listen in on the mastermind’s phone calls

• -According to various sources, on the day before 9/11, the mastermind told the lead hijacker “tomorrow is zero hour” and gave final approval for the attacks. The NSA intercepted the message that day and the FBI was likely also monitoring the mastermind’s phone calls

• -According to the Sunday Herald, two days before 9/11, Bin Laden called his stepmother and told her “In two days, you’re going to hear big news and you’re not going to hear from me for a while.” U.S. officials later told CNN that “in recent years they’ve been able to monitor some of bin Laden’s telephone communications with his [step]mother. Bin Laden at the time was using a satellite telephone, and the signals were intercepted and sometimes recorded.” Indeed, before 9/11, to impress important visitors, NSA analysts would occasionally play audio tapes of bin Laden talking to his stepmother.

• -And according to CBS News, at 9:53 a.m on 9/11, just 15 minutes after the hijacked plane had hit the Pentagon, “the National Security Agency, which monitors communications worldwide, intercepted a phone call from one of Osama bin Laden’s operatives in Afghanistan to a phone number in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia”, and secretary of Defense Rumsfeld learned about the intercepted phone call in real-time (if the NSA monitored and transcribed phone calls in real-time on 9/11, that implies that it did so in the months leading up to 9/11 as well)

But even with all of that spying, the government didn’t stop the hijackers … even though 9/11 wasentirely foreseeable.

ProPublica notes:

“There were plenty of opportunities without having to rely on this metadata system for the FBI and intelligence agencies to have located Mihdhar,” says former Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who extensively investigated 9/11 aschairman of the Senate’s intelligence committee.

These missed opportunities are described in detail in the joint congressional reportproduced by Graham and his colleagues as well as in the 9/11 Commission report.

***

Mihdhar was on the intelligence community’s radar at least as early as 1999. That’s when the NSA had picked up communications from a “terrorist facility” in the Mideast suggesting that members of an “operational cadre” were planning to travel to Kuala Lumpur in January 2000, according to the commission report. The NSA picked up the first names of the members, including a “Khalid.” The CIA identified him as Khalid al Mihdhar.

The U.S. got photos of those attending the January 2000 meeting in Malaysia, including of Mihdhar, and the CIA also learned that his passport had a visa for travel to the U.S.

***

Using their true names, Mihdhar and Hazmi for a time beginning in May 2000 evenlived with an active FBI informant in San Diego.

***

Let’s turn to the comments of FBI Director Robert Mueller before the House Judiciary Committee last week.

Mueller noted that intelligence agencies lost track of Mihdhar following the January 2000 Kuala Lumpur meeting but at the same time had identified an “Al Qaida safe house in Yemen.”

He continued: “They understood that that Al Qaida safe house had a telephone number but they could not know who was calling into that particular safe house. We came to find out afterwards that the person who had called into that safe house was al Mihdhar, who was in the United States in San Diego. If we had had this [metadata] program in place at the time we would have been able to identify that particular telephone number in San Diego.”

In turn, the number would have led to Mihdhar and potentially disrupted the plot, Mueller argued.

(Media accounts indicate that the “safe house” was actually the home of Mihdhar’s father-in-law, himself a longtime al Qaida figure, and that the NSA had been intercepting calls to the home for several years.)

The congressional 9/11 report sheds some further light on this episode, though in highly redacted form.

The NSA had in early 2000 analyzed communications between a person named “Khaled” and “a suspected terrorist facility in the Middle East,” according to this account. But, crucially, the intelligence community “did not determine the location from which they had been made.”

In other words, the report suggests, the NSA actually picked up the content of the communications between Mihdhar and the “Yemen safe house” but was not able to figure out who was calling or even the phone number he was calling from.

***

Theories about the metadata program aside, it’s not clear why the NSA couldn’t or didn’t track the originating number of calls to Yemen it was already listening to.

Intelligence historian Matthew Aid, who wrote the 2009 NSA history Secret Sentry, says that the agency would have had both the technical ability and legal authority to determine the San Diego number that Mihdhar was calling from.

“Back in 2001 NSA was routinely tracking the identity of both sides of a telephone call,” [9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow] told ProPublica.

**

There’s another wrinkle in the Mihdhar case: In the years after 9/11, media reports also suggested that there were multiple calls that went in the other direction: from the house in Yemen to Mihdhar in San Diego. But the NSA apparently also failed to track where those calls were going.

In 2005, the Los Angeles Times quoted unnamed officials saying the NSA had well-established legal authority before 9/11 to track calls made from the Yemen number to the U.S. In that more targeted scenario, a metadata program vacumming the phone records of all Americans would appear to be unnecessary.

In other words, the NSA had the technical ability and legal authority to intercept calls between Midhar and Yemen before 9/11 … and it actually did so.

In reality — despite the government continually grasping at straws to justify its massive spying program — top security experts say that mass surveillance of Americans does not keep us safe.  Indeed, experts say that mass surveillance interferes with catching bad guys.

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 5:20 am

Tags: constitution, domestic news, government corruption, police state

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Bob Sullivan
NBC News
June 21, 2013

The National Security Agency has spent years demanding that companies turn over their data. Now, the spy agency finds the shoe is on the other foot. A defendant in a Florida murder trial says telephone records collected by the NSA as part of its surveillance programs hold evidence that would help prove his innocence, and his lawyer has demanded that prosecutors produce those records.

On Wednesday, the federal government filed a motion saying it would refuse, citing national security. But experts say the novel legal argument could encourage other lawyers to fight for access to the newly disclosed NSA surveillance database.

“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, I guess,” said George Washington University privacy law expert Dan Solove. “In a way, it’s kind of ironic.”

Defendant Terrance Brown is accused of participating in the 2010 murder of a Brinks security truck driver. Brown maintains his innocence, and claims cellphone location records would show he wasn’t at the scene of the crime. Brown’s cellphone provider – MetroPCS – couldn’t produce those records during discovery because it had deleted the data already.

Full article here

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 5:21 am

Tags: constitution, domestic news, domestic spying, government corruption, police state

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Michael Snyder
American Dream
June 21, 2013

If you could get 70 percent of Americans addicted to your drugs and rake in $280 billion a year in the process, would you do it? If you could come up with a “pill for every problem” and charge Americans twice as much for those pills as people in other countries pay, would you do it? If you could make more money than you ever dreamed possible by turning the American people into the most doped up people in the history of the planet, would you do it? In America today, the number of people hooked on legal drugs absolutely dwarfs the number of people hooked on illegal drugs. And sadly, the number of people killed by legal drugs absolutely dwarfs the number of people killed by illegal drugs. But most Americans assume that if a drug is “legal” that it must be safe. After all, the big pharmaceutical companies and the federal government would never allow us to take anything that would hurt us, right? Sadly, the truth is that they don’t really care about us. They don’t really care that prescription painkillers are some of the most addictive drugs on the entire planet and that they kill more Americans each year than heroin and cocaine combined. They don’t care that antidepressants are turning tens of millions of Americans into zombies and can significantly increase the chance of suicide (just look at the warning label). All the big pharmaceutical companies really care about is making as much money as they possibly can. The following are 20 signs that the pharmaceutical companies are running a $280 billion money making scam…

#1 According to a study conducted by the Mayo Clinic, 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug. An astounding 20 percent of all Americans are on at least five prescription drugs.

#2 According to the CDC, approximately 9 out of every 10 Americans that are at least 60 years of age say that they have taken at least one prescription drug within the last month.

#3 The 11 largest pharmaceutical companies combined to rake inapproximately $85,000,000,000 in profits in 2012.

#4 During 2013, Americans will spend more than 280 billion dollars on prescription drugs.

#5 According to Alternet, last year “11 of the 12 new-to-market drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration were priced above $100,000 per-patient per-year”.

#6 The CDC says that spending on prescription drugs more than doubledbetween 1999 and 2008.

#7 Many prescription drugs cost about twice as much in the United States as they do in other countries.

#8 One study found that more than 20 percent of all American adults are taking at least one drug for “psychiatric” or “behavioral” disorders.

#9 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world.

#10 Children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants than children in Europe are.

#11 A shocking Government Accountability Office report discovered thatapproximately one-third of all foster children in the United States are on at least one psychiatric drug. In fact, the report found that many states seem to be doping up foster children as a matter of course. Just check out these stunning statistics…

In Texas, foster children were 53 times more likely to be prescribed five or more psychiatric medications at the same time than non-foster children. In Massachusetts, they were 19 times more likely. In Michigan, the number was 15 times. It was 13 times in Oregon. And in Florida, foster children were nearly four times as likely to be given five or more psychotropic medications at the same time compared to non-foster children.

#12 In 2010, the average teen in the U.S. was taking 1.2 central nervous system drugs. Those are the kinds of drugs which treat conditions such as ADHD and depression.

#13 The total number of Americans taking antidepressants doubled between 1996 and 2005.

#14 All of those antidepressants don’t seem to be working too well. The suicide rate for Americans between the ages of 35 and 64 rose by close to 30 percent between 1999 and 2010. The number of Americans that are killed by suicide now exceeds the number of Americans that die as a result of car accidents.

#15 According to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, 36 millionAmericans have abused prescription drugs at some point in their lives.

#16 A survey conducted for the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that more than 15 percent of all U.S. high school seniors abuse prescription drugs.

#17 According to the CDC, approximately three quarters of a million people a year are rushed to emergency rooms in the United States because of adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs.

#18 According to the Los Angeles Times, drug deaths (mostly caused by prescription drugs) are climbing at an astounding rate….

Drug fatalities more than doubled among teens and young adults between 2000 and 2008, years for which more detailed data are available. Deaths more than tripled among people aged 50 to 69, the Times analysis found. In terms of sheer numbers, the death toll is highest among people in their 40s.

#19 In the United States today, prescription painkillers kill more Americans than heroin and cocaine combined.

#20 Each year, tens of billions of dollars is spent on pharmaceutical marketing in the United States alone.

The American people deserve better than that. Every year, the United Statesspends more on health care than Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain and Australia combined. In fact, if the U.S. health care system was a separate nation it would be the 6th largest economy on the entire planet.

For all the money that we spend, we should be the healthiest people in the world by a wide margin. Instead, life expectancy is higher in dozens of other countries and we have very high rates of cancer, heart disease and diabetes. For much more on the colossal failure of our health care system, please see my previous article entitled “50 Signs That The U.S. Health Care System Is A Gigantic Money Making Scam“.

So what do you think about the pharmaceutical companies that are making billions of dollars by getting the American people addicted to their super-expensive legal drugs?

Please feel free to express your opinion by posting a comment below…

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This article was posted: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 5:18 am

Tags: health, pharmaceutical, science

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

If Congressional Republicans get their way, the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) border separating the US and Mexico will be equipped observation towers, surveillance drones and one guard every 1,000 feet (300 meters).

The proposal comes as a compromise initiative by the US Senate in an effort to pass a immigration reform bill. The legislation would see the Obama administration create a path to citizenship for some 11 million undocumented immigrants, while at the same time ease Republican fears of another mass-cross-border migration from Mexico.

The security plan, created by Republican Senators Bob Corker of Tennessee and John Hoeven of North Dakota, would station another 20,000 Border Patrol agents along the southern border, in addition to the 18,500 already there. The bill would also expand fencing and install a visa entry and exit system at seaports and international airports, among other costly features.

“It would be very difficult to create a stronger border security bill,” Dallas News quoted Corker as saying. “I don’t know what else could be done in this nation to secure the border if these inputs, once implemented, don’t work.”

However, the Republican plan for a ‘surge’ along the US-Mexico border — complete with a dazzling array of sophisticated gadgetry, including night-vision goggles, unmanned aerial vehicles and radar — has liberal groups worried that the US border will become a militarized zone.

These fears are heightened by the fact that border crossing interceptions have dropped significantly since 1999, when approximately 1.5 million migrants were apprehended attempting to cross into the US through Mexico, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Today, fewer than 250,000 immigrants attempting to cross illegally into the United States are stopped annually.

Statistics suggest that the struggling US economy is one reason why fewer Mexicans, among other nationalities, are attempting to illegally cross into the US for work. In the past two years, Mexico’s economy has grown at a healthy 3.9 percent annually, which has helped the Central American nation create jobs.

A newly released report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecasts that the immigration bill would actually reduce the federal budget deficit by $197 billion over the next decade, and $700 billion over the decade after that. The legislation would assimilate both skilled and unskilled workers from abroad, boosting American output and productivity.

The CBO predicts the US economy will be 5.4 percent larger in 2033 if the legislation is passed, and that average salaries would also be slightly higher.

Nevertheless, Republicans — mindful of the multitudes that streamed across the border after Ronald Reagan’s amnesty program in 1986 — have said they would not support Obama’s immigration bill unless it contained “concrete measures” to prevent foreigners from illegally entering the US from Mexico.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, maintaining security along the US-Mexico border already costs $18 billion a year — more than all other federal law enforcement agencies combined. Enhancing security along the Mexican border will cost an additional $30 billion, which may prove a bitter bill to swallow as Washington enacts austerity measures in its effort to trim spending.

John McCain (R-AZ), a co-author of the legislation, claims that this enhanced technology will allow the US Border Patrol to identify locations where undocumented migrants are attempting to cross. The 2008 Republican presidential candidate also wants to force all US companies to check the legal status of their workforce.

Some 40 percent of America’s immigrants have overstayed their visas, rather than entered the country illegally, the senator added.

Although America’s 2,000-mile border with Mexico is more secure than ever, it looks as if it will become even stronger at a time of severe strain on the US budget. The stage is set for ongoing debates between Democrats and Republicans over the limits of imposing security along its southern border, as well as what to do with the millions whose future in the United States remains uncertain.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: ‘You Say What You Like, Because They Like What You Say’ – http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/alerts-2013/731-you-say-what-you-like-because-they-like-what-you-say.html

This article originally appeared on: RT

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Araqchi says Tehran will decide on its presence in the Geneva II conference on Syria after the details of the event are announced.

Å“After the plans, date and agenda of the international Geneva conference on Syria are established, the Islamic Republic of Iran will decide about its participation,” Araqchi said on Friday.

He further welcomed remarks by French President Francois Hollande and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who have both called for the presence of Iranian President-elect Hassan Rohani at the event.

The unrest in Syria erupted over two years ago and many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.

On May 7, Russia and the United States agreed in Moscow to convene an international conference on Syria, which will serve as a follow-up to an earlier Geneva meeting held in June 2012.

Araqchi further said that Iran has not yet received an “official request” for its presence in the Geneva II conference.

Å“Despite extensive consultation, no agenda, plan and also date have been determined for the international Geneva confab yet,” the Iranian spokesperson pointed out.

On June 17, Iranâ„¢s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said the Islamic Republic has received a verbal invitation to attend the Geneva II Conference.

Iran has repeatedly expressed its opposition to any foreign intervention in Syria’s internal affairs, stressing that inclusive dialog and national reconciliation as well as free elections are the keys to resolving the unrest in the Arab country.

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

SF/NN/HMV

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Iran starts distributing Euro-4 premium gasoline, which meets European fuel quality standards, in a number of major cities. (file photo)

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has called for the presence of Iranian President-elect Hassan Rohani in the upcoming Geneva international conference on Syria.

We believe that Iranâ„¢s president-elect should participate in the Geneva II conference on Syria, IRNA quoted Lavrov as saying on Thursday.

He emphasized that Iran and all neighboring countries to Syria which are directly linked to the crisis in the Arab country and host Syrian refugees should be invited to the forum.

The Russian foreign minister further pointed to the shift in Franceâ„¢s stance regarding Iran’s presence at the conference, saying that Paris revised its position on the matter after strong initial opposition to Iran’s participation.

On Tuesday, French President Francois Hollande said on the sidelines of the G-8 summit in Ireland that he would welcome the presence of Iranâ„¢s newly-elected president in the Geneva conference on Syria Å“if he can be constructive.”

In recent weeks, Russia has time and again underlined the importance of Iranâ„¢s presence in the Geneva II conference.

The unrest in Syria erupted over two years ago and many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.

On May 7, Russia and the United States agreed in Moscow to convene an international conference on Syria, which will serve as a follow-up to an earlier Geneva meeting held in June 2012.

Iran has repeatedly expressed its opposition to any foreign intervention in Syria’s internal affairs, stressing that dialog, national reconciliation and free elections are the keys to resolving the unrest.

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

SF/NN/HMV

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has called for the presence of Iranian President-elect Hassan Rohani in the upcoming Geneva international conference on Syria.

We believe that Iranâ„¢s president-elect should participate in the Geneva II conference on Syria, IRNA quoted Lavrov as saying on Thursday.

He emphasized that Iran and all neighboring countries to Syria which are directly linked to the crisis in the Arab country and host Syrian refugees should be invited to the forum.

The Russian foreign minister further pointed to the shift in Franceâ„¢s stance regarding Iran’s presence at the conference, saying that Paris revised its position on the matter after strong initial opposition to Iran’s participation.

On Tuesday, French President Francois Hollande said on the sidelines of the G-8 summit in Ireland that he would welcome the presence of Iranâ„¢s newly-elected president in the Geneva conference on Syria Å“if he can be constructive.”

In recent weeks, Russia has time and again underlined the importance of Iranâ„¢s presence in the Geneva II conference.

The unrest in Syria erupted over two years ago and many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.

On May 7, Russia and the United States agreed in Moscow to convene an international conference on Syria, which will serve as a follow-up to an earlier Geneva meeting held in June 2012.

Iran has repeatedly expressed its opposition to any foreign intervention in Syria’s internal affairs, stressing that dialog, national reconciliation and free elections are the keys to resolving the unrest.

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

SF/NN/HMV

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Russiaâ„¢s President Vladimir Putin (R) exchanges documents with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the Kremlin in Moscow, March 22, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

People wearing face masks walk on the street in Singapore on June 21, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Vehicles pass through a water logged road as the waters of the Yamuna River in northern India rise, June 20, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Islamabad says the project to transfer Iranian natural gas to Pakistan needs to be implemented, one way or another, to settle the energy crisis in the country.

The Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline is the key option to relieve energy shortages in Pakistan, said Pakistanâ„¢s Foreign Office Spokesman Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry in his weekly press briefing on Thursday.

The Pakistani government is committed to settling the countryâ„¢s energy crisis, and seeks to implement the project within the set timeframe, the spokesman was further quoted by IRNA as saying.

On March 11, Iranâ„¢s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari inaugurated the final construction phase of the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline which is to carry natural gas from Iran to its eastern neighbor.

The pipeline could see 21.5 million cubic meters per day of Iranian natural gas exported to Pakistan.

The new Pakistani government has, on several occasions, stressed that it will pursue the gas pipeline project.

Petroleum and Natural Resources Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said on June 15 that Islamabad would honor the agreement signed with Iran during the previous government.

Earlier this month, Federal Minister for Planning Ahsan Iqbal also reiterated that the new Pakistani government would continue the joint gas pipeline project with Iran, saying the issue of energy is Islamabadâ„¢s top priority.

The joint multi-billion-dollar pipeline is designed to help Pakistan overcome its growing energy needs at a time when the country of over 180 million people is grappling with serious energy shortages.

AR/NN/HMV

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

What is the best way to determine the true pulse of the nation? How are we to measure the “recovery” from the Great Recession of 2007-2009? Is it the New York Stock Market’s new highs, now well over 15,000 from a low of 6,547 in March ‘09? Is it the unemployment rate, now dipping to 7.5 from a high of 10 percent in October 2009? Is it the foreclosure rate, which peaked in 2010 at 2.9 million properties, but fell to 1.8 million homes in 2012?

Or is the true measure something more intangible, something more humane and personal such as people’s sex lives, the most intimate human activity people engage in other than childbirth and death?

Like personal “wealth” or work experience, sex tells the story of American life. And like the other two social dimensions of personal life, sex is both private and public, a secret – as practice and as honestly spoken about – shared with only a few and then all-too-often falsified. So, how often do you have sex? And when you “do” it, is it pleasurable? Does it remind you that you are alive, a living natural human being?

Often forgotten when considering the mounting ecological crisis now gripping the globe, humans are natural beings, living nature. The crisis now remaking the global environment is mirrored in the health and wellness crisis affecting human life, in each living, reproducing and dying human being.

The sexual experience is more than the physical act of copulation engaged in for the purpose of species reproduction. Modernity represents the triumph of technology over nature, of pleasure over reproductive purpose, of desire over need. What were once the indulgences of grandees and decadents are now the pleasures of the many.

But what happens to pleasure during a period of social crisis? What if, as some worry, the U.S. is undergoing a social restructuring, expressing the tyranny of the oligarchs not unlike the decades before World War I? Was the post-WWII phase of modernity an aberration?; an era of socially-shared prosperity before artificially-imposed austerity? Is the U.S. returning to the gory-glory days of pre-WWI America, of Robber Barons and Progressive puritans?

* * *

Where is Alfred Kinsey now that we really need him? His twin studies of 60-plus years ago, about male (1948) and female (1953) sexuality, were denounced when they first appeared. They revealed too much about the sex life of ordinary Americans than those in academic, religious, medical and political authority wanted to acknowledge. (Nevertheless, the first study, a 600-page tome, sold over 200,000 copies, which said a lot about what Americans wanted to learn.) Kinsey’s studies remain the touchstone against which to judge subsequent portraits of the nation’s sexual life.

Today, there doesn’t seem to be a similar single authority like Kinsey to shed light on the sexual state of the nation. Nor does there seem to be a reliable study of the impact of the Great Recession on the nation’s sexual life.

Rather, a handful of federal agencies (most notably the Center for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health), nonprofit organizations (e.g. AAPR and Guttmacher Institute) and private companies (e.g., Durex/Trojan condoms) have released reports over the last couple of years that illuminate the nation’s sex climate. Findings from these and other sources begin to illuminate the nation’s sexual state of affairs.

“Sexual health is an intrinsic element of human health,” notes the CDC in a 2012 study. Sexual health “is based on a positive, equitable, and respectful approach to sexuality, relationships, and reproduction, that is free of coercion, fear, discrimination, stigma, shame, and violence.”

(For a very different analysis of the sexual status of individual states, check out Variance’s Sexual Health Rankings.)

The CDC paints a pretty gloomy picture of the nation’s sexual “un-health”: 19 million cases of sexually transmitted disease (STD) infections; 1.2 million people are living with HIV and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and about 50,000 new human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections annually; between 800,000 to 1.4 million people are living with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection; more than 1.8 million women experience unintended pregnancies; and 1.3 million women are raped.

The CDC acknowledges that “sexual satisfaction, pleasure, and functioning are important domains of sexual health,” but warns “these topics do not appear on ongoing, frequent national surveys.” However, a number of federal studies provide insight into some sexual practices. A 2011 CDC study is a snapshot of the sex life of adults aged 25—44 years. Nearly all adults have had vaginal intercourse (women = 98%, men = 97%); many have engaged in oral sex with an opposite-sex partner (women = 36%, men = 44%); and more women then men have engaged in same-sex contact (women = 12%, men = 5.8%). The NIH’s National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) found in 2012 that “masturbation was common throughout the lifespan and more common than partnered sexual activities during adolescence and older age (70+).” It also found that “more than 20% of men ages 25-49 and women ages 20-39 reported anal sex in the past year.”

In a somewhat dated but more revealing study from 2010, “Sex, Romance and Relations,” the AARP found that more then two-thirds (69%) of Americans 45 and older where in some form of a relationship; more than half (54%) were married and 15 percent were dating or engaged. It reports that nearly three in 10 (28%) claimed they had sexual intercourse once a week or more often on average in the last six months, and 40 percent report having intercourse at least once a month. Men report engaging in “self-stimulation” three times more often then women (women = 12%; men = 34%). Men were nearly twice as likely to acknowledge engaging in oral sex (women = 12%, men = 20%). Just 5 percent reported having same-sex partners (women = 2%, males = 8%) and 3 percent reported being gay, under half of 1 percent lesbian and 1 percent bisexual. One in four (25%) said they had sexual thoughts, fantasies or erotic dreams at least once a day, including 16 percent who said it was more than once a day. And men were nearly twice as likely as women (21% vs. 11%) to admit to having had a sexual affair outside their long-term relationship.

A 2012 study by Durex (maker of Trojan condoms) had a more sobering perception of American adults sex life.  Half of those reporting were dissatisfied with their sex lives.  Of these, 37 percent felt that sex was too hurried and 37 percent reported they did not have time to “cross the finish line” at the same time as their partner. Nevertheless, couples keep at it. Three out of four (75%) had rendezvoused in an adventurous local; 65 percent reported getting it on in a car; 35 percent doing “it” in a swimming pool; and 31 percent had done it at the beach. And just about two-thirds (65%) fantasize about making love outside of the bedroom.

Over the last decade, the AARP has conducted three studies on the sex life of “midlife and older adults”, in 1999, 2004 and 2009; its time for another!  One of the most revealing indicators of the nation’s changing sexual values is the significant shift in terms of the belief among adults 45-plus about out-of-wedlock sex. In 1999, 41 percent of respondents agreed with the statement: “People should not have a sexual relationship if they are not married.” However, in 2004, that number had declined to 34 percent and in 2009 it as at only 22 percent, a 45 percent decline.

Between 2004 and ’09, key sex-related behavioral indicators showed a marked decline, an indication of the recession’s eroding effects on personal life. Among 2009 respondents, 43 percent said they were satisfied with their sex lives; this was down from 51 percent in 2004.  People reported having 10 percent more incidents of sex intercourse in ’04 then in ‘09. In addition, respondents reported that kissing, hugging, sexual touching and caressing were also down. Unique among large-scale surveys, AAPR asked respondents what would improve their level of sexual satisfaction. It found that “26 percent of men and 14 percent of women say better finances would help–up from 17 percent of men and 9 percent of women in 2004.

Adding to the complexity of a meaningful analysis of the nation’s true sexual life is the mounting lists of associated factors that impact people’s daily lives and reverberate in their sexual experiences. Two are representative, domestic violence and family structure.

Social science research has overwhelmingly shown that during periods of economic stress, domestic violence by males against women escalates. One study found that during periods of financial strain, the domestic violence rate is 9.5 percent compared with 2.7 percent during baseline periods. One can only wonder what the sex life for a couple under such stress would be like?

The recently released Pew study of “breadwinner moms” further compounds the social context for most people’s sex life. It found that two-fifths (40%) of American households with children under the age of 18 include mothers who are either the sole or primary source of income for the family. These working mothers consist of two groups: (i) 5.1 million (37%) who are married mothers and have a higher income than their husbands; and (ii) 8.6 million (63%) are single mothers.

* * *

The weird thing about the preceding picture of the reported sex life of American adults is that it’s hard to jive with other indicators, phenomenon that collectively paint a very different picture of the nation’s sex life. Seven indicators suggest that something else is going on:

·  Pornography is a booming, $15 billion business, including print, TV/cable, in-room, DVD and online programming and services.

·  Sex paraphernalia — now rebranded as “sexual wellness” – is a $15 billion business, with Amazon the nation’s largest purveyor.

· Gentlemen’s clubs are no longer limited to Las Vegas; TUSCL, a website of strip clubs, lists 2,800 operating throughout the country.

· 1970s swinging scene is back – NASCA International, a swingers association, identifies 168 swingers clubs across the U.S.

·  Explicit adult “safe sex” clubs for gays and straights operate throughout the country; specialized fetish clubs catering to b&d, s&m and other once-perverse tastes operate in many major cities, often hosted by a professional dominatrix.

·  Prostitution is estimated to be an $18 billion business.

· Gay bathhouses remain notorious venues for sexual liaisons.

If you are an adult with a credit card and a certain yen, the nation’s sexual culture has rarely been better.

The unanswered questions remain: What is the sexual state of the nation? and how has it changed in the wake of the Great Recession?

David Rosen writes the “Media Current” column for Filmmaker and regularly contributes to AlterNet, Huffington Post and the Brooklyn Rail. Check out www.DavidRosenWrites.com; he can be reached at drosennyc@verizon.net. 

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

A senior Iranian lawmaker says the Islamic Republic has always supported Azerbaijanâ„¢s territorial integrity in all international circles.

Å“The Islamic Republic of Iran has defended the Azerbaijan Republicâ„¢s territorial integrity in all global circles, and Iranâ„¢s Majlis has always advocated this policy,” said Kazem Jalali in a meeting with Azerbaijani Parliament Vice-Speaker Ziafat Askerov in Baku on Thursday.

The Iranian MP thanked Azerbaijanâ„¢s government for its friendly stances with regard to Tehran at sensitive junctures, expressing hope that mutual ties will further expand during the future administration of Iranian President-elect Dr. Hassan Rohani as he attaches special importance to the promotion of relations with neighboring countries.

Askerov, for his part, said strengthening parliamentary cooperation between Iran and Azerbaijan would play an instrumental role in the enhancement of bilateral relations.

He reiterated Bakuâ„¢s backing for Tehran and said Azerbaijan would never allow others to use its territory against neighboring Iran.

The Azeri official also extended his felicitations to Rohani on his victory in the June 14 race.

Rohani secured an outright win in Iranâ„¢s presidential election by garnering more than half of the 36.7 million ballots cast.

Nearly 50.5 million Iranians were eligible to participate in the presidential election. The voter turnout in the election was 72.7 percent, according to the Interior Ministry.

SF/NN/HMV

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

There are probably more innocent men and women in prison in the United States now than there were people in prison here total – innocent and guilty – 30 years ago, or than there are total people in prison (proportionately or as an absolute number) in most nations on earth.

I don’t mean that people are locked up for actions that shouldn’t be considered crimes, although they are. I don’t mean that people are policed and indicted and prosecuted by a racist system that makes some people far more likely to end up in prison than other people guilty of the same actions, although that is true, just as it’s also true that the justice system works better for the wealthy than for the poor. I am referring rather to men (it’s mostly men) who have been wrongly convicted of crimes they simply did not commit. I’m not even counting Guantanamo or Bagram or immigrants’ prisons. I’m talking about the prisons just up the road, full of people from just down the road.

I don’t know whether wrongful convictions have increased as a percentage of convictions. What has indisputably increased is the number of convictions and the lengths of sentences. The prison population has skyrocketed. It’s multiplied several fold. And it’s done so during a political climate that has rewarded legislators, judges, prosecutors, and police for locking people up – and not for preventing the conviction of innocents. This growth does not correlate in any way with an underlying growth in crime.

At the same time, evidence has emerged of a pattern of wrongful convictions. This emerging evidence is largely the result of prosecutions during the 1980s, primarily for rape but also for murder, before DNA testing had come into its own, but when evidence (including semen and blood) was sometimes preserved. Other factors have contributed: messy murderers, rapists who didn’t use condoms, advances in DNA science that helps to convict the guilty as well as to free the innocent, avenues for appeal that were in some ways wider before the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, and the heroic work of a relative handful of people.

An examination of the plea bargains and trials that put people behind bars ought to make clear to anyone that many of those convicted are innocent. But DNA exonerations have opened a lot of eyes to that fact. The trouble is that most convicts do not have anything that can be tested for DNA to prove their guilt or innocence. Here are 1,138 documented exonerations out of that tiny fraction of the overall prison population for which there was evidence to test. One study found that 6% of these prisoners are innocent. If you could extrapolate that to the whole population you’d be talking about 136,000 innocent people in U.S. prisons today. In the 1990s, a federal inquiry found that DNA testing, then new, was clearing 25% of primary suspects. You do the math.

Of course you can’t simply do the math, because wrongful convictions could be higher or lower for the available sample than for all prisoners. What we can be sure of is that we are talking about a large number of people whose lives (and the lives of their loved ones) have been ruined – not to mention the lives of additional victims of actual criminals left free.

One way to be fairly sure that the rate of wrongful conviction carries over, at least very roughly, to a variety of criminal prosecutions is to examine how those convictions came about. Brandon Garrett’s Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong examines the prosecutions of the first 250 people exonerated by DNA testing. Garrett finds broad systemic problems that could be remedied but largely have not been.

Of the 250, 76% were misidentified by an eyewitness – most of the witnesses having been led to that act by police and/or prosecutor, some of them badgered and threatened, others merely manipulated. Invalid forensic science expertise contributed to 61% of the convictions, much of it willfully manipulated, some fraction perhaps attributable to well-intentioned but negligent incompetence. Informants, mostly jailhouse informants, and most of them manipulated and bribed by police or prosecutor, helped out in 21% of the trials. In 16% of the cases, the accused supposedly confessed to the crime, but these “confessions” tended to be the result of police intimidation, manipulation, brutality, and simple lying. Garrett fears that similar problems infect the U.S. justice system as a whole.

Garrett focuses on problems in policy and perspective. People who believe all eyewitnesses are correct and truthful can mean well and nonetheless get an important point wrong. People who aren’t aware that false confessions exist won’t look for them. But people unaware of such things are not typically part of the criminal justice system, where awareness of these problems is built in but steamrolled over. Judges ask whether witnesses were improperly led to misidentify a witness, but care little for the answers they receive. While Garrett begins and ends his book by claiming that pretty much everyone means well, the intervening pages grown under the weight of endless malevolence. In reading the book, I found myself over and over again scribbling “Did this guy mean well?” in the margin.

Do police feeding a false confession to their victim mean well? When they falsely report on that procedure to a court do they mean well? When they use tape recorders but shut them off each time they feed the prisoner new facts, do they mean well? When they hide evidence? When they destroy evidence? When they stack lineups and pressure witnesses to make identifications? When they hypnotize witnesses? When the prosecutor employs junk science and knowingly makes false claims about it? When simple procedures to avoid bias are known but avoided? When expert witnesses lie for a living? When crime labs alter reports to coverup exculpatory evidence? When police or prosecutors bribe other convicts or codefendants to testify and tell them what to say, but lie about that procedure? When the defense is denied competent counsel or the ability to call witnesses? When the judge effectively acts as part of the prosecution? When jurors pressure and threaten a fellow juror to vote “guilty”?

“It is almost unheard of for prosecutors to be disciplined or sanctioned for misconduct,” writes Garrett, who is no doubt also familiar with this saying: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Garrett believes that serious reforms are needed, and points to North Carolina where a commission has been set up to aid in freeing and not convicting the innocent. If you imagine that that’s what appeals courts are for, read how they handled these 250 cases. In 23 cases, the victim was tried more than once for the same crime. One in a blue moon the system works and frees an innocent – just often enough to keep hope floating out there like a lottery ticket in the distance. Even when DNA clears a prisoner, a prosecutor may propose to try him again, and then do nothing for years while he rots in prison waiting. North Carolina has passed legislation reforming procedures for eyewitnesses, requiring the recording of interrogations, enhancing the preservation of evidence and access to DNA testing, etc.

But one of the major reforms needed is clearly a reform of attitude. And that probably will come more quickly if we recognize what current attitudes are. Jurors and judges should be aware of how often many prosecutors and police officers pursue conviction at the expense of the truth. They should not prejudge in that direction any more than in the other, but they should be aware of what they are up against. If, as a society, we valued the freedom of innocents as much as the punishment of the guilty, we would treat judges and prosecutors and defense attorneys and police differently. We would reward protection of the innocent as much as convictions. A “successful” prosecution would be redefined as one that, first, did no harm. The police officer who found an alibi for a suspect would be praised and promoted just like the officer who found evidence of his guilt. A defendant might even someday find it possible to gain representation from an attorney who at least pretended to believe in at least the possibility of his innocence, and who behaved accordingly.

In the meantime, we are generating and compounding tragedies by the thousands. When James O’Donnell was wrongly convicted, he exploded with anger and cursed the judge and jury. Then he composed himself and said, “I am really sorry for my outburst. I tried to be as civil as possible. I would never do a crime like this. And my life is over now as I know it, my wife and kids’ life. I don’t understand how the jury did this to me. It’s really not right, what they did. I was home in bed. I was sleeping. I would never hit a woman. I have a wife. I never hit my kids, ever. I never forced a woman to do anything in my whole life. That’s the God’s honest truth . . . It’s just – I’m very sorry for my outburst. Don’t take my life away, please.”

David Swanson is author of War is a Lie. He lives in Virginia.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

In his book Propaganda, published in 1928, Edward Bernays wrote: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.

“Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

The American nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays invented the term “public relations” as a euphemism for state propaganda. He warned that an enduring threat to the invisible government was the truth-teller and an enlightened public.

In 1971, the whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg leaked US government files known as the Pentagon Papers, which showed that the invasion of Vietnam was based on systematic lying. Four years later, Frank Church conducted sensational hearings in the Senate: one of the last flickers of American democracy. These laid bare the extent of the invisible government: the domestic spying and subversion and warmongering by intelligence and “security” agencies and the backing they received from big business and the media, both conservative and liberal.

Speaking about the National Security Agency (NSA), Senator Church said: “I know the capacity that there is to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law . . . so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

On 11 June, following the revelations in the Guardian by the NSA contractor Edward Snowden, Ellsberg wrote that the US had now fallen into “that abyss”.

Snowden’s revelation that Washington has used Google, Facebook, Apple and other giants of consumer technology to spy on almost everyone is further evidence of a modern form of fascism. Having nurtured oldfashioned fascists around the world — from Latin America to Africa and Indonesia — the genie has risen at home. Understanding this is as important as understanding the criminal abuse of technology.

Fred Branfman, who exposed the “secret” destruction of tiny Laos by the US air force in the 1960s and 1970s, provides an answer to those who still wonder how a liberal African-American president, a professor of constitutional law, can command such lawlessness. “Under Mr Obama, America is still far from being a classic police-state . . .” he wrote. “But no president has done more to create the infrastructure for a possible future police state.” Why? Because Obama understands that his role is not to indulge those who voted for him but to expand “the most powerful institution in the history of the world, one that has killed, wounded or made homeless well over 20 million human beings, mostly civilians, since 1962”.

In the new American cyberpower, only the revolving doors have changed. The director of Google Ideas, Jared Cohen, was an adviser to Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state in the Bush administration who lied that Saddam Hussein could attack the US with nuclear weapons. Cohen and Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt — they met in the ruins of Iraq — have co-authored a book, The New Digital Age, endorsed as visionary by the former CIA director Michael Hayden and the war criminals Henry Kissinger and Tony Blair. The authors make no mention of the Prism spying programme, revealed by Snowden, that provides the NSA with access to all of us who use Google.

Control and dominance are the two words that make sense of this. These are exercised by political, economic and military design, of which mass surveillance is an essential part, but also by insinuating propaganda into the public consciousness. This was Edward Bernays’s point. His two most successful PR campaigns convinced Americans that they should go to war in 1917 and persuaded women to smoke in public; cigarettes were “torches of freedom” that would hasten women’s liberation.

It is in popular culture that the fraudulent “ideal” of America as morally superior, a “leader of the free world”, has been most effective. Yet even during Hollywood’s most jingoistic periods there were exceptional films, such as those of the exiled Stanley Kubrick, and adventurous European films would find US distributors. These days there is no Kubrick, no Strangelove, and the US market is almost closed to foreign films.

When I showed my own film The War on Democracy to a major, liberal-minded US distributor, I was handed a laundry list of changes, to “ensure the movie is acceptable”. His memorable sop to me was: “OK, maybe we could drop in Sean Penn as narrator. Would that satisfy you?” Kathryn Bigelow’s torture-apologising Zero Dark Thirty and, this year, Alex Gibney’s We Steal Secrets, a cinematic hatchet job on Julian Assange, were made with generous backing by Universal Studios, whose parent company until recently was General Electric. GE manufactures weapons, components for fighter aircraft and advanced surveillance technology. The company also has lucrative interests in “liberated” Iraq.

The power of truth-tellers such as Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden is that they dispel a whole mythology carefully constructed by the corporate cinema and the corporate media. WikiLeaks is especially dangerous because it provides truthtellers with a means to get the truth out. This was achieved by Collateral Damage, the cockpit video of a US Apache helicopter allegedly leaked by Manning. The impact of this one video marked Manning and Assange for state vengeance. Here were US airmen murdering journalists and maiming children in a Baghdad street, clearly enjoying it, and describing their atrocity as “nice”. Yet, in one vital sense, they did not get away with it; for we are all witnesses now, and the rest is up to us.

John Pilger’s film on Australia, Utopia, will be released in the autumn.   

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

Privacy is a sacred word to many Americans, as demonstrated by the recent uproar over the brazen invasion of it by the Patriot Act-enabled National Security Agency (NSA). The information about dragnet data-collecting of telephone and internet records leaked by Edward Snowden has opened the door to another pressing conversation–one about privatization, or corporatization of this governmental function.

In addition to potentially having access to the private electronic correspondence of American citizens, what does it mean that Mr. Snowden–a low-level contractor–had access to critical national security information not available to the general public? Author James Bamford, an expert on intelligence agencies, recently wrote: “The Snowden case demonstrates the potential risks involved when the nation turns its spying and eavesdropping over to companies with lax security and inadequate personnel policies. The risks increase exponentially when those same people must make critical decisions involving choices that may lead to war, cyber or otherwise.”

This is a stark example of the blurring of the line between corporate and governmental functions. Booz Allen Hamilton, the company that employed Mr. Snowden, earned over $5 billion in revenues in the last fiscal year, according to The Washington Post. The Carlyle Group, the majority owner of Booz Allen Hamilton, has made nearly $2 billion on its $910 million investment in “government consulting.” It is clear that “national security” is big business.

Given the value and importance of privacy to American ideals, it is disturbing how the terms “privatization” and “private sector” are deceptively used. Many Americans have been led to believe that corporations can and will do a better job handling certain vital tasks than the government can. Such is the ideology of privatization. But in practice, there is very little evidence to prove this notion. Instead, the term “privatization” has become a clever euphemism to draw attention away from a harsh truth. Public functions are being handed over to corporations in sweetheart deals while publicly owned assets such as minerals on public lands and research development breakthroughs are being given away at bargain basement prices.

These functions and assets–which belong to or are the responsibility of the taxpayers–are being used to make an increasingly small pool of top corporate executives very wealthy. And taxpayers are left footing the cleanup bill when corporate greed does not align with the public need.

With this in mind, let us not mince words. “Privatization” is a soft term. Let us call the practice what it really is–corporatization.

There’s big money to be made in moving government-owned functions and assets into corporate hands. Public highways, prisons, drinking water systems, school management, trash collection, libraries, the military and now even national security matters are all being outsourced to corporations. But what happens when such vital government functions are performed for big profit rather than the public good?

Look to the many reports of waste, fraud, and abuse that arose out of the over-use of corporate contractors in Iraq. At one point, there were more contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan than U.S. soldiers. Look to the private prisons, which make their money by incarcerating as many people as they can for as long as they can. Look to privatized water systems, the majority of which deliver poorer service at higher costs than public utility alternatives. Visit privatizationwatch.org for many more examples of the perils, pitfalls and excesses of rampant, unaccountable corporatization.

In short, corporatizing public functions does not work well for the public, consumers and taxpayers who are paying through the nose.

Some right-wing critics might view government providing essential public services as “socialism,” but as it now stands, we live in a nation increasingly comprised of corporate socialism. There is great value in having public assets and functions that are already owned by the people, to be performed for the public benefit, and not at high profit margins and prices for big corporations. By allowing corporate entities to assume control of such functions, it makes profiteering the central determinant in what, how, and why vital services are rendered.

Just look at the price of medicines given to drug companies by taxpayer-funded government agencies that discovered them.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us! He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

Red color, red paint splashed over white background, against which is a photo of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Underneath it says: “Chavez from his heart.”

“Chavez died, had fallen…” A man, an acquaintance, who is driving me around Caracas, tells me. “But this is not the end. Maduro was his adopted son… Not his real son, but his ideological child, his hare. This red color symbolizes blood. Chavez spilled his blood for his people. Foreign imperialists murdered him, maybe with the help of local elites. And now Maduro will carry on.”

There is an Argentinean food festival at the hotel where I am staying. A steak that would cost some 10 dollars in Buenos Aires goes here for US$100 at official exchange rate, or at US$20 if the money is changed on the black market.

Bolivar and Chavez.

“Son of a bitch!” swears elegantly dressed and moderately pissed-drunk local businessman. “May he drop dead, shitty faggot”. That’s regarding Maduro. Then comes long tirade, this time pointed at deceased President Hugo Chavez. The speech is full of colorful variations on defecation, elaborate sexual acts (some involving farm and domestic animals) and homosexuality. Two ladies, elegantly dressed, wearing high heels and skin color stockings despite the heat, are laughing loudly. They are nodding enthusiastically, in full agreement with their red-faced caballeros.

I try not to listen, but the words are shouted so loudly, they are hard to ignore. I can hear expressions like ‘bus driver’, ‘imbecile’ and ‘nigger’; that’s as they go back to discussing current President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro.

It all suddenly reminds me of Guatemala, many years ago, when Rigoberta Manchu had been awarded Nobel Peace Price, instantly becoming a target of the most outrages ridicule and racism, being described by the Central American elites as ‘that indigenous, fat and dumb bitch’, publicly, repeatedly, and loudly.

*

Venezuela is deeply divided. It seems to be at the edge, uncertain, angry and most obviously not at peace with itself.

One of the executives of pan-American television channel TeleSur, based in Caracas, Andreina Perez, explained to me: “I can say that Chavez survived his death and converted himself into an ideological concept. Now it became inevitable that whichever leader of Venezuela will be compared to him, and it will be very difficult to find a match. Therefore, there is this huge vacuum left after he departed, as well as great disorder inside the country. I feel that we were left as orphans; like children who lost their father.”

Healthy public life.

But Andreina is what could be described as ‘cautious’ optimist:

“I believe that at some point the country will settle on a course that will be less progressive and less radical, but acceptable to the majority. I continue to be positive, thinking that we will be able to join forces, between the left and the right, between what is public and what is private, that we would all manage to cooperate. But I fear that would only happen after some enormous social turmoil… You have to understand: political climate here is presently very tense…”

It surely is. As I am walking from a local shopping mall to my hotel, a mighty SUV stops at the curb, and the door flies open. A man wrapped in bright colors of Venezuelan flag is sitting at the wheel.

“Are you lost, sir?” He screams at me, huge smile on his face. He does not wait for the answer: “Please hop in, I will be happy to give you a lift!”

As he tells me just a few seconds later, he is an air force captain. “I fly fighter jets, defending my country.”

I nod and thank him.

“Are you American?” he continues smiling.

I quickly think what to say. There is my US passport resting in an equipment bag. I was born in Russia. And I live in Japan, among several other places. ‘It is always good to have choices’, I think.

I return his smile and say neutrally: “I was born in Russia”.

He stops the car. He gives me big hug. “Welcome to my country, brother”, he shouts. “Thank you for coming.” His eyes slide to my big professional camera. “And thank you for searching for the truth!”

Here Nobody Surrenders!

He really drives me to my hotel, all the way to the roundabout in front of the entrance. He offers me some chocolates. He is genuine, he reminds me of some medieval knight. He is determined and very patriotic, all that, in some old-fashioned, beautiful way.

Hotel porters are grimacing in mocking and unfriendly fashion, noticing the license plate and the flag. They are black marketers and pimps, buying US dollars and selling local girls. They hate Chavez and they hate the military. They are self-proclaimed ‘businessmen’.

As I am about to leave, the pilot winks at me:

“I thought you were a North American. And I was going to give you a lift, in order to demonstrate that we have nothing against the people of the United States. If they come here as visitors, as friends, we will treat them like brothers. There are many good people living in the United States, and I met several of them… But if they come to kill us again, to stage another coup, or to attack Venezuela, that very moment I will get into my cockpit and fight them… I will be ready to die defending my country.”

*

At the University, at the Engineering Department, a girl, a student, begins to cry when I ask her to talk about Chavez and about Venezuela after his death.

I only showed her my press card, and I asked her whether she thought that the death of Chavez was really a big loss for her country.

Made in Socialism.

She could not utter one single word. She thought for some time how to answer my question, but then she lowered her eyes and I saw tears rolling down her cheeks. Her body began shaking. It was genuine, absolutely real. I put my arm around her shoulder, and she, instinctively, buried her face in my chest, making my shirt wet.

“Read from my tears”, she said much later. “I cannot talk about this. Please forgive me… I simply can’t!”

After we parted, I bought several Cuban and Venezuelan films, including ‘Memories of Underdevelopment’ and ‘I am Cuba’. I decided not to ask anybody about Chavez, at least not right away, for some time.

Things were getting raw, exposed, and powerful. But often they were also unsettling. It all felt like an hour before decisive battle.

At the gate, not far from the university metro station, a crowd of student protesters was marching past the police cordon. Demands to end corruption among professorial staff and the university administration were shouted loudly.

But then one of the students I began talking to on the street showed much greater spite for the West than for the university administration:

“Gringos keep talking about opening up Venezuela. But what they mean by ‘opening’ is actually what they were doing in the past, before Chavez — they want to steal all that our land is holding under its surface, especially all those riches hiding in the jungle. Remember, our country is one of the wealthiest places on earth! And I am not talking about crude oil only.”

Ministry of People’s Power.

I boarded the modern, fast, heavily subsidized, and well-organized metro and traveled to one of the new cable car stations, by metrocable system, now connecting main avenues and metro stations with several needy neighborhoods. Red gondolas suspended from the rope were going every few seconds, making several stops on the hills, transporting thousands of poor people. Such ropeways are usually carrying tourists in Europe, United States, or Japan, and they are extremely expensive. Here, the government turned them into public transportation, with only symbolic prices.

And free or almost free were also books, classical music concerts, medical care, and education. Heavily subsidized was housing for the poor, and public transportation, as well as food. In fact entire chains of supermarkets are selling great variety of foodstuff made in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina and other ‘friendly nations’. The great classical music orchestras are performing in public places for tens of thousands, and for free.

I sat on the hill of San Agustín del Sur, with two aging people: one locksmith, Senor Carlos, and a seller of flowers, Senora Clara.

Public transportation — Caracas metro.

Senor Carlos was angry, agitated:

“Look, here, we are having a real war; a war that has been already taking place for many years. Local capitalists do not just want to make profits; they want to make enormous earnings, by stripping poor people alive. They were doing it freely and shamelessly before Chavez, and then, for years, they had been full of hate for him, because he was on our side, defending us. Capitalists here are bandits, they are thieves!”

“Even now, there are all those private companies, like Polar, that are plotting against us, against the poor. They buy things for 2 and sell for 16. The state sells cooking oil for 4, rice for 2. So what do our capitalists do? The same shit as they did to Chile, to Allende, before 1973 coup. They began creating ‘deficit’! They control transportation and distribution and their goal is to make sure that there is no food in the villages and towns, so people get angry, tired, and consequently vote this government out. And the United States is fully behind all this!”

“But they will not be allowed to come back!” shouts Senora Clara. She is looking at me, straight into my eyes, smiling. “Because we will fight for this government, which is the government of the poor, of the real people. Chavez gave me back my own country, ‘mi patria’. He also gave me hope. I was homeless, desperate before. Now I am alive!”

Some neighborhoods are tough, but definitely not hopeless. It is not like those slums in Manila, Jakarta or Nairobi — the capitals of countries that devour their own people and consequently become darlings of the Western regime. There is electricity and there is water, schools and medical posts, above mentioned ropeways and social centers. There is no hunger here, and no malnutrition.

Senor Carlos arrives at the punch line:

“Do you know why they — the rich — hate us so much? Because now we can read, we understand what is really happening around us. We vote for and we read and understand our own Constitution. And Chavez? They detested his determination to allow us to vote for the real candidates, for the candidates who were really ready to represent us. And they hated him for teaching us how to read and how to understand, and how to think! He gave his life for us! They killed him. And now they are trying to destroy Maduro.”

Special commission that includes doctors and scientists is investigating the possibility that President Hugo Chaves Frias had been murdered.

Still much to do.

As I move through the city, I see more and more posters that I noticed before, some with the face of Chavez, some with Maduro’s images. Those with red paint, like blood, splashed on white sheet: ‘From the heart of Chavez’. What does it mean? Chavez supporting Maduro, with his own blood! Dying, knowing that he was dying, spilling his own blood for the nation. His blood is now Maduro, his blood is the revolution, El Proceso, and Venezuela.

It is powerful, emotional, beautiful and extremely dangerous.

‘We are all Chavez!’ reads another poster.

Chavez became a martyr, a hero. He was always a hero, loved or hated. But if he was murdered, if it would be proven that he was killed, then Venezuela might experience the most violent period in the modern history of Latin America.

It could become one long and terrible conflict, not unlike that in the neighboring Colombia, which is living as a fully divided nation for endless decades, practically since the period called La Violencia.

That is why so many people are calling for calm. But if the President of Venezuela was killed, then calm could only arrive in the footsteps of justice.

*

Margot Urdaneta, a teacher, one of the translators of my work to Spanish and a friend, wrote to me in an email:

“I must say that Maduro, our new President, in spite of what many people criticize about him, including some Chavistas — things like that his curriculum includes no university studies, that he used to be a bus driver and an ordinary worker — used to actually be a very successful union leader, and an excellent Vice President and Foreign Minister. In my opinion he will be a good President. First of all, I do not underestimate the wisdom of Chavez; he must have had good reasons for choosing Maduro as his successor. He was at his side even before Chavez was locked in jail, more than 14 years ago. Chavez trained and taught him — and we should never forget that Chavez was a teacher of history at the Military Academy. Maduro is clever, has a fantastic memory and he is utterly loyal to the Commander and his programs and ideals.”

Student protest.

Ms Urdaneta, like so many supporters of El Proceso feels saddened about the outcome of the latest elections:

“We were greatly disappointed with the results. I was expecting we were going to win by millions of votes and we only got about 250 thousand more than Capriles. Of course this fact gave Capriles an opportunity to agitate people. First, he demanded a recount, then cancelled it… On April 15th, one day after the elections, Capriles, during one TV conference, encouraged his supporters to express their “anger” — he used a very obscene expression — tocando cacerolas (‘to touch the pants’). This was a direct signal to his violent supporters, specially those youngsters calling themselves JAVU, who are inspired by the right-wing Serbian OTPOR to attack CDI’s (Centros de Diagnóstico Integral), PSUV’s houses, or simply people who were celebrating Maduro’s triumph. Also, there was a Twitter of a Venezuelan journalist “informing” that the Cuban doctors in the CDI’s were hiding boxes with electoral materials… After putting this incendiary and wrong information on the net, the journalist fled to Miami.“

The violence is increasing, according to Ms Urdaneta’s account, written to me at the end of May 2013:

“More than 20 CDI’s and some houses of the PSUV party were burned down; a guy driving a truck hit a group of people that was celebrating the victory in Maracaibo, killing two children. Well… there is no end to the violence; as of today we have 11 people who lost their lives, and more than 70 injured. The leaders of the opposition are mostly from the rich families; many of them have never worked one single day, and never thought about the poor, except when they considered to hiring them as servants.”

I wanted to know how trustworthy are the claims that the opposition is now using the same tactics as those in Chile, before 9-11-1973. She elaborated:

“The opposition is hiding food, sabotaging distribution of electricity, and indeed doing the very same things that led to Allende’s ousting. I know, because my brother was in Chile in 1973, and he fled only a few days before the hell erupted.”

“Our opposition is being grossly manipulated by the Empire’s powerful tools — like you recently said in your wonderful article. Now some Venezuelans, who used to be such kind, friendly, and generous people, are often turning violent and aggressive, hating everything that smells of chavismo.

We are Chavez.

“You turn on the TV, which is mainly owned by the elites, and all you see now is the violence. I used to enjoy channels such as Film& Arts. Well… some disappeared, as people are only allowed to consume what the Empire is promoting. The opposition with the help of the Empire, the media and money from the rich businesspeople, are trying to make us to lose this war. I want to cry when I am writing this, but even though our present government is working very hard, right now we desperately need more: shrewdness and sense of strategy of Chavez, that none of our leaders seems to have. But it’s understandable; it’s like you told me: impossible that two leaders of the size of Chavez could be born during the same year, in the same country or even in the world. And the words of Goebbels, about repeated lies that become truth, are now relevant more than ever before. Our opposition is repeating lies, over and over again; it feeds the planet with them. Lies about Venezuela, but also about Cuba, because Cuba is one of the countries they hate the most; their doctors are surely going to be thrown out or killed if the opposition grabs the power. And Capriles said that if he becomes President, Cuba would not get one single drop of oil from us.”

*

Departing from Simon Bolivar Airport is a little bit like an attempt to escape from a well-guarded castle that is continuously under siege. Long lines are everywhere, those for check-in, for meticulous searches, for passport control.

Even before one is actually allowed to check in at an airline counter, all luggage has to be put on the table, where military personnel searches painstakingly through each and every piece of garment, electronics, books. Nothing is left to chance. There is no trust remaining. There was already at least one attempt from the North to overthrow the legitimate government of Venezuela, and many here are convinced that President Hugo Chavez was cynically murdered, that his cancer was caused by biological warfare, part of the merciless drive of the Empire to liquidate all Communist, socialist and progressive leaders now determinately transforming Latin America by resisting imperialism and neo-colonialism.

For centuries, this continent has been enduring all kind of acts of terror inflicted by the Europeans and North Americans: from genocides against its indigenous population to systematic destruction of its culture and identity. Popular governments have been overthrown, trusted and beloved leaders murdered, while the majority of the citizens forced into unimaginable misery. ‘The veins of the continent’, as metaphorically described by great Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, ‘were opened’. Now those who are trying to treat the wounds, to heal entire nations often find themselves on the hit list of the Empire.

Jose, a young soldier, is turning my entire suitcase up side down and inside out. It is of course annoying, and those who would want to convert such situations into yet another set of arguments against the present government, would certainly find some inspiration here.

But it is well-known fact that Western intelligence agencies have no scruples blowing up passenger planes in mid air. One can never be too cautious.

“You say you brought your documentary films about Africa to our Venezuelan television channel?” the soldier asks. “Could you show me DVDs of some of your films?”

I do what I am asked to. He searches for my name on the DVD cover, and then compares it with the name inside my passport. They match. But I am beginning to worry about missing my flight.

Then it is over, everything checked, and the young soldier gives me broad smile. “Done!” he says. “Listo… You can go now.”

“Where are you from?” I ask.

“Ciudad Bolivar”.

I am ready to go. I take few steps towards the door, but then I stop and turn back. I cannot resist asking him one simple question:

“What do you think will happen to Venezuela?”

He does not seem to be surprised. He thinks for a few seconds, and then replies:

“We will be here, don’t worry. And Venezuela will be here.”

“They will not come back, will they?”

He smiles, unexpectedly.

“They…” He says. “They are here from the beginning. They are all around you, all around us…” He nods towards the next table, where a woman in her 60’s wearing heavy make-up argues with another young soldier. He nods at the queue, where several upper class men and women look contemptuously all around, or just staring at their Blackberries and iPhones.

“They never left. But this time, we will not go away either. It is our country. It belongs to the people, to the majority. And if we have to, we will defend it against all enemies…”

He fell silent, probably fearing he could have said too much.

I nod and then I go. Airbus 340 of Air France is waiting at the gate. I don’t want to leave but I have to.

I am certain the soldier wants to go home, to return to his city, to Ciudad Bolivar. But he may have to stay in the capital, and he may have to fight for his country.

Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His critically acclaimed political revolutionary novel Point of No Return is now re-edited and available. Oceania is his book on Western imperialism in South Pacific. His provocative book about post-Suharto Indonesia and market-fundamentalist model is called “Indonesia — The Archipelago of Fear” (Pluto). He just completed feature documentary “Rwanda Gambit” about Rwandan history and the plunder of DR Congo. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and Africa. He can be reached through his website.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

The file photo shows Afghan villagers standing at a house that was hit by a US-led NATO airstrike in Sajawand village in Logar Province, south of Kabul.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

America is going through the worst of days under the fiction (aka false consciousness) of these being the best of days. We learn only today, all part of the Snowden revelations about government surveillance, that the National Security Agency (the world’s largest spying operation, domestic and foreign) has an extremely close and still growing working relation with Silicon Valley (putatively, the harbinger of world democratic forces via the potentialities of the social media hastening connectivity), a political-structural imbrication of the public and private spheres draining the life-blood of human freedom of its citizenry: the right of PRIVACY, a main constituent of the individual’s autonomy, not constrained or shaped by thought control. Why this encroachment on our very identities as persons, not the beliefs and roles we are steadily indoctrinated to assume, but the inner core of self-development, our unfolding possibilities?

The US is now notorious in international circles for regime change. Bad enough, but it gets worse: The US, internally, perhaps as the necessary or ratifying condition which makes broad-gauged intervention, including regime change, possible (and the implicit goal of foreign policy), has taken the qualitative jump into the culture-molding process of the social management of personality. We are reaching the point of no return as a nation, assigning to privatization much of the business of data mining (and it emphatically is a business) wherein our private lives are stripped as nearly bare as possible, the information routed to government for purposes of surveillance, and to private business–often the same information–so as to stimulate wants and sell goods and services.

Crass, yes! The convergence of militarism and consumerism, nay, one better, mutual reinforcement of the two as the formula for sustaining global hegemony and capitalistic growth alike, brings us to the present day, in which surveillance + privatization = the militarization of capitalism, the former keeping us in line (i.e., social discipline through tactics of fear, in order to engender self-pacification), and the latter, giving us a depth of commitment to property as a moral law unto itself legitimating capital accumulation by any and all means (i.e., intervention, regime change, foreign conquest). Is this gross exaggeration? Not if one takes Snowden’s revelations seriously and weighs the activities of the National Security Agency (except for turf wars, inseparable from those of the CIA, FBI, and other assorted intelligence units, chiefly, of the military services) as the direct channel into the lives and minds of Americans–and, we see, foreign nationals–providing the conditions for totalitarianism where free choice is nonexistent and dictated from above.

Then, US expansionism (a euphemism for the combined thrust of imperialism and militarism) will have free reign throughout the world, aided and abetted through the promotion of the political culture of complicity in all things pertaining to war, consumption, and the inculcation of patriotic values, the last-named decisive to the reshaping of America itself so that class structure will reflect wide differentials of wealth and power–the poor as prime candidates for self-pacification in the name of the greater good. We therefore punish ourselves, a collective self-sacrifice on behalf of the glorification of power and force, as though foreign conquest can be fed back into our empty hulks (consciousness), at the expense, gladly surrendered, of a vital social safety net, a more egalitarian social structure, and freedom to think, criticize, and create alternative social systems and political economies. Hence, the masochistic element promoting capitalism and militarism to the detriment of domestic well-being.

But what of sadomasochism, delight in the infliction of pain on others, a delight in cruelty, as, these days, the horrid impersonality of incinerating others from 8,000 miles away, be they “collateral damage,” such as women and children in the vicinity of the drone strike, “signature strikes,” the deliberate targeting of funerals for the victims and of first responders coming to their assistance, or suspicious individuals, often identity unknown? Here our own masochism (sacrificing social needs on the altars of wars, intervention, nuclear modernization, and humongous “defense” spending) justifies, to ourselves, our aggression to others, obviously ungrateful to the bearers of liberty and democratic gifts. As one contemplates the scene, which I intimately associate with Obama (given his active promotion of secrecy, surveillance, and the criminalizing of divulging information exposing despotic government and illegal activities), possibly more than his predecessors, one comes to see the psychopathological nature of American capitalism, as requiring surveillance at this stage of possible senescence, in order to sustain itself. The foregoing thoughts were prompted by the New York Times editorial (June 20), which rightly criticized the conspicuous place of private contractors in intelligence gathering, and a further article on the close ties between NSA and Silicon Valley. My Comment on the editorial follows:

Privatization has become the curse of American democracy. Even specifically in intelligence, it radiates out to include the fusion of capitalism and national security, rendering government the midwife to the policy goals of business implemented via the use of force. Say what one will about Snowden (and I, for one, view him as a national HERO), his revelations have brought to light what had been a secret world of private contractors. Who paid attention to Booz Allen previously? Who imagined a half-million civilians with security clearance? The US govt. has created a moral monstrosity, in which the impetus to war, and its planning, provide the favorable environment for these private-sector firms to garner immense profits—giving them ample reason to perpetuate overclassification and render findings suitable to intervention.

Like it or not, Obama must be held accountable for this militarization of capitalism itself. Deficit reduction? Not until the entire military sector is drastically reduced. Civil liberties? Not until the govt. stops prosecuting whistleblowers under the Espionage Act. The future of democracy? Regrettably, bleak, when surveillance is central to the execution of public policy.

Norman Pollack is the author of “The Populist Response to Industrial America” (Harvard) and “The Just Polity” (Illinois), Guggenheim Fellow, and professor of history emeritus, Michigan State University.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

“In Yemen we are close to the bottom in all kinds of measures like income and education, but there’s one statistic where we come out on top: the number of prisoners in Guantanamo,” laughed Mohammad Naji Allaw, a successful Yemeni lawyer who ploughs his firm’s profits into the National Organization for Defending Rights and Freedoms. “Over 90 of 166 Guantanamo prisoners are from Yemen. Most of them, 56 to be exact, have already been cleared by the US government for release but the US government still won’t send them back.”

Our American peace delegation spent the week in Yemen meeting with lawyers, human rights activists, government officials and most importantly, families with loved ones in Guantanamo.

While we were visiting, Congress passed an amendment saying that no US military funds could be used to transfer prisoners from Guantanamo back to Yemen. The families and Yemeni officials we met were outraged. “You mean that after detaining Yemenis for over 11 years without charges and trials, refusing to release even those prisoners who have been cleared of all wrongdoing, forcing them to starve themselves to call attention to their plight, you’re saying that Congress is going to make it even harder to send them home?,” they asked us. “How can this be?”

How could we explain this to the mother of Abdulhakeem Ghaleeb, who hasn’t seen her son since he was 17 years old in 2002, a mother who can’t eat a meal in peace, knowing that her son has been on a hunger strike since February 6 and is now so weak he can’t speak? How can we explain this to 12-year-old Awda, who was in her mother’s womb when her father Abdulrahman Al Shubati was carted off to the island gulag, and here she was, holding his picture with tears streaming down her cheeks? What could we say to Ameena Yehya, whose brother had been sending home letters with beautiful drawings of flowers and scenes from their village, but stopped even writing five years ago because he is too hopeless to lift his pen? Or to Ali Mohammed, who said that on video call arranged every two months with the Red Cross he barely recognized his brother–a lifeless skeleton with sunken eyes and a big, inflated nose from where the feeding tube is forced down his nostrils?

We couldn’t bear to tell them the truth: that their sons, husbands, fathers and brothers are simply pawns in the US game of politics where one party is always trying to “out hawk” the other, where concern about winning the next election far eclipses any respect for the rights of the prisoners. And we didn’t have the heart to tell them that most American have become so consumed by fear after 9/11 that they think that holding these prisoners in Guantanamo indefinitely somehow makes them safer?

So instead we hugged and cried together. Our delegation explained that we are totally opposed to this cruel policy. We told them that over 300,000 Americans have signed petitions calling for Guantanamo to be closed. We talked about Americans like CODEPINK co-founder Diane Wilson and Veterans for Peace Elliott Adams who are risking their own lives on a long-term solidarity hunger strike–Diane since May 1 and Elliott since May 17. We showed them photos of our protests outside the White House. I mentioned that I even interrupted President Obama’s national security speech on May 23, demanding that he take action to release the 86 prisoners cleared for release. But gnawing constantly on our minds was the fact that we are just not doing enough, not caring enough, not creative enough, not strategic enough to force a change in policy. 

In 2009, President Obama had cleared 56 Yemenis for transfer home, 26 immediately with 30 others to follow. But days after Christmas Day attempt to bomb an aircraft as it was landing in Detroit, Obama placed a moratorium on the transfer of Yemeni detainees. The would-be bomber, Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, who had hidden plastic explosives in his underwear, told U.S. investigators that he’d been recruited for the mission in Yemen by Anwar al Awlaki, the US-born cleric who was later killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011. 

Human Rights Minister Hooria Mashoohouras heard US officials say that Yemeni government is not stable enough or strong enough to make sure the released prisoners don’t take up arms against America. They have told her that even if some of the prisoners were totally innocent and unjustly imprisoned, now–after 11 years behind bars–they probably hate the US so much that they’ll want revenge. In our meeting with Mashoohourshe threw up her arms in exasperation. “So you abuse these men and then you keep abusing them because they might hate you for your abuse? Is that the way the US justice system works?,” she asked. 

Mashhour said the Yemeni government has already agreed to assign 10 government ministries to monitor repatriated detainees to ensure they don’t threaten the United States. The returnees, she said, would receive counseling, job training and other aid. She also explained how she went to Washington DC in May to sign a Memorandum of Understanding to release the cleared Yemeni prisoners, but left empty handed, complaining that she was never received at the White House. 

Now the US government is setting up another obstacle: it wants Yemen to set up a rehabilitation center, but it has not committed money to fund it. Many people we talked to in Yemen believe the US government should not only fund the rehabilitation center, as this is a problem that the US created and Yemen has no money, but that it should also compensate the prisoners who have been wrongly imprisoned. 

Instead, the US Congress is trying to cut off funds that could even be used to send the prisoners home. The Congressional amendment passed on June 14 is designed just for Yemen, prohibiting Department of Defense funds from being used to repatriate Yemenis. This doesn’t become law unless it is passed by the Senate and signed by the president. So there’s still time to stop it. 

When we spoke about this amendment to Nadia Sakkof, an extraordinarily talented young women who is one of the key organizers of the National Dialogue Committee, she sprung into action. “Excuse me,” she apologized, running over to her computer, “but this is simply unacceptable and I must do something about this right now.” She fired off a message of outrage to her contacts in the U.S. Congress and wrote a letter to her colleagues at the National Dialogue Committee, asking them to join her in complaining to the US government about this new affront. By the end of the next day, 136 members of the National Dialogue had signed on and she had delivered the letter to the US Ambassador. 

The following day, June 17, we planned the first-ever protest of Yemenis and Americans outside the US Embassy in Sanaa. Our 7-person delegation arrived at 10 am, thinking that perhaps a few dozen Yemenis would join us. After all, it was a weekend, the place was hard to get to, and they had very little notice in advance. 

We waited, we heard a commotion. Marching up with street, in bright orange jumpsuits, were several hundred Yemeni families and their supporters. They were chanting “Freedom, freedom, where are you? Human rights, human rights, where are you?” 

After the chants and speeches, we brought out a letter to send to President Obama, via the Embassy, in the name of our delegation and the Yemenis. One by one, starting with the women, the Yemenis came up to sign the letter. The ones who couldn’t write stamped their fingerprints. Even the children signed. The guards allowed a few of us to cross the barricades so we could deliver the letter to an Embassy representative. We also reiterated to the Embassy staff that earlier in the week, Ambassador Gerald Feierstein had promised to us he would meet with some of the families, and we hoped he would fulfill that promise. 

At the end of the rally, we visited the National Dialogue Committee, which has been meeting for several months to co-build the foundations for a more democratic, peaceful nation. We brought orange ribbons for delegates to wear as armbands to show support for the Guantanamo prisoners. Even the security guards and reporters wanted to wear them. The 300 armbands we had quickly disappeared, with people asking for more. The support for the prisoners among the different political parties and independents at the National Dialogue is nearly universal. They say the refusal of the administration to release the Yemenis is an affront to the nation’s pride. 

Attorney Mohammad Naji Allaw told us he has lost faith in Obama but he still has faith in the American people. We must work together to turn a noble page in American history. These prisoners are nearing death; time is running out. Please, go back and tell your friends in America that these are real human beings with real families, all of whom are suffering every day. The American people must do more to stop this.” 

Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of www.codepink.org and www.globalexchange.org. She is the author of Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

“In Yemen we are close to the bottom in all kinds of measures like income and education, but there’s one statistic where we come out on top: the number of prisoners in Guantanamo,” laughed Mohammad Naji Allaw, a successful Yemeni lawyer who ploughs his firm’s profits into the National Organization for Defending Rights and Freedoms. “Over 90 of 166 Guantanamo prisoners are from Yemen. Most of them, 56 to be exact, have already been cleared by the US government for release but the US government still won’t send them back.”

Our American peace delegation spent the week in Yemen meeting with lawyers, human rights activists, government officials and most importantly, families with loved ones in Guantanamo.

While we were visiting, Congress passed an amendment saying that no US military funds could be used to transfer prisoners from Guantanamo back to Yemen. The families and Yemeni officials we met were outraged. “You mean that after detaining Yemenis for over 11 years without charges and trials, refusing to release even those prisoners who have been cleared of all wrongdoing, forcing them to starve themselves to call attention to their plight, you’re saying that Congress is going to make it even harder to send them home?,” they asked us. “How can this be?”

How could we explain this to the mother of Abdulhakeem Ghaleeb, who hasn’t seen her son since he was 17 years old in 2002, a mother who can’t eat a meal in peace, knowing that her son has been on a hunger strike since February 6 and is now so weak he can’t speak? How can we explain this to 12-year-old Awda, who was in her mother’s womb when her father Abdulrahman Al Shubati was carted off to the island gulag, and here she was, holding his picture with tears streaming down her cheeks? What could we say to Ameena Yehya, whose brother had been sending home letters with beautiful drawings of flowers and scenes from their village, but stopped even writing five years ago because he is too hopeless to lift his pen? Or to Ali Mohammed, who said that on video call arranged every two months with the Red Cross he barely recognized his brother–a lifeless skeleton with sunken eyes and a big, inflated nose from where the feeding tube is forced down his nostrils?

We couldn’t bear to tell them the truth: that their sons, husbands, fathers and brothers are simply pawns in the US game of politics where one party is always trying to “out hawk” the other, where concern about winning the next election far eclipses any respect for the rights of the prisoners. And we didn’t have the heart to tell them that most American have become so consumed by fear after 9/11 that they think that holding these prisoners in Guantanamo indefinitely somehow makes them safer?

So instead we hugged and cried together. Our delegation explained that we are totally opposed to this cruel policy. We told them that over 300,000 Americans have signed petitions calling for Guantanamo to be closed. We talked about Americans like CODEPINK co-founder Diane Wilson and Veterans for Peace Elliott Adams who are risking their own lives on a long-term solidarity hunger strike–Diane since May 1 and Elliott since May 17. We showed them photos of our protests outside the White House. I mentioned that I even interrupted President Obama’s national security speech on May 23, demanding that he take action to release the 86 prisoners cleared for release. But gnawing constantly on our minds was the fact that we are just not doing enough, not caring enough, not creative enough, not strategic enough to force a change in policy. 

In 2009, President Obama had cleared 56 Yemenis for transfer home, 26 immediately with 30 others to follow. But days after Christmas Day attempt to bomb an aircraft as it was landing in Detroit, Obama placed a moratorium on the transfer of Yemeni detainees. The would-be bomber, Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, who had hidden plastic explosives in his underwear, told U.S. investigators that he’d been recruited for the mission in Yemen by Anwar al Awlaki, the US-born cleric who was later killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011. 

Human Rights Minister Hooria Mashoohouras heard US officials say that Yemeni government is not stable enough or strong enough to make sure the released prisoners don’t take up arms against America. They have told her that even if some of the prisoners were totally innocent and unjustly imprisoned, now–after 11 years behind bars–they probably hate the US so much that they’ll want revenge. In our meeting with Mashoohourshe threw up her arms in exasperation. “So you abuse these men and then you keep abusing them because they might hate you for your abuse? Is that the way the US justice system works?,” she asked. 

Mashhour said the Yemeni government has already agreed to assign 10 government ministries to monitor repatriated detainees to ensure they don’t threaten the United States. The returnees, she said, would receive counseling, job training and other aid. She also explained how she went to Washington DC in May to sign a Memorandum of Understanding to release the cleared Yemeni prisoners, but left empty handed, complaining that she was never received at the White House. 

Now the US government is setting up another obstacle: it wants Yemen to set up a rehabilitation center, but it has not committed money to fund it. Many people we talked to in Yemen believe the US government should not only fund the rehabilitation center, as this is a problem that the US created and Yemen has no money, but that it should also compensate the prisoners who have been wrongly imprisoned. 

Instead, the US Congress is trying to cut off funds that could even be used to send the prisoners home. The Congressional amendment passed on June 14 is designed just for Yemen, prohibiting Department of Defense funds from being used to repatriate Yemenis. This doesn’t become law unless it is passed by the Senate and signed by the president. So there’s still time to stop it. 

When we spoke about this amendment to Nadia Sakkof, an extraordinarily talented young women who is one of the key organizers of the National Dialogue Committee, she sprung into action. “Excuse me,” she apologized, running over to her computer, “but this is simply unacceptable and I must do something about this right now.” She fired off a message of outrage to her contacts in the U.S. Congress and wrote a letter to her colleagues at the National Dialogue Committee, asking them to join her in complaining to the US government about this new affront. By the end of the next day, 136 members of the National Dialogue had signed on and she had delivered the letter to the US Ambassador. 

The following day, June 17, we planned the first-ever protest of Yemenis and Americans outside the US Embassy in Sanaa. Our 7-person delegation arrived at 10 am, thinking that perhaps a few dozen Yemenis would join us. After all, it was a weekend, the place was hard to get to, and they had very little notice in advance. 

We waited, we heard a commotion. Marching up with street, in bright orange jumpsuits, were several hundred Yemeni families and their supporters. They were chanting “Freedom, freedom, where are you? Human rights, human rights, where are you?” 

After the chants and speeches, we brought out a letter to send to President Obama, via the Embassy, in the name of our delegation and the Yemenis. One by one, starting with the women, the Yemenis came up to sign the letter. The ones who couldn’t write stamped their fingerprints. Even the children signed. The guards allowed a few of us to cross the barricades so we could deliver the letter to an Embassy representative. We also reiterated to the Embassy staff that earlier in the week, Ambassador Gerald Feierstein had promised to us he would meet with some of the families, and we hoped he would fulfill that promise. 

At the end of the rally, we visited the National Dialogue Committee, which has been meeting for several months to co-build the foundations for a more democratic, peaceful nation. We brought orange ribbons for delegates to wear as armbands to show support for the Guantanamo prisoners. Even the security guards and reporters wanted to wear them. The 300 armbands we had quickly disappeared, with people asking for more. The support for the prisoners among the different political parties and independents at the National Dialogue is nearly universal. They say the refusal of the administration to release the Yemenis is an affront to the nation’s pride. 

Attorney Mohammad Naji Allaw told us he has lost faith in Obama but he still has faith in the American people. We must work together to turn a noble page in American history. These prisoners are nearing death; time is running out. Please, go back and tell your friends in America that these are real human beings with real families, all of whom are suffering every day. The American people must do more to stop this.” 

Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of www.codepink.org and www.globalexchange.org. She is the author of Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

Four bipartisan US senators have introduced a bill aimed at prohibiting the administration of President Barack Obama from providing military assistance to militants in Syria.

The legislation was introduced on June 20 by Democrats Tom Udall and Chris Murphy and Republicans Mike Lee and Rand Paul in an effort to bar the US Department of Defense and spy agencies from feeding anti-Syria Takfiri militants.

On June 14, Obama ordered his administration to provide the militants with weapons, which include assault rifles, shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank missiles.

Rand Paul said in a statement that the Å“presidentâ„¢s unilateral decision to arm Syrian rebels is incredibly disturbing, considering what little we know about whom we are arming.”

Chris Murphy also argued, Å“We should be extremely wary of allowing the United States to be drawn into a complicated proxy war that could mire our country for years at a potentially incalculable cost to US taxpayers and Americaâ„¢s reputation at home and abroad.”

Many members of the US Congress remain deeply skeptical about White House plans for transferring weapons to foreign-sponsored militants in Syria, while a number of others have been pressing for military aid to the Takfiris for months.

Washington announced its plans to arm the militants in Syria a day after it claimed that the Syrian army had used chemical weapons in its fight against the militants.

Syria strongly rejects such claims and says the extremists have used chemical weapons on several occasions, including an attack in the region of Khan al-Assal in the northwestern province of Aleppo on March 19, where over two dozen people died.

Turmoil has gripped Syria since March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.

MKA/HSN

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Four bipartisan US senators have introduced a bill aimed at prohibiting the administration of President Barack Obama from providing military assistance to militants in Syria.

The legislation was introduced on June 20 by Democrats Tom Udall and Chris Murphy and Republicans Mike Lee and Rand Paul in an effort to bar the US Department of Defense and spy agencies from feeding anti-Syria Takfiri militants.

On June 14, Obama ordered his administration to provide the militants with weapons, which include assault rifles, shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank missiles.

Rand Paul said in a statement that the Å“presidentâ„¢s unilateral decision to arm Syrian rebels is incredibly disturbing, considering what little we know about whom we are arming.”

Chris Murphy also argued, Å“We should be extremely wary of allowing the United States to be drawn into a complicated proxy war that could mire our country for years at a potentially incalculable cost to US taxpayers and Americaâ„¢s reputation at home and abroad.”

Many members of the US Congress remain deeply skeptical about White House plans for transferring weapons to foreign-sponsored militants in Syria, while a number of others have been pressing for military aid to the Takfiris for months.

Washington announced its plans to arm the militants in Syria a day after it claimed that the Syrian army had used chemical weapons in its fight against the militants.

Syria strongly rejects such claims and says the extremists have used chemical weapons on several occasions, including an attack in the region of Khan al-Assal in the northwestern province of Aleppo on March 19, where over two dozen people died.

Turmoil has gripped Syria since March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.

MKA/HSN

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]At least four people have been killed in a bomb attack carried out inside a Shia mosque in Pakistan’s main northwestern city of Peshawar.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]At least four people have been killed in a bomb attack carried out inside a Shia mosque in Pakistan’s main northwestern city of Peshawar.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

The American polity is showing growing signs of a lapse into immaturity. Sobriety, accountability, responsible custodianship of the public good are the earmarks of serious leadership in a healthy democracy. Their common denominator is honesty — intellectual, political, and — above all, to oneself in knowing who one is and why one is doing things. These traits, today, are most remarkable by their absence from the country’s leadership ranks. That is true from the President on down. It encompasses not only our government officials on a bipartisan basis but a very large fraction of our political class as a whole.

Behavior usually associated with (some) adolescents has become the norm. The shirking of responsibility for one’s acts, a self-absorbed narcissism, the substitution of a gratifying virtual reality for an actuality that entails obligations to others and has consequences for dereliction are its hallmarks. Most disturbing, we have become so accustomed the resulting feckless conduct of our public affairs that we tacitly accept this degradation as the new normal. Therein lies the gravest danger; for it enables and encourages all those disposed to follow an indulgent path of least resistance. And that number grows steadily.

The extremity of this phenomenon is on full display in the NSA/FBI spying affair. Consider these events. President Obama declares that the PRISM program has been “transparent” when in fact its secrecy has driven a sustained campaign to hide it from public view — and even to restrict severely knowledge about it to protective Congressional committee members. He invites an open debate on the “trade-offs’ but offers no information as to what procedures are now in place with what justification. It is not the outright lying that is immature as much as is the attitude that not one should care or even notice the blatant contradictions. Too, he sends his message via a late night talk show rather than a serious address to the American people.

Responsibility for the program, and therefore accountability, is sloughed off with the claim that “checks & balances” have been incorporated into the program despite an ignorant Congress’ willful passivity and obedient FISA courts giving a nodding ’yes’ to everything the NSA, DOJ and White House demand. This is little different from the teen-ager justifying some outrageous behavior by claiming that ‘I checked with Ben and Jerry who said their parents think it’s O.K.” In a similar vein, Senate majority Leader Harry Reed blandly announced that the PRISM spying had to be legal since a majority of the American people think it’s okay according to the opinion polls.

Mr. Obama complains that the negative reaction to the Snowden disclosures has been “hyped.” “Cm’ on folks — don’t get all bent out of shape by a little thing like this.”

Then there is the blithe take-my-word-for-it testimony that all is upright. We have heard a chorus from executive branch officials assuring us that the content of electronic messages is never scrutinized except when the FISA court has granted a warrant and that communication patterns themselves are selected according to pre-determined reference points. Why should we believe them when the same people testified a few months back under oath that the PRISM program did not exist? Why should we believe them when they are simultaneously justifying the program with claims that massive, random data collection resulted in the prevention of “more than 50 terrorist acts?” How can you achieve the one without doing the other? This sort of logical contradiction in answers given to two different questions is a flagrant disregard for the most elementary standards of truthful public discourse.

The claim itself is absurd. Why should these 50 alleged plots have gone unremarked all this time when the administration has gone out of its way to highlight and celebrate every other instance of a supposed conspiracy foiled — even the most improbable? In addition, no records are provided that could be examined to determine if the assertions are accurate. Trust me! (“Dad, you know that I’d never do anything wrong!” Forget my ‘yellow sheet’ dating back to the age of 12). And if you don’t trust what I say, you’re the one who is undermining faith in our democracy.

Another example of juvenilia passing as serious public service is FBI Director Robert Mueller’s belated and grudging admission that the Bureau has been using drone aircraft to spy on Americans. Just a few weeks earlier the White House had been saying that the question of domestic drone use was under study and that it was prepared to cooperate with Congress in fashioning appropriate legislative guidelines. Embarrassment? Apology? Regrets? Of course not. The post-modern public narcissist never feels the need to apologize. He “explains” — however thin the explanation might be. Mr. Mueller tells the Senate Intelligence Committee: “I will tell you that our footprint is very small. We have very few of limited use, and we’re exploring not only the use, but the necessary guidelines for that use…..” drones were used “in a very, very minimal way, and very seldom….It is very narrowly focused on particularized cases and particularized needs, that is the principal privacy limitation we have.” It’s Bill Clinton, the eternal adolescent delinquent, explaining “I didn’t inhale;” or, “I’m/she’s minimally pregnant — so I didn’t think it important enough to tell you.”

The casual hypocrisy of all this was captured in the official statement that “the government does not “unilaterally obtain information” from corporate servers without ‘an appropriate, and documented foreign intelligence purpose to the acquisition.” We now know that Yahoo, Google, Facebook etc. have received and acted on over 100,000 demands for access to private records in 2012 alone. Over the life of PRISM that amounts to a number in the vicinity of 250,000. Telephone company demands have not been disclosed but they must be at least as numerous. Only Executive officials with a disregard for honesty would have the nerve to make us believe that each of those demands were documented and that there was reasonable cause to delve into those records. By its own dubious account, only 50 of them turned up anything useful — that is 1 out of every 10,000. Who is kidding whom? Are they kidding themselves ? Remember — these 500,000 requests are supposedly targeted on individuals already identified and thereby constituting just cause. Some targeting.

The “war on terror” — at home and abroad —  is now more imaginary than real. We live with the dread belief that Americans are under siege by an army of evil-doers probing relentlessly for chinks in our armor so as to strike us a grievous blow. The images and emotions of 9/11 fill our minds and rule our actions. Events like the Boston bombings provide just enough impetus to perpetuate the fantasy. To live for more than a decade in a fantasy world is unnatural and unhealthful. Disturbed children do that — not the elites of a great nation.

Are we destined to be ruled indefinitely by immature people who have neither the intent nor the incentive ever to grow up?

Michael Brenner is a Professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

The American polity is showing growing signs of a lapse into immaturity. Sobriety, accountability, responsible custodianship of the public good are the earmarks of serious leadership in a healthy democracy. Their common denominator is honesty — intellectual, political, and — above all, to oneself in knowing who one is and why one is doing things. These traits, today, are most remarkable by their absence from the country’s leadership ranks. That is true from the President on down. It encompasses not only our government officials on a bipartisan basis but a very large fraction of our political class as a whole.

Behavior usually associated with (some) adolescents has become the norm. The shirking of responsibility for one’s acts, a self-absorbed narcissism, the substitution of a gratifying virtual reality for an actuality that entails obligations to others and has consequences for dereliction are its hallmarks. Most disturbing, we have become so accustomed the resulting feckless conduct of our public affairs that we tacitly accept this degradation as the new normal. Therein lies the gravest danger; for it enables and encourages all those disposed to follow an indulgent path of least resistance. And that number grows steadily.

The extremity of this phenomenon is on full display in the NSA/FBI spying affair. Consider these events. President Obama declares that the PRISM program has been “transparent” when in fact its secrecy has driven a sustained campaign to hide it from public view — and even to restrict severely knowledge about it to protective Congressional committee members. He invites an open debate on the “trade-offs’ but offers no information as to what procedures are now in place with what justification. It is not the outright lying that is immature as much as is the attitude that not one should care or even notice the blatant contradictions. Too, he sends his message via a late night talk show rather than a serious address to the American people.

Responsibility for the program, and therefore accountability, is sloughed off with the claim that “checks & balances” have been incorporated into the program despite an ignorant Congress’ willful passivity and obedient FISA courts giving a nodding ’yes’ to everything the NSA, DOJ and White House demand. This is little different from the teen-ager justifying some outrageous behavior by claiming that ‘I checked with Ben and Jerry who said their parents think it’s O.K.” In a similar vein, Senate majority Leader Harry Reed blandly announced that the PRISM spying had to be legal since a majority of the American people think it’s okay according to the opinion polls.

Mr. Obama complains that the negative reaction to the Snowden disclosures has been “hyped.” “Cm’ on folks — don’t get all bent out of shape by a little thing like this.”

Then there is the blithe take-my-word-for-it testimony that all is upright. We have heard a chorus from executive branch officials assuring us that the content of electronic messages is never scrutinized except when the FISA court has granted a warrant and that communication patterns themselves are selected according to pre-determined reference points. Why should we believe them when the same people testified a few months back under oath that the PRISM program did not exist? Why should we believe them when they are simultaneously justifying the program with claims that massive, random data collection resulted in the prevention of “more than 50 terrorist acts?” How can you achieve the one without doing the other? This sort of logical contradiction in answers given to two different questions is a flagrant disregard for the most elementary standards of truthful public discourse.

The claim itself is absurd. Why should these 50 alleged plots have gone unremarked all this time when the administration has gone out of its way to highlight and celebrate every other instance of a supposed conspiracy foiled — even the most improbable? In addition, no records are provided that could be examined to determine if the assertions are accurate. Trust me! (“Dad, you know that I’d never do anything wrong!” Forget my ‘yellow sheet’ dating back to the age of 12). And if you don’t trust what I say, you’re the one who is undermining faith in our democracy.

Another example of juvenilia passing as serious public service is FBI Director Robert Mueller’s belated and grudging admission that the Bureau has been using drone aircraft to spy on Americans. Just a few weeks earlier the White House had been saying that the question of domestic drone use was under study and that it was prepared to cooperate with Congress in fashioning appropriate legislative guidelines. Embarrassment? Apology? Regrets? Of course not. The post-modern public narcissist never feels the need to apologize. He “explains” — however thin the explanation might be. Mr. Mueller tells the Senate Intelligence Committee: “I will tell you that our footprint is very small. We have very few of limited use, and we’re exploring not only the use, but the necessary guidelines for that use…..” drones were used “in a very, very minimal way, and very seldom….It is very narrowly focused on particularized cases and particularized needs, that is the principal privacy limitation we have.” It’s Bill Clinton, the eternal adolescent delinquent, explaining “I didn’t inhale;” or, “I’m/she’s minimally pregnant — so I didn’t think it important enough to tell you.”

The casual hypocrisy of all this was captured in the official statement that “the government does not “unilaterally obtain information” from corporate servers without ‘an appropriate, and documented foreign intelligence purpose to the acquisition.” We now know that Yahoo, Google, Facebook etc. have received and acted on over 100,000 demands for access to private records in 2012 alone. Over the life of PRISM that amounts to a number in the vicinity of 250,000. Telephone company demands have not been disclosed but they must be at least as numerous. Only Executive officials with a disregard for honesty would have the nerve to make us believe that each of those demands were documented and that there was reasonable cause to delve into those records. By its own dubious account, only 50 of them turned up anything useful — that is 1 out of every 10,000. Who is kidding whom? Are they kidding themselves ? Remember — these 500,000 requests are supposedly targeted on individuals already identified and thereby constituting just cause. Some targeting.

The “war on terror” — at home and abroad —  is now more imaginary than real. We live with the dread belief that Americans are under siege by an army of evil-doers probing relentlessly for chinks in our armor so as to strike us a grievous blow. The images and emotions of 9/11 fill our minds and rule our actions. Events like the Boston bombings provide just enough impetus to perpetuate the fantasy. To live for more than a decade in a fantasy world is unnatural and unhealthful. Disturbed children do that — not the elites of a great nation.

Are we destined to be ruled indefinitely by immature people who have neither the intent nor the incentive ever to grow up?

Michael Brenner is a Professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

Israeli security guards have opened fire and killed a man near the Western Wall of al-Quds (Jerusalem) as they mistook him for a Palestinian resistance fighter.

The incident reportedly took place around 8:00 a.m. local time (0500 GMT) on Friday, when there were many people in front of the Wall.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said that a security guard near the place Å“drew his weapon and fired several shots” at the 46-year-old man after he shouted Å“Allahu Akbar,” which means Å“God is [the] Greatest.”

Å“He died from his wounds a few moments ago,” Rosenfeld said.

The Western Wall is located in East al-Quds (Jerusalem), at the foot of the western side of the Temple Mount, where al-Aqsa Mosque is located.

The incident came a few days after Israeli forces shot and injured a Palestinian farmer in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Palestinian medical personnel said the farmer sustained moderate injuries in the city of Deir al-Balah.

MKA/HSN

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

For some time it has been a gathering that seemed to be more floral than substantive, a matter of chit chat, sometimes serious, over issues of the day. General guidelines are proposed. Bland suggestions are made. Declarations are always filled with well meaning suggestions, the well aimed bromide to assuage.

In recent years, the leaders of the G-8 have acted as some de facto consortium of much noise signifying nothing. As Tom Barry observed in an article for Foreign Policy in Focus as far back as July 2002, the G-8 “had shown little leadership in addressing the deepening crisis of global governance.”

As forecast prior to the talks in Northern Ireland, the conflict in Syria dominated discussion and vacillation. The status quo has been affirmed — the United States, Britain and France wanting to push the Assad regime out, with Russia insisting that the move needed to be tempered with strict guidelines.

The result, naturally unsatisfying for everyone other than the political mechanists, is that the G-8 have agreed that something has to be done regarding Syria, though what exactly should be done remains unclear and at best inchoate. The casualty rate is soon to peak at 100 thousand dead, but the G-8 leaders left the press corps with a vaguely imprecise list of options.

A seven point plan was the resulting offspring of the talks. British Prime Minister David Cameron, in observing that there were “very different views around the G-8 table” could tell his constituents that “fundamental differences” had been overcome through “frank discussion”.

The points themselves reveal nothing significant. The “bloodshed and loss of life” had to be stopped. A peace conference should be held in Geneva as soon as possible, leading to a “transitional governing body” to take the reins of power. Humanitarian aid had to be increased. The disastrous “lessons of Iraq” — namely, the dismantling of institutions — had to be kept in mind. The use of chemical weapons had to be condemned and investigated. Syria had to be cleansed of “terrorists and extremists”. Any succeeding government would have to be non-sectarian.

In the end, the Russian President is probably bound to be the most content. Having been busy tipping the balance against Bashar al-Assad’s enemies, he is the one with more cards than most. When the balance was swinging away from the Syrian regime, the Russians beefed up Syria’s surface-to-air capabilities. While his politics might seem rank, Putin’s position has been clear from the start. Everyone knows the horse he is backing and the oats he is giving it. Nor is he too keen on seeing a Sunni-mad regime come to power. Watch, he seems to be saying, what you wish for.

In contrast, the Western powers such as France, the United States and Britain keep company with such peculiar customers as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, who see their own version of regime change in the Middle East with heavily tinted glasses. The result is promised change with no change.

The other feature on the agenda, and again, another well aimed bromide, was the global bogeyman of tax evasion. As Robert W. Wood of Forbes Magazine (Jun 19) explains, “The G-8 nations agree: tax evasion is bad and hurts everyone. More inter-nation corporation is needed. But exactly what is legitimate and what isn’t aren’t so clear.” Global tax evasion, in terms of figures, vary, but one estimate from the Tax Justice Network puts it at around $3 trillion a year.

Cameron was pushing for the execution of the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Assistance in Tax Matters. Vital to this, as Wood points out, is the information sharing aspect of the document, enabling several jurisdictions to share information about bank accounts. None of this actually clears up the business as to what is legitimate tax “minimisation” and what constitutes actual evasion. The tax accounting wizards at Apple and Google know only too well that appearance is everything and that money has a habit of walking when needed.

Leaders such as Canada’s Stephen Harper have shown lukewarm enthusiasm, when he has bothered to, about such international reform. MPs from the NDP see Harper as heading the pack against such change. “Why Stephen Harper should choose to protect those who use international tax havens to evade paying their taxes is inexplicable and is unacceptable,” suggested NDP Foreign Affairs critic Paul Dewar (iPolitics, Jun 11).

The resulting Lough Erne declaration from the G-8 summit was standard process without more, a stand favouring transparency over clandestine and unreachable tax havens. “Countries should change rules that let companies shift their profits across borders to avoid taxes, an multinationals should report to tax authorities what tax they pay and where.” As Dennis Howlett of Canadians for Tax Fairness surmised, “The commitments are hedged a bit and the roadmap for action is vague.” That said, he was content that the declaration “definitely moves us forward in efforts to curb tax evasion facilitated by tax havens.”

Such matters — death and taxes — are truly staples and plagues of human existence. But the G-8 discussions have shown that, whether it be the issue of debt relief (Gleneagles, Scotland in 2005); or the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Kananaskis, Canada), actions tend to lag behind undertakings.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

There’s a riveting moment in Dirty Wars — the new documentary about the War on Terror by investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill — that calls to mind glimpses of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Charlie Kaufman’s masterful reflection on memory, consciousness, and identity.

Scahill has been on the trail of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (known as JSOC, the “paramilitary arm of the administration”) across the globe, uncovering the agency’s fingerprint in night raids, drone strikes, and targeted killings in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and beyond. His reporting is, of necessity, retrospective — the opening sequence has him interviewing relatives of an Afghan police commander and two pregnant women killed in a night raid in Gardez.

The elusive “kill list”, for him, is always in his past, its members long since dead by the time he arrives on the scene. Then comes Anwar Al-Awlaki. Scahill discovers the name listed as one of the targets in a press release describing an unsuccessful raid in Yemen. And he’s off, in a race against the clock, to find with the radicalized American Muslim cleric, to tell his story before a drone flying at 60,000 feet extinguishes his life. The viewer, of course, already knows how this story ends.

Scahill wonders if the War on Terror has turned on itself, with him “investigating the planned assassination of a US citizen.” In a daring sequence, President Obama is portrayed as Al-Awlaki’s mirror image, each mimicking the other’s violent rhetoric about war, retribution, and justice, positioning themselves as the aggrieved party acting in self-defense. He never gets to meet Al-Awlaki — who is killed in 2011 along with his 16-year old Denver-born son, but there are two moving sequences with Al-Awlaki’s parents, both before and after the assassination.

If JSOC and Obama are the putative villains of the film, Scahill — the lone, investigative journalist patriotically risking life and limb to expose the reckless follies of his government — is the hero. Brooding and pensive, he says little when he’s on the screen, content to narrate his life story from behind the camera. We see him in Brooklyn, at his apartment, writing feverishly in a restaurant in Williamsburg, shopping at an over-priced grocery store, on the subway. At one point, he wonders if he can get used to New York after having experienced the thrill of the war front.

We are told time and time again that no one is asking these questions — in Gardez, in the desert in Manjalah, Yemen, where Scahill walks amidst used ordinance, bomb remnants that read “Made in Pennsylvania,” ever the lone hero, in Somalia, and in Washington, DC. This is not the life of a socialite — there are no girls in the film, not even any friends. The only calls he gets are from secretive JSOC operatives who either threaten him or agree to on-the-camera interviews with facial and vocal distortion. The talk show rounds are exposed with cruel realism, the entire exercise a farce of “free media,” with one heart-breaking moment when a joker with a late night show wonders aloud, “Why aren’t you dead yet? Like one day you might come home in a body bag.”

Notwithstanding David Brooks’ pseudo social psychological rantings about “the atomization of society,” Scahill’s experience conforms to the archetype of the solitary, isolated, modern anti-hero as hero. Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, even Rand Paul are all imagined as lone voices of reason in the wilderness, calling out against the madness of the self-fulfulling prophecy of the never-ending Global War on Terror — in Brooks’ words, “the solitary naked individual” against “the gigantic and menacing state.”

As a film-goer (and putative film critic), Dirty Wars is a bit like Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore’s 2004 antiwar documentary. In nine years, though, the scale of wrongdoing has increased exponentially — due process-less assassination of American citizens, warrantless wiretapping of millions (with the complicity of Silicon Valley’s tech giants), and undeclared JSOC activity in over 75 countries — while the antiwar movement has all but evaporated, the left having been completely emasculated, buying into the rhetoric of endless war, a handful of libertarians the only ones left to carry the banner of peace and prosperity.

“How does a war like this end?” asks Scahill, on multiple occasions. The war, by design, is self-propagating, a cancer that can only grow out of control until it infests the host itself, as the NSA scandal reveals so vividly. Every kill on the kill list creates more enemies, causes more kill lists to be generated, until there is no need even for a kill list and all males between 15 and 75 become legitimate, military targets. As Scahill observes upon returning from Yemen, “The whole world was a battlefield, I didn’t know where to go next.”

In Somalia, Scahill meets US-backed warlords engaged in vicious civil wars, one of whom he asks, “If you capture a fighter alive, do you execute him on the battlefield?” The man, Indha Adde, is unblinking. “We have to show the fighters that we have no mercy.” Another warlord praises the US. “America knows war,” he says. “They are war masters.” The film ends with the by now familiar refrain: “How does a war like this end? And “What do we do when we see what’s hiding in plain sight?”

The screening I attend — at the IFC Center in New York’s West Village — is followed by a panel discussion with Amy Goodman and two others. I ask the first question: “What do we do after watching a movie like this? Do we sigh and say, ‘we’re fucked’, and get on the train back to Brooklyn?” Amy is optimistic. “This might be the film that ends the war,” she says. “It entirely reframes the debate.” Anthony Arnove, one of the film’s producers, admits that “many progressives have placed a lot of illusions in this president” and expresses hope that the film would spark conversations and soul-searching.

I meet Angela, a twenty-something graduate student in anthropology, who reluctantly confesses to having voted for Obama — twice. She had recently moved to the city from the South and confessed that her anxieties about living in New York paled in comparison to the traumas inflicted upon the innocent victims of the Global War on Terror. Meanwhile, Christina, an activist and freelance journalist, films the police car parked across from the cinema. “Why aren’t you investigating the corporate crimes on Wall Street?” she shouts.

An odd sense of melancholy settles in as I stand amidst the bustling urban crowds on 6^th Avenue.

How does a war like this end?

Hamdan Azhar is a New York based writer and data scientist. His writings have appeared in the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, and the Christian Science Monitor.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

The United Arab Emirates is set to put on trial 30 Egyptians and Emiratis on charges of running an illegal branch of Egyptâ„¢s Muslim Brotherhood.

Emirati state news agency WAM reported on June 19 that some in the group had Å“set up and operated a branch of an organization with an international nature… for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt without a license.”

The report also quoted prosecutor Ahmed al-Danhani as saying that the group had attempted to recruit new members and received financial assistance from a Å“secret organization that had sought to seize power in the country.”

According to the report, the 30-member group is accused of stealing sensitive electronic material regarding the same Å“secret organization” from a government department.

The group has been referred to the Federal Supreme Court, the prosecutor said.

Danhani made the remarks in apparent reference to a group of 94 Emirati nationals who are awaiting trial over their charges of plotting to overthrow the government.

Ahmed Aref, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, said he was not aware of the trial.

Å“A lot of these files are not dealt with in a way that protects peopleâ„¢s rights and the charges are trials for political opinions,” Aref said, adding, Å“They are dealt with using a security mentality similar to pre-revolution times in Egypt.”

Relations between Cairo and Abu Dhabi soured following the detention of eleven Egyptian nationals in early 2013, who allegedly held Å“secret meetings” across the country and Å“recruited Egyptian expats in the UAE to join their ranks,” according to Emirati media.

On January 3, Egypt sent a delegation of senior officials to the UAE to discuss the release of its nationals with Emirati officials. However, Abu Dhabi rejected Cairoâ„¢s call to free them.

In April, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry also summoned the Emirati charge dâ„¢affaires over the fate of the detained Egyptians, who are reportedly believed to be part of the group of 30 facing trial in the United Arab Emirates.

MKA/HSN

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

With Washington perversely continuing to violate Pakistanâ„¢s sovereignty with its assassination drones, a chorus is growing in the Asian country for military action against the unmanned aerial vehicles, Press TV reports.

Many in Pakistan are demanding that the high courts order the government to shoot down the US assassination drones.

The newly elected members of Pakistan’s parliament have also shown resentment against the US for its violations.

Å“The Obama administration has to back off because they should decide whether Pakistan is a friend or if Pakistan is a foe. If Pakistan is a friend of the United States of America, then the drone strikes must end. It is incumbent on the newly elected government of Pakistan to take a clear, principled, strong position on this issue,” said Mushahid Hussain, a member of Pakistanâ„¢s parliament.

Opposition groups, including the countryâ„¢s leading opposition party – Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), recently blamed the Pakistani military for providing intelligence reports to the CIA, calling on the newly formed government to reform its domestic policies in order to find a diplomatic solution to rampant US aggression.

Å“The entire nation, a national consensus has evolved around drone attacks, and people feel that they should be stopped forthwith. Tehreek-e-Insaaf has very clearly said that if the government takes a position on this, we will give them all the support that they require,” said Shah Mehmood Qureshi, vice chairman of the PTI.

This is while Pakistanâ„¢s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has criticized the assassination drone strikes, saying they violate the countryâ„¢s national sovereignty and territorial integrity and describing the CIA-operated strikes as a violation of international law and the UN charter.

Washington claims to target militants in the country but reports indicate that many of the drone strike victims are civilians.

Over the past several years, Washington has been launching drone attacks on Muslim countries, including Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. The strikes have also triggered massive protests in the Middle East.

GMA/HMV

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

France and Spain are likely to fine US Internet giant Google Inc. over its policies on collecting user data, amid Washingtonâ„¢s controversial surveillance programs in Europe.

Reports said that the US National Security Agency (NSA) under the controversial Prism surveillance program secretly collected user data from nine American companies, including Google, in a bid to track peopleâ„¢s movements and contacts. The news makes the timing sensitive for Google.

The French National Commission on Computing and Freedom (CNIL) said on June 20 that Google has broken the French law. The search giant is given three months to alter its privacy rules or run the risk of paying a fine of up to 150,000 euros (about $200,000).

The CNIL added that the UK, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands are due to take a similar action against Google. The French National Commission on Computing and Freedom has been leading Europeâ„¢s inquiry since Google launched its consolidated privacy policy in March 2012.

Å“By the end of July, all the authorities within the (EU data protection) task force will have taken coercive action against Google,” said CNIL President Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin.

Meanwhile, Spainâ„¢s Data Protection Agency (AEPD) told Google that it would face a fine between 40,000 euros and 300,000 euros for each of the five suspected data breaches that include disproportionate use of private data and storing private information for excessive or undetermined periods.

Google merged its 60 privacy policies into one and began combining data collected on individual users across its services, including YouTube, Gmail and social network Google+, in 2012. The new policy allows Google to track users across all its platforms.

The move prompted Europeâ„¢s national data protection regulators to launch a joint inquiry and give Google until February to offer changes. However, Google did not cooperate.

According to a spokesman for Germanyâ„¢s data protection regulator, Google representatives are to answer allegations on the issue in a German court hearing next week.

MR/HSN

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Just for the sake of argument, let’s suspend our disbelief for a moment and pretend (I know it’s a stretch) that the Obama administration and the apologists for the nation’s spy apparatus in Congress, Democratic and Republican, are telling us the gods’ honest truth.

They have, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, “amped up” their defense of the NSA’s massive spying program, claiming that not two, but 50 terrorist plots have been foiled thanks to their metadata mining and their intrusive monitoring of our phone and email conversations and website browsing activity.

Think what that means: for years now, the Jihadists have known that the US spy apparatus is ubiquitous, and that it is able to track all their communications. Of course they knew this, because they would have seen all these plots being foiled (the real ones, not the many ones that were created by FBI or CIA provocateurs and plants), and, not being stupid, they would have put it together and realized that the plots that depended upon a lot of phone calls and internet communications were getting busted up, while ones that were handled either solo, or that were developed by careful word-of-mouth communication and courier were managing to succeed.

But we poor schmucks, the American people, have been left in ignorance, imagining that our carefully crafted and painstakingly memorized six or eight-digit passwords, including at least one letter and one number (or if we’re really good, some symbol or other), were doing the job of keeping our online lives private and that our unlisted numbers, or our decision not to list an address with the phone company, were keeping our telephonic communications secure.

Ho ho! Were we fooled!

But really, are we going to believe this nonsense about 50 NSA-foiled plots?

The reason the NSA’s success rate at defeating terror plots leapt overnight from an initial unimpressive two to an impressive 50 is that it turns out that the American people were really not very happy or grateful about learning that they had surrendered all privacy to Big Brother in return for the alleged disrupting of one wacko who had a dream, though poorly conceived, of bombing the New York subway, and the belated capture of another guy who had already allegedly done all the target-scouting work for the successful massacre in the hotel and train station of Mumbai, in India. That’s clearly not a great record to stand on, so now we’re being told by the NSA that actually it wasn’t just two plots that were foiled by their Orwellian spying, it was two score and 10. Much better, right?

Except… we don’t get to learn what those alleged busted plots were. If they were as hairbrained as the underwear bomber’s plan, which succeeded only in scorching his own privates, or as poorly conceived as the Times Square bomber’s plot, which succeeded only in burning some of the upholstery in his SUV, we don’t really have much to show for the freedom we’ve had stolen from us.

And we’re not going to learn what most of these alleged foiled plots were because…they’re secret.

We do know that Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO), who as members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, were briefed on at least some of the plots, including the first two that were offered up to us as demonstrations of the NSA’s prowess, have concluded that the NSA was exaggerating. They report that those first two plots were actually foiled by tips from British police, who had broken up plots in that country through good police work and then passed along evidence about plotters they were linked to here in the US. There is really no reason to believe that’s not the case with the other alleged NSA “triumphs.” It’s highly likely that they were all busted by solid police work and that the NSA was and also-ran in the process, playing a cameo role, and at best providing post-facto evidence to use in any prosecution, if that (as was the case in it’s “success” after the Mumbai massacre).

In reality, the biggest threat to America today is not terrorism, which is really a much more minor problem than drunk driving (and one which would subside if the US stopped trying to be a global empire), but rather a government that has become increasingly unhinged, unmoored from the people and the Constitution, and thoroughly unprincipled – ready to lie without hesitation and acting in the interests of the rich and the powerful, instead of in the broad interests of the majority of the population.

We have reached a point where trust in the government is so low that the default assumption of most ciizens is that the government is lying – and they are correct. Our government lies about the extent to which it spies on us, it lies about the integrity of the IRS, it lies about wanting to rein in the banks, it lies about “winning” the war in Afghanistan, it lies about the Social Security program going bankrupt, it lies about the US not torturing captives, it lies about chemical weapons use in Syria, it lies about not deliberately killing innocent civilians, including women and children, with its drones in Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan, and it lies about nuclear power being safe (and about there being no radioactive fallout in the US from the Fukushima disaster). That’s just a partial list. You can add your own to it, I’m sure, with little difficulty.

As the president said in one of his rare moments of accidental candor: “If people can’t trust, not only the executive branch, but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges to make sure we’re abiding by the Constitution, due process and the rule of law, then we’re gonna have some problems here.”

Exactly. And that’s one reason we do have problems. Based upon a towering stack of evidence, the people of the United States, left, right and center, now profoundly do not trust the government.

But the real reason we have a problem is that the government – the executive branch, the Congress and the federal courts, especially the Supreme Court – don’t trust the people. Hence the spying, the amped up police departments with all their swat gear, tanks, and soon drones, and the laws making any expression of protest a crime. Look at the way the federal government orchestrated the brutal crushing of the Occupy Movement. Police in paramilitary and SWAT garb, armed with flash-bang stun grenades, rubber bullets, truncheons, saps, gallons of mace and even sonic weapons, using night-time assaults, mass arrests, and keeping the media at bay, cleared out Occupy actions across the country, city by city, under the direct guidance of the Department of Homeland Security. What was that but fear of the people? Look at the way the full force of the US government’s spying, diplomatic and legal apparatus have been brought down on whistleblowers like Julian Assange, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden for simply telling the truth. What is that but fear of the people knowing the truth?

Today I drove past a couple of people in the neighboring village of Flourtown, PA, who had set up some signs on a sidewalk along the main street calling for the impeachment of “Big Brother Obama.” People driving past in their cars in this town, which had voted for Obama both in 2008 and 2012, were waving and honking their horns. I though, “Hey, this is great. Obama’s starting to be seen the way G.W. Bush was seen, as a Constitutional criminal.” Then I noticed that the protesters were from the Lyndon LaRouche cult, the National Caucus of Labor Committees.

Amazing! To think that the US has sunk so far into fascist-style police statism, that the LaRouchies, who used to just seem like paranoid kooks, are now looking sane and prescient.

DAVE LINDORFF is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, an online newspaper collective, and is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

Tensions have flared up between Britain and Argentina over the sovereignty of the Malvinas Islands.

The two countries, which claim ownership of the islands, clashed over the issue at the United Nations on Thursday.

Addressing the UN special committee on decolonization, Argentinean Foreign Minister Hector Timerman regretted the Å“intransigence of the United Kingdom” as he repeated his countryâ„¢s calls for the UK to engage in negotiations over the sovereignty of the archipelago.

Timerman also denounced a referendum held in Malvinas in March as British Å“propaganda.”

Meanwhile, the UN committee passed a non-binding resolution, backed by a number of Latin American states, which calls for a peaceful and negotiated settlement between Argentina and Britain over the islands.

However, UK Ambassador to the UN Mark Lyall Grant expressed opposition to the resolution, saying, Å“The committeeâ„¢s approach is outdated and disconnected from the people itâ„¢s supposed to be helping.”

On March 10-11, the British inhabitants of the disputed islands participated in what the Argentinean government called an illegal referendum, voting for the islands to remain part of the British overseas territories.

Argentinaâ„¢s Foreign Ministry has accused the UK government of manipulating the dispute and status of the islands through its referendum.

Argentina and the UK fought a 74-day-long war in 1982 over the islands. The conflict ended with the British side claiming victory.

Located about 4,800 kilometers (300 miles) off Argentinaâ„¢s coast and home to about 3,000 inhabitants, the Malvinas Islands have been declared part of the British overseas territories since the UK established its colonial rule on the territories in 1833.

MR/HSN

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

We are so accustomed to the connection between political parties and democracy that to question the relationship between the two might seem absurd. But for those who recognize the multiple crises faced by humanity – the destruction of our environment, climate change, the ravages of unfettered finance capital, the undeniable limits to growth – the failure of our liberal, multi-party democracies seems increasingly obvious.

To many people, the millions who can’t even be bothered to vote, they are simply irrelevant.

Of course for the elites and the corporations that feed off it, the current system is working fine. Deregulation, privatization, high-end tax cuts and the Orwellian security state now being exposed in the U.S. all contribute to wealth and political power of the One Per Cent (actually more like the Ten Per Cent). While they still have to breathe the same polluted air as the rest of us, the elites believe they can somehow achieve immunity from the global forces now in play. Of course they are wrong. But so long as they believe they are right, the crises will continue to worsen and the rest of us will continue to suffer.

The tragic irony in all this is that in most democracies the majority of people actually share values that, if they drove government policy, would begin to address the crises. But there is a persistent disconnect between what people want and what the system can deliver. The multi-party system is designed to be dominated by money and increasingly sophisticated marketing, micro-targeting and data-mining. Disengaged citizens haven’t a prayer in dealing with the modern election machine.

Left wing parties try to play this game but inevitably come up short. The “game” has been designed not to represent the needs of people or communities but to manage capitalism in the interests of the elites. As soon as you accept the rules of this game, that is what you end up doing. The electoral contest is inherently corrupting of genuine democracy.

Reflective of this decay of democracy is the recent British Columbia election in which a totally bankrupt Liberal government won re-election against an NDP which thought it could stroll to power using the conventional machine approach to elections. But to truly draw upon people’s progressive instincts you have to engage them at the community level year round. Just think of the odds against winning in the conventional B.C. contest: a totally hostile media which effectively operates like the propaganda arm of the Liberal Party, live-streaming neo-liberal ideology into every home every day of every year.

Elections as we experience them are themselves apolitical. People are supposed to suddenly become informed citizens – for one month every four years. There is no substantive dialogue with the citizenry. The parties are like alien entities that suddenly arrive in your living room, not to engage you but to somehow coax you into voting for them. Even working in elections is apolitical. The NDP insists that its callers and door knockers not talk to people off script – because they fear their own members are so ill-informed about its policies that they might say something to harm the campaign.

The inevitable result of a progressive party adopting the election tactics and operating principles of its right-wing opponents is that it has to move to the right to be competitive. If you don’t trust your support base or even your members to be progressive you have little choice. At the federal level a single policy area fatally reduces the NDP’s capacity for progressive positions. The NDP refuses to seriously address the revenue/tax issue. Conservative and Liberal tax cuts have lopped off between $50 and $80 billion a year in revenue without which the NDP can do virtually nothing to reverse the dismantling of the social democratic features of the federal state.

To be fair to the NDP the other missing element in national politics are robust, grassroots social and labour movements whose role it is to move the ideological and political goal posts to the left. With the aforementioned media ready and willing to trash any policy or party that steps outside the bounds of what is acceptable to Bay Street, it is not difficult to understand the NDP’s reluctance to provide bold leadership on critical issues. Without social movements creating the political space an electoral machine party is vulnerable when it comes to taking bold positions.

Two recent examples of the NDP taking advantage of political space created by social movement organizations demonstrate how it should work. Last year the NDP alarmed social activists with statements suggesting broad acceptance of corporate rights (“free trade”) deals, including the odious CETA deal with the EU. But recently, both Don Davies the NDP trade critic and Mulcair himself have come out clearly against the investor-state provisions of these deals – provisions that neutralize government’s capacity for legislation by allowing corporations to sue governments directly for laws that affect their profitability. That change followed effective grassroots campaigns against CETA and FIPA, the 31-year deal with China.

On the tax front the NDP has taken a strong position on the issue of tax havens. While this is an easy one to lead on (not even the Taxpayers Federation can find a way to defend crooks), the party’s position is strongly reinforced by an effective campaign by the group Canadians for Tax Fairness. It remains to be seen if the party will take on tougher tax issues like increasing personal and corporate income taxes and whether the fair tax movement is there to back it up.

While these are positive signs for progressive politics, they are rearguard actions aimed primarily at stopping things from getting even worse. There is another political world out there that is the elephant in the room – the need for a steady state, low growth economy, bringing finance capital to heel and dealing with the rapidly unfolding climate crisis. The formal political scene still operates as if it is business as usual, incapable in its current state of seriously addressing the most important issues facing humanity. At some point progressive forces are going to have to come to grips with the need to change the way they do politics both at the party level and the civil society level. Both branches of progressive politics are in desperate need of fundamental change though at this point there is little appreciation of this fact.

It will require an enormous effort in both camps which have institutionalized their approaches to politics to such an extent they cannot see the need for change. It is difficult to imagine the NDP suddenly returning to its CCF roots and once again becoming a movement rooted in community. History does not move backwards and there is no grassroots push within the NDP membership for developing a movement/party that actually engages ordinary citizens on a year round basis.

Similarly, the remnants of what were once robust and effective social movements are (with some important exceptions) increasingly weak, demoralized and isolated. Small wonder. The context for the creation of these single-issue movements was the early Trudeau era when governments actually listened to citizens’ groups while expanding the social and economic role of governments. The efficacy of this kind of civil society organizing has however been in a steady decline since the signing of the FTA with the U.S. What is now needed is a broad social movement which incorporates all of the issues now dealt with by hundreds of disconnected organizations.

It all has to do with recovering community and the commons. The destruction of community has been the great success of the right. When Margaret Thatcher stated there was “no such thing as society” she was not describing current reality – she was describing her goal. It has been largely achieved in English-speaking developed countries. If we are to even begin to address our share of the global crises we will have to do it by creating a political culture that reinvents the commons and ends people’s isolation from each other.

It’s a difficult and long-term task – likely as long as the right has been dominant. There is at least one reason for optimism on this front – the recent coming together the CAW and CEP unions to launch Unifor, billed as a reinvention of unionism “for the unemployed and self-employed, a union for women and young workers – a union for everyone.” That sounds a lot like a union rooted not just in the workplace but in the community. It will, we can hope, be a challenge to the rest of the labour movement which finds itself in a state of embattled relevance in the struggle for a better world.

But, how, in the next five to ten years, can civil society organize in such a way as to reverse the decline of community and transition from “silo” politics? A key to this goal is to be found at the level of civic politics. It is the level of government closest to people in their daily lives and presents a scale of politics with the most potential for community building. There are scattered efforts across the country to elect progressive councils but the left needs to focus serious resources and planning if civic politics is to become the battleground for changing the political culture.

The right has already thrown down the gauntlet. Preston Manning’s Centre for Building Democracy announced this spring that it is putting major resources into civic politics to help conservative candidates take over city and town councils across the country. It’s the last field of battle for the hearts and minds of Canadians. We had better show up.

MURRAY DOBBIN, now living in Powell River, BC has been a journalist, broadcaster, author and social activist for over forty years. He now writes a bi-weekly column for the on-line journals the Tyee and rabble.ca. He can be reached at murraydobbin@shaw.ca

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

The Taliban is finally making another try at initiating peace talks. Who is listening and who cares?

Afghans care. Their hearts are in pieces like the rubble that is strewn wherever the US-led NATO/Karzai forces have bombed from the air, or where the Taliban has crude-bombed, sometimes suicide-bombed, from the ground.

The Bush-installed Karzai government cares–and they don’t want it because the Taliban are sort of acting like a government-in-exile, replete with a new office in Doha, Qatar that sported a Taliban flag and a plaque identifying the building as the offices of the “Political Office of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” Whoops. Hamid Karzai wants it clear that these are just ragtag insurgents, not a government-in-exile. But both sides have a point. Karzai holds that, unlike the Taliban, his government is elected. The Taliban, who did indeed take power by military force–although the origin stories of the Taliban tell of liberation and defense of the vulnerable, making them popular in the early-to-mid 1990s and made recruiting easy for them, paving their way to power–ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until ousted by the US invasion in 2001 (and were heavily supported during their formation and rule by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, who were massively supported by the US), so in their eyes they are the government-in-exile. They see Karzai as the puppet government of the occupying military.

Underlying these deep differences are the age-old problems of the conflict industry, that is, those who benefit financially, politically, or militarily by the continuation of the war and so work to sabotage peace efforts. Those parties may be visible or shadowy and they may proclaim public support for peace or peace talks, but their actual work is to undermine any real peace. They are the war contractors, the business owners both in Afghanistan and elsewhere who profit handsomely from the ongoing war, the military leaders from all sides, and the politicians who stand to lose everything if peace breaks out. Indeed, says a Pakistani source who told Reuters on condition of anonymity, “there were many likely spoilers in the peace process who would want to maintain the status quo to continue to benefit from the war economy and the present chaotic conditions.”

How can we who live in a democracy help in a situation like this?

First, tell our President and our Secretary of State and our elected representatives that we expect the US to stick to the military exit plan, to accelerate it if possible, and to bring home or destroy all US military weapons and munitions as we leave. The US should ban itself from selling or giving any weapons to any party in the region. That is a proven losing strategy, again and again. It was a loser when we gave tons of weapons to the mujahedeen in the 1980s–weapons that then became the arsenals of the fighting Islamic forces that either launched the September 11 attacks or harbored those who did. It’s called blowback and it works well for US war profiteers. Ending their profit-taking is perhaps the most important peace step the American people can achieve by themselves, without the involvement of any foreign government. As long as American war corporations are allowed to sell their warmaking arsenals and ammunition either to the Pentagon to give away to Central Asian governments or to any of those governments (or any parties who trade with those governments and who can act as transshipment brokers), we are enabling the conflict industry that is killing innocent Afghans and enraging the survivors and crippling any efforts toward peace.

We, the American people, can take decisive steps to give Afghans more hope than they’ve had since 1979 if we outlaw the sale of the goods of war to the region, withdraw our own troops and weaponry, and convert funds that our Congress was going to take from the US taxpayers for making war and spend them instead on some combination of desperately needed humanitarian aid, US war-debt reduction, and US domestic expenses (education, environmental protection, and US infrastructure maintenance–all of which create far more jobs than the weapons industry ever did).

In short, what is good for peace for the people of Afghanistan is good for the well being of all Americans except for the extremely wealthy war profiteers. It’s time for them to stop controlling us.

Tom H. Hastings is PeaceVoice Director and teaches in the Conflict Resolution program at Portland State University.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

Homelessness is finally catching the attention of the media, everyday people and even politicians in the Midlands of South Carolina. We’ve heard much about compassion, humanity, respect and some sensible approaches to ending homelessness.

A community approach to homelessness has challenged the Midlands for years. Recently, City Councilman Cameron Runyan has led on the issue. In April, he called for several public meetings to solicit solutions from our diverse community. People responded. Every meeting was full, with all seats taken and people lining the walls, eager to speak or hear others’ ideas. Council members and the mayor were there to hear from service providers such as Transitions Homeless Center, United Way and The Free Clinic, as well as from volunteers, neighborhoods, downtown business owners and the homeless themselves. Most speakers were positive and made excellent suggestions. A few spent their time painting the homeless as subhuman pariahs who must be eliminated from the community immediately.

On June 4, Councilman Runyan presented his report, “Columbia Cares: A Vision for Addressing Homelessness,” to Council and the public. The six goals Councilman Runyan synthesized from community input were aspirations most of us can agree on. The lofty ideals include bringing “humanity to the response” and meeting the “unique needs of the individuals in need.”

Other goals, some more specific, are ones we can rally around: “Create opportunities for people to work.” The homeless we know are crying out for jobs. Provide “public hygiene facilities.” The homeless and downtown residents agree on this. “Bring accountability to those in poverty.” As in the rest of the population, there are responsible homeless people and there are irresponsible homeless people who give the others a bad name. “Address root causes, not just symptoms.” Yes!

We support the report’s proposal of an induction center, a “one-stop shop” triage to identify the needs of the homeless and direct them to community resources. The greater Columbia community can probably agree on that as an efficient way to assist the homeless toward overcoming the obstacles on their way to self-sufficient living.

Then comes the scary part. Councilman Runyan’s plan also contains ideas that volunteers in the homeless community believe smack of banishment, exile and the questionable redirecting of personal assets. These ideas we will oppose as strongly as we support the positive ones.

Leave Town

The plan states that if the homeless violate existing laws – such as loitering, panhandling or urban camping – they must go to the induction center, go to jail or leave town. How convenient! Banishment is one way of clearing Columbia’s streets of undesirables. The plan no doubt includes this last option of getting the homeless out of town in hopes of sending our problems away for someone else to deal with, rather than facing them ourselves. Surely those of all faiths are struck by how far afield that approach is from the admonition of our faith tradition to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and welcome the stranger.

Go to the Retreat

Scary idea number two is sending those found physically or mentally deficient to a proposed facility called The Retreat. This facility, a 100-plus-acre privately owned facility 10 to 15 miles outside of town, is referred to in the plan as the shelter of last resort. So we are separating outcasts with physical, mental and social problems from the mainstream of our culture and sending them to a “Retreat” where they will take part in a work program and be concentrated away from civil society. Makes us mindful of the giant sign across the main entrance of the Auschwitz work camp in Poland: Arbeit macht frei; labor makes you free.

Redirect Resources

The Funding the System section of the “Columbia Cares” report states that the cost of the retreat facility and other programs will be defrayed in part by “payments currently being lost” such as food stamps, housing and disability. These items will be redirected to the provider of the service. This sounds like a plan to have the residents’ Social Security disability checks turned over to the provider. This will certainly require new legislation – and the plan is appalling.

We who volunteer with the homeless will strongly support positive solutions to ending homelessness – and will work to let the public know the whole story when plans are made concerning the homeless.

Tom Turnipseed is an attorney, writer and peace activist in Columbia, SC. His blog is http://tomandjudyonablog.blogspot.com/He and wife Judy are sponsors of Homeless Helping Homeless and work 15 hours a week on homeless issues

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

June 14, 2013
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As one who writes in defense of recreational “hard” drug users, I am frequently irked by the anti-drug sensationalism presented in supposedly objective news articles. An example is the recent front-page article in the Huffington Post, “ Nazis Took ‘Meth’ Pills to Stay Alert, Boost Endurance During World War II, Letters Reveal.”

Pairing methamphetamine with the Nazis is a double-the-evil masterstroke of front-page flair. It comes from a journalistic tradition that has similarly paired crack with black welfare queens in the mythic crack-baby epidemic, and cannibals and mephedrone in the nonsensical bath-salts cannibalism phenomenon. (Both the cack-baby and the bath-salts cannibalism stories have been debunked; see here and here.)

The basis of the Huffington Post article is that the Nazis gave their troops the drug Pervitin (pharmaceutical methamphetamine), in World War II. This is true, but the rest of the article is a lesson in spin.

1. Nothing New Here

First, the letters did not reveal anything new. Nazi use of Pervitin has been widely known for over seventy years. The letters themselves were old news as well. The only thing new was someone at the Huffington Post read Der Spiegel and realized Nazis plus meth equals web gold.

2. American Kids Are Prescribed Almost the Same Thing

Methamphetamine is a type of amphetamine that has essentially the same effect on the central nervous system as dextroamphetamine. Dextroamphetamine is in Adderall. The substantial difference between street methamphetamine and Adderall is not from their pharmacology but from dosage and administration. Adderall users take small doses by the ingestion of pills. Street users inject or smoke large doses. Injecting and smoking provides a shorter, but more intense, reaction to a drug. The Nazis distributed small doses in pill form, just as American doctors do today to our nation’s youth–with negligible addiction risk.

3. Allied Forces Did and Still Do Almost the Same Thing

During World War II over 72 million “energy tablets” were dispersed to the British military, and an even larger amount went to US forces. Amphetamines assisted in stopping Erwin “Desert Fox” Rommel and the German army in Northern Africa at the Second Battle of El Alamein where the British 24th Armoured Brigade fought without sleep for four straight days while losing heavy casualties.

Ironically, the American military went with amphetamines instead of methamphetamines because the former provided a better “subjective lift in mood.” In lay terms, the US chose amphetamine because it gave a better high, and they continued to use it. Decades later the US military’s usage of amphetamines per soldier in Vietnam dwarfed the usage of both the Germans and the Allies in World War II.

The amphetamine Dexedrine is still used by Air Force pilots today. In 2003, Colonel Peter Demitry, chief of the US Air Force surgeon-general’s science and technology division, said that Dexedrine, “has never been associated with a proven adverse outcome in a military operation. This is a common, legal, ethical, moral and correct application.” If the distribution of amphetamines caused significant troop addiction, it is doubtful the military would continue to use it.

4. Everyone Already Knows That Meth Is Bad

The requisite morality message that methamphetamine is bad is delivered in the article by saying its usage leads to the symptoms exhibited by extreme cases. Most people who try methamphetamine do not continue to use it regularly, much less become horribly addicted, and as someone who has spent time with middle-class methamphetamine users I can assure you meth mouth is as foreign to them as it is to diet-soda drinkers. (See meth/diet-soda mouth here.)

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

June 18, 2013
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How to describe your first time in a green lane? There’s nothing quite like it.

For me it happened on a business trip to Copenhagen. I saw bikes everywhere, beginning with the taxi ride from the airport where I spotted business executives toting briefcases on bikes, wanna-be fashion models wearing high heels on bikes, kids heading to school on bikes, parents pedaling toddlers to daycare on bikes, old folks chatting to one another on bikes.

How do they do it, I wondered? I was a seasoned bicyclist who rode every day for commuting and recreation yet still felt tense wheeling down busy city streets. These riders looked completely at ease, even in the midst of morning rush hour with cars, buses, trucks and motorcycles all around them. I even saw one guy smoking a cigarette on a bike and others absorbed in conversations on their mobile phones.

Then I looked down and noticed that the bike lane was separated from motor vehicles by a divider. So that’s how they do it! I couldn’t wait to try it myself.

The next day I ducked out of a meeting, rented a bike at nearby shop and set forth to explore Copenhagen on two wheels. After pedaling just a block, I thought “Wow!” and began giggling. This was an entirely new experience in biking– almost like the exhilaration of riding without training wheels for the first time.

Liberated from fears of being sideswiped by motorists, I could take in the historic architecture and enjoy the city’s teeming streetlife. There were even special traffic signals for bicyclists, giving us a slight head start through crowded intersections. No wonder half of Copenhagen’s downtown commuters travel by bike.

Cruising through the heart of the city, I realized that these protected bike lanes were good for everyone, not just bicyclists. Without them, pedestrians, motorists and bus riders would be engulfed by twice as much traffic. That, I figured, accounted for the calm courtesy I experienced from people behind the wheel.

We need something like this in the U.S., I told everyone back home. Impossible, many folks would tell me. Special bike lanes are strictly a European thing that would never fit in our newer, auto-dominated cities. You’re selling America short, I answered. We are an enterprising nation, dedicated to innovations that can improve our lives. If we can invent the Internet, we can make biking safe for everyone.

And that’s exactly what’s happening right now.  Protected bike lanes (now called Green Lanes) are popping up from Miami to Long Beach, Austin to Chicago. As I ride the new protected bike lanes downtown here in Minneapolis, I say “Wow!” and then giggle. I can appreciate the handsome old warehouses and enjoy the bustling streetlife. I notice people in suits and in high-fashion outfits on bikes, even some teenagers and older riders. It feels even more exhilarating than the first time Copenhagen, because it’s right here at home.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

June 19, 2013
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Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing AlterNet series, “The Age of Fraud,” edited by Lynn Stuart Parramore.

Say your town needs a new bridge. It might turn to Wall Street to come up with strategies to finance the project. This is supposed to be a win-win arrangement, but in the lucrative municipal finance business, one side has turned out to be the big loser. Guess which?

Nearly five years after Wall Street’s shady activities triggered massive funding crises for cities, states, and municipalities, the $3.7 trillion municipal finance cesspool has yet to be dredged. Banks continue to profit from their bad – or even fraudulent – advice that cost billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Meanwhile, the rest of us must tighten our belts, or pay higher taxes, or see services slide.

Let’s take a look at how bankers cooked up scams to drain the public coffers and why they continue to get away with it.

How your community became Wall Street prey

Many municipalities invested in flawed “structured finance” deals on the advice of bankers who said these complex transactions would give them a better deal than simpler, traditional products. So trusting public finance officials lined up to follow their advice – only to be told later that advice was not to be relied upon.

Tellingly, few (if any) corporations used similar structures to meet their funding needs. Nor did the banks themselves. Unfortunately, these products didn’t work as advertised, and public funding costs exploded as a result.

The financial structures bankers inflicted on the public are not easy to understand, but please try and stick with us: Banks rely on this complexity to obscure just how badly cities and states that followed their advice were hosed.

One common structure combined three key pieces: variable rate demand bonds (VRDBs), letters of credit and interest rate swaps. Municipal treasurers were looking to achieve the equivalent of a fixed rate financing– think of a 30-year mortgage–at lower than the market rate. And they signed on the dotted line in record numbers for these deals, with issuances of these complex bonds peaking in 2008.

Bankers realized that many professional investors – such as money market fund managers – cannot hold long-term debt, and instead prefer investments that can be dumped quickly when market conditions change. So bankers created VRDBs, which were “putable”– allowing buyers to get their money back, in most cases, every week, if they chose. Bankers thought these bonds, which in effect came with a money-back guarantee, would appeal to money market fund investors. At first, they did.

Alas, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. A bond that can be returned, with no penalty charges, every week doesn’t sound at all like the long-term infrastructure financing the city or state wanted. So banks promised municipal clients that if investors wanted to return bonds, the bank would find another buyer. Sounds like it might work out okay, right? 

But what would happen if no one wanted to buy these returned bonds? To avoid leaving its municipal client and investors in a lurch, the bank created a guarantee, a letter of credit, that would provide alternative financing. Think of this letter of credit as insurance that would allow the city or state to continue to pay its bills if the market for its bonds dried up, while providing assurance to bond investors that the bond could be redeemed on demand.

The final piece of the structured contraption was a complex derivative, an interest rate swap. It was supposed to convert the weekly variable interest rate on the bonds to a fixed interest rate. This was another form of insurance that was meant to protect the public authority if interest rates went up.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

June 19, 2013
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WASHINGTON D.C. — Revelations of a massive cyber-surveillance program targeting American citizens holds particularly chilling consequences for immigrants and communities of color. Given the history of such programs, going back to the pre-digital age, these groups have reason to fear.

Who is mined, who is profiled, and who suffers at the hands of an extensive regime of corporate and government surveillance raises issues of social and racial justice.

PRISM, the National Security Agency’s clandestine electronic surveillance program, builds on a history of similar efforts whose impacts have affected racial and ethnic minorities in disproportionate ways. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Counter Intelligence Program (“COINTELPRO”), established in 1956, represents one of the forbearers of PRISM. Created at a time when political decision makers worked to promote the idea of national security in the public consciousness, the program targeted first Communist sympathizers and later domestic dissenters under a broad remit which allowed COINTELPRO to monitor and interrogate groups that threatened social order at the time.

Though COINTELPRO targeted whites and nonwhites, journalists and researchers have shown that some of the program’s most controversial–and life-threatening–targeting focused on African Americans, or what the FBI categorized as “Black Nationalist Groups.” The lion’s share of COINTELPRO targeting fell upon the Black Panther Party. The agency also targeted mainstream civil rights groups, like the NAACP, Congress for Racial Equality, and Southern Christian Leadership Conference, as well as mainstream civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. Other minority groups, including those representing Arab Americans, Filipino Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans, also found themselves under COINTELPRO’s watch.

Though COINTELPRO was eventually dismantled and held up as an example of overbroad, abusive exercise of government surveillance, subsequent administrations have expanded government surveillance programs, including most recently with the aid and abetment of digital technologies. Former Attorney General Ashcroft, for example, amended guidelines to permit the FBI to purchase data profiles from commercial data mining companies (e.g., Axciom) without cause for suspicion. Ashcroft’s guidelines also permitted the FBI to store such information for an indefinite amount of time.

For communities of color, this expansive, digitally enabled form of surveillance has had particular dire consequences. For example, the availability of big data has facilitated government efforts to map and monitor Arab American populations. As reported in Wired Magazine, the FBI’s analysis was extensive: it included and tracked ordinary Arab Americans, suggesting that the FBI suspected and classified all Arab Americans as potential terrorists. Moreover, as the ACLU (which was responsible for surfacing FBI mapping and monitoring documents) has argued, the commercial data purchased by the FBI and other agencies is riddled with errors, which once stored indefinitely become truth. Using a set of indicators that correlate with terrorist activities, analysts compute the likelihood that a person represents a threat to national security. That is, flawed data become part of routine analysis and reanalysis that wrongly targets individuals.

Despite the Obama Administration’s attempts to define PRISM’s consequences narrowly, it is fair to speculate that the burden will fall unfairly on communities of color. Like domestic surveillance under Ashcroft, PRISM collects electronic communications and also stores information indefinitely, a process which again risks wrongly classifying and targeting communities of color.

In fact, little is known about the parameters used to define algorithms that search PRISM data or a combination of PRISM and other commercial data. As privacy advocates have argued, characteristics that define everyday behavior of some ethnic and racial minorities —the use of cash versus credit, purchase of a pre-paid cellphone, or mobility (e.g., moving residence frequently) – may also be used as parameters to identify likely terrorist activity. Until there is greater transparency in the nature of data analysis, including the possibility to examine and assess the accuracy of the analysis of telecommunications records, email communications, and other commercial data, ethnic and racial minorities will remain at risk of discriminatory data profiling.

For now, there are three potential avenues for addressing the unique problems that government surveillance poses to communities of color. First, community members can speak up and express their concern about the overbroad nature of government surveillance and demand that decision makers scrutinize its particular effects. That means not only contacting members of Congress and urging them to reform laws like the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act and Patriot Act, but also asking them to lead a broader national conversation on surveillance, online privacy, and justice. Questions of surveillance go beyond national security; they connect to the ability of groups to define themselves as opposed to being defined by flawed algorithms, to partake in everyday transactions and routines without recrimination, and to express themselves without fear of being erroneously categorized and linked to terrorist activity.

Aside from pressuring Congress, communities of color can also explore using technology to protect themselves against undue surveillance. This entails using search engine tools like DuckDuckGo, which keep online searches anonymous, or privacy protecting plug-ins like Ghostery that prevent corporate entities from collecting and storing data about an individual surfing the Web. Increasingly, these tools are becoming more user friendly, making it easier for the ordinary individual – as opposed to a person with a programming background – to avoid being tracked and targeted.

Lastly, communities of color can connect with organizations that advocate on their behalf to begin thinking holistically about privacy and surveillance in a digital age. A holistic approach means thinking about when, how, and why to share information about oneself and one’s community. With these small steps, we can begin to reclaim our own digital reputations rather than leaving them to corporate and government data analysts.

Seeta Peña Gangadharan is a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute (OTI). Her research focuses on the nature of digital inclusion, including inclusion in potentially harmful aspects of Internet adoption due to data mining, data profiling, and other facets of online surveillance and privacy.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

June 19, 2013
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Whether one views Edward Snowden as a hero or a villain, perhaps we could all agree that if the government is to keep secrets, a 29-year-old private contractor with a soft spot for Ron Paul shouldn’t have access to a treasure trove of its most sensitive information.

Of course, that assumes that there still exists a bright line between government and the private sector. But that’s become an antiquated notion after two decades of ideologically driven outsourcing of what were once considered core government functions. As a result of that effort, there are now a million potential Edward Snowdons — or, more precisely, 483,263 contractors with top-secret clearances, according to James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence — any of whom could slip out with sensitive data on a thumb drive if they have a personal or ideological axe to grind.

More troubling is the fact that we’re being constantly monitored by private spy companies with virtually no oversight or accountability. According to journalist Tim Shorrock, around 70 percent of our national security spending now goes to private firms. Michael Hayden, “who oversaw the privatization effort as NSA director from 1999 to 2005,” told Shorrock that “the largest concentration of cyber power on the planet is the intersection of the Baltimore Parkway and Maryland Route 32,” where the NSA’s top contractors are located. Hayden coined the term, “Digital Blackwater” to describe the privatization of American cyber security agencies.

“I think it’s extraordinarily frightening because the oversight by Congress is so minimal to begin with,” says Robert McChesney, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois and author of Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy. “From what we know, the oversight of spying, intelligence and surveillance is really rock-bottom, with members of Congress often knowing little or nothing” about the details of these programs. “So, they’re going off the books [with private firms] to avoid even the minimal oversight they do have.”

Reinventing Government

How did we get here? Ironically, while a lot of Americans are convinced that Democrats hold an unwavering fealty to “big government,” during the 1990s, a central tenet of Bill Clinton’s agenda was shrinking down the size of the federal government. The administration’s “Reinventing Government” initiative — which took place in two phases, known as REGO I and II — resulted in a whopping 17 percent reduction in the federal workforce.

Ed Kilgore, former vice president for policy at the Democratic Leadership Council and now a journalist with the Washington Monthly , said REGO, “reflected not just a serious determination by the Clinton administration to rethink how government works, but also a much broader trend on the center-left — at think tanks and magazines really for years — that suggested that the future of liberalism depended on sorting out ends and means.”

Liberals, the administration believed, had become too eager to identify progressivism with government programs. “So a lot of the neoliberal movement and the whole New Democrat thing was very explicitly focused on making the efficient achievement of progressive goals the definition of being a liberal rather than just defending programs and how they were administered.”

The initiative resulted in some decent innovations, like government data being made available in easily accessible form over the Internet. But 20 years later, Donald Kettl, dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, told the industry magazine Government Executive  that the elimination of over 425,000 federal jobs had caused serious problems. “The reduction didn’t happen in a way that matched workforce needs because they used a strategy for downsizing to hit a target,” he said. “The effort got in the way of the ‘making government work better’ piece. Many with special skills left, and people who stayed might have been those we’d have wanted to leave.”

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

June 20, 2013
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In or around 1978, America’s character changed. For almost half a century, the United States had been a relatively egalitarian, secure, middle-class democracy, with structures in place that supported the aspirations of ordinary people. You might call it the period of the Roosevelt Republic. Wars, strikes, racial tensions and youth rebellion all roiled national life, but a basic deal among Americans still held, in belief if not always in fact: work hard, follow the rules, educate your children, and you will be rewarded, not just with a decent life and the prospect of a better one for your kids, but with recognition from society, a place at the table.

This unwritten contract came with a series of riders and clauses that left large numbers of Americans — black people and other minorities, women, gay people — out, or only halfway in. But the country had the tools to correct its own flaws, and it used them: healthy democratic institutions such as Congress, courts, churches, schools, news organisations, business-labour partnerships. The civil rights movement of the 1960s was a nonviolent mass uprising led by black southerners, but it drew essential support from all of these institutions, which recognised the moral and legal justice of its claims, or, at the very least, the need for social peace. The Roosevelt Republic had plenty of injustice, but it also had the power of self-correction.

Americans were no less greedy, ignorant, selfish and violent then than they are today, and no more generous, fair-minded and idealistic. But the institutions of American democracy, stronger than the excesses of individuals, were usually able to contain and channel them to more useful ends. Human nature does not change, but social structures can, and they did.

At the time, the late 1970s felt like shapeless, dreary, forgettable years. Jimmy Carter was in the White House, preaching austerity and public-spiritedness, and hardly anyone was listening. The hideous term “stagflation”, which combined the normally opposed economic phenomena of stagnation and inflation, perfectly captured the doldrums of that moment. It is only with the hindsight of a full generation that we can see how many things were beginning to shift across the American landscape, sending the country spinning into a new era.

In Youngstown, Ohio, the steel mills that had been the city’s foundation for a century closed, one after another, with breathtaking speed, taking 50,000 jobs from a small industrial river valley, leaving nothing to replace them. In Cupertino, California, the Apple Computer Company released the first popular personal computer, the Apple II. Across California, voters passed Proposition 13, launching a tax revolt that began the erosion of public funding for what had been the country’s best school system. In Washington, corporations organised themselves into a powerful lobby that spent millions of dollars to defeat the kind of labour and consumer bills they had once accepted as part of the social contract. Newt Gingrich came to Congress as a conservative Republican with the singular ambition to tear it down and build his own and his party’s power on the rubble. On Wall Street, Salomon Brothers pioneered a new financial product called mortgage-backed securities, and then became the first investment bank to go public.

The large currents of the past generation — deindustrialisation, the flattening of average wages, the financialisation of the economy, income inequality, the growth of information technology, the flood of money into Washington, the rise of the political right — all had their origins in the late 70s. The US became more entrepreneurial and less bureaucratic, more individualistic and less communitarian, more free and less equal, more tolerant and less fair. Banking and technology, concentrated on the coasts, turned into engines of wealth, replacing the world of stuff with the world of bits, but without creating broad prosperity, while the heartland hollowed out. The institutions that had been the foundation of middle-class democracy, from public schools and secure jobs to flourishing newspapers and functioning legislatures, were set on the course of a long decline. It as a period that I call the Unwinding.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

June 20, 2013
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It was Texas Representative Michael Burgess’ turn on the GOP’s Bullhorn of Crazy this week. “You watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful,” Burgess said during a congressional debate on the House Republican’s absolutely pointless bill outlawing abortions past 20 weeks. “They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. I mean, they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to think that they could feel pain?”

Burgess’ prenatal masturbation musing is only the tip of the melting iceberg of Republican science denial. Here are seven battier things they believe, from trees causing global warming to fetuses in your Pepsi.

1. Abortion Leads To Cancer, Birth Defects, And Everything Else

Burgess’ absurdity actually masked a very serious GOP belief. The “fetus pain” theory, which holds that fetuses begin to feel pain around 20 weeks, has been the primary logic behind a slew of recent abortion bills in state legislatures. As no reputable science backs the theory up, the GOP has been forced to find anything wearing a lab coat to make stuff up.

Abortions are rare after 21 weeks, and usually occur when a woman develops serious complications with her pregnancy. But some Republicans go so far as to think the health exemption is a cover for the abortion industry. “There’s no such exception as life of the mother, and as far as health of the mother, same thing,” Joe Walsh said in 2012 on his way to losing his House seat. “With advances in science and technology, health of the mother has become a tool for abortions for any time under any reason.” (Republicans have no problem invoking science when it suits their needs.)

Burgess is hardly alone in digging up scientific-sounding nonsense to back up his abortion views. Rick Santorum was the most recent peddler of the long-discounted theory that abortions lead to breast cancer, while out in Virginia, which has a nasty strain of abortion-based delusion, a state delegate advanced the notion that abortions lead to handicaps. “The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps have increased dramatically,” Bob Marshall said. “Why? Because when you abort the firstborn of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children.”

2. Everything They Say About Rape

Burgess’ comment was notable for not featuring the word “rape,” the hook on which many right-wing legislators hang their crazy coats, to the point that Stephen Colbert has instituted a “ Days Without a Rape Reference” segment.

This started with Todd Akin’s famous “legitimate rape” comment last fall, though the theory is still being repeated. Akin’s comment was so bad that even lawmakers who didn’t entirely agree with it were caught in its net: Richard Mourdock blew a gimme election in Indiana when he tripped himself trying to get away from Akin’s remark.

Like Burgess, Akin’s comment was important not because it was an aberration, but because it reflected a real belief on the right, one that’s beginning to infect policy. Arguing against a rape exemption in his anti-abortion bill last week, Trent Franks stated that the incidences of pregnancy from rape are “ very low.” Some see daylight between Franks’ iteration of the rape/pregnancy connection and Akin’s, but it’s minor. And while Akin’s view was rooted in medieval medicine, Franks’ theory traces its lineage right back to Nazi experiments. Whether dealing with centuries-old pseudo-science or its bleak modern mutations, the GOP’s rape/pregnancy link is bad science at its most savage.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

June 20, 2013
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Last week, it was reported that George Clooney incited his second aesthetic trend in as many decades. As Dr. Doug Ross on ER, at the height of primetime medical dramas of yore, Clooney’s hair was shorn in a neo-Caesar crew cut which had American men running to the nearest barber. The ’90s were simpler times. Since making a joke in an Italian magazine last January about getting his testicles tightened, Clooney has influenced the latest trend in scrotum chic: ball ironing.

Ball ironing, or tackle-tightening, is a facelift for your stones. For $575 one can have the smooth, youthful ball sack of a millennial. But pristine family jewels is just one of the many vanity procedures on the rise for men. Last year nearly 800,000 fellas went under the knife, a 121 percent increase since 1997. The most popular surgeries for men are the same as for women: liposuction, eyelifts, hair transplants, rhinoplasty, and breast reduction (and in some cases augmentation). Here are some of the others:

1) Chinplants: Something magical happened in 2011. The weak-chinned men of America decided they needed, nay DEMANDED, the chiseled jaw lines of a Disney prince. The year saw a 71% increase in the surgery, which entails inserting an implant (often silicone) in front of the chin. Subsequently, the human species is 10,600 defined male chins richer. What transpired to provoke men to rush to the local plastic surgeon, waving their checkbook and a photograph of Gaston LeGume? Clinical professor of surgery at Columbia University, Darrick Antell, told the Today Show,

People have cameras everywhere…You can be at a wedding at the buffet table and a moment later see pictures of your double chin on Facebook. We’re a much more image-driven society than we were even five years ago.

Smartphone photo and video technology has turned our lives into a virtual house of mirrors. Antell also notes that the greatest number of men who’ve been chinplanted are over 40 “which is the point where people are bridging the gap between youthfulness and middle age.” He conducted a study of Fortune 500 companies which revealed 90% of the CEOs have “strong chins,” the facade of leadership and power being an impetus for men to alter their profile.

2) Limb-lengthening: Height dysphoric Skee-lo could have fulfilled one of his many wishes with the incredibly painful and complicated procedure known as limb-lengthening. Conceived to assist sufferers of dwarfism and those with disparate leg length, limb-lengthening has been hijacked by cosmetic surgeons as a vanity procedure.

Stature is extended after a doctor implants telescoping rods in the patient’s broken shin. Over the course of three months, the rod stretches the bone apart one millimeter every day, wherein muscle, nerves,skin, new bone, and sometimes harmful bacteria grow to fill the newly created void. The procedure can’t turn you into Yao Ming, but can add 2-3 inches to your height, and one man paid for two procedures to grow 6 inches. The majority of guys who endure this process are reported to languish with height dysphoria, convinced their diminutive figure prevents them from getting the respect bestowed upon taller men.

3) Character Affectation Surgery: Have you felt like you’re really a velociraptor trapped inside a human body, or that maybe looking exactly like Wolverine will help you feel the quiet contentment that has always evaded you? Then allow these men to be your inspiration! Men like Lizardman, born a mere human but transformed by tattoos, tongue bifurcation, dental modification, and subdermal implants to become a reptilian-human hybrid. Or with enough facial transdermal implants and body modifications your inner feline could manifest and transfigure you like Cat Man. Or the Devil. One 35-year-old Filipino man has spent the last decade having his body manipulated and his skin lightened to look just like Superman, and another guy had 100 surgeries to resemble a sentient Ken doll. Want to surgically metamorphose into a stalk of broccoli, or a red panda, or Liberace? Godspeed!

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

More intensely than almost any other nation, we Americans are dependent on energy – to run businesses, heat and light homes and buildings, power the many forms of transportation we frequently take for granted, and more. Worry over recent years that the world is running out of energy, especially the sources known as fossil fuels, has reached virtually everyone. Worry about dependence on questionable and erratic foreign suppliers should also concern every citizen.

But a new process for extracting oil and gas from deep below the surface of the earth has allayed many fears. This process, known as “fracking,” has made available vast amounts of energy deposits that should calm all the worries and lead to a brighter and more secure future. These shale deposits can already be found beneath 34 of our nation’s states. Tapping the newly available resources has begun, but so has a well-funded and well-publicized campaign claiming that fracking will contaminate water supplies, foul the air, and even cause earthquakes. 

Addressing these concerns while touting the worth of this method of obtaining energy deposits (it has been known for at least 60 years) is the hour-long documentary entitled FRACKNATION. Not only are all the doomsday claims of various disasters debunked, the well-produced program dwells on fracking’s capability to harvest the vast amounts of energy right here within the United States. As one of the experts interviewed in the film stated, “Shale deposits are a gift from God.”

FRACKNATION was produced and narrated by Irish-born Phelim McAleer with the help of two associates. (They have also produced Not Evil Just Wrong, a documentary about the claims of Al Gore.) FRACKNATION takes viewers on a journey that includes visits both to fracking’s proponents and foes, interviews with government officials, commentary from scientific experts who challenge the health scares, background about the chief opponent of the process, and even a credible suggestion that Vladimir Putin’s Russia stands to be an important beneficiary if fracking can be discredited and banned.

The documentary earned its financing from small donations collected over many years, much of it through the website Kickstarter. In contrast, fracking’s chief adversary Josh Fox is a film producer who wouldn’t answer McAleer’s inquiries, has enjoyed financial support from some of Hollywood’s leftist celebrities, and receives favorable coverage in various elements of the mass media. Fox’s film entitled Gasland: Can You Light Your Water on Fire? dwells on fracking’s unproven dangers in rural Pennsylvania where water supplies are supposedly polluted so greatly with methane and other contaminants that the water coming into a kitchen sink from a well can be set on fire. Fox’s film has been nominated for an Oscar and has won an Emmy award. Widespread media coverage about it has informed America that the dramatic effect of tapwater igniting is common. But FRACKNATION cites several counter arguments, including the conclusion of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection that “there is no evidence in Pennsylvania of fracking ever having contaminated drinking water.” 

Coverage by the New York Times of Pennsylvania’s supposedly dire predicament eventually led to the newspaper’s own angry ombusdsman to label reports from the Times as “unethical.” But showings of Fox’s Gasland have encouraged the unwary to demand an end to fracking, the ultimate goal of Fox and his allies. McAleer’s film shows, with a great deal of credibility, that the claims in Gasland are baseless. Yet mention is made of a plan by HBO to produce a Gasland sequel produced by Fox.

When he visited with Carol Collier, the director of the Delaware River Basin Commission (serving portions of Pennsylvania and New Jersey), McAleer asked why her name appeared on a document used by Fox to render importance to Gasland. Collier sought at that point to terminate the interview. Moreover, the commission she leads has been able to mandate a moratorium on the use of the fracking process in the two-state area near the river. With trips to California and Texas, in addition to his foray into Pennsylvania, McAleer presented the attitudes of several experts who debunked the various claims that fracking causes cancer and even leads to earthquakes.

Noting that much of Europe depends on Russia for natural gas supplies, FRACKNATION showed Russian President Putin attacking the fracking process and becoming “agitated” when asked if harvesting shale gas in Poland would pose a threat to the virtual gas monopoly held by Russia’s Gazprom. He even expressed his own curious concern for Americans when he told his questioner to look to the United States for the supposed damage already caused by fracking.

For many years, the United States has been importing its energy, frequently from nations and regions where hatred for or jealousy about the American way of life is common. Fracking could reverse that situation and, in the process, ensure preservation of our nation’s independence. The information packed into this film can surely help the cause of fracking and thereby help the cause of energy and national independence.

FRACKNATION: A Journalist’s Search For the Fracking Truth

Hard Boiled Films

578 Washington Blvd. #938

Marina Del Rey, CA 90292

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

$19.95

This article originally appeared on: The New American

John is 46 but looks twenty years younger, with not a single white hair or whisker. His grungy style also suspends him in early adulthood. His mom was a registered nurse, then secretary at a garage. His dad sold car parts and drove a mail truck from Philly to Harrisburg in the evening. “I’m not doing as well as my parents, but I’m not trying as hard either,” John confided as he sat in McGlinchey’s, a pint of Rolling Rock in front of him. It was late afternoon, and the place was still quiet, with the jukebox interfering only intermittently. On four televisions, golf balls sailed or skated around cups.

I had come in after recording a segment for Press TV at a nearby studio. Seeing me in suit and tie, Shelley, the bar owner, grinned, “Coming from church?” On Iranian television, I had assumed a serious face to talk about China and the US, how China will try to muscle the US away from the Western Pacific, and how it is moving to supplant the US Dollars, first by trading with various countries (including American allies such as Japan, France and Australia) in their own currencies, then eventually having a gold-backed Yuan, at which point game’s over. I pointed out how China is intertwining itself with Europe through increasing trade and an extensive rail network completed or in progress. Already, freights can be moved by rail from Holland or Belgium to China. The US is still top (bull)dog thanks to its military and control of the world’s banking system, but China is gaining status and leverage through manufacturing, increasing trade ties and infrastructure improvement and linkages. Unlike the USA, it has a long term economic vision, and soon enough, may flash its claws and fangs and show itself no less of a bully, as is already evident by its belligerence in the South China Sea. With the decrease of cheap oil and gas, global economic growth is over, in any case, but certain countries may still chug along fine in the near future, but the US won’t be among them.

We’re so passive, we’re doomed! We watch our rights being systematically stripped away with barely an eye roll, and with each passing day, we are becoming poorer, with our wages steadily decreasing and more of us on food stamps than ever. While fixated on sports, singing contests and network news, we’re being lowered into our degradation. NSA, FBI, Homeland Security and CIA spooks shadow us for evidence of rebellion and espy nada. After inconsequential Occupy and Tea Party twitches, all is quiet. Those sign waving assemblies merely served a carthatic function, and even wore us out, without threatening the status quo at all. Too easily, they funneled our discontent into the Democratic vs. Republican sewage, with too many of us excited to line up, again, to rubber stamp our defeat.

Underemployed and malnourished even, John is ahead of the curve in our collective stumble towards destitution. A maverick screwup, he’s a pioneer of sort, a Neil Armstrong, so let’s examine this man a bit more closely. Three days a week, John scrubs and mops at this lowlife bar, and each day, he also goes to Shelley’s house to twice walk the dog. In between, he can relax on his boss’ couch and stare at the TV.

“Yo, John, how much do you make a week?”

“Ah, I don’t want to tell you, but most of what I make goes towards rent.”

“I can’t see how you make enough to eat!”

“I don’t eat that much. I drink beer, and I get my beer here for free. This is also food, you know.”

“How much do they give you?”

“Two pints.”

“Two pints! That’s not enough! How can you stop at two pints? Once I have had two pints, I must drink more. Why won’t they give you four pints, at least?”

“Maybe you can say something to Shelley about that. You can be my lawyer!”

“Yeah, I’ll say something to Shelley. Cheap motherfucker! But you haven’t explained how you manage to eat on almost no money? How do you eat?!”

“I already told you, man, I don’t eat that much. I haven’t eaten in days! Actually, yesterday, I had three ounces of spaghetti.”

“You count your ounces?!”

“I know because on the package, it said six ounces.”

“Frozen shit?”

“No, man, I don’t even have a fridge. It’s this moist, microwavable shit.”

“OK, OK, but how do you stop eating at three ounces? Why didn’t you eat the whole damn thing if you were that hungry?”

“I don’t need to eat that much. Look at your beer. Can you knock that down in one shot?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“But I can’t do that. My stomach wouldn’t be able to handle it. I don’t need to eat or drink that much. Some weeks, I only spend five bucks on food.”

“That’s ridiculous! What do you buy for five bucks?”

“You can always buy rice. Rice is cheap.”

“You’re right, rice is cheap, especially when you buy a huge bag, but do you ever shoplift, you know, like shove a can of tuna down your pants?”

“No, I have never done that.”

When writing about someone, I must make sure I get everything right, down to the last detail, but with John, I don’t have to fret as much, because he doesn’t know how to use a computer. John won’t be able to read what I’m writing. A man who can barely eat is not someone who will pay for wifi. There, too, John’s ahead of the curve.

“How do you not know how to use a computer? What is there not to know?” And I made some typing motion on the bar.

“Ah, man, I just can’t figure it out, but I don’t miss it. Who cares. I don’t have any tattoos either,” and he showed me his untinted arms. Nodding towards a waitress sitting nearby, bent over her laptop, John continued, “ Once she spent twenty minutes trying to teach me the computer, but I couldn’t figure it out.”

“She can’t get off the computer, and you can’t get on!”

After his two pint allotment, John slunk out of the bar. From Shelley, I then found out that he lives at the Parker Spruce, a residential hellhole that charges $250 a week, plus an extra 10 bucks since John owns a microwave. His bathroom, he shares with another tenant. This is a bum deal, obviously, but John has no choice since he has never been able to cough up enough for the security deposit of a regular apartment. A certain lethargy is also in play here, but it’s hard to have initiative on three ounces of mushy spaghetti coated in some dodgy “meat” sauce.

Just to visit a Parker Spruce resident, you must pay six bucks at the desk, though condoms are free, thanks to the city’s health department. After riding up the musty elevator, you enter a moldy hallway redolent of urine and clorox. If taking the stairs, you might step over a dime bag or two. Whole families take refuge here, not just hurting singles, drug addicts and whores, and though pets are banned, you can hear a caged canary as you walk past this door, and inside this cell is a black cat. At the end of each hallway, bars are placed on windows to prevent jumpers from diving, permanently, into hell, the final one, but if you go straight to the roof of this 12-story building, where the view is indeed spectacular and the air fresh, nothing will stop you from flying for a second or two before splashing onto the adjacent row house’s tar roof, which must be fixed every few years, after yet another corpse is removed.

Before Shelley hired John to walk his dog, he employed Casey, and she also dwelled at the Parker Spruce. In her dresser were bread, peanut butter, jam and pop tarts, and in winter, cans of Bud Ice could be kept cool in a plastic bag hanging out her window.

“So you trust John, huh?” I asked Shelley. “He doesn’t steal like Casey?”

“You know about that too!” Shelley smiled. “Casey only stole small things from me. I went to her place once and saw all these little things that looked very familiar, like salt and pepper shakers that I used to own. Everywhere I looked, there were little things that I used to own.”

“Yeah, and she stole from me! I was talking to Casey at Frank’s one night, and it was her birthday, so I bought her a couple of beers, but when I went to the bathroom, she stole one of my camera lenses. It’s very expensive, you know, more than 500 bucks, but then Casey returned it, because she felt bad, I guess. When I called Frank’s the next day, Sheila said, ‘Hey, we found your camera lens!’ I knew it had to be Casey because I never took the lens out of my bag.”

“Yeah, it was Casey.”

Soon enough, everything that isn’t nailed down will walk. It’s telling that many of our homeless still leave relative valuables such as a newish jacket, belt or pair of shoes unattended as they sleep. This means we’re not quite Third World, hurrah!, for if we were, even a pair of unwatched prescription glasses would take wing within seconds. Of course, stuff here already disappear often enough. In Berkeley, I met a white haired man who had been robbed by another homeless man four times. His coat and shoes he managed to recover in nearby trash cans, “but the photos of my wife and children are gone.” As we talked, a young woman gave him some leftover from a restaurant meal. “But I can’t eat it,” he lamented, “I don’t have any teeth.”

“You can eat it,” she smiled. “It’s only rice.”

Without fork or spoon, he then scooped the brown rice with the carry out container’s plastic top.

The big guys will steal big, including your youth, mature years and old age, your entire lives, in short, sometimes even your sanity or parts of body, while small time crooks will try to relieve you of everything else, including your salt and pepper shakers. The biggest guys will steal the earth from right under you.

I never hinted to Casey that I knew she had stolen from me, but after that incidence, I kept my distance. I have known her for a long time. Adopted, Casey has never been able to find her Puerto Rican birth mother. On each of her sneaker is scrawled “ESPERANZA” [“HOPE”]. Casey has worked as a cook and as a waitress, including here at McGlinchey’s. The last time I saw her, she said she was getting married, so I waved at her bride, a laughing woman standing across Broad Street. They had found an apartment in Point Breeze. Idyllic sounding, it’s a neighborhood best known for flying bullets.

Once, a balding, middle-aged dude saw me talking to Casey, and so advised, “You know, you shouldn’t talk to her. She’s ugly. You make yourself look bad by talking to such an ugly woman.” This guy looked like crap himself, I must add, and so do I, even on my best days. Ugly and uglier, we will slog forward, for sure. The current waitress at McGlinchey’s is only 23, however, and so not ugly. She’s pretty, in fact. Let’s meet her.

“I never went to college, because I don’t like school, and I also can’t afford it.”

“But you said you’re into languages?”

“Yeah, I studied French for five years, and the other day, when I met some French students, I could speak to them, maybe because I was drunk,” she grinned, “and I can pronounce Russian words. I read Camus’ The Stranger five times in English, but when I finally read it in French, it was so much better.”

“You read it in French from beginning to end?”

“Almost.”

She also knows scraps of Sanskrit and Japanese, which have proven useful at SugarHouse, Philly’s very first casino, opened less than three years ago. Playing roulette, she has won up to $100 while chanting “sa ta na ma,” thinking it meant, “all one none sum,” although it really means, “birth, life, death, rebirth,” as I would find out later, after googling. Sometimes she mumbled “nam myoho renge kyo.” On full moons, people win more at casinos, she informed me. Perhaps this Pisces should also use a Magic Marker to scrawl “HOPE” onto her sneakers.

Magic incantations are as good as any, for we have no other plans. Desperate people will plead to the unseen and unprovable. Give us this day our three ounces, at least, and lead us not onto the no-fly list. In 2010, I witnessed a religious procession at San Francisco’s Civic Center, with supplicants carrying this banner, “Praying the Rosary for America… As human efforts fail to solve America’s key problems, we turn to God, through His Holy Mother, asking for His urgent help.”

As we’re making no efforts to solve any of our problems, we’re muttering or shouting words that mean less and less. Amen.

Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories, five of poems, and a novel, Love Like Hate. He’s tracking our deteriorating socialscape through his frequently updated photo blog, State of the Union.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

The Iranian deputy foreign minister for Arab and African Affairs has stressed that the ongoing crisis in Syria can be settled only through political approaches, rejecting a military approach to the unrest.

Å“As we have reiterated before, political approaches are the only solution to the problems in Syria, and the crisis in the country has no military or security solution,” Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in a meeting with Omani Minister Responsible for Foreign Affairs Yousef bin Alawi bin Abdullah in Muscat on Thursday.

Syria has been in crisis since March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of Syrian security forces, have been killed in the unrest.

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

Regarding the developments in Bahrain, the Iranian official said that the problems in the Arab country can be resolved only through negotiations between the Manama government and all Bahraini groups.

Amir-Abdollahian also warned about the growing activities of extremist Takfiri groups in the region, criticizing those who support such groups and beat the drums of sectarian and religious divisions in the Middle East.

He called on political and religious leaders to encourage moderation to rein in acts of extremism which create religious rifts in the Islamic world.

He also hailed as good and constructive the relations between Iran and Oman, pointing out that cooperation between the two countries has been growing in different areas.

The Omani official, for his part, highlighted the importance of constant dialog and consultations between Iran and Oman.

Bin Alawi also said that the only solution to the unrest in Syria was a halt to the violence and bloodshed, and the initiation of talks among different Syrian groups.

He further underlined that the Manama government must meets the demands of the Bahraini people.

The Bahraini uprising began in mid-February 2011. The Manama regime promptly launched a brutal crackdown on the peaceful protests and called in Saudi-led Arab forces from neighboring states.

Dozens of people have been killed in the crackdown, and the security forces have arrested hundreds, including doctors and nurses.

Bahrainis say they will continue holding demonstrations until their demand for the establishment of a democratically elected government is met.

AR/NN/HMV

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

June 14, 2013
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As one who writes in defense of recreational “hard” drug users, I am frequently irked by the anti-drug sensationalism presented in supposedly objective news articles. An example is the recent front-page article in the Huffington Post, “ Nazis Took ‘Meth’ Pills to Stay Alert, Boost Endurance During World War II, Letters Reveal.”

Pairing methamphetamine with the Nazis is a double-the-evil masterstroke of front-page flair. It comes from a journalistic tradition that has similarly paired crack with black welfare queens in the mythic crack-baby epidemic, and cannibals and mephedrone in the nonsensical bath-salts cannibalism phenomenon. (Both the cack-baby and the bath-salts cannibalism stories have been debunked; see here and here.)