June 3, 2013
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It’s hard to identify the moment when a company once beloved by trendsetters becomes uncool. Sometimes the firm gets too big for its britches and starts pissing off its customers. Others times the hipsters who first embraced the products grow too long in the tooth to seem cool anymore. Lots of times innovation starts to lag as a firm shifts its focus from making cool stuff to shoveling money toward executives.

Apple’s cool factor seems to be suffering for all of these reasons and then some. So what, you say. It’s just a vibe. They still have gobs of money. Well, the problem for Apple is that its marketability has been built on the cool factor, and once you lose it, it’s not easy to get it back. Here are six unmistakable signs that Apple is on the downward slide.

1. Apple is boring. That’s not what you want to hear when you’re trying to be the cool company. And yet USA Today reports that college students are feeling unbedazzled by Apple CEO Tim Cook’s promises of amazing new gadgets at a recent conference. “Some college students are losing their enthusiasm for Apple after recent product upgrades have been underwhelming,” notes collegiate correspondent Mark Lieberman. Among the student complaints were overpricing, lack of ability to customize Apple products, and various technical challenges.

Other Apple-watchers have voiced similar beefs, pointing out that for all the iPhones, iPads and MacBooks, the whole just adds up to a big yawn. Ashraff Eassa at the Seeking Alpha blog doesn’t mince any words: “Apple’s problem today is that it’s just plain boring. Yeah, it makes a lot of money, and yeah, it makes good products, but people forget that tech stocks are all about who’s got the most glam.”

2. Headline headaches. One minute Tim Cook is defending tax-dodging practices that screw American taxpayers out of billions and leave us with no money to pay for decent schools that, you know, educate Apple’s workers or roads that, ahem, allow the company to ship its products around the country. The next minute Apple is on the hot seat for allegedly fixing prices on ebooks — and we’re talking emails between Steve Jobs and James Murdoch (son of Rupert) in which Jobs essentially says, hey, let’s make a deal that screws our customers!

These are not the sorts of activities many customers will find endearing. Making headlines for all the wrong reasons is not going to help Apple get its mojo back. Gangsta-style capitalism is a lot of things — cool is not one of them.

3. Going Wall Street. Apple’s customers have long hailed the company for its snazzy designs and user-friendly interface. But its ability to excel in playing Wall Street casino games was never really on the list.

These days, however, Apple is all about Wall Street. The company is sitting on a mountain of cash, but instead of doing something useful and intelligent with that money such as, I dunno, paying workers a decent salary or investing in innovative new products, Apple announced it is spending an eye-popping $60 billion on a buyback. Stock buybacks, a practice that took off in the go-go ‘80s, is a pernicious trend in which a company buys back its own shares from the marketplace and thereby reduces the number of outstanding shares. It’s a terrible way to allocate resources, and it’s mainly about making executives richer. As Eamonn Fingleton recently put it over at Forbes, “every dollar spent on a buyback is one dollar less invested in a corporation’s future.”

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

June 4, 2013
 |

The heated debate over immigration reform continues in Washington. Much of the heat comes from one claim: immigration hurts low-skill US workers.

The idea is that immigration causes overall economic harm to low-skill US workers, because many immigrants are low-skill themselves and compete for the same jobs. This is a reasonable belief if all one has to go on is the kind of day-to-day experiences that everyone has–such as applying for jobs and competing with other applicants.

It is also wrong.

Many of the world’s best labor economists have spent the last quarter century exhaustively looking all over the world for negative effects of immigration on low-skill workers. They cannot find such effects. This is one of the most robust findings in the labor economics research literature.

These economists take two main approaches. The first is to look for sudden, large increases in immigration to a particular area, and track what happens to native workers in that area. These include massive inflows of Cubans to Miami in 1980, Algerians to France in 1962, Russians to Israel in the early 1990s, all immigrants to different regions of Germany in the 1980s and to regions of the United Kingdom in the 80s and 90s, and Former Yugoslavians to the rest of Europe. Not one detects substantial effects of immigration on wages or employment.

In the second approach, economists chop up the data differently. They divide workers in the migrant-destination country not into different geographic regions but into different groups of broadly similar people–for example, 25—29 year-old males with a high school degree, 30—34 year old females with a college degree, and so on. They then watch what happens to wages and employment among native workers in each group, across the whole country, upon the arrival of immigrants with those characteristics. With this method, the leading-edge research is by Gianmarco Ottaviano and Giovanni Peri. In a paper published last year, they show that total, cumulative immigration to the United States between 1990 and 2006 had almost no net effect on the wages of American workers–including those with no high school degree.

How did our common-sense intuition get this crucial fact so wrong? Our best understanding now is that two broad forces yield this counterintuitive result. For the low-skill jobs that exist, there is extremely little competition between native workers and immigrant workers. And the indirect economic effects of low-skill immigrants’ work are the reason that many low-skill jobs exist in the first place, including the ones filled by native workers.

First, the vast majority of low-skill immigrants are not competing with any U.S. worker at all. The problem is not that Americans entering the labor force aren’t willing to take certain jobs. It’s that there aren’t enough Americans to do them.

In the next decade most of the fastest-growing occupations will be jobs that require less than high school education. The US Bureau of Labor Statistic projects that between 2010 and 2020 there will be 3.6 million new, additional jobs in the US economy in home health care, basic childcare, and food service, and other low-skill industries. That is, the Census Bureau reports, is more than double the total American workers age 25—54 who will enter the labor force in the same period: 1.7 million.

This point bears repeating: even if every single American entering the labor force in the next decade dropped out of high school and college to do low-skill work, they wouldn’t be able to fill half the labor positions America needs in these areas. And of course that isn’t going to happen: In that period roughly 30 percent of Americans entering the labor force will have high school only, and under 10 percent will have less than high school. That means we can reasonably expect somewhere around 5—15 percent of these very low-skill jobs to be filled by American workers. For the rest, no American will be competing with immigrants.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

June 4, 2013
 |

Is this the Turkish Spring? No, at least not yet. Is Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan the new Mubarak? No, at least not yet.

History keeps warning us it takes just a spark to light a political bonfire. The recent spark in Istanbul was provided by a small group of very young environmentalists organizing a peaceful sit-in, Occupy-style, in Taksim Square to protest the planned destruction of one of the city center’s few remaining public green spaces, Gezi park.

Gezi park’s destruction follows a globally tested neoliberalism racket; it will be replaced by a simulacrum – in this case a replica of the Ottoman Artillery Barracks – housing, what else, yet another shopping mall. It’s crucial to note that the mayor of Istanbul, also from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), owns a retail chain that will make a killing out of the mall. And the man holding the contract for this “redevelopment” is no less than Erdogan’s son-in-law.

Predictably harsh police repression led to the protesters being joined by top cadres from Turkey’s main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP). And sooner rather than later, the Taksim Square green theme morphed into a Tahrir square-style “Down with the dictator”.

By Saturday, Taksim Square was crammed with tens of thousands of people; a multitude had walked across the Bosphorus Bridge from the Asian side of Istanbul, banging pots and pans Argentina 2002 cacerolazo-style, openly trampling the law against pedestrians crossing the bridge. Police duly upgraded the repression to water cannons, pepper spray and tear gas.

The behavior of a mostly cowed Turkish broadcast media was predictably appalling – perhaps not surprising when 76 journalists are in jail accused of supporting “terror” and other unspecified “crimes”. This may also be interpreted as a reflection of US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization hold over a precious ally – as in “OK, smash a few skulls, but don’t kill anybody”.

Print media at least exhibited some redeeming features. Hurriyet – a newspaper that used to exercise its critical faculties – recovered some of its dignity by printing headlines such as “Erdogan no longer almighty”. Zaman – which is part of the network of the moderate Islamist Gulen movement – showed how worried it is with Erdogan and the AKP’s overwhelming power, with editorials condemning his “excessive” behavior and supporting the protesters.

Meanwhile, in the US and the European Union, Ankara has not really been condemned – just the usual, vapid, “concern”. Turkey after all is the ultimate CNN poster country; it’s totally “on message” in its brand of autocracy-enabling neoliberalism (as are the Gulf Cooperation Council petro-monarchies). To be violently condemned – and threatened with strikes – is the “privilege” of Iran and Syria.

Take it to the bridge

How fitting that this all started with the “redevelopment” of Gezi park. However, this is just a small node in a vast scheme – a slew of AKP mega-projects all across Istanbul that totally exclude the input of civil society.

Turkey may have become the world’s 17th largest economy in the world, but it’s growing at only 3% in 2013 (even is that is much better than Europe). The AKP has certainly noted that the Turkish economic miracle rests on clay feet, based on products of low added value very dependent on markets – in agriculture, small industry or tourism.

Enter a planned third bridge over the Bosphorus – part of a new US$2.6 billion, 260 kilometer highway linking Thrace to Anatolia circumventing the Istanbul metropolis and one of the key nodes of the European Union-supported Europe-Caucasus-Asia transport corridor (TRACECA).

In the 2011 election,s Erdogan opened his campaign spinning a “crazy project”; a 50 km canal from the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea to be completed by 2023 – the centenary of the Turkish Republic – to the tune of up to $20 billion. The objective is not only to decongest the Bosphorus but, alongside the building of a third bridge and a third harbor, to transfer the axis of Istanbul to the not-yet-developed north of the city. That would include two new towns and a third airport as well.

The AKP has described this ambitious policy as “urban transformation”. The pretext is the risk of a major earthquake – such as the one in 1999. For what amounts to a major real estate speculation bonanza, Erdogan and the AKP rely on two government agencies, TOKI and KIPTAS, who have been setting prices way too high for the average Turk. The prime target is the upper middle classes who vote AKP.

The AKP is absolutely obsessed with controlling Istanbul – which accounts for 85 of the 550 Parliament members (Ankara, the capital, is worth only 31). Erdogan and his cohorts have been at the helm of Greater Istanbul since 1994, at the time as members of the Refah party. Erdogan started his conquest of Turkey from the former Ottoman capital.

AKP-sponsored mega-projects have been conceived as the ultimate platform to project emerging Turkey into post-globalization, milking to the maximum the cliche of a “bridge between civilizations”. After all, 50% of Turkey’s exports originate in Istanbul. The urban-political marketing of these mega-projects will condition Turkey’s global credibility among the usual suspects, “international investors”. It has nothing to do with social cohesion or respect for the environment. It’s fair to argue that the Taksim Square movement has totally grasped the implications of this authoritarian, profit-hungry logic of development.

Friends of Turkey, anyone?

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

June 4, 2013
 |

Editor’s Note: From time to time we publish articles we don’t necessarily agree with. We encourage differences of opinion, for the sake of open debate. Here, AlterNet’s environmental editor Tara Lohan responds to Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger at the end of their article.

Eighty years ago, the Tennessee Valley region was like many poor rural communities in tropical regions today. The best forests had been cut down to use as fuel for wood stoves. Soils were being rapidly depleted of nutrients, resulting in falling yields and a desperate search for new croplands. Poor farmers were plagued by malaria and had inadequate medical care. Few had indoor plumbing and even fewer had electricity.

Hope came in the form of World War I. Congress authorized the construction of the Wilson dam on the Tennessee River to power an ammunition factory. But the war ended shortly after the project was completed.

Henry Ford declared he would invest millions of dollars, employ one million men, and build a city 75 miles long in the region if the government would only give him the whole complex for $5 million. Though taxpayers had already sunk more than $40 million into the project, President Harding and Congress, believing the government should not be in the business of economic development, were inclined to accept.

George Norris, a progressive senator, attacked the deal and proposed instead that it become a public power utility. Though he was from Nebraska, he was on the agriculture committee and regularly visited the Tennessee Valley. Staying in the unlit shacks of its poor residents, he became sympathetic to their situation. Knowing that Ford was looking to produce electricity and fertilizer that were profitable, not cheap, Norris believed Ford would behave as a monopolist. If approved, Norris warned, the project would be the worst real estate deal “since Adam and Eve lost title to the Garden of Eden.” Three years later Norris had defeated Ford in the realms of public opinion and in Congress.

Over the next 10 years, Norris mobilized the progressive movement to support his sweeping vision of agricultural modernization by the federal government. In 1933 Congress and President Roosevelt authorized the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority. It mobilized thousands of unemployed men to build hydroelectric dams, produce fertilizer, and lay down irrigation systems. Sensitive to local knowledge, government workers acted as community organizers, empowering local farmers to lead the efforts to improve agricultural techniques and plant trees.

The TVA produced cheap energy and restored the natural environment. Electricity from the dams allowed poor residents to stop burning wood for fuel. It facilitated the cheap production of fertilizer and powered the water pumps for irrigation, allowing farmers to grow more food on less land. These changes lifted incomes and allowed forests to grow back. Although dams displaced thousands of people, they provided electricity for millions.

By the ’50s, the TVA was the crown jewel of the New Deal and one of the greatest triumphs of centralized planning in the West. It was viewed around the world as a model for how governments could use modern energy, infrastructure and agricultural assistance to lift up small farmers, grow the economy, and save the environment. Recent research suggests that the TVA accelerated economic development in the region much more than in surrounding and similar regions and proved a boon to the national economy as well.

Perhaps most important, the TVA established the progressive principle that cheap energy for all was a public good, not a private enterprise. When an effort was made in the mid-’50s to privatize part of the TVA, it was beaten back by Senator Al Gore Sr. The TVA implicitly established modern energy as a fundamental human right that should not be denied out of deference to private property and free markets.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

June 4, 2013
 |

Sex worker activists (who want the sex trade to be treated like any other work) and prostitution abolitionists (who want to see it disappear entirely) don’t agree on much, but they do on this: Giving people charged with prostitution a felony also gives them a criminal record that makes other work almost impossible to find, thus trapping them into selling sex in perpetuity.

And now, with eight states handing down felony charges for prostitution – where nonviolent, mostly female prostitution offenders are serving in state prison — a battle to lessen criminal penalties has been joined by an unlikely ally. Conservative lawmakers, looking at price tags, are also receptive to changing the way we see — and treat – people working in prostitution.

The latest example of this shift to view people in prostitution as victims rather than criminals is last week’s passage of a bill removing the felony penalty in Illinois – which has some of the harshest prostitution laws in the country. The legislation sailed through the Illinois Legislature, after a decade of work by End Demand Illinois, a coalition that wants to see prostitution eliminated. The highest penalty for selling sex in the state will now be a Class A misdemeanor.

“There are very, very few crimes, in my view, that exist in the criminal code, that you can truly say in this instance, the perpetrator is likely as much a victim as they are a perpetrator,” said Illinois state Sen. Dale Righter, a Republican and former prosecutor, when the bill was being debated. “People who would disagree with that would say, ‘there’s a notion of personal responsibility here. They decided to do it.’ And you know, in the strictest of legal terms, there’s no doubt that that’s true. But the situations that most of these young ladies find themselves in are unlike any situations that I bet any of us have encountered, and I hope none of us ever have to encounter.”

Texas, not exactly known for its leniency to offenders, also came close to eliminating its felony penalty this year. (A bill made it out of committee but wasn’t voted on, and there is still felony prostitution in Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan and Missouri.) ”It’s nuts that we’ve got this many prostitutes in prison, people that we’re not afraid of, but we’re just mad at,” the state’s Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire told the Austin American Statesman last year. “By locking them up, we’re not fixing the problem – we’re just spending a lot of money incarcerating them, warehousing them, when we could be spending a lot less getting them treatment so they can get out and stay out of this business.”

Prostitution remains the only crime in which more women are arrested than men. (That includes both arrests for selling sex and for purchasing it.) Prostitution arrests happen on the streets – in sweeps or in response to neighborhood complaints – in raids on establishments thought to be promoting prostitution, and through sting operations conducted through sites like Backpage. Sex worker advocates have criticized such “end demand” campaigns for partnering with the criminal justice system, which they argue further marginalizes people in the sex trade, but Lynne Johnson, policy and advocacy director at the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, said the alliance had been key to removing the felony penalty.

“Both police and prosecutors are on the front lines of watching prostitution, how it works on the street. They see the desperation of the people in prostitution, they came to recognize that the practice of habitual arrest and rearrest was not working, and that folks are in need of specialized services and are in need of more intelligent responses,” Johnson told Salon.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

June 4, 2013
 |

Every day, thousands, probably millions of people ask their family, friends, neighbors and colleagues similar and increasingly familiar questions: What has happened to our country? How did we get here? Isn’t it scary? Can anything be done about it?

There is an abundance of evidence that there are forces tearing apart the U.S. economy and society, causing increasing levels of fear, anxiety and trauma for large numbers of people. Many people are mystified as to the specific causes of their fears, with a mass media system that constantly broadcasts propaganda about how great America is and a new digital media system that may be exacerbating the problems for a society under immense and unprecedented duress.

There is the added problem that the theories and the means of social change we are familiar with, and to which we still turn, are not remotely up to the task we face, and have mostly proven to be inadequate. Virtually every problem we face has gotten worse over the past 40 years, and heavily sped up since 9/11 and the economic crash of 2007.

In an environment of confusion and despair, it can be helpful to name the beast–essentially to understand the forces at play, how they operate, and why they feel both intractable and overwhelming. So, what follows is a kind of Users’ Guide To What Is Freaking Us Out.”

What Has Happened to Us?

So the big question is: what is the “it” that has happened to us? Depending on your vantage point and the myriad problems in front of us, “it” can be any number of causes and factors.

For many, it is the disappearance of the sense of a democracy many thought was embedded in U.S society. Sure, we’ve always been ruled by elites. But we are in a new era where we feel crushed by the overwhelming dominance of corporations and big institutions that treat people like commodities, getting away with degrading people’s dignities while pocketing large profits. This is especially true of banks, which are now so big they are beyond the reach of the legal system for fear that the global economy will be adversely affected.

Many people feel they have no control over the direction of the country because their vote doesn’t matter–incumbents with the most money mostly get elected. Many voters feel trapped by the lack of options because of pro-corporate stances of both Republicans and Democrats, and then there is another beast–the rabid right-wing.Our legislators are bought by campaign contributions and seem incapable of constructive action. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, and the fact that legally corporations are often treated like persons, is beyond most people’s comprehension.

Economic Disaster For Many

For others, the anxiety producing “it” is directly connected to personal economic loss, of homes, jobs, personal wealth, or increased debt, all which has contributed to a massive erosion of financial security.

The statistics are quite shocking. The poor are suffering–more than 46 million Americans live at or below the poverty level, which is $23,201 for a family of four. That’s $5,800 per person; but a far larger group of 138 million people (nearly 40% of American households)–many of whom had considered themselves part of the middle class–are living paycheck to paycheck. And, according to a Pew Foundation survey, “nearly a quarter of Americans (24%) say they had trouble putting food on the table in the past 12 month revealing a painful level of deprivation and family trauma despite the U.S.  being the richest country in the world. Our level of deprivation is closer to that in Indonesia or Greece rather than Britain or Canada.”

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

June 4, 2013
 |

AARON MATÉ: The military trial of Army whistleblower Bradley Manning is underway. Manning is accused of providing more than 700,000 secret U.S. government documents and cables to WikiLeaks, the largest disclosure of state secrets in U.S. history. Manning faces more than 20 charges, including violating the Espionage Act and aiding the enemy. He has already pled guilty to 10 lesser charges of misusing classified material.

The trial began Monday with the defense and prosecution presenting starkly contrasting accounts. Manning’s defense lawyer, David Coombs, said Manning wanted to reveal the human costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Coombs said, quote, “[Bradley Manning] believed this information showed how we value human life. He was troubled by that. He believed that if the American public saw it, they too would be troubled.”

AMY GOODMAN: Army prosecutor Captain Joe Morrow accused Bradley Manning of aiding the enemy, including Osama Bin Laden, who allegedly accessed some of the classified State Department cables after they were published by the website WikiLeaks. Morrow said, quote, “This is a case about a soldier who systematically harvested hundreds of thousands of classified documents and dumped them onto the Internet, into the hands of the enemy–material he knew, based on his training, would put the lives of fellow soldiers at risk,” he said.

Coombs responded by arguing that Manning was selective, saying, quote, “He had access to literally hundreds of millions of documents as an all-source analyst, and these were the documents that he released. And he released these documents because he was hoping to make the world a better place,” he said.

The trial is expected to run to the end of August. Supporters of Bradley Manning gathered outside Fort Meade as the trial opened.

BROOKS BALLENGER: Bradley Manning did a very courageous thing. He told the American people and the world about what was going on in Afghanistan and about misinformation and distortions that were used to convince people that we should be in this war and that it was a just war and that we were helping the Afghan people, and a bunch of other misdeeds that the U.S. was doing. And I think that was a service to the country.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Bradley Manning supporter Brooks Ballenger.

To talk more about the first day of the trial and its implications, we’re joined by Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a lawyer for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. He was there yesterday at the opening session of Bradley Manning’s trial at Fort Meade.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Michael. Describe the scene yesterday. This is when the defense and the prosecution lays out their opening arguments.

MICHAEL RATNER: You know, it’s the third time, really, that I’ve been utterly devastated by being in that courtroom. First was when Bradley talked about his torture; secondly, when he talked about why he leaked the documents and gave his political reasons. And this time, the scene was–imagine a small antiseptic-looking courtroom. You have Bradley Manning sitting at the table between very large people, including his lawyer, looking very diminutive, but very dignified. And you have, you know, 16 of us in the courtroom plus a bunch of prosecutors and a few sketch artists and press. And they open–the government opens with a slide show. And the slide show is about how we are going to convince the court–it’s only a judge trial–that Bradley Manning aided the enemy, just dumped millions of documents, has nothing good to say about him, and we’re going to put him away for life. I mean, they didn’t say that, but that’s what happens if he’s convicted.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

A researcher works on a mosquito stock cage in a laboratory at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London. (file photo)

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

The UK government has failed in its desperate attempt at the European Union to blacklist the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah as a Å“terrorist group”, local media reported.

The failure came after Britain was unable to convince its European allies that Hezbollah was behind an attack on Israeli tourists in Bulgaria last year, according to British media outlets.

The bombing happened last July in the Black Sea resort of Burgas, where five Israeli tourists, a Bulgarian driver and the bomber were killed.

This was considered as a crucial part of the UK governmentâ„¢s rationale to convince the EU to blacklist Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

However, several EU countries voiced doubt over the evidence linking the resistance movement to the bombing.

Hezbollah enjoys a major political and social standing within the Lebanese society and the EU nation also voiced concerns that blacklisting it could create instability in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, after a one-year probe, the Bulgarian government too was unable to submit credible proof that Hezbollah was involved in the attack.

“An attack takes place and immediately all over the world, governments are saying it was Hezbollah,” said Elena Pavlova, a Middle East analyst based in Sofia. “Yet, we have waited a year and still no one has given any proof.”

Along with local journalist Ruslan Yordanov, she found al Qaida-linked martyrdom videos online, claiming responsibility a day after the bombing in Burgas. They wonder whether evidence pointing towards alternative perpetrators was deliberately ignored to meet the demands of Israeli and Western governments seeking an excuse to ban Hezbollah.

Hezbollah has also dismissed allegations of involvement in the Burgas plot, and the attempt to blacklist the resistance movement has brought heated responses from Lebanon.

“Any listing of the group as a terrorist organisation will be considered as political provocation,” Lebanon’s acting foreign minister Adnan Mansour, who is seen as close to the Syrian government, said last week. “We know there are Israeli pressures practised on more than one international side in order to accuse Hezbollah of terrorism.”

Enough doubts remain to make several EU governments uncomfortable about blacklisting the group, and the support of all 27 members is needed for the motion to pass.

MOL/HE

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Iran has congratulated the Syrian nation, government, and army on the success of the Syrian military forces in recapturing the strategic town of al-Qusayr in Western Syria.

Iran also condemned certain sides that facilitate the shipment of arms to the militants in the Arab country for the massacre of the Syrian people, emphasizing that those behind the carnage in Syria must be tried for war crimes.

Syriaâ„¢s state television reported on Wednesday that Syrian forces have regained full control of Qusayr following three weeks of fighting with the militants in the region.

The Syrian military forces dismantled the terrorist network of the militants in the strategic area, which borders Lebanon.

ASH/HJL

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales (L) at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California on August 23, 2011.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Iranâ„¢s Atieh Kazemi Mojarad wins 2013 UNESCO Young Scientist Award.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

A fire broke out at the Okhotny Ryad Metro station in downtown Moscow, injuring at least one person and prompting a mass evacuation of commuters. Four trains remain stranded in the Metro’s underground tunnels.

The injured woman has been taken to the Sklifosovsky trauma
clinic, Viktor Biryukov, a spokesperson for the capital’s
emergencies service told RIA Novosti. An estimated 2,000 people
were evacuated, he added. 

More people are being evacuated from trains that were stopped
inside the tunnels after the fire broke out during morning rush
hour in Moscow.

Firefighters have managed to douse the blaze. The cause of the
fire is yet to be determined, but a preliminary investigation
indicates a technical failure in a power line inside a tunnel,
the spokesperson said.

The fire, which damaged both the station and some of the tunnels,
seriously disrupted transportation in Moscow. Several nearby
stations had to close and urge passengers to leave and seek an
alternate means to get to their destination.

Authorities have blocked ground traffic at one of the streets
near Okhotny Ryad station to allow ambulances and fire brigades
to arrive.

DETAILS TO FOLLOW 

This article originally appeared on: RT

Protesters shout anti-government slogans during a demonstration in Ankara on June 4, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

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This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

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This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

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This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

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This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

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This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

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This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

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This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

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This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

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This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Syria’s state television reports that Syrian forces have regained full control of the strategic city of Qusayr.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

A French demonstrator holds a sign during a protest against labor agreements in Paris on March 5, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) held a successful convention last Friday and Saturday at the Ameristar Hotel in St. Charles, Missouri, a large suburb west of St. Louis. (See video below.)

Featuring a variety of nationally recognized speakers delivering dozens of liberty-promoting messages, the hundreds of lawmen and lawmakers in attendance were reminded of the vital role played by state and local law enforcement and elected officials in repelling the federal government’s assault on freedom.

A central aspect of the state and local counter-offensive is the nullification of any and all unconstitutional acts of the federal government.

Presentations on the first day of the convention were divided into four sections: The Constitution and the Oath of Office; The Right to Keep and Bear Arms; State Sovereignty and the Tenth Amendment; and American Liberty: Whose Job is it?

Representing the John Birch Society, this reporter spoke during the fourth segment, describing threats to liberty posed by the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the effectiveness of state measures refusing to enforce those provisions inside state borders.

Other keynote speakers included Sheriff Richard Mack, founder of the CSPOA, who recounted his experience fighting the Brady Bill and winning his case at the Supreme Court.

Several state legislators reported on the success of efforts in their respective states to resist federal overreaching into matters not within its constitutional purview.

Former state Representative Charles Key of Oklahoma and current state Reps. Paul Curtman of Missouri and Matt Shea of Washington spoke specifically on their individual contributions in advancing the cause of liberty and restoring the sovereignty of their respective states.

Each of those state lawmakers have sponsored bills nullifying acts of Congress exceeding the boundaries built by states around the powers of the federal government.

During breakout sessions held Saturday, June 1, attendees could choose from over a dozen smaller meetings, each covering a topic central to fulfilling the overall mission of the convention to “equip sheriffs, peace officers and public officials with the necessary information and public support to carry out their duties in accordance with their Oaths of Office.”

From the demise of due process under the NDAA to the federal infringement on the right to bear arms, there was a common thread running through all the presentations: the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution are in clear and present danger from the federal government and that states “have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil” attendant on the nearly constant federal assault on liberty and the attempt by many to convert states into mere subordinate units of an all-powerful central authority.

With the invaluable information provided to them at the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association’s Convention, local law enforcement and state and local elected officials can step confidently into the breach and fearlessly defend the life, liberty, and property of all citizens within their jurisdictions.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

The Colombian-American computer hacker who turned Army Private Bradley Manning in to authorities surprised courtroom spectators Tuesday when he took the stand during day two of the soldier’s trial.

Prosecutors called Adrian Lamo to testify Tuesday morning, an
unexpected maneuver that brought gasps from within the courtroom
and the nearby media center where only a handful of journalist
gathered to report on the second day of the long-awaited
court-martial of Private first class Manning. Not a single one of
the 70 seats within the Ft. Meade press center was vacant when
the trial kicked off on Monday, but barely two-dozen
journalists assembled a day later when a key witness in the case
was called to answer questions about the Army intelligence
analyst.

Less than a week before he was arrested by American authorities
in May 2010 and charged with the biggest leak of intelligence in
US history, Pfc. Bradley Manning admitted to Lamo in online chats
that he shared a trove of sensitive files with the whistleblower
website WikiLeaks. Lamo told law enforcement officials about
his conversations with Manning shortly after the two began
talking on May 21, in turn prompting the private’s arrest and
ultimately the trial that finally got underway in Fort Meade,
Maryland this week after more than three years of waiting.

The prosecution called Lamo as their third witness on Tuesday and
began their questioning by asking him to discuss his history as a
computer hacker, a tenure he said started in the 90s and
involved a number of high profile intrusions into the networks of
the New York Times, Microsoft and others. Now 32, Lamo was
practically a teenager when he became a fugitive of the law more
than a decade ago before pleading guilty to computer crimes and
ultimately being sentenced to serve a brief stint of house arrest
and probation. Manning later learned of Lamo’s run from the FBI
and reached out to him from Iraq during an apparent time of need.
Now the soldier stands to spend life in prison if convicted of aiding the
enemy – the most serious of the 20-plus counts the US government
charged him with after Lamo turned him in.

When prosecutors began to test their witness, they asked Lamo to
go back to 2010 and recall the computers and software he used
during the random few chats between himself and Manning. The Army
would later enlist forensics experts to scour Lamo’s laptops for
more information about his online encounters with the WikiLeaks
source, but the witness’s own mastery of computers had him
running circles around the prosecution as he spoke from the
stand.

At one point, Lamo – who admittedly suffers from Asperger’s
syndrome and severe depression – eluded attorneys by offering
all-too detailed descriptions of his computer habits, leaving
even Army prosecutors scratching their heads.

“Mr. Lamo, you seem to know more than the common person about
computers,” an Army attorney acknowledged early on during
Tuesday’s questioning. Lamo agreed that he has extensive
experience in the field, including proven knowledge with regards
to finding ways to bypass and improve the security of certain
systems. That know-how eventually led to Lamo’s criminal
conviction, and later defense attorney David
Coombs related it to his client’s own thirst for knowledge.

Pfc. Manning reached out to Lamo initially via emails before the
chats over AOL ever began, and the prosecution asked the hacker
to explain how he knew the correspondence came from the intel
analyst and not anyone else.

“Based on retrieving return address information common to all
email,” Lamo replied dryly.

When prosecutors pushed him to explain what that information
entailed exactly, Lamo said without missing a beat,
“Information indicating where it originated from which allows
the recipient to reply.”

“Is that an email address?” the prosecutors asked
sincerely.

“Yes, it is,” he replied, prompting snickers from the
press gallery.

Lamo went on to speak about the two personal computers he used to
speak with Manning, but wasn’t allowed the opportunity to discuss
the now infamous chat logs until the defense began
cross-examination later that morning.

Manning was the one who initiated those conversations with Lamo
and didn’t wait long at all before revealing his association with
WikiLeaks and his role in sending them files. Earlier this year,
the soldier said in a pretrial hearing that he
sent WikiLeaks US State Department cables, field reports from
the Iraq and Afghan wars and a tome of other sensitive
information.

“I’m an Army intelligence analyst, deployed to eastern
Baghdad, pending discharge for ‘adjustment disorder’ in lieu of
‘gender identity disorder,” Manning wrote in confidence to
Lamo only moments into their first IM chat.

The logs of the Manning/Lamo talks were released to the media by
the hacker himself only days after the soldier was apprehended
outside of Baghdad, but until now the self-taught computer
security expert spoke little publically about the few days the
two talked before he turned him in.

After the prosecution retired, Coombs began his turn at
questioning by having Lamo admit to cracking computer network at
a younger age, a decision on his part that prompted him to run
from the FBI and end up on wanted posters across California.

“I committed a string of offenses, yes,” Lamo said.

Coombs raged on, subtlety intensifying his questions at a pace
that lent to the counsel relentlessly wanting Lamo to enlighten
the court as to his opinions of Manning and his role with
WikiLeaks given what he encountered during the few Internet chats
between the two.

“You were concerned about the type of information?” Coombs
asked.

“Yes,” Lamo replied of the leaked Army data.

“You were also concerned for Pfc. Manning’s life?”

Again, a “Yes.”

The government predicted during opening statements one day
earlier this week that that they will prove that Manning went to
WikiLeaks knowing he would bring harm to America. In particular,
they said the soldier was aware that sharing sensitive files on
the Web would mean enemies of the US – specifically al-Qaeda –
could come across the information and use it to better their own
battlefield strategies. Manning has insisted otherwise, though,
and Coombs coaxed his one-time supposed-confidant into admitting
that he was left with that same impression of the soldier during
those few days of chats in the spring of 2010.

On the defense’s part, Coombs used his opening remarks on
Monday
to depict Manning as a young, naïve and well-intentioned
do-gooder who gave Wikileaks hundreds of thousands of files with
the desire of bringing about change across the globe. But during
his cross-examination of the prosecution’s witness on Tuesday,
Coombs all but made the man who turned his client in agree to
exactly the same.

“You believed he was ideologically motivated?” Coombs
asked him.

“That was my speculation.”

“You also saw him as idealistic?”

“Yes, I did.”

“He told you during your conversations that he wanted to
disclose this information for public good,” Coombs recalled
from the logs.

“That was his representation, yes,” Lamo said.

Coombs went on draw comparisons between the two, many of which
Lamo admitted were indeed rather accurate. Both men were geeky,
rather introverted computer wizzes, and both had roles in their
respective LGBT communities.

“He told you that he was always the type of person that tried
to investigate to find out the truth?” Coombs asked.

Lamo, in response, said that that was “Something that I could
appreciate.”

The prosecution objected to the questioning made by Coombs no
fewer than four times during what was less than an hour of
testimony, but the courtroom grew tense as the dialogue revealed
not just more in common between the two, but also Manning’s
fragile yet focused state during the online chats.

“He told you he was an intelligence analyst,” Coombs said,
and a person who “reached out to somebody like you who would
possibly understand.”

“Yes,” Lamo responded to both statements.

Coombs went on with his assessments and Lamo further confirmed a
number of allegations brought up during the cross-examination.
Before long the exchanges became emotional and Lamo was
noticeably distraught as he answered the attorney’s inquires
while sitting less than 15 feet from the man who may spend life
in jail because of him. The only other time they’ve been in the
same physical space occurred in late 2011 during a pretrial
motion hearing that came after Manning spent nearly 10 months in
essentially solitary confinement within a military jail cell in
Northern Virginia.

Coombs continued to cite excerpts from the logs, asking Lamo to
agree – which he always did – that those exchanges took place.

“He also told you that he had been questioning his gender for
years but started to come to terms with his gender during the
deployment. He told you he believed he had made a huge mess.”

“Yes,” Lamo responded on both accounts.

Manning confessed to be “emotionally crashing,” and
“said he was talking to you as somebody that needed moral and
emotional support,” Coombs recalled.

Again, Lamo responded affirmatively.

“At this point, you say he was trying not to end up killing
himself,” Coombs said solemnly.

“That is also correct.”

“He told you that he was feeling desperate and isolated . . .
Described himself as a broken soul . . . He said his life was
falling apart and he didn’t have anyone to talk to . . . He said
he was honestly scared . . .There was no one he could trust . . .
And he told you he needed a lot of help.”

“Yes, he did,” Lamo said after each one of Coombs’
purposed pauses.

Coombs asked Lamo to confirm a number of other items from the
chat logs, a rope-a-dope verbal assault that appeared to weaken
the witness while exemplifying the defense’s claims that Manning
only meant to help the world by going to WikiLeaks.

As the exchanges intensified, Coombs paraphrased from a now
widely-quoted quip from the chat logs in which Manning proposed a
hypothetical question that he hoped would elicit an answer from
Lamo as to how to handle the material he encountered while
deployed in Iraq and presented with access to information he
never dreamed of.

“If you had free reign over classified networks for long
periods of time… and you saw incredible things, awful things…
things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server
stored in a dark room in Washington DC… what would you do?”
the original chat quote reads.

“Do you recall him asking you that question?” Coombs
asked.

“Yes I do.”

“And he told you that he thought the information that he had
would have an impact on the entire world?”

“That is also correct.”

Coombs said his client believed the disclosure would reveal the
truth regarding casualties in Iraq, and how the First World – the
US – exploited the Third World solely for America’s own gain.

“He believed that everywhere there was a US post there was a
diplomatic scandal?” said Coombs.

“That he did.”

Manning thought it was “important the info got out,” and
that “it might actually change something.” It was no
longer a “good guys versus bad guys” scenario in America’s
wars and that he couldn’t participate in a program where innocent
lives were being undervalued. Lamo agreed again on all accounts.
Then Coombs painted a picture of a soldier who saw himself a
humanist and valued every live on Earth – even those being
slaughtered by his Army peers.

“He felt connected to everybody,” recalled Coombs.

“Yes.”

“He felt like we were all distant family.”

“Indeed.”

“And he cared.”

“Yes.”

“And he wanted to make sure that everybody was okay.”

“Yes.”

Later, Lamo admitted that Manning confided to him in the chats
that the release of documents attributed to him brought
“immense hope” and that, according to Coombs, “He was
hoping that people would change if they saw the information.”

Then, suddenly, Coombs stopped asking questions whose answers
were well documented in the chats. Before sending Lamo off the
stand, he asked the witness if Manning’s remarks suggested, like
the prosecutions attests, the soldier wanted to aid the enemy.

“At any time did he say he had no loyalty to America?”
Coombs asked.

“Not in those words, no.”

“At anytime did he say the American flag didn’t man anything
to him?”

“No.”

“At any time did he say he wanted to help the enemy?”

“Not in those words, no.”

“Thank you, Mr. Lamo,” Coombs concluded before the witness
was permanently excused from the stand.

“He broke Adrian,” one of the dozen-or-so spectators
inside of the courtroom told RT’s Andrew Blake as the session
went on break. Others said that several witnesses broke into
tears during the exchange between Lamo and the defense, and one
struggled to find the words most appropriate to describe the
moment when Lamo left the stand and walked by Manning, ignoring
the soldier’s stare and exiting the room for good, likely never
to be face-to-face with him again.

The government is expected to call more witnesses throughout the
week who have first-hand knowledge of the early days of the
Army’s criminal investigation into Manning after he was
apprehended. The trial is expected to run through August.

This article originally appeared on: RT

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Police inTurkey have arrested at least 25 people in the western city of Izmir for posting material on the social networking website, Twitter, as anti-government protests enter the sixth day across the country.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Did you know that Barack Obama has been secretly negotiating the most important trade agreement since the formation of the World Trade Organization?

Did you know that this agreement will impose very strict Internet copyright rules, ban all “Buy American” laws, give Wall Street banks much more freedom to trade risky derivatives and force even more domestic manufacturing offshore?

If you have not heard about this treaty, don’t feel bad. Obama has refused to even give Congress a copy of the draft agreement and he has banned members of Congress from attending the negotiations.

The plan is to keep this treaty secret until the very last minute and then to railroad it through Congress and have it signed into law by October. The treaty is known as “the Trans-Pacific Partnership”, and the nations that are reported to be involved in the development of this treaty include the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Peru, Brunei, Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia. Opponents of this treaty refer to it as “the NAFTA of the Pacific”, and if it is enacted it will push the deindustrialization of America into overdrive.

The “one world” economic agenda that Barack Obama has been pushing is absolutely killing the U.S. economy. As you will see later in this article, we are losing jobs and businesses at an astounding pace. And each new “free trade” agreement makes things even worse.

For example, just check out the impact that the recent free trade agreement that Obama negotiated with South Korea is having on us…

—A 10 percent decline of U.S. exports to Korea
—The U.S. trade deficit with Korea has climbed 37 percent
—U.S. auto industry has been crippled
—Loss of U.S. control where international trade, banking and finance is concerned
—A projected 159,000 jobs will be lost

Wait a second — I though that “free trade” agreements were actually supposed to increase exports.

So why have they declined by 10 percent?

Did someone make a really bad deal?

And of course we have all seen the economic devastation that NAFTA has wrought.

When NAFTA was pushed through Congress in 1993, the United States actually had a trade surplus with Mexico of 1.6 billion dollars. By 2010, we had a trade deficit with Mexico of 61.6 billion dollars.

And “free trade” with China has turned out to be a complete and total nightmare as well.

Back in 1985, our trade deficit with China was approximately 6 million dollars (million with a little “m”) for the entire year.

In 2012, our trade deficit with China was 315 billion dollars. That was the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world.

But instead of learning from the mistakes of the past, Barack Obama is pressing for more “free trade” agreements.

The New York Times is calling the Trans-Pacific Partnership “the most significant international commercial agreement since the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995“. It is reportedly going to include a whole host of provisions which would never be able to get through Congress on their own. Even though this treaty will affect all of our daily lives, the Obama administration is keeping this treaty a total secret. In fact, Obama won’t even show it to Congress even though members of Congress have asked repeatedly to see it…

The agreement, under negotiation since 2008, would set new rules for everything from food safety and financial markets to medicine prices and Internet freedom. It would include at least 12 of the countries bordering the Pacific and be open for more to join. President Obama has said he wants to sign it by October.

Although Congress has exclusive constitutional authority to set the terms of trade, so far the executive branch has managed to resist repeated requests by members of Congress to see the text of the draft agreement and has denied requests from members to attend negotiations as observers – reversing past practice.

While the agreement could rewrite broad sections of nontrade policies affecting Americans’ daily lives, the administration also has rejected demands by outside groups that the nearly complete text be publicly released.

So exactly who in the world does this guy think that he is? Why won’t Obama let us know exactly what is in this treaty?

Fortunately, there have been a few leaks. One thing that we have discovered is that this new treaty would reportedly ban all “Buy American laws“.

That certainly would not be popular if it got out.

And do you remember SOPA?

The American people wanted nothing to do with the very strict Internet copyright provisions of SOPA and loudly expressed their displeasure to members of Congress.

Unfortunately, now the provisions of SOPA are back. It is being reported that most of the provisions of SOPA have been quietly inserted into this treaty. If this treaty is enacted, those provisions will become law and the American people will not be able to do anything about it.

And according to the New York Times, there are all sorts of other disturbing things that have been slipped into the treaty…

And yet another leak revealed that the deal would include even more expansive incentives to relocate domestic manufacturing offshore than were included in Nafta – a deal that drained millions of manufacturing jobs from the American economy.

The agreement would also be a boon for Wall Street and its campaign to water down regulations put in place after the 2008 financial crisis. Among other things, it would practically forbid bans on risky financial products, including the toxic derivatives that helped cause the crisis in the first place.

Are you starting to understand why the Obama administration is keeping this treaty such a secret?

If the details of this treaty were revealed to the American people right now, it would create such an uproar that Congress would never approve this treaty.

So please share this article with as many people as you can. We have got to get the American people educated about this.

Enough damage has already been done to the U.S. economy by “free trade” agreements. Just consider the following statistics…

-The United States has lost more than 56,000manufacturing facilities since 2001.

-Back in the year 2000, there were more than 17 million Americans working in manufacturing. Now there are less than 12 million.

-There are less Americans working in manufacturing today than there was in 1950 even though the population of the country has more than doubled since then.

-According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.

-According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.
’
-Today, corporate profits as a percentage of U.S. GDP are at an all-time high, but wages as a percentage of U.S. GDP are near an all-time low.

-Without enough good jobs, more Americans are becoming dependent on the government. If you can believe it, the number of Americans on food stamps has gone from about 17 million in the year 2000 to more than 47 million today.

-Overall, the United States has run a trade deficit of more than 8 trillion dollars with the rest of the world since 1975.

And things continue to get even worse. The Institute for Supply Management manufacturing index declined to 49.0 in May. Any reading below 50 indicates contraction.

That was the lowest reading that we have seen since June 2009. Just like most of the rest of the world, we are rapidly heading toward another major economic downturn.

And if you want a perfect visual example of what deindustrialization is doing to America, just look atthe city of Detroit.

It was once one of the greatest manufacturing cities in the history of the world, but now it is a rotting, decaying, festering hellhole.

According to the New York Times, there are now approximately 70,000 abandoned buildings in Detroit, and at this point the city is so broke that there is talk that the female giraffe at the Detroit Zoo could be sold off to help pay the bills.

For much more on how deindustrialization is ripping the guts out of the U.S. economy, please see the following articles…

1) “55 Reasons Why You Should Buy Products That Are Made In America”

2) “40 Ways That China Is Beating America”

3) “Show This To Anyone That Believes That ‘Things Are Getting Better’ In America”

4) “10 Amazing Charts That Demonstrate The Slow, Agonizing Death Of The American Worker”

5) “22 Stats That Show How The Emerging One World Economy Is Absolutely Killing American Workers”

What Barack Obama is trying to do is a mind blowing mistake.

The “one world” economic agenda that he is pursuing is destroying the American worker and the American middle class.

U.S. workers are being thrown into a global labor pool with workers on the other side of the planet that live in countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages.

Do you want to directly compete with a worker on the other side of the globe that is doing your job for a dollar an hour with no benefits?

If not, you need to stand up and make your voice be heard.

There is no way in the world that American workers should have to compete for jobs with workers making slave labor wages in communist China.

What we desperately need are some red-blooded economic patriots to arise and to tell both political parties that we do not want this “one world” economic agenda.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the peoples of the world have witnessed successive governments in the United States that have demonstrated little if any respect for fundamental considerations of international law, human rights, and the United States Constitution itself. Instead, the world has watched a comprehensive and malicious assault upon the integrity of the international and domestic legal orders by groups of men and women who are thoroughly Machiavellian in their perception of international relations and in their conduct of both foreign affairs and American domestic policy.

Even more seriously, in many instances specific components of the U.S. government’s foreign policies constitute ongoing criminal activity under well recognized principles of both international law and United States domestic law, and in particular the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, as well as the Pentagon’s own U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 on The Law of Land Warfare (1956), which applies to the President as Commander-in-Chief of United States Armed Forces under Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution.

Depending on the substantive issues involved, these international and domestic crimes typically include but are not limited to numerous Nuremberg offences of “crimes against peace.”

Their criminal responsibility also concerns Nuremberg “crimes against humanity” and war crimes as well as grave breaches of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the 1907 Hague Regulations on land warfare.  Furthermore, various officials of the United States government have committed numerous inchoate crimes incidental to these substantive offences that under the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles as well as U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956) are international crimes in their own right: planning and preparation, solicitation, incitement, conspiracy, complicity, attempt, aiding and abetting.

Of course the terrible irony of today’s situation is that over six decades ago at Nuremberg the U.S. government participated in the prosecution, punishment, and execution of Nazi government officials for committing some of the same types of heinous international crimes that these officials of the United States government have inflicted upon people all over the world. To be sure, I personally oppose the imposition of capital punishment upon any human being for any reason no matter how monstrous their crimes.

According to basic principles of international criminal law set forth in paragraph 501 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, all high level civilian officials and military officers in the U.S. government who either knew or should have known that soldiers or civilians under their control (such as the C.I.A. or mercenary contractors), committed or were about to commit international crimes and failed to take the measures necessary to stop them, or to punish them, or both, are likewise personally responsible for the commission of international crimes.

This category of officialdom who actually knew or should have known of the commission of these international crimes under their jurisdiction and failed to do anything about them include at the very top of America’s criminal chain-of-command the President, the Vice-President, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Director of National Intelligence, the C.I.A. Director, National Security Advisor and the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff along with the appropriate Regional Commanders-in-Chief, especially for U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).  These U.S. government officials and their immediate subordinates are responsible for the commission of crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes as specified by the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles as well as by U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 of 1956.

One generation ago the peoples of the world asked themselves: Where were the “good” Germans? Well, there were some good Germans. The Lutheran theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the foremost exemplar of someone who led a life of principled opposition to the Nazi-terror state even unto death.

Today the peoples of the world are likewise asking themselves: Where are the “good” Americans? Well, there are some good Americans. They are getting prosecuted for protesting against and resisting illegal U.S. military interventions and war crimes around the world. Private Bradley Manning is America’s equivalent to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Vaclav Havel, Andrei Sakharov, Wei Jingsheng, Aung San Suu Kyi, and others. He is the archetypal American Hero whom we should be bringing into our schools and teaching our children to emulate, not those wholesale purveyors of gratuitous violence and bloodshed adulated by the U.S. government, America’s financial power elite, the mainstream corporate news media, and its interlocked entertainment industry.

Today in international legal terms, the United States government itself should now be viewed as constituting an ongoing criminal conspiracy under international criminal law in violation of the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, because of its formulation and undertaking of serial wars of aggression, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes that are legally akin to those perpetrated by the former Nazi regime in Germany.

As a consequence, American citizens and soldiers such as Bradley Manning possess the basic right under international law and United States domestic law, including the U.S. Constitution, to engage in acts of civil resistance designed to prevent, impede, thwart, or terminate ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by U.S. government officials in their conduct of foreign affairs policies and military operations purported to relate to defense and counter-terrorism. If not so restrained, the United States government could very well precipitate a Third World War.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

Kaspersky Lab has discovered a years-long cyber-espionage operation that victimized hundreds of high-profile targets in 40 countries. The malware, known as NetTraveler, was used for covert computer surveillance and appears to have originated in China.

The Kaspersky Global Research and Analysis Lab best known for
exposing Flame and Stuxnet – sophisticated spywares launched by
the US government – has uncovered a global cyber-espionage
network targeting the world’s diplomatic, government and military
agencies.

In a report published on June 4 the malware that especially
targeted Asian countries was identified as an “advanced
persistent threat” similar to the Red October unveiled in
January.

“Based on the collected intelligence, we estimate the
[controlling] group side to about 50 individuals, most of which
speak Chinese natively and have working knowledge of the English
language,” the report said.

However, nowhere in the Kaspersky report is the Chinese
government accused of any wrongdoing and only speculation links
China to the infection software.

According to the report, NetTraveler was designed to “steal
sensitive data as well as log keystrokes, and retrieve file
system listings and various Office or PDF documents.”

The amount of stolen data discovered on the malware’s
command-and-control servers exceeded 22 gigabytes, with that
being a small fraction of the total data stolen since the rest of
it was previously downloaded by the attackers and deleted from
the servers.

The countries most frequently targeted by NetTraveler — Russia,
India, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan — all border China.
The first evidence of NetTraveler appeared in 2004, but the
report said the most attacks came between 2010 and 2013.

Diplomats were targeted most often, followed by government
workers, and high-level private officials then international
military contractors. Tibetan/Uyghur activists and oil industry
companies also ranked among the favorite targets.

The hackers did not use any advanced vulnerabilities and relied
on phishing attacks, which often distribute infected links via
email or social media.

“NetTraveler victims get infected through spear-phishing
attacks using Office documents which exploit two publicly known
vulnerabilities,” the report states with analysts surprised
that such unsophisticated attacks can still be successful with
high profile targets. “Although these vulnerabilities have
been patched by Microsoft, they remain effective and are among
the most exploited in targeted attacks.”

The researchers discovered that at least six NetTraveler targets
— a Russian military contractor, a government organization in
Tajikistan, and embassies in Belgium, Iran, Kazakhstan, and
Belarus — were previously hacked by the Red October campaign that
was likely launched from Eastern Europe. Kurt Baumgartner, a
senior security researcher for the Americas on the Global
Research and Analysis Team at Kaspersky, told DarkReading.com the
attempts from separate phishing schemes indicates those locations
are highly valued.

“Threat actors infiltrate victims simultaneously and may or
may not be concerned about victim overlap,” he said. “Most
likely, with these two groups in particular, the operators have a
specific set of tasks at the victim organizations. If they happen
to see another piece of malware on the target network, and it
doesn’t interrupt their operation, they just go back to
completing their assignments.”

This article originally appeared on: RT

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Turkish police have fired tear gas and used water cannons to disperse thousands of anti-government demonstrators at Istanbul’s Taksim Square.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Turkish police fire tear gas at anti-government demonstrators in Istanbul on June 4, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

[J]

For the 14th year in a row, shareholders of ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company, have soundly rejected a proposal that would have added homosexuality to the company’s non-discrimination employment policy. The proposal, voted down by an overwhelming 81 percent of ExxonMobil’s shareholders on May 30 read, “The Shareholders request that ExxonMobil amend its written equal employment opportunity policy to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and to substantially implement the policy.”

While the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” do not appear in the company’s written policy on discrimination, ExxonMobil insists its “global zero-tolerance policy” fully applies to “all forms of discrimination, including discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.” The company said in a statement that harassment, “even in its most subtle forms, directly conflicts with company policy and will not be tolerated. All employees are subject to disciplinary action, including termination, for any act of harassment.”

In a proxy statement before the vote, ExxonMobil’s board of directors encouraged the shareholders to reject the proposal, which would have added anti-discrimination language specific to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals. “The Board has reviewed in detail ExxonMobil’s existing global policies that prohibit all forms of discrimination, including those based on sexual orientation and gender identity, in any Company workplace, anywhere in the world,” the statement read. “In fact, ExxonMobil’s policies go beyond the law and prohibit any form of discrimination. Based on these existing all-inclusive, zero-tolerance policies, the Board believes the proposal is unnecessary.”

Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association said that had the shareholders approved the proposal, “the company would have been forced to begin promoting and providing ‘acceptance’ training of homosexuality to all employees, even if they had religious objections.”

CNSNews.com noted that a week before the vote, Exxon “was sued by the LGBT advocacy group Freedom to Work, which alleges that ExxonMobil discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation by hiring a less-qualified administrative assistant rather than one who served as treasurer of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund.”

Peter Romer-Friedman, an attorney for Freedom to Work, called Exxon “an outlier that refuses to follow industry standards. The concern is that it’s one of the largest corporations in the world yet won’t adopt an express policy prohibiting sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, the homosexual activist group Human Rights Campaign “gave Exxon a negative 25 score on its most recent rankings of major companies for its Corporate Equality Index” – a report that ranks businesses according to their willingness to embrace the homosexual culture. The Human Rights Campaign noted that many other firms scored higher than 80 on a scale of 100.

Freedom to Work president Tico Almeida complained that Texas-based ExxonMobil “stands virtually alone in the Fortune 100 in denying qualified gay and transgender Americans a fair shot to get a job based on their talents and hard work.” According to the Times, the group had sent the company two phony resumes “in response to a December listing for a job in Illinois. The group alleged that the candidate who volunteered for a feminist college group and earned a 3.9 grade-point average in college received more call-backs than the applicant with a 3.98 GPA and served as treasurer of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund.”

“Exxon might make money from fossil fuels, but it’s lagging behind most other Fortune 500 companies with fossilized workplace policies,” Almeida said in a statement on the Freedom to Work’s Facebook page. “Exxon remains on the wrong side of history.”

However, Tony Perkins of the conservative Family Research Council applauded Exxon’s decision to stand firm against the homosexual bullying that has intimidated other companies into submission. “While other businesses drift away from their principles or capitulate under pressure, Exxon is putting its stock in something other than political correctness,” said Perkins in a statement. “For the 14th straight year, shareholders voted to maintain their reputation as a company that upholds the commonsense principle that managers should be able to determine what conduct contributes to and what conduct detracts from the effective performance of an employee’s duties.”

Perkins said that the four-to-one margin against the pro-homosexual resolution “is a strong indication that the homosexual community’s agenda is not resonating beyond the most liberal states. Exxon is setting a good example for other businesses who think promoting extreme political views is the only away to avoid the strong arm tactics of far left special interests.”

Peter Sprigg, FRC’s senior fellow for policy studies, told CNSNews, that “the fact ExxonMobil has adopted none of the pro-homosexual policies demanded by groups like the Human Rights Campaign, yet remains the second largest corporation in America, demonstrates the falsehood of claims that such policies are necessary to attract a quality workforce. On the contrary, other corporations would be wise to follow ExxonMobil’s example, focusing on their core business rather than on appeasing small populations and special interest groups.”

Perkins applauded Exxon “for standing firm and not ceding the moral high ground to the bullies of the left. Their conviction is a refreshing change from companies like Target and Amazon.com, who continue to alienate customers with their radical political views.”

This article originally appeared on: The New American

[J]

For the 14th year in a row, shareholders of ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company, have soundly rejected a proposal that would have added homosexuality to the company’s non-discrimination employment policy. The proposal, voted down by an overwhelming 81 percent of ExxonMobil’s shareholders on May 30 read, “The Shareholders request that ExxonMobil amend its written equal employment opportunity policy to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and to substantially implement the policy.”

While the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” do not appear in the company’s written policy on discrimination, ExxonMobil insists its “global zero-tolerance policy” fully applies to “all forms of discrimination, including discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.” The company said in a statement that harassment, “even in its most subtle forms, directly conflicts with company policy and will not be tolerated. All employees are subject to disciplinary action, including termination, for any act of harassment.”

In a proxy statement before the vote, ExxonMobil’s board of directors encouraged the shareholders to reject the proposal, which would have added anti-discrimination language specific to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals. “The Board has reviewed in detail ExxonMobil’s existing global policies that prohibit all forms of discrimination, including those based on sexual orientation and gender identity, in any Company workplace, anywhere in the world,” the statement read. “In fact, ExxonMobil’s policies go beyond the law and prohibit any form of discrimination. Based on these existing all-inclusive, zero-tolerance policies, the Board believes the proposal is unnecessary.”

Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association said that had the shareholders approved the proposal, “the company would have been forced to begin promoting and providing ‘acceptance’ training of homosexuality to all employees, even if they had religious objections.”

CNSNews.com noted that a week before the vote, Exxon “was sued by the LGBT advocacy group Freedom to Work, which alleges that ExxonMobil discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation by hiring a less-qualified administrative assistant rather than one who served as treasurer of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund.”

Peter Romer-Friedman, an attorney for Freedom to Work, called Exxon “an outlier that refuses to follow industry standards. The concern is that it’s one of the largest corporations in the world yet won’t adopt an express policy prohibiting sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, the homosexual activist group Human Rights Campaign “gave Exxon a negative 25 score on its most recent rankings of major companies for its Corporate Equality Index” – a report that ranks businesses according to their willingness to embrace the homosexual culture. The Human Rights Campaign noted that many other firms scored higher than 80 on a scale of 100.

Freedom to Work president Tico Almeida complained that Texas-based ExxonMobil “stands virtually alone in the Fortune 100 in denying qualified gay and transgender Americans a fair shot to get a job based on their talents and hard work.” According to the Times, the group had sent the company two phony resumes “in response to a December listing for a job in Illinois. The group alleged that the candidate who volunteered for a feminist college group and earned a 3.9 grade-point average in college received more call-backs than the applicant with a 3.98 GPA and served as treasurer of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund.”

“Exxon might make money from fossil fuels, but it’s lagging behind most other Fortune 500 companies with fossilized workplace policies,” Almeida said in a statement on the Freedom to Work’s Facebook page. “Exxon remains on the wrong side of history.”

However, Tony Perkins of the conservative Family Research Council applauded Exxon’s decision to stand firm against the homosexual bullying that has intimidated other companies into submission. “While other businesses drift away from their principles or capitulate under pressure, Exxon is putting its stock in something other than political correctness,” said Perkins in a statement. “For the 14th straight year, shareholders voted to maintain their reputation as a company that upholds the commonsense principle that managers should be able to determine what conduct contributes to and what conduct detracts from the effective performance of an employee’s duties.”

Perkins said that the four-to-one margin against the pro-homosexual resolution “is a strong indication that the homosexual community’s agenda is not resonating beyond the most liberal states. Exxon is setting a good example for other businesses who think promoting extreme political views is the only away to avoid the strong arm tactics of far left special interests.”

Peter Sprigg, FRC’s senior fellow for policy studies, told CNSNews, that “the fact ExxonMobil has adopted none of the pro-homosexual policies demanded by groups like the Human Rights Campaign, yet remains the second largest corporation in America, demonstrates the falsehood of claims that such policies are necessary to attract a quality workforce. On the contrary, other corporations would be wise to follow ExxonMobil’s example, focusing on their core business rather than on appeasing small populations and special interest groups.”

Perkins applauded Exxon “for standing firm and not ceding the moral high ground to the bullies of the left. Their conviction is a refreshing change from companies like Target and Amazon.com, who continue to alienate customers with their radical political views.”

This article originally appeared on: The New American

There’s an old patriotic joke about how the Soviet media spun a two-auto race in which an American car bested a Russian one. Went the reportage: “Russian car finishes second in race.

American car comes in next to last.”

But this joke has nothing on the modern Western media’s practices, which were on full display in the coverage of a recent Vatican speech on finances given by Pope Francis to visiting new ambassadors. For instance, The Telegraph ran the headline, “Pope Francis urges global leaders to end ‘tyranny’ of money.” Author Nick Squires then went on to “explain,” “He [the pope] said free-market capitalism had created a ‘tyranny’…. [That is,][u]nchecked capitalism had created ‘a new, invisible, and at times virtual, tyranny’, said the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio.”

The problem?

The pope never used the term “free-market capitalism.”

For that matter, he never mentioned capitalism or the “free market” at all.

Nor did his speech include the phrase the “tyranny of money.”

In fairness, Squires didn’t present the absent terms and phrases as quotations, but as elements of his own interpretation of what the pope meant. But his journalistic divination clearly is blind to the divine, as he thoroughly mischaracterized the theme of Francis’s speech.

To wit: Financiers, politicians, and economists should cultivate a God-centered ethics when pursuing their endeavors.

In fact, the words “ethics” and “ethical” were mentioned eight times in the pope’s 1000-word speech (which took mere minutes to deliver), and “God” appeared four times. But while Squires used terms in his article that Francis never uttered, he mentioned “ethical” only once, in passing, and “God” not at all.

This is deceptive – if not deceitful. Even if a reader notes your cut-and-paste efforts – which are a legitimate part of good summarization – he will likely assume that you’re seeking to distill, not distort, the essence of the story. And in Squires’ case the reader can’t easily compare notes, either, since the author departed from common practice and did not provide a link to what the pope actually said. Surprise, surprise.

Of course, to focus on the speech’s actual theme – ethics – would have contradicted the media narrative that the pope was calling for government, and not godly, control. For ethics lies outside of law. Sure, we want our politicians to be ethical in their personal lives and when crafting legislation, but we also want our auto mechanics, teachers, parents, doctors, lawyers, and clergymen to be ethical. And you can have ethics without government – but you cannot have good government without ethics.

Moreover, the pope correctly tied ethics in with God, writing:

Indebtedness and credit distance countries from their real economy and citizens from their real buying power. Added to this, as if it were needed, is widespread corruption and selfish fiscal evasion which have taken on worldwide dimensions. The will to power and of possession has become limitless.

Concealed behind this attitude is a rejection of ethics, a rejection of God.

And since baby-in-philosophy journalists have long insisted that you can be good without God, they’re loath to tie ethics in with Him.

Also note that in talking about how indebtedness is distancing “countries from their real economy and citizens from their real buying power,” the pope is clearly criticizing the budget-busting spending of Western nanny-state governments. But the media also found this unworthy of mention.

Having said this, a couple of Francis’s lines did give the leftist media grist for the mill, such as when he said, “While the income of a minority is increasing exponentially, that of the majority is crumbling. This imbalance results from ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and thus deny the right of control to States.” Of course, while there are ideologies espousing the absolute autonomy of markets, they haven’t had much influence in an over-regulated West that increasingly sucks the life out of the private sector. So, no, Pope Francis wasn’t echoing Milton Friedman – nor will I hold my breath waiting for a South American Jesuit to do so. But unlike what the media would have us believe, he wasn’t channeling Karl Marx, either.

So why would the media think they could get away with such deceptive reportage on the Catholic Church? Mainly because they always have (just consider the shameless distortions of Pope Pius XII’s actions during WWII). Remember that the pope oversees a vast world of 1.2 billion Catholics and isn’t aware of every disgorgement of Western media spin; even if he were, however, popes just don’t address such things (that’s the job of people such as I). Thus, the media know they can say anything they want with relative impunity.

Sometimes, though, it’s not only that the media are trying to fool us but that they long ago fooled themselves. As the saying goes, “When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” When leftist media types evaluate something, they relate what they feel is relevant. Now, these people wouldn’t put much stock in talk about God; to them that’s just window dressing, something politicians and prelates say that’s as meaningful as hello or goodbye. So Francis’s true focus must have been a call for statism; by “ethics” he must mean edicts, by “solidarity” he surely means the collective. God is not real, you see, so what could the higher power be other than government?

Of course, though, these leftists are also the people who gave us the concept of a living Constitution. So perhaps they believe the pope’s speech is living, too, and changed between its delivery and their publication.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

There’s an old patriotic joke about how the Soviet media spun a two-auto race in which an American car bested a Russian one. Went the reportage: “Russian car finishes second in race.

American car comes in next to last.”

But this joke has nothing on the modern Western media’s practices, which were on full display in the coverage of a recent Vatican speech on finances given by Pope Francis to visiting new ambassadors. For instance, The Telegraph ran the headline, “Pope Francis urges global leaders to end ‘tyranny’ of money.” Author Nick Squires then went on to “explain,” “He [the pope] said free-market capitalism had created a ‘tyranny’…. [That is,][u]nchecked capitalism had created ‘a new, invisible, and at times virtual, tyranny’, said the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio.”

The problem?

The pope never used the term “free-market capitalism.”

For that matter, he never mentioned capitalism or the “free market” at all.

Nor did his speech include the phrase the “tyranny of money.”

In fairness, Squires didn’t present the absent terms and phrases as quotations, but as elements of his own interpretation of what the pope meant. But his journalistic divination clearly is blind to the divine, as he thoroughly mischaracterized the theme of Francis’s speech.

To wit: Financiers, politicians, and economists should cultivate a God-centered ethics when pursuing their endeavors.

In fact, the words “ethics” and “ethical” were mentioned eight times in the pope’s 1000-word speech (which took mere minutes to deliver), and “God” appeared four times. But while Squires used terms in his article that Francis never uttered, he mentioned “ethical” only once, in passing, and “God” not at all.

This is deceptive – if not deceitful. Even if a reader notes your cut-and-paste efforts – which are a legitimate part of good summarization – he will likely assume that you’re seeking to distill, not distort, the essence of the story. And in Squires’ case the reader can’t easily compare notes, either, since the author departed from common practice and did not provide a link to what the pope actually said. Surprise, surprise.

Of course, to focus on the speech’s actual theme – ethics – would have contradicted the media narrative that the pope was calling for government, and not godly, control. For ethics lies outside of law. Sure, we want our politicians to be ethical in their personal lives and when crafting legislation, but we also want our auto mechanics, teachers, parents, doctors, lawyers, and clergymen to be ethical. And you can have ethics without government – but you cannot have good government without ethics.

Moreover, the pope correctly tied ethics in with God, writing:

Indebtedness and credit distance countries from their real economy and citizens from their real buying power. Added to this, as if it were needed, is widespread corruption and selfish fiscal evasion which have taken on worldwide dimensions. The will to power and of possession has become limitless.

Concealed behind this attitude is a rejection of ethics, a rejection of God.

And since baby-in-philosophy journalists have long insisted that you can be good without God, they’re loath to tie ethics in with Him.

Also note that in talking about how indebtedness is distancing “countries from their real economy and citizens from their real buying power,” the pope is clearly criticizing the budget-busting spending of Western nanny-state governments. But the media also found this unworthy of mention.

Having said this, a couple of Francis’s lines did give the leftist media grist for the mill, such as when he said, “While the income of a minority is increasing exponentially, that of the majority is crumbling. This imbalance results from ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and thus deny the right of control to States.” Of course, while there are ideologies espousing the absolute autonomy of markets, they haven’t had much influence in an over-regulated West that increasingly sucks the life out of the private sector. So, no, Pope Francis wasn’t echoing Milton Friedman – nor will I hold my breath waiting for a South American Jesuit to do so. But unlike what the media would have us believe, he wasn’t channeling Karl Marx, either.

So why would the media think they could get away with such deceptive reportage on the Catholic Church? Mainly because they always have (just consider the shameless distortions of Pope Pius XII’s actions during WWII). Remember that the pope oversees a vast world of 1.2 billion Catholics and isn’t aware of every disgorgement of Western media spin; even if he were, however, popes just don’t address such things (that’s the job of people such as I). Thus, the media know they can say anything they want with relative impunity.

Sometimes, though, it’s not only that the media are trying to fool us but that they long ago fooled themselves. As the saying goes, “When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” When leftist media types evaluate something, they relate what they feel is relevant. Now, these people wouldn’t put much stock in talk about God; to them that’s just window dressing, something politicians and prelates say that’s as meaningful as hello or goodbye. So Francis’s true focus must have been a call for statism; by “ethics” he must mean edicts, by “solidarity” he surely means the collective. God is not real, you see, so what could the higher power be other than government?

Of course, though, these leftists are also the people who gave us the concept of a living Constitution. So perhaps they believe the pope’s speech is living, too, and changed between its delivery and their publication.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

One of the many sad signs of our times is the way current immigration issues are discussed. A hundred years ago, the immigration controversies of that era were discussed in the context of innumerable facts about particular immigrant groups. Many of those facts were published in a huge, multi-volume 1911 study by a commission headed by Senator William P. Dillingham.

That and other studies of the time presented hard data on such things as which groups’ children were doing well in school and which were not; which groups had high crime rates or high rates of alcoholism, and which groups were over-represented among people living on the dole.

Such data and such differences still exist today. Immigrants from some countries are seldom on welfare but immigrants from other countries often are. Immigrants from some countries are typically people with high levels of education and skills, while immigrants from other countries seldom have much schooling or skills. 

Nevertheless, many of our current discussions of immigration issues talk about immigrants in general, as if they were abstract people in an abstract world. But the concrete differences between immigrants from different countries affect whether their coming here is good or bad for the American people.

The very thought of formulating immigration laws from the standpoint of what is best for the American people seems to have been forgotten by many who focus on how to solve the problems of illegal immigrants, “living in the shadows.”

A recent column in the Wall Street Journal titled “What Would Milton Friedman Say?” tried to derive what the late Professor Friedman “would no doubt regard as the ideal outcome” as far as immigration laws were concerned.

Although I was once a student of Professor Friedman, I would never presume to speak for him. However, he was a man with the rare combination of genius and common sense, and he published much empirical work as well as the analytical work that won him a Nobel Prize. In short, concrete facts mattered to him.

It is hard to imagine Milton Friedman looking for “the ideal outcome” on immigration in the abstract. More than once he said, “the best is the enemy of the good,” which to me meant that attempts to achieve an unattainable ideal can prevent us from reaching good outcomes that are possible in practice.

Too much of our current immigration controversy is conducted in terms of abstract ideals, such as “We are a nation of immigrants.” Of course we are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of people who wear shoes. Does it follow that we should admit anybody who wears shoes?

The immigrants of today are very different in many ways from those who arrived here a hundred years ago. Moreover, the society in which they arrive is different. The Wall Street Journal column ends by quoting another economist who said, “Better to build a wall around the welfare state than the country.”

But the welfare state is already here – and, far from having a wall built around it, the welfare state is expanding in all directions by leaps and bounds. We do not have a choice between the welfare state and open borders. Anything we try to do as regards immigration laws has to be done in the context of a huge welfare state that is already a major, inescapable fact of life.

Among other facts of life utterly ignored by many advocates of de facto amnesty is that the free international movement of people is different from free international trade in goods.

Buying cars or cameras from other countries is not the same as admitting people from those countries or any other countries. Unlike inanimate objects, people have cultures and not all cultures are compatible with the culture in this country that has produced such benefits for the American people for so long.

Not only the United States, but the Western world in general, has been discovering the hard way that admitting people with incompatible cultures is an irreversible decision with incalculable consequences. If we do not see that after recent terrorist attacks on the streets of Boston and London, when will we see it?

“Comprehensive immigration reform” means doing everything all together in a rush, without time to look before we leap, and basing ourselves on abstract notions about abstract people.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2013 CREATORS.COM

This article originally appeared on: The New American

One of the many sad signs of our times is the way current immigration issues are discussed. A hundred years ago, the immigration controversies of that era were discussed in the context of innumerable facts about particular immigrant groups. Many of those facts were published in a huge, multi-volume 1911 study by a commission headed by Senator William P. Dillingham.

That and other studies of the time presented hard data on such things as which groups’ children were doing well in school and which were not; which groups had high crime rates or high rates of alcoholism, and which groups were over-represented among people living on the dole.

Such data and such differences still exist today. Immigrants from some countries are seldom on welfare but immigrants from other countries often are. Immigrants from some countries are typically people with high levels of education and skills, while immigrants from other countries seldom have much schooling or skills. 

Nevertheless, many of our current discussions of immigration issues talk about immigrants in general, as if they were abstract people in an abstract world. But the concrete differences between immigrants from different countries affect whether their coming here is good or bad for the American people.

The very thought of formulating immigration laws from the standpoint of what is best for the American people seems to have been forgotten by many who focus on how to solve the problems of illegal immigrants, “living in the shadows.”

A recent column in the Wall Street Journal titled “What Would Milton Friedman Say?” tried to derive what the late Professor Friedman “would no doubt regard as the ideal outcome” as far as immigration laws were concerned.

Although I was once a student of Professor Friedman, I would never presume to speak for him. However, he was a man with the rare combination of genius and common sense, and he published much empirical work as well as the analytical work that won him a Nobel Prize. In short, concrete facts mattered to him.

It is hard to imagine Milton Friedman looking for “the ideal outcome” on immigration in the abstract. More than once he said, “the best is the enemy of the good,” which to me meant that attempts to achieve an unattainable ideal can prevent us from reaching good outcomes that are possible in practice.

Too much of our current immigration controversy is conducted in terms of abstract ideals, such as “We are a nation of immigrants.” Of course we are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of people who wear shoes. Does it follow that we should admit anybody who wears shoes?

The immigrants of today are very different in many ways from those who arrived here a hundred years ago. Moreover, the society in which they arrive is different. The Wall Street Journal column ends by quoting another economist who said, “Better to build a wall around the welfare state than the country.”

But the welfare state is already here – and, far from having a wall built around it, the welfare state is expanding in all directions by leaps and bounds. We do not have a choice between the welfare state and open borders. Anything we try to do as regards immigration laws has to be done in the context of a huge welfare state that is already a major, inescapable fact of life.

Among other facts of life utterly ignored by many advocates of de facto amnesty is that the free international movement of people is different from free international trade in goods.

Buying cars or cameras from other countries is not the same as admitting people from those countries or any other countries. Unlike inanimate objects, people have cultures and not all cultures are compatible with the culture in this country that has produced such benefits for the American people for so long.

Not only the United States, but the Western world in general, has been discovering the hard way that admitting people with incompatible cultures is an irreversible decision with incalculable consequences. If we do not see that after recent terrorist attacks on the streets of Boston and London, when will we see it?

“Comprehensive immigration reform” means doing everything all together in a rush, without time to look before we leap, and basing ourselves on abstract notions about abstract people.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2013 CREATORS.COM

This article originally appeared on: The New American

The so-called “organic” foods industry may not be as natural as consumers have been led to believe, owing to a lack of serious testing and other major flaws in the system, according to a former inspector of organic foods in the United States and Canada who grew up on an organic farm. What the expert described as the “globalist environmental movement” – George Soros, for example, and others like him – is also deeply involved in promoting organic foods, he explained.

In an interview with The New American, Mischa Popoff, who serves as a policy advisor to the Heartland Institute and wrote a book exposing “the inside story” of the organic industry, explained that much of the certification process for organic produce today essentially amounts to a “scam.” The crux of the problem, he said, is that there is no field testing of organic crops or livestock anywhere in the world. 

“There is some end-product testing being carried out by the EU, but that’s like testing Olympic athletes after they go home,” said Popoff, who spent five years working as an organic inspector. “Athletes are tested during the games when performance-enhancing drugs are still coursing through their veins, not after.” Despite years of promises, neither the U.S. Department of Agriculture nor the Canadian Food Inspection Agency conduct proper tests to ensure that organic standards are being met, he added.

The way the system works now, Popoff continued, is by having organic farmers and processors keep records of their activities, which are then reviewed once a year during a pre-announced “inspection.” Meanwhile, up-front organic certification fees can cost thousands of dollars, followed by transaction fees collected as sales are made.

That creates problems in the way the system is operated, Popoff said. “It’s clear that instead of having an incentive to stamp out fraud, the private, for-profit certifiers that operate under the aegis of the EU, USDA and CFIA actually have an incentive to rubber stamp the certifications and sales of their clients,” he explained.

Also, despite oft-cited claims that organic agriculture is somehow more “sustainable” than regular farming, Popoff said the environmental benefits are negligible at best. Organic farms, for example, are prohibited from using modern, nitrogen-based fertilizers that drastically increase crop yields. Synthetic pesticides are also prohibited. Because agriculture inherently becomes less productive under such restrictions, it takes far more land and resources to produce the same amount of food.

With a global population of around seven billion, efficient and cost-effective farming, of course, becomes even more crucial. That is why, according to Popoff, globalist environmentalists with deep pockets and dubious motives have taken such an interest in the promotion of organic farming and all things “sustainable.” Among the key figures: John Podesta, former White House chief of staff to President Clinton and current boss of the statist Center for American Progress; self-styled communist and former Obama administration “green jobs” czar Van Jones; and billionaire globalist financier George Soros.  

“But here’s the far more important consideration,” Popoff said. “Everything else the globalist environmental movement ever tried before required that people stop buying things, whether it was fur, meat, wood, fuel for our cars, or cars themselves. But now these activists have found a way to encourage people to buy – i.e. ‘organic,’ local and ‘humane’ food – and thereby fund their anti-technological revolution with genuine market-driven capital.”

“This is unprecedented,” he continued. “Unprecedented in today’s market place, unprecedented in human history. And, in fact, it makes the whole concept of carbon trading look like child’s play by comparison.” At the end of the day, Popoff believes that this may represent “the biggest green scam since Nazism.”

One of the motivations behind the groups and individuals pushing the organic movement is reducing human population levels, Popoff argued, echoing widespread concerns among analysts who monitor the “sustainability” establishment and its schemes. He said that by using a combination of subsidies for organics and stiffer regulations for conventional farming, population-control zealots are gradually – if quietly – winning in their gambit to reduce the number of humans on the planet.

“Anytime an organic activist argues that organic agriculture can feed the world, the unspoken assumption contained in that assertion is that there will be far fewer people to feed in the future,” Popoff said. “How many fewer? Those who support population control but who are unfamiliar with the actual limitations of organic agriculture put the estimate at about half the planet’s current population of human beings. Those who are more informed put it at something closer to a quarter.”

In fairness, there are plenty of experts and countless activists who believe that the push to foist genetically modified agriculture on the world are seeking to reduce the population as well. While the U.S. government claims GM foods are substantially equivalent to traditional crops, a growing number of studies have linked certain biotech products to serious health concerns.

Last year, for example, a major French study using rats found a correlation between genetically modified corn and cancer. While the research was lambasted by biotech firms and their allies, it was hardly the first time scientists have sounded alarms bells on the potential negative effects of certain forms of GMO crops. Alarm about the entire business model, which includes patenting DNA, has also been expressed. So for consumers rightly or wrongly concerned about the issue, buying organic may still represent a good choice, and there are actually mechanisms in place that try to keep GMOs out of the organic food supply.

Popoff, while conceding that some of the companies involved may well be questionable, is a strong supporter of genetic engineering, saying it will help humanity and that concerns are “completely unfounded.” He pointed to synthetic insulin, developed using biotech technology, as an example of the potential benefits that genetically engineered organisms can offer the world.     

Still, companies like Monsanto have been staunch supporters of “sustainability” schemes, too – openly backing the controversial United Nations Agenda 21. As The New American reported in February, the bio-technology behemoth, which recently sparked global protests, officially joined the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, a group of powerful interests including major banks and Big Oil backing the deeply controversial UN “sustainable development” plot.

Despite Popoff’s concerns about the problems in the existing organic regulatory system, he is not necessarily opposed to any and all organic crops. However, he urges consumers to be educated and cautious in choosing what products to buy. Among other recommendations, he said people who want genuine organic foods should try to buy them directly from a farmer they know – preferably right from the farmer’s farm. 

“The consumer has to be his or her own eyes and ears when it comes to determining what’s organic and what’s fake,” Popoff said. “The consumer cannot under any circumstances rely on the public-private bureaucracies of the EU, USDA or CFIA to guarantee anything. They are simply not equipped to find fraud, and can’t be bothered to do so even if they were.”

He also says that a free-market approach to the system for people interested in purchasing healthy, toxin-free foods is not only possible, but “well within reach.” According to Popoff, competition and advances in technology have dramatically slashed the price of proper testing, for example. The current system of asking farmers to keep records for pre-announced “inspections” by federally approved bureaucrats does not keep people honest – and it just will not work.  

“For the last ten years I’ve been saying that instead of record-keeping and record-checking by private, federally accredited certification agencies, let’s instead rely on testing through private labs to prove a farmer or processor is organic,” he said. “There’s no better free-enterprise solution. After all, governments the world over already agree on what constitutes parts-per-million in lab tests.”

The major biotech firms – companies like Monsanto, Dow, DuPont, and others – “love” the current organic system, Popoff explained, saying that they did not want organic certification to become scientific, market-driven, and hence, legitimate. Meanwhile, honest organic farmers are being “crushed” under the weight of bureaucratic compliance. While there may not be a perfect solution, like in virtually all fields, the free market would almost certainly do a better job in helping consumers.

Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is currently based in Europe. He can be reached at
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
.

Related articles:

UN: Let Them Eat Bugs!

GMO Giant Monsanto Joins Big Business Coalition for UN Agenda 21

UN Pushes Population Control Agenda

EU Targets Seeds and Gardeners; Critics Lash Out

Anti-GMO Labeling Campaign Accused of Fraudulent Claims

Two Million March Against Monsanto in Worldwide Protest of GM Foods

Russia Bans GMO Corn Over Cancer Fears as Pressure Builds on Monsanto

UN Sustainability Summit Exposed: Big Business, Dictators, and NGOs

The Real Agenda Behind UN “Sustainability” Unmasked

Despite Setbacks, UN “Sustainability” Agenda Marches on After Rio+20

Alabama Adopts First Official State Ban on UN Agenda 21

This article originally appeared on: The New American

The so-called “organic” foods industry may not be as natural as consumers have been led to believe, owing to a lack of serious testing and other major flaws in the system, according to a former inspector of organic foods in the United States and Canada who grew up on an organic farm. What the expert described as the “globalist environmental movement” – George Soros, for example, and others like him – is also deeply involved in promoting organic foods, he explained.

In an interview with The New American, Mischa Popoff, who serves as a policy advisor to the Heartland Institute and wrote a book exposing “the inside story” of the organic industry, explained that much of the certification process for organic produce today essentially amounts to a “scam.” The crux of the problem, he said, is that there is no field testing of organic crops or livestock anywhere in the world. 

“There is some end-product testing being carried out by the EU, but that’s like testing Olympic athletes after they go home,” said Popoff, who spent five years working as an organic inspector. “Athletes are tested during the games when performance-enhancing drugs are still coursing through their veins, not after.” Despite years of promises, neither the U.S. Department of Agriculture nor the Canadian Food Inspection Agency conduct proper tests to ensure that organic standards are being met, he added.

The way the system works now, Popoff continued, is by having organic farmers and processors keep records of their activities, which are then reviewed once a year during a pre-announced “inspection.” Meanwhile, up-front organic certification fees can cost thousands of dollars, followed by transaction fees collected as sales are made.

That creates problems in the way the system is operated, Popoff said. “It’s clear that instead of having an incentive to stamp out fraud, the private, for-profit certifiers that operate under the aegis of the EU, USDA and CFIA actually have an incentive to rubber stamp the certifications and sales of their clients,” he explained.

Also, despite oft-cited claims that organic agriculture is somehow more “sustainable” than regular farming, Popoff said the environmental benefits are negligible at best. Organic farms, for example, are prohibited from using modern, nitrogen-based fertilizers that drastically increase crop yields. Synthetic pesticides are also prohibited. Because agriculture inherently becomes less productive under such restrictions, it takes far more land and resources to produce the same amount of food.

With a global population of around seven billion, efficient and cost-effective farming, of course, becomes even more crucial. That is why, according to Popoff, globalist environmentalists with deep pockets and dubious motives have taken such an interest in the promotion of organic farming and all things “sustainable.” Among the key figures: John Podesta, former White House chief of staff to President Clinton and current boss of the statist Center for American Progress; self-styled communist and former Obama administration “green jobs” czar Van Jones; and billionaire globalist financier George Soros.  

“But here’s the far more important consideration,” Popoff said. “Everything else the globalist environmental movement ever tried before required that people stop buying things, whether it was fur, meat, wood, fuel for our cars, or cars themselves. But now these activists have found a way to encourage people to buy – i.e. ‘organic,’ local and ‘humane’ food – and thereby fund their anti-technological revolution with genuine market-driven capital.”

“This is unprecedented,” he continued. “Unprecedented in today’s market place, unprecedented in human history. And, in fact, it makes the whole concept of carbon trading look like child’s play by comparison.” At the end of the day, Popoff believes that this may represent “the biggest green scam since Nazism.”

One of the motivations behind the groups and individuals pushing the organic movement is reducing human population levels, Popoff argued, echoing widespread concerns among analysts who monitor the “sustainability” establishment and its schemes. He said that by using a combination of subsidies for organics and stiffer regulations for conventional farming, population-control zealots are gradually – if quietly – winning in their gambit to reduce the number of humans on the planet.

“Anytime an organic activist argues that organic agriculture can feed the world, the unspoken assumption contained in that assertion is that there will be far fewer people to feed in the future,” Popoff said. “How many fewer? Those who support population control but who are unfamiliar with the actual limitations of organic agriculture put the estimate at about half the planet’s current population of human beings. Those who are more informed put it at something closer to a quarter.”

In fairness, there are plenty of experts and countless activists who believe that the push to foist genetically modified agriculture on the world are seeking to reduce the population as well. While the U.S. government claims GM foods are substantially equivalent to traditional crops, a growing number of studies have linked certain biotech products to serious health concerns.

Last year, for example, a major French study using rats found a correlation between genetically modified corn and cancer. While the research was lambasted by biotech firms and their allies, it was hardly the first time scientists have sounded alarms bells on the potential negative effects of certain forms of GMO crops. Alarm about the entire business model, which includes patenting DNA, has also been expressed. So for consumers rightly or wrongly concerned about the issue, buying organic may still represent a good choice, and there are actually mechanisms in place that try to keep GMOs out of the organic food supply.

Popoff, while conceding that some of the companies involved may well be questionable, is a strong supporter of genetic engineering, saying it will help humanity and that concerns are “completely unfounded.” He pointed to synthetic insulin, developed using biotech technology, as an example of the potential benefits that genetically engineered organisms can offer the world.     

Still, companies like Monsanto have been staunch supporters of “sustainability” schemes, too – openly backing the controversial United Nations Agenda 21. As The New American reported in February, the bio-technology behemoth, which recently sparked global protests, officially joined the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, a group of powerful interests including major banks and Big Oil backing the deeply controversial UN “sustainable development” plot.

Despite Popoff’s concerns about the problems in the existing organic regulatory system, he is not necessarily opposed to any and all organic crops. However, he urges consumers to be educated and cautious in choosing what products to buy. Among other recommendations, he said people who want genuine organic foods should try to buy them directly from a farmer they know – preferably right from the farmer’s farm. 

“The consumer has to be his or her own eyes and ears when it comes to determining what’s organic and what’s fake,” Popoff said. “The consumer cannot under any circumstances rely on the public-private bureaucracies of the EU, USDA or CFIA to guarantee anything. They are simply not equipped to find fraud, and can’t be bothered to do so even if they were.”

He also says that a free-market approach to the system for people interested in purchasing healthy, toxin-free foods is not only possible, but “well within reach.” According to Popoff, competition and advances in technology have dramatically slashed the price of proper testing, for example. The current system of asking farmers to keep records for pre-announced “inspections” by federally approved bureaucrats does not keep people honest – and it just will not work.  

“For the last ten years I’ve been saying that instead of record-keeping and record-checking by private, federally accredited certification agencies, let’s instead rely on testing through private labs to prove a farmer or processor is organic,” he said. “There’s no better free-enterprise solution. After all, governments the world over already agree on what constitutes parts-per-million in lab tests.”

The major biotech firms – companies like Monsanto, Dow, DuPont, and others – “love” the current organic system, Popoff explained, saying that they did not want organic certification to become scientific, market-driven, and hence, legitimate. Meanwhile, honest organic farmers are being “crushed” under the weight of bureaucratic compliance. While there may not be a perfect solution, like in virtually all fields, the free market would almost certainly do a better job in helping consumers.

Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is currently based in Europe. He can be reached at
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
.

Related articles:

UN: Let Them Eat Bugs!

GMO Giant Monsanto Joins Big Business Coalition for UN Agenda 21

UN Pushes Population Control Agenda

EU Targets Seeds and Gardeners; Critics Lash Out

Anti-GMO Labeling Campaign Accused of Fraudulent Claims

Two Million March Against Monsanto in Worldwide Protest of GM Foods

Russia Bans GMO Corn Over Cancer Fears as Pressure Builds on Monsanto

UN Sustainability Summit Exposed: Big Business, Dictators, and NGOs

The Real Agenda Behind UN “Sustainability” Unmasked

Despite Setbacks, UN “Sustainability” Agenda Marches on After Rio+20

Alabama Adopts First Official State Ban on UN Agenda 21

This article originally appeared on: The New American

Marriage is safe in Illinois – for the time being, at least. On May 31, the Illinois House of Representatives adjourned for the summer without voting on a bill that would have made Illinois the 13th state to legalize same-sex marriage. The homosexual marriage measure had passed the state Senate in February, and Democratic Governor Pat Quinn had promised to sign the bill into law. But while the Democrats had a majority in the House, Christian and pro-family groups succeeded in building grassroots momentum against the bill, leading some key lawmakers to back off on their support and prompting the bill’s sponsor to pull it from consideration.

“This was the hardest thing I’ve done in my life,” Democratic House sponsor Greg Harris (D-Chicago, shown) told the Chicago Tribune after pulling the bill. Harris, who is openly homosexual, said that fellow Democratic lawmakers had asked him to pull the bill and give them more time to talk their constituents into accepting the inevitability of homosexual marriage in the state. “I’ve never been sadder to accept this request,” Harris said after pulling the bill, “but I have to keep my eye, as we all must, on the ultimate prize. They’ve asked for time to go back to their districts, talk to their constituents, and reach out to their minds and hearts and have told me they’ll return in November with their word that they’re prepared to support this legislation.”

Gov. Quinn issued a statement expressing his own disappointment, but emphasized that he would continue to force the issue. “This is not over,” he said. “The fight goes on. We will keep on fighting until marriage equality is law in Illinois.”

Currently Illinois recognizes civil unions, which give homosexual couples legal benefits equal to marriage. But many same-sex couples “said they weren’t satisfied and felt the civil union classification created a second class that wasn’t quite marriage,” reported the Chicago Tribune.

Pro-homosexual groups expressed their dismay at the defeat of what appeared to be an easy victory for same-sex marriage. “The House of Representatives has neglected the rights of its constituents by failing to vote on marriage equality legislation,” said Chad Griffin of the Human Rights Campaign. “For months [homosexual] couples and their children have had their lives put on hold throughout an exhaustive political process that ultimately came up short. Today’s inaction is a prime example of why the U.S. Supreme Court must rule in favor of full marriage equality nationwide to ensure the security and welfare of these and countless other American families aren’t left to chance in future political battles.”

Similarly, Rick Garcia of the Chicago-based Civil Rights Agenda said that his group was “not only deeply disappointed but angry.” He added that “beginning tomorrow, we are starting over. We may need to start over with a new sponsor … who will fight for the families here in Illinois.”

Among those pushing hard for the homosexual marriage measure was President Barack Obama, who told an audience at an Illinois Democratic fundraiser May 29 that “I just want to say for the record it’s something that I deeply support. I am absolutely convinced it is the right thing to do.”

While many homosexual activists considered the bill a shoe-in, the state’s strong Catholic constituency, as well as the heavily pro-traditional-marriage contingent among Chicago’s African-American population, helped to derail the effort.

The Chicago Sun Times reported that there was a particularly “stubborn resistance” against the bill from the House Black Caucus, “a 20-member bloc of African-American lawmakers who have faced a withering lobbying blitz against the plan from black ministers.” Among the black ministers applying pressure to House Democrats were members of the African-American Clergy Coalition, whose co-chairman, the Rev. Larry Trotter, released a statement thanking the Black Caucus for “showing extreme courage in their defense of traditional marriage in Illinois.” Declaring that “today our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has won,” Trotter said that he and the other members of the black clergy coalition were “proud of the God fearing Black Caucus members who withstood the pressure of the LGBT forces and allowed God’s word concerning marriage to remain between one man and one woman in Illinois.”

Illinois Catholics also expressed their opposition to the measure. In an op-ed published by the Chicago Tribune, Robert Gilligan, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Illinois, wrote that, contrary to the insistence from proponents that support for same-sex marriage was surging, “millions of Illinois residents oppose redefining an institution that underscores the foundation of our society, and have made that opposition known to their state representatives.”

A day before the bill was pulled, the Thomas More Society, a legal advocacy group that concentrates on issues of religious liberty, warned that the Illinois same-sex marriage bill offered “the worst religious liberty protections of any same-sex marriage bill in the country.” In a letter to Illinois House members, Peter Breen, the More Society’s senior counsel and vice president, noted that if passed, the bill would make Illinois “the most hostile state in the country to the religious freedoms of people of faith. SB 10 would generate years of litigation and cause those who faithfully practice their religion to be mislabeled as ‘discriminators,’ stripped of government benefits, and subjected to fines and penalties simply because they abide by their sincerely held beliefs.”

Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute, which was at the forefront of lobbying against the bill, called the decision by Democratic lawmakers to pull the bill “a truly remarkable victory” for families, adding that “the failure of this bill is a good thing for children, for parental rights, for religious liberty, for the common good, and for truth.”

^{Photo of Illinois Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago) standing alone on the House floor: AP Images}

This article originally appeared on: The New American

Marriage is safe in Illinois – for the time being, at least. On May 31, the Illinois House of Representatives adjourned for the summer without voting on a bill that would have made Illinois the 13th state to legalize same-sex marriage. The homosexual marriage measure had passed the state Senate in February, and Democratic Governor Pat Quinn had promised to sign the bill into law. But while the Democrats had a majority in the House, Christian and pro-family groups succeeded in building grassroots momentum against the bill, leading some key lawmakers to back off on their support and prompting the bill’s sponsor to pull it from consideration.

“This was the hardest thing I’ve done in my life,” Democratic House sponsor Greg Harris (D-Chicago, shown) told the Chicago Tribune after pulling the bill. Harris, who is openly homosexual, said that fellow Democratic lawmakers had asked him to pull the bill and give them more time to talk their constituents into accepting the inevitability of homosexual marriage in the state. “I’ve never been sadder to accept this request,” Harris said after pulling the bill, “but I have to keep my eye, as we all must, on the ultimate prize. They’ve asked for time to go back to their districts, talk to their constituents, and reach out to their minds and hearts and have told me they’ll return in November with their word that they’re prepared to support this legislation.”

Gov. Quinn issued a statement expressing his own disappointment, but emphasized that he would continue to force the issue. “This is not over,” he said. “The fight goes on. We will keep on fighting until marriage equality is law in Illinois.”

Currently Illinois recognizes civil unions, which give homosexual couples legal benefits equal to marriage. But many same-sex couples “said they weren’t satisfied and felt the civil union classification created a second class that wasn’t quite marriage,” reported the Chicago Tribune.

Pro-homosexual groups expressed their dismay at the defeat of what appeared to be an easy victory for same-sex marriage. “The House of Representatives has neglected the rights of its constituents by failing to vote on marriage equality legislation,” said Chad Griffin of the Human Rights Campaign. “For months [homosexual] couples and their children have had their lives put on hold throughout an exhaustive political process that ultimately came up short. Today’s inaction is a prime example of why the U.S. Supreme Court must rule in favor of full marriage equality nationwide to ensure the security and welfare of these and countless other American families aren’t left to chance in future political battles.”

Similarly, Rick Garcia of the Chicago-based Civil Rights Agenda said that his group was “not only deeply disappointed but angry.” He added that “beginning tomorrow, we are starting over. We may need to start over with a new sponsor … who will fight for the families here in Illinois.”

Among those pushing hard for the homosexual marriage measure was President Barack Obama, who told an audience at an Illinois Democratic fundraiser May 29 that “I just want to say for the record it’s something that I deeply support. I am absolutely convinced it is the right thing to do.”

While many homosexual activists considered the bill a shoe-in, the state’s strong Catholic constituency, as well as the heavily pro-traditional-marriage contingent among Chicago’s African-American population, helped to derail the effort.

The Chicago Sun Times reported that there was a particularly “stubborn resistance” against the bill from the House Black Caucus, “a 20-member bloc of African-American lawmakers who have faced a withering lobbying blitz against the plan from black ministers.” Among the black ministers applying pressure to House Democrats were members of the African-American Clergy Coalition, whose co-chairman, the Rev. Larry Trotter, released a statement thanking the Black Caucus for “showing extreme courage in their defense of traditional marriage in Illinois.” Declaring that “today our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has won,” Trotter said that he and the other members of the black clergy coalition were “proud of the God fearing Black Caucus members who withstood the pressure of the LGBT forces and allowed God’s word concerning marriage to remain between one man and one woman in Illinois.”

Illinois Catholics also expressed their opposition to the measure. In an op-ed published by the Chicago Tribune, Robert Gilligan, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Illinois, wrote that, contrary to the insistence from proponents that support for same-sex marriage was surging, “millions of Illinois residents oppose redefining an institution that underscores the foundation of our society, and have made that opposition known to their state representatives.”

A day before the bill was pulled, the Thomas More Society, a legal advocacy group that concentrates on issues of religious liberty, warned that the Illinois same-sex marriage bill offered “the worst religious liberty protections of any same-sex marriage bill in the country.” In a letter to Illinois House members, Peter Breen, the More Society’s senior counsel and vice president, noted that if passed, the bill would make Illinois “the most hostile state in the country to the religious freedoms of people of faith. SB 10 would generate years of litigation and cause those who faithfully practice their religion to be mislabeled as ‘discriminators,’ stripped of government benefits, and subjected to fines and penalties simply because they abide by their sincerely held beliefs.”

Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute, which was at the forefront of lobbying against the bill, called the decision by Democratic lawmakers to pull the bill “a truly remarkable victory” for families, adding that “the failure of this bill is a good thing for children, for parental rights, for religious liberty, for the common good, and for truth.”

^{Photo of Illinois Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago) standing alone on the House floor: AP Images}

This article originally appeared on: The New American

According to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 20 percent of children in the United States – one out of five – has a mental disorder. Perhaps even more sobering, the latest edition of the “psychiatric Bible,” the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), claims there is more than a 50-percent chance that an American will develop a mental disorder in his or her lifetime. The CDC reported that 25 percent of adults already suffer from mental illness and affirmed the idea that the number will rise to 50 percent, as the DSM-5 predicts.

These claims are disputed, however. Dr. Allen Frances, author of the DSM-4, has challenged the claims of the new manual, specifically those concerning ADHD. Frances stated the following about the proliferation of claims of mental illness:

We’re already over diagnosing ADHD. Almost 20 percent of teen boys get the diagnosis of ADHD, and about 10 percent of boys are on stimulant drugs. We don’t need to make it easier to diagnose ADHD. If we decided as a society that the use of stimulants is good, it shouldn’t be done through a fake medical diagnosis.

ADHD, according to a recent study by the CDC, “was the most prevalent current diagnosis among children aged 3-17 years,” and although “scientists are studying the causes … there is no test to diagnose ADHD.” In other words, the most common form of mental illness in children is not testable. Yet both children and adults are still being medicated.

The situation becomes more disturbing when connected with gun control.

While it seems reasonable to prohibit the “dangerously mentally ill” from owning firearms, the high prevalence of mental illness diagnoses is likely to be the slippery slope that leads to widespread gun confiscation.

In fact, merely using present and proposed legislation and tweaking the meaning of a few words would do the trick. New gun-grabbing laws already require some people who have “mental illness” to hand over their weapons to the government – so anti-gun legislators merely need to find an excuse to take guns away from all people with “mental illness.”

Actions by authorities show how close we are to that reality.

New York resident David Lewis received a letter from the Erie County clerk on April 1, informing Lewis that his gun license was being suspended and that failure to comply and hand over his firearms would result in the revocation of his gun license altogether.

The reason for his license suspension and removal of his firearms was that Lewis had taken anti-anxiety medication. Even though he had a clean record, was not reported to be mentally ill, and had stopped taking the prescribed medication the previous year, the New York SAFE Act allowed the government to obstruct his Second Amendment right.

Erie County Clerk Chris Jacobs, representing the office that sent Lewis the letter, explained that there had been a mistake. “When the State Police called to tell us they made a mistake and had the wrong person, … it became clear that the State did not do their job here, and now we all look foolish.” After an Erie County Supreme Court judge determined that the letter was sent in error, Lewis’ privileges were reinstated.

Similarly, in California, a resident near Los Angeles recently felt the full brunt of a new law Governor Jerry Brown signed last month requiring citizens who legally purchased handguns and assault rifles to surrender them to the government if they have since committed a crime or suffer from mental illness. Nine agents from the California Justice Department, armed with pistols, paid a visit to the man’s home and walked out with his three registered firearms because the gun owner had recently spent two days in a mental hospital.

Another California resident, Lynette Phillips, voluntarily admitted herself to a mental hospital last December, where she spent two days. Phillips says that her medication had been adjusted and that, subsequently, she could not stop crying. A nurse noted in her file, however, that Phillips was involuntarily admitted and suggested that she might be suicidal. Phillips was shocked at these claims. “I kept telling her I had a grand-baby at home and had to be better for Christmas,” she said. “Does that sound like the words of someone who is a risk to themselves and others?”

Nevertheless, nine police officers with the California Justice Department, armed and wearing bulletproof vests, showed up on her doorstep and asked to enter her home. Phillips and her husband, David, had never had problems with the law before, so they let the officers inside without asking for a warrant. Although invasive and unconstitutional, this new gun law does not actually give warrants for officers to look through homes for firearms.

After the couple had politely directed them to where their guns were kept, the officers left with all three of the Phillips’ legally owned firearms.

In Phillips’ case, not only was her gun confiscated, but her husband’s guns were as well. Though David Phillips is a law-abiding citizen with no criminal history and no record of mental illness or use of psychotropic drugs, his guns were still taken.

Michelle Gregory, a spokeswoman for the California attorney general’s office, attempted to shed light on the issue. “The prohibited person can’t have access to a firearm,” she said, indicating that the “prohibited person” does not have to be the registered owner of the gun. Since David lived under the same roof as someone who is “mentally ill,” his firearms were taken by the government. After all, his wife could have access to them.

The definition of someone who is officially “mentally ill” could be changed at a moment’s notice once these types of laws are in place, making them an extreme danger to rights. So far, only California and New York have implemented them, but other states may follow. California Attorney General Kamala Harris even wrote a letter to Vice President Biden, who was leading a White House review of firearms policy, suggesting that he consider California’s methods an example for the entire nation.

As the situation stands now, the New York law mandates that all mental health professionals, psychiatrists, and psychologists must report any patient they believe may be “dangerous” to local officials, who will then have the authority to seize all firearms that individual might own – don’t make your psychiatrist angry. The dangerous person’s name will then be entered into state and national registries so that no future gun purchases can occur – not legal purchases, anyway.
 

This article originally appeared on: The New American

According to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 20 percent of children in the United States – one out of five – has a mental disorder. Perhaps even more sobering, the latest edition of the “psychiatric Bible,” the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), claims there is more than a 50-percent chance that an American will develop a mental disorder in his or her lifetime. The CDC reported that 25 percent of adults already suffer from mental illness and affirmed the idea that the number will rise to 50 percent, as the DSM-5 predicts.

These claims are disputed, however. Dr. Allen Frances, author of the DSM-4, has challenged the claims of the new manual, specifically those concerning ADHD. Frances stated the following about the proliferation of claims of mental illness:

We’re already over diagnosing ADHD. Almost 20 percent of teen boys get the diagnosis of ADHD, and about 10 percent of boys are on stimulant drugs. We don’t need to make it easier to diagnose ADHD. If we decided as a society that the use of stimulants is good, it shouldn’t be done through a fake medical diagnosis.

ADHD, according to a recent study by the CDC, “was the most prevalent current diagnosis among children aged 3-17 years,” and although “scientists are studying the causes … there is no test to diagnose ADHD.” In other words, the most common form of mental illness in children is not testable. Yet both children and adults are still being medicated.

The situation becomes more disturbing when connected with gun control.

While it seems reasonable to prohibit the “dangerously mentally ill” from owning firearms, the high prevalence of mental illness diagnoses is likely to be the slippery slope that leads to widespread gun confiscation.

In fact, merely using present and proposed legislation and tweaking the meaning of a few words would do the trick. New gun-grabbing laws already require some people who have “mental illness” to hand over their weapons to the government – so anti-gun legislators merely need to find an excuse to take guns away from all people with “mental illness.”

Actions by authorities show how close we are to that reality.

New York resident David Lewis received a letter from the Erie County clerk on April 1, informing Lewis that his gun license was being suspended and that failure to comply and hand over his firearms would result in the revocation of his gun license altogether.

The reason for his license suspension and removal of his firearms was that Lewis had taken anti-anxiety medication. Even though he had a clean record, was not reported to be mentally ill, and had stopped taking the prescribed medication the previous year, the New York SAFE Act allowed the government to obstruct his Second Amendment right.

Erie County Clerk Chris Jacobs, representing the office that sent Lewis the letter, explained that there had been a mistake. “When the State Police called to tell us they made a mistake and had the wrong person, … it became clear that the State did not do their job here, and now we all look foolish.” After an Erie County Supreme Court judge determined that the letter was sent in error, Lewis’ privileges were reinstated.

Similarly, in California, a resident near Los Angeles recently felt the full brunt of a new law Governor Jerry Brown signed last month requiring citizens who legally purchased handguns and assault rifles to surrender them to the government if they have since committed a crime or suffer from mental illness. Nine agents from the California Justice Department, armed with pistols, paid a visit to the man’s home and walked out with his three registered firearms because the gun owner had recently spent two days in a mental hospital.

Another California resident, Lynette Phillips, voluntarily admitted herself to a mental hospital last December, where she spent two days. Phillips says that her medication had been adjusted and that, subsequently, she could not stop crying. A nurse noted in her file, however, that Phillips was involuntarily admitted and suggested that she might be suicidal. Phillips was shocked at these claims. “I kept telling her I had a grand-baby at home and had to be better for Christmas,” she said. “Does that sound like the words of someone who is a risk to themselves and others?”

Nevertheless, nine police officers with the California Justice Department, armed and wearing bulletproof vests, showed up on her doorstep and asked to enter her home. Phillips and her husband, David, had never had problems with the law before, so they let the officers inside without asking for a warrant. Although invasive and unconstitutional, this new gun law does not actually give warrants for officers to look through homes for firearms.

After the couple had politely directed them to where their guns were kept, the officers left with all three of the Phillips’ legally owned firearms.

In Phillips’ case, not only was her gun confiscated, but her husband’s guns were as well. Though David Phillips is a law-abiding citizen with no criminal history and no record of mental illness or use of psychotropic drugs, his guns were still taken.

Michelle Gregory, a spokeswoman for the California attorney general’s office, attempted to shed light on the issue. “The prohibited person can’t have access to a firearm,” she said, indicating that the “prohibited person” does not have to be the registered owner of the gun. Since David lived under the same roof as someone who is “mentally ill,” his firearms were taken by the government. After all, his wife could have access to them.

The definition of someone who is officially “mentally ill” could be changed at a moment’s notice once these types of laws are in place, making them an extreme danger to rights. So far, only California and New York have implemented them, but other states may follow. California Attorney General Kamala Harris even wrote a letter to Vice President Biden, who was leading a White House review of firearms policy, suggesting that he consider California’s methods an example for the entire nation.

As the situation stands now, the New York law mandates that all mental health professionals, psychiatrists, and psychologists must report any patient they believe may be “dangerous” to local officials, who will then have the authority to seize all firearms that individual might own – don’t make your psychiatrist angry. The dangerous person’s name will then be entered into state and national registries so that no future gun purchases can occur – not legal purchases, anyway.
 

This article originally appeared on: The New American

On May 30, Lou Dobbs had a panel discussion with Fox News colleagues Doug Schoen, Juan Williams, and Erick Erickson over a Pew Research Center study showing that women are now the primary or sole wage earners in 40 percent of American homes. 

Dobbs views this phenomenon as a function of “society dissolving around us.” Erickson, observing that all throughout the animal kingdom males “typically” assume “the dominant role,” remarked that “having mom as the primary breadwinner is bad for kids.” Williams sees this correlating with “the disintegration of marriage,” while Schoen characterized it as “a catastrophic issue” that threatened to “undermine our social order.” 

Bear in mind, while Erickson of redstate.com leans to the Right, Dobbs is an independent, and Williams and Schoen are both long-time Democrats. Yet whatever political differences they have over other issues were forgotten while discussing this one. As Williams asserted: “Left, right, I don’t see how you can argue” that Pew’s findings are a good thing.

Well, another Fox News celebrity, Megyn Kelly, did indeed try to do what Williams thought impossible. The very next day, she had Dobbs and Erickson on her show.

Kelly wasted no time in getting to the point. To Erickson, she asked: “What makes you dominant and me submissive and who died and made you scientist-in-chief?”

When the imperturbable Erickson replied that the much respected Pew Research Center determined that many in their own study were no less concerned about its findings than he, Kelly shot back: “Just because you have people that agree with you doesn’t mean that it’s not offensive.”

She continued: “I didn’t like what you wrote one bit. To me you sound like somebody who’s judging and then wants to come out and say, ‘I’m not, I’m not, I’m not,’ and now let me judge, judge, judge.”

Kelly alluded to studies that supposedly suggest that children of homosexual parents and single mothers are just as well adjusted as the children of stay-at-home mothers. She also mentioned that once upon a time “science” established that the offspring of interracial unions were inferior. “Tell that to Barack Obama,” she said.

Notice, Kelly didn’t just disagree with her colleagues’ assessment of the Pew study. She was angry at them for it. She found their comments “offensive,” judgmental, and, in short, “didn’t like” them “one bit.” From beginning to end, her exchange with Dobbs and Erickson was marked by sarcasm and hostility.

Yet it was also marked by illogic and irrationality. 

It may come as a newsflash to Kelly, but the truth of a proposition doesn’t depend upon whether she – or anyone – is offended by it. There are still other lessons that she would be well served to learn.

In bullying one’s interlocutor by making insinuations against his character, one neither strengthens one’s own view nor weakens that of one’s opponent. Moreover, even if the charges are accurate, even if, say, one’s opponent really is the jerk, idiot, “sexist,” or “racist” that one suggests, he may still be correct. 

The left-wing blogosphere lionized Kelly for combating “the sexism” of her colleagues. If this is indeed the target upon which she set her sights, then Kelly must be deemed to have failed abysmally, for she only fueled the stereotypical image of the hyperemotional woman. 

Meanwhile, Dobbs and Erickson remained as calm as could be and in good cheer.

That 40 percent of women are primary or exclusive wage earners is no cause for celebration. It is cause for concern. It may not be an occasion for tears – or it may be so. But this is the point: We simply don’t and can’t know for certain the effect that a shift this dramatic, this unprecedented, in an institution as central as the family will have on the fate of civilization. The prudent and wise would never think to treat any change of this magnitude as cavalierly as they would regard a change in bed sheets or lipstick brands.

And they certainly wouldn’t demonize those, like Dobbs and Erickson, who are reasonably pessimistic about such changes.

But Kelly has proven that she is neither prudent nor wise.

Nor, for that matter, is she particularly charitable to those with whom she disagrees – especially when they dare to deviate from the politically correct line on gender relations.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

On May 30, Lou Dobbs had a panel discussion with Fox News colleagues Doug Schoen, Juan Williams, and Erick Erickson over a Pew Research Center study showing that women are now the primary or sole wage earners in 40 percent of American homes. 

Dobbs views this phenomenon as a function of “society dissolving around us.” Erickson, observing that all throughout the animal kingdom males “typically” assume “the dominant role,” remarked that “having mom as the primary breadwinner is bad for kids.” Williams sees this correlating with “the disintegration of marriage,” while Schoen characterized it as “a catastrophic issue” that threatened to “undermine our social order.” 

Bear in mind, while Erickson of redstate.com leans to the Right, Dobbs is an independent, and Williams and Schoen are both long-time Democrats. Yet whatever political differences they have over other issues were forgotten while discussing this one. As Williams asserted: “Left, right, I don’t see how you can argue” that Pew’s findings are a good thing.

Well, another Fox News celebrity, Megyn Kelly, did indeed try to do what Williams thought impossible. The very next day, she had Dobbs and Erickson on her show.

Kelly wasted no time in getting to the point. To Erickson, she asked: “What makes you dominant and me submissive and who died and made you scientist-in-chief?”

When the imperturbable Erickson replied that the much respected Pew Research Center determined that many in their own study were no less concerned about its findings than he, Kelly shot back: “Just because you have people that agree with you doesn’t mean that it’s not offensive.”

She continued: “I didn’t like what you wrote one bit. To me you sound like somebody who’s judging and then wants to come out and say, ‘I’m not, I’m not, I’m not,’ and now let me judge, judge, judge.”

Kelly alluded to studies that supposedly suggest that children of homosexual parents and single mothers are just as well adjusted as the children of stay-at-home mothers. She also mentioned that once upon a time “science” established that the offspring of interracial unions were inferior. “Tell that to Barack Obama,” she said.

Notice, Kelly didn’t just disagree with her colleagues’ assessment of the Pew study. She was angry at them for it. She found their comments “offensive,” judgmental, and, in short, “didn’t like” them “one bit.” From beginning to end, her exchange with Dobbs and Erickson was marked by sarcasm and hostility.

Yet it was also marked by illogic and irrationality. 

It may come as a newsflash to Kelly, but the truth of a proposition doesn’t depend upon whether she – or anyone – is offended by it. There are still other lessons that she would be well served to learn.

In bullying one’s interlocutor by making insinuations against his character, one neither strengthens one’s own view nor weakens that of one’s opponent. Moreover, even if the charges are accurate, even if, say, one’s opponent really is the jerk, idiot, “sexist,” or “racist” that one suggests, he may still be correct. 

The left-wing blogosphere lionized Kelly for combating “the sexism” of her colleagues. If this is indeed the target upon which she set her sights, then Kelly must be deemed to have failed abysmally, for she only fueled the stereotypical image of the hyperemotional woman. 

Meanwhile, Dobbs and Erickson remained as calm as could be and in good cheer.

That 40 percent of women are primary or exclusive wage earners is no cause for celebration. It is cause for concern. It may not be an occasion for tears – or it may be so. But this is the point: We simply don’t and can’t know for certain the effect that a shift this dramatic, this unprecedented, in an institution as central as the family will have on the fate of civilization. The prudent and wise would never think to treat any change of this magnitude as cavalierly as they would regard a change in bed sheets or lipstick brands.

And they certainly wouldn’t demonize those, like Dobbs and Erickson, who are reasonably pessimistic about such changes.

But Kelly has proven that she is neither prudent nor wise.

Nor, for that matter, is she particularly charitable to those with whom she disagrees – especially when they dare to deviate from the politically correct line on gender relations.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

When libertarian scholar Peter Ferrara asked rhetorically in Sunday’s issue of Forbes, “Economically, Could Obama Be America’s Worst President?” he relied heavily on statistics provided by the chief enabler of the Great Recession, the Federal Reserve. Noting that the policies of President Obama have done nothing to stimulate the economy but plenty to keep it from growing, he used recent economic recoveries as prime examples of what recoveries would look like if government would stay out of the way:

The right measure and comparison for Obama’s record is not to compare the recovery to the recession, but to compare Obama’s recovery with other recoveries from other recessions since the Great Depression. By that measure, what is clear is that Obamanomics has produced the worst recovery from a recession since the Great Depression, worse than what every other President who has faced a recession has achieved since the Great Depression.

Using data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Ferrara complained that it’s taken 64 months for the present recovery to regain the ground lost since the beginning of the Great Recession, whereas 64 months into the Reagan recovery, “jobs had grown 9.5% higher than where they were when [that] recession started, representing an increase of about 10 million more jobs.” By contrast, taking population growth into account, the present recession has cost 10 million jobs. The unemployment rate, according to Ferrara and the Minneapolis Fed, has stayed higher longer than at any time since the 1930s, and that’s using government figures and not the real unemployment rate (U6) that has been replaced by new “updated” calculations. Ferrara concluded: “This utterly failed jobs record of Obamanomics reflects the more basic reality that the economy has not been growing under President Obama.”

Ferrara rounded up additional statistics to support his point: The average American family is worse off, in inflation-adjusted terms, than they were before the Great Recession began in 2007. Poverty levels have increased, along with government regulations.

Confirmation came from another branch of the Fed when the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis released its report that any economic “recovery” as measured by gains in the stock market have failed to help those on the lower end of the economic scale. In its May 30 report, the Fed concluded that the average American family has recovered less than half of what it lost since the Great Recession bottomed out in the summer of 2009, mostly because the average family has little invested in the stock market and instead have most of their real wealth invested in real property, mostly their personal homes. Despite some recovery in home prices, that has done precious little to help the average family to recover lost ground significantly.

But Ferrara and the Fed fail to go back far enough to show just how weak the present recovery really is. He (and they) need to go back to the 1920-21 depression to remind his readers of how a nearly free-market economy really responds when it is left to its own devices. Following a sharp decline in productivity that began in January 1920 of almost 30 percent (far deeper than that of the present Great Recession), the economy rebounded by more than 60 percent so that by July 1921, just 18 months later, unemployment had fallen to normal low-single-digit levels. This set the stage for the Roaring Twenties, when the economy doubled in output in a little over seven years. 

In his summary of “the forgotten depression of 1920” as he called it, scholar Tom Woods noted what it took to put in place such a remarkable rebound:

Instead of “fiscal stimulus,” [President] Harding cut the government’s budget nearly in half between 1920 and 1922. The rest of Harding’s approach was equally laissez-faire. Tax rates were slashed for all income groups. The national debt was reduced by one-third.

The Federal Reserve’s activity, moreover, was hardly noticeable. As one economic historian puts it, “Despite the severity of the contraction, the Fed did not move to use its powers to turn the money supply around and fight the contraction.”

By the late summer of 1921, signs of recovery were already visible. The following year, unemployment was back down to 6.7 percent and was only 2.4 percent by 1923.

Woods went on to say, in his best-seller The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, 

[Presidents] Harding and Coolidge did not establish a Square Deal, a New Deal, a New Frontier, a Great Society, or a New Covenant. For the most part they simply stayed out of the economy and out of people’s lives. 

The results speak for themselves. By the end of the decade, the United States could boast an incredible 34 percent of total world production [of the world’s goods and services]. [Emphasis added.]

Ferrara is no doubt well-meaning, and his scholarship is undeniable. However, he does a disservice, when he compares the present fake recovery from the Great Recession to other recoveries when the economy was laden with high taxes, increasing government regulations, and welfare state programs as well. Why not use the recovery strategies from the Depression of 1920-21 as a model instead? Then his readers would see much more clearly what is needed for a true economic renaissance: government staying within its constitutional bounds, taxes reduced to perhaps 20 percent of their present level, and letting the free market breathe once again.

^{Photo of President Barack Obama: AP Images}

A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

When libertarian scholar Peter Ferrara asked rhetorically in Sunday’s issue of Forbes, “Economically, Could Obama Be America’s Worst President?” he relied heavily on statistics provided by the chief enabler of the Great Recession, the Federal Reserve. Noting that the policies of President Obama have done nothing to stimulate the economy but plenty to keep it from growing, he used recent economic recoveries as prime examples of what recoveries would look like if government would stay out of the way:

The right measure and comparison for Obama’s record is not to compare the recovery to the recession, but to compare Obama’s recovery with other recoveries from other recessions since the Great Depression. By that measure, what is clear is that Obamanomics has produced the worst recovery from a recession since the Great Depression, worse than what every other President who has faced a recession has achieved since the Great Depression.

Using data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Ferrara complained that it’s taken 64 months for the present recovery to regain the ground lost since the beginning of the Great Recession, whereas 64 months into the Reagan recovery, “jobs had grown 9.5% higher than where they were when [that] recession started, representing an increase of about 10 million more jobs.” By contrast, taking population growth into account, the present recession has cost 10 million jobs. The unemployment rate, according to Ferrara and the Minneapolis Fed, has stayed higher longer than at any time since the 1930s, and that’s using government figures and not the real unemployment rate (U6) that has been replaced by new “updated” calculations. Ferrara concluded: “This utterly failed jobs record of Obamanomics reflects the more basic reality that the economy has not been growing under President Obama.”

Ferrara rounded up additional statistics to support his point: The average American family is worse off, in inflation-adjusted terms, than they were before the Great Recession began in 2007. Poverty levels have increased, along with government regulations.

Confirmation came from another branch of the Fed when the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis released its report that any economic “recovery” as measured by gains in the stock market have failed to help those on the lower end of the economic scale. In its May 30 report, the Fed concluded that the average American family has recovered less than half of what it lost since the Great Recession bottomed out in the summer of 2009, mostly because the average family has little invested in the stock market and instead have most of their real wealth invested in real property, mostly their personal homes. Despite some recovery in home prices, that has done precious little to help the average family to recover lost ground significantly.

But Ferrara and the Fed fail to go back far enough to show just how weak the present recovery really is. He (and they) need to go back to the 1920-21 depression to remind his readers of how a nearly free-market economy really responds when it is left to its own devices. Following a sharp decline in productivity that began in January 1920 of almost 30 percent (far deeper than that of the present Great Recession), the economy rebounded by more than 60 percent so that by July 1921, just 18 months later, unemployment had fallen to normal low-single-digit levels. This set the stage for the Roaring Twenties, when the economy doubled in output in a little over seven years. 

In his summary of “the forgotten depression of 1920” as he called it, scholar Tom Woods noted what it took to put in place such a remarkable rebound:

Instead of “fiscal stimulus,” [President] Harding cut the government’s budget nearly in half between 1920 and 1922. The rest of Harding’s approach was equally laissez-faire. Tax rates were slashed for all income groups. The national debt was reduced by one-third.

The Federal Reserve’s activity, moreover, was hardly noticeable. As one economic historian puts it, “Despite the severity of the contraction, the Fed did not move to use its powers to turn the money supply around and fight the contraction.”

By the late summer of 1921, signs of recovery were already visible. The following year, unemployment was back down to 6.7 percent and was only 2.4 percent by 1923.

Woods went on to say, in his best-seller The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, 

[Presidents] Harding and Coolidge did not establish a Square Deal, a New Deal, a New Frontier, a Great Society, or a New Covenant. For the most part they simply stayed out of the economy and out of people’s lives. 

The results speak for themselves. By the end of the decade, the United States could boast an incredible 34 percent of total world production [of the world’s goods and services]. [Emphasis added.]

Ferrara is no doubt well-meaning, and his scholarship is undeniable. However, he does a disservice, when he compares the present fake recovery from the Great Recession to other recoveries when the economy was laden with high taxes, increasing government regulations, and welfare state programs as well. Why not use the recovery strategies from the Depression of 1920-21 as a model instead? Then his readers would see much more clearly what is needed for a true economic renaissance: government staying within its constitutional bounds, taxes reduced to perhaps 20 percent of their present level, and letting the free market breathe once again.

^{Photo of President Barack Obama: AP Images}

A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio (shown) has proposed adding an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would invalidate the ObamaCare health insurance mandate. Labelled the “Right to Refuse” amendment, the measure would make it unconstitutional for Congress to impose taxes on American citizens who refuse to purchase goods or services deemed necessary by Congress.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the individual mandate clause of the Affordable Care Act is constitutional because it is a tax and therefore falls under the power of Congress to tax.

Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that while the “individual mandate is not a valid exercise of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause,” it is a valid exercise of the taxing power granted the federal government by the Constitution. “Simply put, Congress may tax and spend,” he concluded. Of course, that line of reasoning overlooks the fact that the federal government taxing powers are not intended to fund anything the Congress wants to spend money on but only those things that are enumerated in the Constitution.

Rubio seeks a constitutional amendment to override that ruling. According to his office, the Right to Refuse amendment reads, “Congress shall make no law that imposes a tax on a failure to purchase goods or services.”

If the individual mandate is permitted to go into effect, the IRS is tasked with the responsibility of overseeing the payments of the individual mandate tax by those who opt out of health insurance.

Rubio contends, however, that the recent scandal surrounding the IRS is compelling enough to invalidate the agency’s role in overseeing the mandatory individual mandate tax on all Americans. He stated in a press release:

ObamaCare is a disastrous policy that is not only destructive to job creation, it will also unleash the corrupt and scandal-ridden IRS on taxpayers simply for not buying health insurance. We should put our faith in the American people to decide what goods and services they want to buy, not have Congress dictate it and have the IRS empowered to harass Americans to make sure they do it.

Let’s do everything we can to keep the IRS out of our health care and stop future congresses from forcing private citizens to spend their hard-earned money on products or services Washington is forcing on them.

Rubio’s Right to Refuse amendment is the Senate companion to H .J. Res. 28, introduced in the House of Representatives in February by Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-Miss). In a statement, Palazzo applauded Rubio for promoting the amendment:

Senator Rubio has been a consistent defender of individual liberty, and I’m proud to have his support in championing this cause. Just as the IRS has no business punishing organizations based on political beliefs, the government has no business telling individuals how they should spend their money. How can Americans feel confident about Obamacare going forward if they can’t even trust the agency tasked with enforcing this massive law? That is why Right to Refuse is so important. This measure would take the power out of the hands of the IRS and place it back in the hands of the American people.

Rubio’s amendment has support among several conservative organizations, including the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ), Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), and the National Taxpayers Union (NTU). But the John Birch Society is not among them. John F. McManus, president of the constitutionalist-minded group, points out, “Amending the Constitution to cancel an unconstitutional act of Congress – even one deemed acceptable by the Supreme Court – actually does disservice to the Constitution since it suggests that the ObamaCare mandate is constitutional. The outrageous requirements of the ObamaCare legislation, a measure that in no way is authorized by the Constitution, can be cancelled by state nullification or by congressional action, neither of which will imply that the Constitution is deficient and needs correcting.”

An amendment to the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate, or a constitutional convention called by two thirds of the state legislatures. It must be ratified by three quarters of the states in order to be added to the Constitution.

^{Photo: Senator Marco Rubio: AP Images}

This article originally appeared on: The New American

British government’s restrictions on foreign student visa could cost Britain’s universities billions in a decade.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

The protesters who descended on Fort Meade military base in Maryland to express frustration with the trial of Bradley Manning have been joined by major American celebrities and journalists, who have are also rallying support for the Army whistleblower.

Manning, 25, could spend the rest of his life in prison if
convicted of aiding and abetting the enemy by leaking military
cables to WikiLeaks. US military prosecutors have asserted that
Manning put his own agenda above national security and that by
releasing the cables, most notably the Collateral Murder video
depicting an American helicopter opening fire on Iraqi civilians,
he jeopardized Americans in the field of battle.

But his trial at Fort Meade this week has attracted the attention
of influential Americans, as well as international activists who
opposed the American wars in the Middle East and beyond.

The “I Am Bradley Manning” campaign, featuring a video trailer of
A-list celebrities and public thinkers voicing support for
Manning, pushed viewers to consider if they themselves would have
the courage to disclose military video footage in order to stop
the carnage.

Actors Russell Brand, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Wallace Shawn join
Oliver Stone, Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, and
journalists Chris Hedges, Matt Taibbi and a slew of others who
lend Manning their support. Daniel Ellsberg, the former US
Defense Department employee who leaked the Pentagon Papers during
the Vietnam War, is also featured. 

“If you saw incredible things, awful things, things that
belonged in the public domain and not in some server stored in a
dark room in Washington,” each advocate says in the campaign
trailer, “What would you do?”

The trailer also urges audience members to sign a petition
encouraging the Nobel Committee to award Manning the Nobel Peace
Prize. By Tuesday, the second day of Manning’s trial, nearly
60,000 people had signed the petition, organized by Roots Action,
which describes itself as “an online initiative dedicated to
galvanizing Americans who are committed to economic fairness,
equal rights, civil liberties, environmental protection — and
defunding endless wars.”

Supporters also made themselves known outside the trial at the
main gates of Fort Meade. Michael Thurman, a former member of the
US Air Force, told the Daily Beast he flew in from Oakland,
California to personally witness the events.

“”I think what Bradley Manning did was pretty heroic and
selfless, and I want to do everything I can to support someone
who is willing to sacrifice everything so we can all know the
truth about US foreign policy and what this government is
doing,” he said.

“When I was in the military, I was able to see it for what it
was. I came to the conclusion during my enlistment that it wasn’t
an organization benefitting anyone, it was a business venture
that benefitted a few very elite people,” Thurman continued.
“I saw the corporate collusion and found out about the
civilian casualties, the racism, the seizure of resources, and
basically the nature of US policies. I thought it was wrong, and
I became opposed to it, and that’s why I’m supporting Bradley
Manning, who exposed all those things.”

European groups have also sided with Manning. The former Army
Private first-class admitted in February that he provided a large
number of classified documents to WikiLeaks, but that confession
came after nearly three years of detention, where Manning was
monitored as he stewed in solitary confinement for an entire
year.

Joshua Benton, the director of Harvard University’s Nieman
Journalism Lab, explained to the Associated Press why the
American press has been more “uniformly unsympathetic” than their
European counterparts. 

“Part of that is the mainstream press here doesn’t cover the
same ideological turf that it does in the UK, or elsewhere,”
Benton said. “But I’d suspect most of it is the mundane fact
it’s the American interests he’s accused of threatening, and that
people accused of ‘aiding the enemy,’ rightly or wrongly, tend
not to get the most flattering coverage in their home
country.”

This article originally appeared on: RT

Presidential candidate Saeed Jalili says Iranâ„¢s high cultural capacity and public diplomacy are the main reasons behind its successful resistance against the countryâ„¢s enemies.

In a TV interview on Tuesday night, Jalili said the logic behind Iran’s foreign policy is tenable, hence the 120 member states of the Non-Aligned Movement have repeatedly expressed support for Iranâ„¢s right to a peaceful nuclear energy program.

The principlist candidate also said the administration should have a supervisory and managerial role in the countryâ„¢s economy.

Jalili said if elected president, he will try to channel the countryâ„¢s high liquidity into the production sector in order to subdue inflation.

The secretary of the Supreme National Security Council also stated the best way to fight corruption is to close the loopholes in the banking and economic regulations.

In Iranâ„¢s June 14 presidential election, Jalili will be competing against Hassan Rohani, who is the director of the Strategic Research Center of the Expediency Council, MP Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, Tehran Mayor Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, former Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Velayati, Expediency Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei, former First Vice President Mohammad-Reza Aref, and former Telecommunications Minister Mohammad Gharazi.

Iranians will cast their ballots at over 66,000 polling stations across the country in the nationâ„¢s 11th presidential election. Expatriates will also be able to vote at 285 polling stations that will be set up in foreign countries.

The president of Iran is elected for a four-year term in a national election.

MHB/AS

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

The Myanmar government says it will soon release all prisoners of conscience as part of its political reforms.

In his monthly radio address on Tuesday, Myanmar President U Thein Sein said that he would free all prisoners of conscience.

“We are taking time to investigate cases that confuse criminal offences and political offences,” the Myanmar president said in his monthly radio address, adding that those who were convicted of violent crimes linked to political acts would Å“deserve their sentences.”

However, many activists say the governmentâ„¢s amnesties are propaganda efforts seeking political gain in the international community.

“We welcome the fact the government admits it has political prisoners,” Mark Farmaner, a director of Burma Campaign UK, said, adding, “But with Burma (Myanmar) it is always best to judge by action not by words… Thein Sein has promised to release prisoners before, but why are there hundreds still in jail?”

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the US Campaign for Burma advised the United States not to extend new trade benefits to Myanmar.

“Burma does not yet have the safeguards in place to protect citizen’s rights and assure the rule of law, especially in resource-rich minority regions,” US Campaign for Burma Executive Director Jennifer Quigley said.

Over the years, minority religious and ethnic groups have not fared well in Myanmar, and some of them have been waging armed rebellions against the central government for decades.

But recently, the central government has been trying to make peace with the armed separatists.

On May 31, the government and the rebels in the state of Kachin signed an agreement, which had been brokered by United Nations Special Envoy to Myanmar Vijay Nambiar and representatives from the ethnic umbrella group United Nationalities Federal Council.

The agreement was reached with the Kachin Independence Organization — the political wing of the Kachin Independence Army.

However, Rohingya Muslims have been denied Myanmar citizenship since a new citizenship law was enacted in 1982, and there have been a number of attacks on Rohingyas over the past year.

And the situation has recently deteriorated for the other Muslims of Myanmar.

The violence that originally targeted Rohingya Muslims in western Myanmar is beginning to spread to other parts of the country, where Muslims who have been granted citizenship are now being attacked, according to the website burmamuslims.org.

About 800,000 Rohingyas in the western state of Rakhine are deprived of citizenship rights due to the policy of discrimination that has denied them the right of citizenship and made them vulnerable to acts of violence and persecution, expulsion, and displacement.

The Myanmar government has so far refused to extricate the stateless Rohingyas from their citizenship limbo, despite international pressure to give them a legal status.

Rohingya Muslims have faced torture, neglect, and repression in Myanmar for many years.

Hundreds of Rohingyas are believed to have been killed and thousands displaced in recent attacks by extremists who call themselves Buddhists.

The extremists frequently attack Rohingyas and have set fire to their homes in several villages in Rakhine. Myanmar army forces allegedly provided the fanatics containers of petrol for torching the houses of Muslim villagers, who were then forced to flee.

Myanmarâ„¢s government has been accused of failing to protect the Muslim minority.

Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has also come under fire for her stance on the violence. The Nobel Peace laureate has refused to censure the Myanmar military for its persecution of the Rohingyas, although she recently condemned the decision by local officials in Rakhine state to enforce a two-child policy on Rohingya Muslims.

Rohingyas are said to be Muslim descendants of Persian, Turkish, Bengali, and Pathan origin, who migrated to Myanmar as early as the 8th century.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have issued separate statements, calling on Myanmar to take action to protect the Rohingya Muslim population against extremists.

NT/HGL

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Presidential candidate Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf says some of the rights of the Iranian people have been ignored in the implementation of Iranâ„¢s subsidy reform plan.

In a televised speech on Tuesday, Qalibaf said one of the commendable works of the Ahmadinejad administration was the implementation of the plan after several years, but he criticized the way it was implemented.

Å“The subsidy reform plan was implemented to liberalize prices, but the people have rights that were disregarded in the implementation process,” Qalibaf said.

Å“Under the plan, cash subsidies have been paid, but the production sector, which supports job creation, has been disregarded, bringing about inflation and decreasing purchasing power,” the principlist candidate stated.

The Mayor of Tehran said people can no longer afford the commodities they could purchase prior to the implementation of the plan.

Qalibaf said if elected president, he will implement the plan fully, allocate funds to producers and farmers, and ensure that domestic products meet quality standards. He also promised to facilitate the production of quality goods and increase purchasing power.

In Iranâ„¢s June 14 presidential election, Qalibaf will be competing against Hassan Rohani, who is the director of the Strategic Research Center of the Expediency Council, MP Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, Supreme National Security Council Secretary Saeed Jalili, former Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Velayati, Expediency Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei, former First Vice President Mohammad-Reza Aref, and former Telecommunications Minister Mohammad Gharazi.

Iranians will cast their ballots at over 66,000 polling stations across the country in the nationâ„¢s 11th presidential election. Expatriates will also be able to vote at 285 polling stations that will be set up in foreign countries.

The president of Iran is elected for a four-year term in a national election.

MHB/AS

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Press TV: Why does Germany and the US criticize Russia for sending arms to Syria while they themselves are providing weapons to Israel?

Chossudovsky: Well, it’s a nonsensical discourse of countries, which are in fact behind the terrorist organizations in Syria.

They cannot on the one hand be peacemakers in terms of the proposed Geneva peace conference and at the same time support an insurrection channeling weapons to al-Qaeda affiliated forces.

But there is another dimension. They accuse Russia of providing weapons to Syria for defensive purposes under bilateral agreement between two countries. On the other hand we notice that the United States is channeling billions and billions of dollars to Israel — right from the beginning from the instatement of … Israel.

Germany is on record of providing German-made submarines, which are tooled with Israeli nuclear warheads — in other words it is fact in violation not only of the Non Proliferation Treaty(NPT), but it is also in violation of German law and European law in providing weapons technology in support of nuclear weapons.

Press TV: Why is it that only Israel’s security is so important and not the security of others in the region?

Chossudovsky: Well, this of course is an expression of double standards.

Syria is not a threat to countries in the Middle East. But if we look at Israel and we look at its history it has waged wars against several of its neighboring countries, certainly including Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, in the course of recent history.

And much of these operations have been in effect also supported by US military aid. Israel receives billions and billions and billions of dollars of US military aid.

And I should also mention that other countries in the region such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey are also recipients of US military aid and much of this military aid is also being used to threaten Syria and to fund the insurrection, which is composed as we know of terrorist death squads.

Press TV: Despite the fact that the European Union has lifted an arms embargo on Syrian insurgents, how optimistic are you that the Geneva 2 talks will be able to resolve the Syrian crisis politically and not militarily?

Chossudovsky: The United States and its allies are not seeking a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis.

If they were seeking a solution they would disengage in terms of their support to al-Nusra, which is a terrorist organization and its not only a violation of international law, but it’s also a violation of United States law, which classifies al-Nusra as a terrorist organization.

And is somewhat ironic that US Secretary of State John Kerry is implementing a policy, which is in direct contradiction with the country’s anti-terrorist legislation — in fact he is in violation of those criteria because he is brokering a relationship with a terrorist organization and channeling US military aid to al-Qaeda.

SC/HGH

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

The US has infuriated Israel by accidentally revealing the details of a top-secret military facility it planned to build for its Middle Eastern ally to house its Arrow 3 ballistic missiles.

“If an enemy of Israel wanted to launch an attack against a facility, this would give him an easy how-to guide. This type of information is closely guarded and its release can jeopardize the entire facility,” said an Israeli military official who declined to be named because he wasnâ„¢t authorized to discuss the facility.

More than 1,000 pages of information about the project were made public when the US government published building tenders for the $25 million military installation this week, according to the Australian.

The document disclosed details from the engineering plans and the depth of the underground facility to its cooling and heating systems and building materials to be used.

The missile facility is to be built at Tel Shahar, a base between al-Quds (Jerusalem) and Ashdod whose location has never been officially confirmed.

Arrow 3, which is capable of intercepting missiles at a range of 2,500 kilometers and is being jointly developed by Israel Aerospace Industries and the US aerospace giant Boeing Co., is slated to become operational in 2015-16.

MA/AS

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Britain has the highest food and energy inflation in western Europe.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

It’s a scandal.

Monsanto has just announced it’s giving up on most of Europe: people there don’t want GMO food. In America, the struggle is for labeling GMOs.

This is some kind of “fairness doctrine.” Let the US consumer decide what kind of food to buy. Choice. It’s the American way, right?

No, actually it isn’t. The evidence gathered over the last 10 years is staggering. GMO food and the herbicides sprayed on them constitute a major health hazard, to say the least.

And this doesn’t begin to cover the lying business practices of Monsanto, who promised farmers that Roundup would kill weeds in the fields. Instead, the weeds have proliferated to the point where the farmers have to kill everything growing with stronger, more dangerous herbicides, like Paraquat.

In the US, laws exist to prosecute crimes involving endangerment of health and crimes related to false marketing practices. These laws are on the books. When it comes to Monsanto, they’re gathering dust on the shelves.

Choice and fairness apply to competitive products that are safe. The consumer picks one type of tomato over another. The consumer buys walnuts rather than pecans. The consumer chooses black olives over green olives.

Choosing non-GMO corn instead of GMO corn still leaves dangerous GMO corn in produce bins.

Should a bottle of cyanide sit on a store shelf next to a bottle of salt, just to be fair to the consumer? To give him a choice?

Three or four federal law-enforcement agencies would arrest and prosecute the store owners who sell cyanide, as well as the distributors, and the packagers.

But in the case of GMO food, the FDA and USDA, the relevant agencies, do nothing. Neither does the Dept. of Justice.

Aside from several counties in America that have banned the growing of GMO crops, the big push is for labeling of GMO food in stores. That’s it.

The theory is, when consumers have a choice, they’ll overwhelmingly reject GMOs and put a serious crimp in Monsanto’s business. That may or may not happen (if labeling is widespread), but the theory doesn’t directly address Monsanto’s crimes.

The “kinder, gentler” approach is based on two assumptions. One, American consumers need soft activism. They won’t demand legal rejection of GMO food. They will, however, choose the right food.

And two, Monsanto has made such a powerful inroad on food-crop farming, it’s too late to take it back. It’s too late to declare all the GMO crops illegal.

“You see, so many people are taking Vioxx, we can’t go to court over it. It’s a done deal, even though patients are dropping like flies.”

It wasn’t a done deal.

Neither are GMOs.

In a previous article, “Meet Monsanto’s number-one lobbyist: Barack Obama,” I detailed Obama’s horrendous record when it comes to allowing new GMO crops to enter the food chain, and his outrageous appointments of ex-Monsanto stalwarts to important and key positions in his administration.

But Obama is “a good man.” He must be doing the right thing. He’s popular, so it wouldn’t be wise to attack him on the issue. Better to lay back, paste a smile on our faces, and try to secure labeling for GMOs.

Of course, that’s exactly the wrong strategy. But as in all campaigns, the longer people wait and do nothing and remain timid, the less likely it is they can succeed, if and when they decide to move.

That’s why Monsanto now has so many acres of GMO food growing in the United States. That’s why Monsanto has been able to push its unconscionable propaganda down the throat of the American consumer.

That’s why Whole Foods and other major health-food companies decided to surrender the real battles and opt for co-existence with Monsanto.

When there is continuing crime in a community, the people, the citizens have to go after and expose the public officials who are doing nothing about it, who are indeed profiting from it. In the case of Monsanto, the officials are, among others, President Barack Obama, Tom Vilsack, head of the USDA, and Michael Taylor, food czar at the FDA.

But health-food companies, who should be leading the battle, are either friendly or neutral toward these bad actors. They’re hedging their bets. They’re saying, “We’ll inform consumers so they can make good choices, we’ll do labeling, but don’t expect us to be more aggressive than that. Don’t expect us to get mad.”

Neutrality is apparently the American way. First and foremost, the business of America is business. And the idea of consumers staging a full-bore boycott against Whole Foods? Out of the question. No, consumers are too busy loading up bags with groceries.

Monsanto relies on that. Monsanto knows Americans are tuned up to buy, buy, and consume, and then buy more. Americans consider it their right not to be distracted from that obsession.

Obama, like Bush and Clinton before him, are silent on the GMO issue. They all pretend it doesn’t exist. They sell out the people at the drop of a hat, and they don’t lose any sleep over it. Conscience? Never heard of it.

Ditto for major mainstream news outlets. “We don’t cover the Monsanto story in depth because it’s a he-said he-said thing. The scientific issues are complex. People on both sides make interesting points. But there’s no traction…”

That’s a bunch of crap. Make me the managing editor of the Washington Post for a year and I’ll send sales of the paper through the roof. I’ll let the hounds loose on Monsanto 24/7 and pound on the story day after day. The bottom line of the Post will look healthier than it has since Watergate, a minor topic compared to GMOs.

But the Post doesn’t really care about their bottom line. They would go bankrupt before they’d venture into these waters. They’re sold out from the top down. They’re part of the cover-up.

I’ve written about this before, but here it is again. In the early 1990s, when the US health freedom movement was at a fever pitch, when people were going after the FDA for raiding natural practitioners’ offices and trying to limit access to nutritional supplements in stores, I sat in on several significant meetings of activists.

People who controlled those meetings, who were connected to supplement companies, wanted a bill in Congress to protect the consumer. To give the consumer choice and access to supplements. That’s all they wanted.

I told them, in no uncertain terms, that this wouldn’t work over the long term. We had to go after the FDA. We had to attack.

I had a dossier on the FDA. I, like others, knew a lot about their crimes going back a long way.

I was told this was the wrong strategy. “First,” they said, “let’s get a good bill passed in Congress. Then we can attack the FDA.”

They had no such intention, and I told them so. They were never going to support going after the FDA and exposing it down to the ground as a criminal agency.

They had no stomach for it, and they were sold out themselves. They had a confined agenda, which had to do with helping to guard supplement companies’ profits.

They were slick operators. They knew how to present themselves as neutral and rational. They could spout New Age garble at appropriate moments. “Anger can be self-defeating.” “You achieve your aims when you come from a place of doing service.”

The same thing is happening now. “Give people the right to know, the right to choose what’s in their food.” It plays well, because it caters to the wholly absorbed self-interest of the health-food consumer with discretionary income.

It doesn’t work in the long run. It papers over the fact that corporate criminals, in partnership with the highest government officials, are committing RICO crimes against the health of the American people.

The appropriate emotion is outrage.

In case you hadn’t noticed, for the past 40 years there has been a major psyop in progress against righteous outrage and on behalf of Nice. Be nice. Be friendly. Be happy. Be self-contained. Don’t make waves. Anger is a sign of a mental disorder. Outrage isn’t Spiritual. You’ll injure your Karma.

Karma was invented to prop up a caste system. It was used to promote passivity.

Silence is not golden. Profits are.

Labeling food that isn’t poisonous, while permitting the sale of poison, is let’s-pretend virtual reality.

I’ve met so-called health entrepreneurs who’ve adopted squeaky clean New Age cover-personalities to obscure their sleazebag cynical motives. They’re very slippery characters. They do their real work in conference rooms where they look at spread sheets.

The chance of them going after GMO criminals is zero.

Once in a while, if you wait for it, or if you push them a little, you’ll see something come into their eyes. A dead cold nothing. It’s a sign of the personal Arctic region where they really live.

They don’t till, they don’t plant, they don’t harvest. They sell. They’re very much like the Sunday television preachers who are there to hustle dollars.

Only they take a kinder, gentler approach. They’re all about “consciousness” and saving the planet.

If the planet were alive in the way they claim it is, the planet would have long ago consigned them to a desert island under a blazing sun.

Jon Rappoport

The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (R) speaks with Kofi Annan (C), the then-UN envoy to Syria, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (L) before the Geneva meeting, June, 2012.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

British Chancellor Osborne warns cabinet ministers over budget cuts.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

A teenage girl who was assaulted by a classmate has been suspended from a Texas high school for fighting back, though a cell phone video of the incident shows her being beaten on a classroom floor with no teacher in sight.

“I don’t even know how to fight,” the Cypress Ridge High
School senior, who did not want to be named, told local KHOU 11
News.

The teen says that the girl who attacked her is a bully who
approached her for no reason and started punching and kicking her
in a classroom during her sixth period class. The victim says
that as the bully approached, her mind was blank and she
“didn’t know what to do or what to think.”

A 45-second video recording that surfaced on the Internet after
the attack shows the bully punching and kicking the girl in the
face while she lies on her back on the classroom floor. 

A teacher in the classroom at the time did nothing to break up
the attack. While the victim was being beaten, the teacher
pressed a panic button to alert the school’s emergency
administrators about the fight. From the cell phone video, it
appears that another student intervened to stop the bully’s
punches while the instructor is nowhere in sight.

“Where’s the teacher?” Eric Green, the victim’s father,
told KHOU. “Why didn’t they step in and do something about
this? Do something about this mess before it escalated into
physical confrontation?”

The school then proceeded to suspend both girls for participating
in a “mutual” fight, even though one girl was clearly
victimized by the other in what Mr. Green calls an
“assault”.

The assistant principal “basically told me we had two students
that got in a fight,” Green said. “We had mutual combat.’
That was it. She was being suspended. The other student was being
suspended.”

In a statement school administrators sent to NewsFix, a Cypress
Ridge High School spokesman defending the decision and said that
“the campus administration conducted an investigation and the
students involved were disciplined according to the Student Code
of Conduct.”

But the school’s response, together with the teacher’s failure to
break up the attack, has caused Green to develop grave concern
over the safety of his daughter at a place that’s supposed to be
a safe learning environment.

“My concern is Cy-Ridge has no system in place to protect my
child while she’s in school,” he told NewsFix. “And it’s
not just my child. It could be anybody’s child.”

The cell phone video of the attack was uploaded to the Internet
several hours after the incident and after the suspensions were
in effect. The video evidence contradicts the “mutual”
altercation claims made by school administrators. It also
portrays the instructor’s lack of involvement, which could
reflect negatively on the school.

In North Carolina, a fight occurred between two seventh graders
at Hope Mills Middle School last week, with one student recording
it on her mobile phone camera. Kayla Echevvaria, the girl behind
the recording, was subsequently suspended for making the fight
public. Her mother believes the video served as an embarrassment
to the school, which prompted the suspension.

“I tried to explain to [an administrator] there were more
people than me just recording the fight and taking pictures, but
she basically said it didn’t matter because mine was the only one
that made it to the news,” the girl said.

This article originally appeared on: RT

A teenage girl who was assaulted by a classmate has been suspended from a Texas high school for fighting back, though a cell phone video of the incident shows her being beaten on a classroom floor with no teacher in sight.

“I don’t even know how to fight,” the Cypress Ridge High
School senior, who did not want to be named, told local KHOU 11
News.

The teen says that the girl who attacked her is a bully who
approached her for no reason and started punching and kicking her
in a classroom during her sixth period class. The victim says
that as the bully approached, her mind was blank and she
“didn’t know what to do or what to think.”

A 45-second video recording that surfaced on the Internet after
the attack shows the bully punching and kicking the girl in the
face while she lies on her back on the classroom floor. 

A teacher in the classroom at the time did nothing to break up
the attack. While the victim was being beaten, the teacher
pressed a panic button to alert the school’s emergency
administrators about the fight. From the cell phone video, it
appears that another student intervened to stop the bully’s
punches while the instructor is nowhere in sight.

“Where’s the teacher?” Eric Green, the victim’s father,
told KHOU. “Why didn’t they step in and do something about
this? Do something about this mess before it escalated into
physical confrontation?”

The school then proceeded to suspend both girls for participating
in a “mutual” fight, even though one girl was clearly
victimized by the other in what Mr. Green calls an
“assault”.

The assistant principal “basically told me we had two students
that got in a fight,” Green said. “We had mutual combat.’
That was it. She was being suspended. The other student was being
suspended.”

In a statement school administrators sent to NewsFix, a Cypress
Ridge High School spokesman defending the decision and said that
“the campus administration conducted an investigation and the
students involved were disciplined according to the Student Code
of Conduct.”

But the school’s response, together with the teacher’s failure to
break up the attack, has caused Green to develop grave concern
over the safety of his daughter at a place that’s supposed to be
a safe learning environment.

“My concern is Cy-Ridge has no system in place to protect my
child while she’s in school,” he told NewsFix. “And it’s
not just my child. It could be anybody’s child.”

The cell phone video of the attack was uploaded to the Internet
several hours after the incident and after the suspensions were
in effect. The video evidence contradicts the “mutual”
altercation claims made by school administrators. It also
portrays the instructor’s lack of involvement, which could
reflect negatively on the school.

In North Carolina, a fight occurred between two seventh graders
at Hope Mills Middle School last week, with one student recording
it on her mobile phone camera. Kayla Echevvaria, the girl behind
the recording, was subsequently suspended for making the fight
public. Her mother believes the video served as an embarrassment
to the school, which prompted the suspension.

“I tried to explain to [an administrator] there were more
people than me just recording the fight and taking pictures, but
she basically said it didn’t matter because mine was the only one
that made it to the news,” the girl said.

This article originally appeared on: RT

Britain’s House of Lords have supported same-sex marriage bill, moving the initiative a step closer to becoming law in England and Wales.

The “wrecking” amendment aimed at blocking the gay marriage bill, which was tabled by crossbench peer Lord Dear, was defeated by 390 votes to 148.

However, anti-same sex marriage campaigners, including Coalition for Marriage, opposed the coalition governmentâ„¢s proposed bill.

“The debate lifted the lid on the shoddy and undemocratic tactics of the Government who remain determined to ram this legislation through Parliament at all costs,” said campaign director Colin Hart.

The archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has also warned that the draft legislation was in an “awkward shape” and would undermine marriage as the basis for rearing children.

Recently, leaders of Britain’s major faiths called on British Prime Minister David Cameron to halt the plan to allow gay marriage in the UK, suggesting it would “devalue the meaning” of the institution.

On May 21, the House of Commons voted to allow gay marriage in England and Wales despite fierce opposition from the majority of Conservative MPs.

MOS/SSM/HE

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Turkish protesters have rejected the government’s apology for excessive violence by police and its appeal to end days of unrest.

On Tuesday, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc told a news conference in Ankara, “The excessive violence that was used in the first instance against those who were behaving with respect for the environment is wrong and unfair. I apologize to those citizens.”

Arinc called for the unrest to end, saying the protests had been taken over by “terrorist elements”.

The demonstrators took to the streets again on Tuesday evening in defiance of their government’s apology and plea to end the protests, which have escalated into deadly unrest in cities across Turkey.

The protesters flooded Istanbul’s Taksim Square, yelling defiance at Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who earlier dismissed them as “extremists” and “vandals”.

“The vandals are here! Where is Tayyip?” yelled the crowd.

They demanded the resignation of Erdoganâ„¢s government.

“If they step back, if they change something in Turkey, the conservatism and the things they’ve done, then maybe the crowd can go home,” said Didem Kul, a 24-year-old student in Taksim Square.

“But we can’t go home without having a demonstration. And even if we go home, the feelings won’t change.”

Earlier in the day, the Turkish Confederation of Public Workers’ Unions (KESK), which represents 240,000 employees, launched a two-day strike to express solidarity with the protesters.

KESK spokesman Baki Cinar also rejected the governmentâ„¢s conciliatory move.

“The apology is just damage control and only because they know they are stuck,” Cinar said.

Since Friday, tens of thousands of anti-government protesters have held demonstrations in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Mugla, Antalya, and many other cities and towns.

According to the Turkish Human Rights Association, two protesters died and over 2,800 protesters were injured in the past five days. It added that 791 protesters were arrested by the police.

The anti-government unrest began after police broke up a sit-in staged in Taksim Square on Friday to protest against the demolition of Gezi Park.

The protesters say Gezi Park, which is a traditional gathering point for rallies and demonstrations as well as a popular tourist destination, is the city’s last green public space.

Amnesty International censured the Turkish police for the tactics they used to control the protests.

GJH/AS

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

The defendants were charged with receiving illicit foreign funds and operating without a license in an Egyptian court.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Press TV
June 4, 2013

Press TV has conducted an interview with Alex Jones, Infowars.Com, Texas, about the issue of the suspicious death five months ago of Aaron Schwartz an outspoken critic of Barack Obama.

The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: It is a known fact that Schwartz was a critic of the Obama government of the American policy specially the ‘kill list’ and suspicion still surrounds his death. What do you make of it, first of all?

Jones: Well, he was openly saying he was going to fight the charges; they were fraudulent; he was going to beat them and so I believe they probably actually killed him, not that they harassed him until he committed suicide — They could hang me in my home and say that I committed suicide. This is a very dangerous precedent.

One of the friends of the supposed Boston bombing patsies who said he thought it was the government doing it, he was shot through the top of the head by the FBI during an interrogation.

So in America now, you don’t get a judge or a jury or a trial, the FBI just drops by and hangs you or shoots you in the top of the head.

And there is no doubt — I know people that knew Schwartz; I know people that are off-record talking about the Boston bombing brothers as well and there is doubt from their research that this entire thing is a staged event.

Press TV: Earlier in May a court in the US sided with the prosecution in keeping evidence secret with regards to the case against Schwartz that was about illegally downloading information from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and other networks, so to speak. It raises the question over what is it that they want to hide?

Jones: Aaron Schwartz was facing 35 years in prison for downloading stuff basically for the MIT library. Most of the stuff was 30, 40, 50 years old.

They were persecuting him because he led the real effective grass roots movements for internet freedom here in the United States. And he was against the big corporations that are setting up a kind of a corporatocracy here that in the words of CNET news, CBS news is a Chinese style, a communist style, a Russian Style net censorship.

So, what happened was, he was against government web censorship and so they basically harassed him and hounded him and charged him for 35 years in jail for something that would be like Jaywalking — walking across the street. They then said he committed suicide, but I don’t buy that. I have known Pulitzer Prize winners like Gary Webb who exposed CIA drug dealing who told me he was being followed and that he had a big book coming out and he got shot twice in the head.

So, it gets beyond them harassing him, in my view and my research, until he committed suicide. I believe that clandestine forces, maybe even corporate forces that want this 100 billion dollar a year cyber security spy grid, killed Aaron Schwartz.

Press TV: Right now we’re going to see the trial of Bradley Manning starting soon as well. This is a time that many are asking questions over what is the future of people like Schwartz in the US?

Jones: The future is death, unless we all stand together. We have mainline reporters that do interviews with people from the State Department on issues like North Korea, that’s not even secret information and they’re getting arrested, the State Department people and journalists.

So this is a persecution against real media and against the conscience of America. America is full of moral, good people, but we’ve been very, very naïve about how corrupt the globalists are. And so now the people are waking up, they’re trying to persecute the press and whistleblowers. There is a war going on against truth tellers and people that have conscience in America.

But I’ll say this in closing — I believe the persecution of whistleblowers, the persecution of government people, and the persecution of media has now backfired. The people have got past their fear and you’re going to see a lot more whistleblowers.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 at 5:10 pm

Tags: police state, terrorism

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Turkish police have fired tear gas and used water cannons to disperse thousands of anti-government demonstrators who gathered at Istanbul’s Taksim Square.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Elizabeth Harrington
cnsnews.com
June 4, 2013

The 166 terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay are offered a course in “interviewing and resume writing” as part of their indefinite stay at the prison camp.

Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) lists the variety of classes and activities it offers to the terrorist trainers, financiers, bomb makers, recruiters and facilitators who are housed at Gitmo.

Among them: “Interviewing and Resume Writing“ and “Writing Success.”

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This article was posted: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 at 4:52 pm

Tags: domestic news, terrorism

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Elise Foley
Huffington Post
June 4, 2013

The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the federal government Tuesday over its voluntary departures program, through which the group alleges officials often use misinformation to pressure undocumented immigrants to sign away their rights before being forced out of the country.

The program helps the government rack up removals of undocumented immigrants, which reached a record of more than 400,000 last year. But the policy works differently than the usual broader detention and removal process: Border patrol or immigration agents give detained unauthorized immigrants the option to sign a form that will lead to their immediate removal – sometimes within hours.

For most, that means leaving the country before they can talk to a lawyer, see their family or, the ACLU argues, receive necessary information that would help them realize they have other options.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 at 4:29 pm

Tags: domestic news

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Image: Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe

In November 2012, Finance Minister Marie Carmelle Jean-Marie, who has since resigned, sounded the alarm about the state of public finances. She asked government officials to limit their spending, especially in non-essential travel.

According to Senator Moïse Jean-Charles, former President René Préval left some $1.9 billion in the treasury when he stepped down in May 2011. But nobody knows how this large amount was spent.

Furthermore, $150 million was earmarked for the reconstruction of the capital’s hilltop neighborhood of Fort National, which was devastated in the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake. However, $50 million of that sum was diverted to build 3,000 houses in Morne à Cabri while the remaining $100 million has mysteriously disappeared.

Under the government of President Michel Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe, a great deal has been spent, but very little has been accomplished. Corruption has been the hallmark of the first two years of President Martelly’s government.

Now, the president of the Senate’s Economy and Finance Commission, Sen. Jocelerme Privert, has laid bare the sad state of the country’s finances. A budget deficit of 9 billion gourdes [$211.805 million] is already forecast for the current fiscal year 2012-2013. According to the budget forecast, the state should collect 52 billion gourdes [$1.224 billion]. But for the first half of the fiscal year, the state only collected 21.7 billion gourdes [$510.684 million], despite an increase in payroll and income taxes. Therefore, there is already a deficit of 4.3 billion gourdes [$101.196 million]. During the same period in fiscal year 2011-2012, the state collected 22 billion gourdes [$517.744 million].

Meanwhile, the exchange rate continues to rise. Today, one needs 44 gourdes to buy one dollar, up from 39 gourdes in 2011, so the purchasing power of households has decreased significantly, despite an 8% increase in money transfers from the diaspora. Charles Castel, the Central Bank’s governor, says the inflation rate is 7.2%, but independent economists say it is closer to 10%.

The Central Bank, also known as the Bank of the Republic of Haiti (BRH), has confirmed the budget deficit. However, Castel makes a difference between the revenue deficit, which is 9 billion gourdes [$211.805 million], and the fiscal deficit, which is 2.7 billion gourdes [$63.541 million]. Therefore, according to Castel, the deficit is less than 1% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Castel also announced the issuance of $15 million from the state’s reserve money supply to try to stabilize the Haitian Gourde’s exchange rate.

Despite the budget deficits, officials of the Martelly-Lamothe government continue to make a great number of unnecessary trips abroad, which entail hugely inflated per diem expense. For example, President Martelly gets travel expenses of up to $20,000 per day. Under previous governments, travel expenses were set at $600 per day for the highest ranking officials who needed to go to Europe, Africa, or Asia, and $500 per day for their travel in the Americas, while lower-level state officials received $300 to $400 per day, according to Sen. Jocelerme Privert, who spent many years working in different Haitian administrations.

Meanwhile, the Senate’s Public Works and Communications Commission, led by Sen. Jean William Jeanty, issued a report that discovered corruption, embezzlement, and numerous other irregularities in the management of funds which the Martelly/Lamothe government illegally collected on international phone calls from June 2011 to November 2012. The report notes that National Council for Telecommunications (CONATEL), a regulatory body, collected $50.4 million during that period, but only 60% of the money — about $30 million — was sent to the Treasury. About 10% of the revenue — $ 5 million — was spent to purchase equipment to fight telecommunications fraud, and another $4 million was spent to hire the Swiss firm Société Générale de Surveillance S.A. (SGS) to improve security against fraud. Much of the money was spent on large unexplained expenses for “staff” salaries and bonuses.

Sen. Jocelerme Privert said that according to the accounting that was available, CONATEL should have collected $69 million during this period. Furthermore, there is no law which authorizes the taxing of phone calls at 5 cents per call, nor the release of that revenue.

Meanwhile, about $63 million was collected on incoming and outgoing money transfers (at $1.50 per transfer) for the period from Jun. 15, 2011 to Apr. 16, 2013. These funds were supposed to have been collected to finance the Program for Free and Compulsory Universal Schooling (PSUGO), which is also largely funded by the World Bank. This program has left a trail of corruption scandals from the National Palace through the Education Ministry all the way to schools themselves.

Following the release of the reports, the Senate summoned Lamothe to appear before it on May 28, 2013 in order to explain the irregularities in the expenditure of scarce state resources, including 5 billion gourdes [$117.67 million] spent on an emergency funds program for Hurricane Sandy last autumn. Seven senators signed the summons: Moïse Jean Charles Jean-Baptiste Bien-Aimé, Irvenson Steve Benoit, François Joseph Annick, Jean William Jeanty, Westner Polycarpe, and John Joel Joseph. As has happened before, the Prime Minister did not want to answer the senator’s questions and requested a postponement of the session until Friday, May 31, 2013, [which was postponed to June 4, 2013] despite the the senators’ strenuous objections.

Meanwhile, President Michel Martelly, also on May 28, called members of the National Assembly to an extraordinary session to continue working on draft legislation. Most saw Martelly’s call for an extraordinary session to be a tactic to create a diversion from the attempt to convoke Lamothe.

If the Prime Minister does not respect the senators’ summons or if they are not satisfied with his answers, will they unseat him? This question will be answered in the days ahead.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

British lawyers stage a protest over the governmentâ„¢s plans to slice a further £220 million from the criminal legal aid budget.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Mike Adams
Natural News
June 4, 2013

Monsanto is now in full retreat against a global grassroots rejection of its poisons and lies. The company is backpedaling on every front now, even admitting defeat in Europe and now trying to focus its last, desperate efforts on the United States and Brazil.

But even in the Americas, Monsanto is losing on every front: GMO labeling legislation is cropping up in over a dozen states, the global March Against Monsanto demonstrated global grassroots unity against GMOs, and even the so-called “science” behind the “safety” GMOs is revealed as utter hogwash now that GMOs have escaped Monsanto’s experimental wheat fields and contaminated commercial wheat crops in America.

Japan has halted U.S. wheat imports and South Korea joined in as well. Ben & Jerry’s ice cream company has announced it is going 100% GMO-free, and massive boycotts are under way against brands that tried to block the GMO labeling ballot measure in California (Prop 37).

We’ve reached the tipping point against Monsanto
Jeffrey Smith of www.ResponsibleTechnology.org has always talked about a “tipping point” being reached on GMOs, after which the flood of consumer awareness and demand would force food manufacturers and retailers to begin the process of ditching GMOs. I believe that tipping point has now been reached. In fact, I believe the March Against Monsanto was the final push over the fulcrum of the tipping point, and I am ecstatic that so many people all around the world marched in the streets to protest global food injustice while the wholly-discredited mainstream media sat back and pretended the march never even took place!

In one fell sweep, the tipping point against Monsanto was triggered and the whole world realized the mainstream media has zero credibility. I’ll call that a victory any day!

Next steps: Commands from headquarters?

If you’re waiting for “commands from headquarters” to figure out what’s next in the war for food justice and farming justice – the war against Monsanto and GMOs – you don’t really understand this movement. The beauty of everything that’s happening today is that there IS no headquarters!

Activists against Monsanto are simply making this up as we go along. There is no “leader.” There is no secret strategy meeting. There are no talking points. There is no overarching set of milestones being discussed. There is no one person that makes all this happen.

The anti-GMO movement is all just large numbers of courageous individuals waking up and doing what needs to be done, whether that’s organizing a march, posting videos online, boycotting food brands that use GMOs, or holding home viewing parties of DVDs that educate people on the truth about GMOs.

This is the movement’s strength. This is why nobody can be intimidated, sued or shut down by Monsanto. Behind every activist there are a thousand more carrying the torch for food justice. The anti-GMO grassroots movement absolutely will not stop until GMOs are banned from the global food supply, and that bold statement is just as true in Venezuela and Portugal as the United States. Everywhere that people eat food and grow food, everyone who is informed supports the idea of outlawing GMOs entirely.

This goal will be achieved. I can see it now with clarity. The grassroots energy behind this movement is unstoppable. And while everyone in the grassroots anti-GMO movement may come from slightly different viewpoints on other social, political and economic issues, they all agree that GMOs have no place in the food supply, period!

As I recently said in my speech at the March Against Monsanto in Austin:

The fact that you are here, in all your beautiful diversity… is proof that they cannot divide us! They can only unite us with their insanity!

If you are part of the effort to stop Monsanto and outlaw GMOs, you are winning. You are making a measurable, effective difference in the world, and the positive shockwaves of your efforts will be felt for generations to come.

Keep up the good work.

Nuha Shabaan
usatoday.com
June 4, 2013

Syrian rebels outside Damascus said Tuesday that thousands of Hezbollah and Iraqi fighters are massing on the outskirts of the capital in what appears to be a prelude to a large-scale ground invasion against towns they have held for months.

“Planes are dropping off fully armed fighters from Hezbollah and the Iraqi Fadl Brigades,” said opposition activist Abu Yasser.

Hezbollah is a Lebanon-based terrorist group; the Fadl Brigades are Iranian-trained Shiite Muslim militants from Iraq. Both groups are likely destined for the fight in al-Qusayr, a town near the Lebanese border that is at the center of the rebels’ supply routes for ammo and fighters, Yasser said.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 at 4:11 pm

Tags: foreign affairs, terrorism

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Turkish govt. offers apology for violent crackdown on protests

Demonstrators carry an injured man during a protest against Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in central Ankara on June 2, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio (shown) has proposed adding an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would invalidate the ObamaCare health insurance mandate. Labelled the “Right to Refuse” amendment, the measure would make it unconstitutional for Congress to impose taxes on American citizens who refuse to purchase goods or services deemed necessary by Congress.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the individual mandate clause of the Affordable Care Act is constitutional because it is a tax and therefore falls under the power of Congress to tax.

Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that while the “individual mandate is not a valid exercise of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause,” it is a valid exercise of the taxing power granted the federal government by the Constitution. “Simply put, Congress may tax and spend,” he concluded. Of course, that line of reasoning overlooks the fact that the federal government taxing powers are not intended to fund anything the Congress wants to spend money on but only those things that are enumerated in the Constitution.

Rubio seeks a constitutional amendment to override that ruling. According to his office, the Right to Refuse amendment reads, “Congress shall make no law that imposes a tax on a failure to purchase goods or services.”

If the individual mandate is permitted to go into effect, the IRS is tasked with the responsibility of overseeing the payments of the individual mandate tax by those who opt out of health insurance.

Rubio contends, however, that the recent scandal surrounding the IRS is compelling enough to invalidate the agency’s role in overseeing the mandatory individual mandate tax on all Americans. He stated in a press release:

ObamaCare is a disastrous policy that is not only destructive to job creation, it will also unleash the corrupt and scandal-ridden IRS on taxpayers simply for not buying health insurance. We should put our faith in the American people to decide what goods and services they want to buy, not have Congress dictate it and have the IRS empowered to harass Americans to make sure they do it.

Let’s do everything we can to keep the IRS out of our health care and stop future congresses from forcing private citizens to spend their hard-earned money on products or services Washington is forcing on them.

Rubio’s Right to Refuse amendment is the Senate companion to H .J. Res. 28, introduced in the House of Representatives in February by Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-Miss). In a statement, Palazzo applauded Rubio for promoting the amendment:

Senator Rubio has been a consistent defender of individual liberty, and I’m proud to have his support in championing this cause. Just as the IRS has no business punishing organizations based on political beliefs, the government has no business telling individuals how they should spend their money. How can Americans feel confident about Obamacare going forward if they can’t even trust the agency tasked with enforcing this massive law? That is why Right to Refuse is so important. This measure would take the power out of the hands of the IRS and place it back in the hands of the American people.

Rubio’s amendment has support among several conservative organizations, including the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ), Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), and the National Taxpayers Union (NTU). But the John Birch Society is not among them. John F. McManus, president of the constitutionalist-minded group, points out, “Amending the Constitution to cancel an unconstitutional act of Congress – even one deemed acceptable by the Supreme Court – actually does disservice to the Constitution since it suggests that the ObamaCare mandate is constitutional. The outrageous requirements of the ObamaCare legislation, a measure that in no way is authorized by the Constitution, can be cancelled by state nullification or by congressional action, neither of which will imply that the Constitution is deficient and needs correcting.”

An amendment to the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate, or a constitutional convention called by two thirds of the state legislatures. It must be ratified by three quarters of the states in order to be added to the Constitution.

^{Photo: Senator Marco Rubio: AP Images}

This article originally appeared on: The New American

Robert Pear
nytimes.com
June 4, 2013

Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, disclosed on Tuesday that she had made telephone calls to three companies regulated by her department and urged them to help a nonprofit group promote President Obama’s health care law.

She identified the companies as Johnson & Johnson, the drug maker; Ascension Health, a large Roman Catholic health care system; and Kaiser Permanente, the health insurance plan.

At a Congressional hearing, Ms. Sebelius said she had not explicitly asked the companies for money, but urged them to support the work of the nonprofit group, Enroll America.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 at 4:07 pm

Tags: domestic news, government corruption, health, healthcare

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

(Photo: Oxfam International/cc/flickr)More than 65 countries have signed the first-ever treaty regulating the global arms trade. The United States, which is the world’s top arms exporter, has delayed signing it after being accused of weakening the treaty before its approval last month.

Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday the United States would sign as soon as the official translation process is complete. The treaty would not control domestic weapons use but still faces a tough battle for ratification in the U.S. Senate. On Monday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged countries that export arms to embrace the treaty.

Ban Ki-moon: “I particularly appeal to major arms trading countries to be first movers. The eyes of the world are watching arms traders, manufacturers and governments as never before. I call on all governments to bring national legislation and procedures in line with the requirements of the treaty so that it becomes a strong force for security and development for all.”

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

Afghan interpreters’ UK resettlement package is described as Å“inadequate”.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius says it is confirmed that the nerve agent of sarin has been used multiple times during the crisis in Syria.

Fabius said in a brief statement on Tuesday that samples taken from Syria and tested in France “prove the presence of sarin in the samples in our possession.”

The French minister, however, did not specify the location and the time the agent had been used.

The claim comes upon a new report by the United Nations that says there are “reasonable grounds” to believe that chemical weapons have been used in Syria.

Fabius added that the test results have been handed to the UN.

The White House said on Tuesday that it was continuing efforts to collect evidence about the probable use of chemical weapons in Syria.

France and the UK say the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against militants, a claim Damascus has rejected as Å“lies.”

Damascus says terrorists have used chemical weapons on several occasions, including an attack in the region of Khan al-Assal in the province of Aleppo in which over two dozen people died.

MA/AS

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Turkish police should be blamed for provoking violence in Istanbul, where peaceful actions grew into bloody protests. But despite the escalation, Turkey is still a democracy and PM Erdogan will not quit, journalist and author Andrew Finkel told RT.

RT: We’ve seen the first deaths in Turkey, how far do
you think this could go?

Andrew Finkel: It’s difficult to say, but it’s clear
there’s an opposition movement forming against the government
really outside the confines of the traditional political parties.
Whether they will continue to show their opposition in the
streets, or whether they will simply become a political force
within Turkey, it’s really not quite clear. However, I think the
notion that Turkey will go back to normal by Thursday — by the
time the Prime Minister gets back from North Africa — is a little
bit of wishful thinking.

RT: The Prime Minister said these protests are nothing
like the Arab Spring and events on Tahrir square in Egypt – do
you agree?

AF: It is perhaps a misleading comparison. People have
also compared it with the Velvet Revolution in Prague [while the]
Turks say, ‘We resemble ourselves.’ There is something
intrinsic to Turkey about what has happened. Why it’s different
from the Arab Spring is that Erdogan is a Prime Minister who was
elected […] in three consecutive elections. Each time he got a
little more of the vote. If there were an election tomorrow, many
people think he would still be elected. He said the other day,
‘You have a hundred thousand people on the streets; I could get
one million.’ This may be a little bit of a threat, but possibly
not an exaggeration.

[Erdogan] won’t quit, he will go to a general election if that’s
necessary. It’s not a question of him being ousted from power by
tanks and bullets. Turkey, for all its faults, is still a
democracy.

RT: Protesters accuse the police for their excessive
use of force. What has made the security forces go in so
hard?

AF: Certainly no one would defend the way the police have
handled these riots, and indeed, much of the outrage that we are
seeing on the streets is a result of the way the police have
handled a sit-down, tree-hugging protest in the center of an
Istanbul square. Had they not gone in with tear gas and set tents
on fire and batons blazing then a lot of the outrage that we are
seeing would not have happened. Some of the outrage would have
happened. A lot of it is frustration at the way the government
has been ruling.

Yet, what is the solution to the problem? The solution is not
people standing on tanks and storming the presidential palace.
The solution would be for the government to go to a poll. That’s
what happens in democratic societies.

RT: How well do you think the government’s handling the
crisis?

AF: They are confounded by the crisis. They don’t know how
to react. They’re not used to dealing with such large-scale civil
unrest, and indeed they helped provoke the civil unrest by the
initial use of force….They have to come to some sort of
negotiation with the demonstrators. It’s not clear to me that
what we’re going to see in Turkey is an escalation of street
violence met by an escalation of government violence. I think at
some point people will realize that to go in that direction is
madness. But clearly the government understands it’s going to
have to listen to voices on the streets and not just its own
supporters.

RT: Activists are calling on Erdogan to quit. Will
Western leaders join the chorus and tell him to go too like they
did with Assad in Syria and Gaddafi in Libya?

AF: There is irony here in that [Syrian President Bashir]
Assad has issued travel warnings against people going to Turkey.
It’s him laughing up his sleeve at the situation. As I’ve said,
Turkey, for all its faults, is still a parliamentary democracy.
So it’s not a question of Erdogan quitting. It’s a question of
him resigning and going into a general election if he felt he had
lost the confidence of his electorate. I don’t see that happening
in the immediate future. I don’t think he’s going to step down
and resign. But clearly his popularity will take a knock.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

This article originally appeared on: RT

KEITH KOFFLER
White House Dossier
June 4, 2013

In the latest blow to the Obama administration’s claim to be the “openness administration,” word emerged today that the Department of Labor sought to charge a news organization more than $1 million for information.

According to the Associated Press, which reported today on the widespread use by government officials of secret email accounts, Labor demanded that AP pay $1.03 million for costs the department said were involved in retrieving email addresses for political appointees.

According to the piece:

(The agency) said it needed to pull 2,236 computer backup tapes from its archives and pay 50 people to pore over old records. Those costs included three weeks to identify tapes and ship them to a vendor, and pay each person $2,500 for nearly a month’s work.

But under the department’s own FOIA rules — which it cited in its letter to the AP — it is prohibited from charging news organizations any costs except for photocopies after the first 100 pages. The department said it would take 14 weeks to find the emails if the AP had paid the money . . .

A department spokesman later termed the demand for cash a “mistake” and provided the Associated Press with the email addresses for all Labor appointees confirmed by the Senate. But it would appear demanding such and exorbitant sum to drum up a few email addresses may amount to an effort to create a barrier to the release of information.

The episode suggests that the failure to appreciate the role of the press extends well beyond the White House, which bullies reporters to suppress the news, and the Justice Department, which makes them subject to criminal inquiry for collecting information. It is one of the cardinal rules of journalism that you don’t pay for information, particularly not a sum like $1 million.

June 4, 2013
 |

Members of the ultra-conservative wing of the Republican Party didn’t try to oust Speaker John Boehner from his perch because God told them not to, a Washington Post report highlighted by Salon’s Jillian Rayfield states.

The background to the story is that in January, a vote within the new House Republican caucus occurred on whether to keep Boehner on as speaker. Some conservatives were upset that Boehner had allowed a deal to be struck that averted the so-called “fiscal cliff,” and they wanted Boehner out because of it. But in the end, only 12 GOP members voted against Boehner. That was short of the 17 needed to force another vote on the Speaker slot.

Yesterday, the Washington Post revealed new details about why Boehner kept his slot in a story published about the Republican Party’s warring factions. One reason why Boehner wasn’t ousted is because “several Republicans, after a night of prayer, said God told them to spare the speaker,” according to the Post’s Paul Kane.

Florida Rep. Steve Southerland told Kane that he “read the Old Testament the night before the vote.”

“He’s not a God of chaos, he’s a God of order,” said Southerland, who woke up the day of the vote deciding that Boehner should stay.

Kane also granted anonymity to other Republicans who also “prayed before siding with Boehner.”

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

Seung Min Kim
Politico
June 4, 2013

Four Senate Republican opponents of the Gang of Eight immigration bill are mounting an effort to sway their colleagues against the legislation.

Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Mike Lee of Utah and Chuck Grassley of Iowa sent a “Dear Colleague” letter Tuesday afternoon laying out specific criticisms of the bill, saying it would give “immediate” legalization to undocumented immigrants without adequate border security and does not repair the legal immigration system.

The four senators, who voted against the bill in the Judiciary Committee, said the process of marking up the bill was “predicated on a deal struck before” the committee process began.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 at 3:36 pm

Tags: domestic news, legislation

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Infowars.com
June 4, 2013

Sheila Hemphill and her son, Coleman Hemphill, talked with David Knight and Infowars Nightly News about shifting the debate on smart meters in a positive direction.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 at 3:35 pm

Tags: activism, domestic news, technology

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

bbc.co.uk
June 4, 2013

HSBC is being sued by the state of New York for allegedly ignoring a law designed to protect US homeowners from losing their houses.

HSBC’s “illegal business practices make it more likely that homeowners will unnecessarily lose their homes,” the lawsuit states.

It accuses Europe’s largest bank of being too slow to file paperwork in 300 foreclosure cases in New York state.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 at 3:31 pm

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Becky Evans
Daily Mail
June 4, 2013

Two disgraced soldiers who abused Afghan civilians will be allowed to stay anonymous because of fears they could become victims of a ‘lone wolf’ attack like soldier Lee Rigby.

A 22-year-old ex-private was fined £1,000 after admitting pulling a young boy’s hand towards his genitals and saying ‘Touch my special place’.

His 23-year-old comrade, a serving non-commissioned officer, was demoted in rank after pleading guilty to racially insulting a local man by photographing him holding a sign reading ‘Silly Paki’.

But controversially the judge at the court martial today ruled the shamed troops’ names should be shrouded in secrecy following the murder of soldier Lee Rigby.

Two Islamic extremists have been charged with allegedly hacking Drummer Rigby, 25, to death with cleavers and knives outside Woolwich barracks in south east London two weeks ago.

udge Advocate Alan Large, sitting at the hearing in Sennelager, Germany, said the guilty soldiers and their families could be at risk of attack from ‘lone wolf’ terrorists if their anonymity was lifted.

He said: ‘In the light of recent events in London and the threat posed by lone wolves it seems to me that it would be wrong to lift the restrictions.

‘I accept that it would usually be wrong to make such an order and this should not be seen as an attempt by the military to hide behind the law.

‘It was made in response to very specific circumstances and on specific grounds.’

The servicemen were attached to the 1st Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment which was fighting the Taliban in the Nahr-e Saraj area of Helmand when the offences took place in December 2011.

The former private, known as Soldier X, pleaded guilty to two charges of misconduct.

In once incident he was filmed near a checkpoint with a child aged around five sitting on his knee.

Film footage showed him laughing, pulling the boy’s hand and telling him to touch his crotch.

He also pleaded guilty to insulting an Afghan boy aged around ten who offered to shake his hand, telling him to ‘f*** off’ and calling him a ‘f****** c***’.

He was cleared of disgraceful conduct of an indecent kind and allegedly forcing an Afghan girl to touch him intimately on another occasion.

Judge Advocate Large accepted there was no sexual motive behind Soldier X’s behaviour towards the young boys but said it was ‘gratuitously unpleasant’ and ‘totally unacceptable’.

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When libertarian scholar Peter Ferrara asked rhetorically in Sunday’s issue of Forbes, “Economically, Could Obama Be America’s Worst President?” he relied heavily on statistics provided by the chief enabler of the Great Recession, the Federal Reserve. Noting that the policies of President Obama have done nothing to stimulate the economy but plenty to keep it from growing, he used recent economic recoveries as prime examples of what recoveries would look like if government would stay out of the way:

The right measure and comparison for Obama’s record is not to compare the recovery to the recession, but to compare Obama’s recovery with other recoveries from other recessions since the Great Depression. By that measure, what is clear is that Obamanomics has produced the worst recovery from a recession since the Great Depression, worse than what every other President who has faced a recession has achieved since the Great Depression.

Using data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Ferrara complained that it’s taken 64 months for the present recovery to regain the ground lost since the beginning of the Great Recession, whereas 64 months into the Reagan recovery, “jobs had grown 9.5% higher than where they were when [that] recession started, representing an increase of about 10 million more jobs.” By contrast, taking population growth into account, the present recession has cost 10 million jobs. The unemployment rate, according to Ferrara and the Minneapolis Fed, has stayed higher longer than at any time since the 1930s, and that’s using government figures and not the real unemployment rate (U6) that has been replaced by new “updated” calculations. Ferrara concluded: “This utterly failed jobs record of Obamanomics reflects the more basic reality that the economy has not been growing under President Obama.”

Ferrara rounded up additional statistics to support his point: The average American family is worse off, in inflation-adjusted terms, than they were before the Great Recession began in 2007. Poverty levels have increased, along with government regulations.

Confirmation came from another branch of the Fed when the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis released its report that any economic “recovery” as measured by gains in the stock market have failed to help those on the lower end of the economic scale. In its May 30 report, the Fed concluded that the average American family has recovered less than half of what it lost since the Great Recession bottomed out in the summer of 2009, mostly because the average family has little invested in the stock market and instead have most of their real wealth invested in real property, mostly their personal homes. Despite some recovery in home prices, that has done precious little to help the average family to recover lost ground significantly.

But Ferrara and the Fed fail to go back far enough to show just how weak the present recovery really is. He (and they) need to go back to the 1920-21 depression to remind his readers of how a nearly free-market economy really responds when it is left to its own devices. Following a sharp decline in productivity that began in January 1920 of almost 30 percent (far deeper than that of the present Great Recession), the economy rebounded by more than 60 percent so that by July 1921, just 18 months later, unemployment had fallen to normal low-single-digit levels. This set the stage for the Roaring Twenties, when the economy doubled in output in a little over seven years. 

In his summary of “the forgotten depression of 1920” as he called it, scholar Tom Woods noted what it took to put in place such a remarkable rebound:

Instead of “fiscal stimulus,” [President] Harding cut the government’s budget nearly in half between 1920 and 1922. The rest of Harding’s approach was equally laissez-faire. Tax rates were slashed for all income groups. The national debt was reduced by one-third.

The Federal Reserve’s activity, moreover, was hardly noticeable. As one economic historian puts it, “Despite the severity of the contraction, the Fed did not move to use its powers to turn the money supply around and fight the contraction.”

By the late summer of 1921, signs of recovery were already visible. The following year, unemployment was back down to 6.7 percent and was only 2.4 percent by 1923.

Woods went on to say, in his best-seller The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, 

[Presidents] Harding and Coolidge did not establish a Square Deal, a New Deal, a New Frontier, a Great Society, or a New Covenant. For the most part they simply stayed out of the economy and out of people’s lives. 

The results speak for themselves. By the end of the decade, the United States could boast an incredible 34 percent of total world production [of the world’s goods and services]. [Emphasis added.]

Ferrara is no doubt well-meaning, and his scholarship is undeniable. However, he does a disservice, when he compares the present fake recovery from the Great Recession to other recoveries when the economy was laden with high taxes, increasing government regulations, and welfare state programs as well. Why not use the recovery strategies from the Depression of 1920-21 as a model instead? Then his readers would see much more clearly what is needed for a true economic renaissance: government staying within its constitutional bounds, taxes reduced to perhaps 20 percent of their present level, and letting the free market breathe once again.

^{Photo of President Barack Obama: AP Images}

A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at
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This article originally appeared on: The New American

(Photo: luke chan/cc/flickr)The news of Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) wheat that turned up on an Oregon farm has brought repeated assurances that trials of this GM wheat stopped years ago.

But while the particular strain of its GM glyphosate-resistant wheat MON 71800 stopped, Monsanto resumed trials of other GM wheat in 2011, according to Bloomberg, which cites information posted in a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) database.

Bloomberg reported that the corporate agriculture giant planted 150 acres of GM wheat in Hawaii last year and 300 acres of GM (also known as genetically engineered or GE) wheat in North Dakota this year. Monsanto did not disclose the specific herbicides these trial wheat crops are bred to tolerate, Bloomberg added.

These new GM trials, the seed giant told Bloomberg, are “an entirely different event” from the Monsanto wheat found on the Oregon farm.

In a statement last week, the company wrote, “Monsanto’s process for closing out the Roundup [glyphosate] Ready wheat program was rigorous, well-documented and audited.”

A FAQ sheet from the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which regulates genetically modified organisms, also emphasizes the completion of “glyphosate-resistant wheat” field testing. It states, “There are no APHIS-authorized glyphosate-resistant GE wheat field trials being conducted in Oregon or any neighboring states at this time.”

“APHIS authorized over 100 field tests with this specific glyphosate-resistant wheat variety in years spanning from 1998 through 2005. Field tests were conducted in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming,” it continues.

This particular document does not mention field testing of other kinds of GE wheat taking place, which, according to Bloomberg‘s reporting, are in fact underway, though this other wheat may be genenetically engineered to be resistant to an herbicide other than glyphosate.

APHIS stated that “there are no GE wheat varieties approved for sale or in commercial production in the United States or elsewhere at this time.”

The discovery of the rogue wheat in Oregon has already caused international backlash, with Japan suspending some imports of US wheat, South Korea testing all of its US wheat imports, and the EU urging its members to test some of its US wheat imports.

And on Monday, a wheat farmer in Kansas filed suit against Monsanto, charging that he and other U.S. wheat farmers have been adversely affected by the resulting actions following the rogue wheat in Oregon. The petition states that the “plaintiff has been harmed by any and all Monsanto GE wheat because it has impacted wheat exports and the price of wheat.”

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This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

Two Afghans were killed in Wardak province on Tuesday when public protests against US special forces for their role in the possible torture and murder of “disappeared” villagers turned heated and Afghan police reportedly opened fire on the crowd.

Image from a separate protest in Wardak earlier this year. (Photo: Press TV) At issue is a bizarre series of events surrounding the mysterious workings of an Afghan military police unit and its connection to a US special forces outpost in the Nerkh district of Wardak. Though the US denies any knowledge or responsibility for the Afghan villagers who went missing and later turned up dead, local witnesses say the US forces were supporting and sheltering the shadowy operations.

The Guardian reports:

When relatives identified three mutilated bodies dug up near a former US special forces base as their missing family members, they decided to take the corpses to the capital of restive Wardak province and organise a protest to spread word of their loss.

By noon on Tuesday, hundreds of people had flooded the streets of Maidan Shar town, blocking the main road to Kandahar and Kabul and shouting “Death to America” and “Death to special forces”. By early afternoon two more men were dead and one seriously injured after police opened fire to control what they said was an increasingly violent crowd.

The three bodies were just the latest grisly discovery in the troubled Nerkh district, where locals say a string of civilians disappeared into a military base housing US special forces. They claim they were then tortured and killed. Their families blame American forces, although the base was shared with Afghan troops and a US military spokesman strongly denied any abuses by foreign soldiers.

But locals have continued to blame US forces. “We have found 10 bodies of people killed by Americans in total, seven before and three more today, on the west side of the US base,” said Sediqullah, a de-miner whose brother’s body was one of the three found on Monday.

“His name was Atiqullah, he was 38 years old and a shopkeeper in Maidan Shar,” said the 42-year-old, before going on to list the names and professions of the other dead, who included a teacher, a taxi driver, a government worker and casual labourers. He said their bodies bore signs of torture.

“They cut their fingers and beat their stomach and head with rocks,” he said by phone from his home just outside Maidan Shar. “They were poor people who just had ordinary business and were just working to feed their families.”

A senior Wardak politician said the 10 men all vanished at the end of last year, and their families had been seeking news of them for months.

The Associated Press reports that though an investigation is underway “it was too soon to say if the three were among at least nine people who villagers say disappeared into American custody and were never seen again.”

AP also describes how the protest unfolded, though how exactly two Afghans ended up dead remained murky:

Tuesday’s rally brought a car with the three bodies to the local provincial governor’s office, then protesters fanned out and blocked traffic on the main road from Kabul to Kandahar, said Fahimi, the council member.

“They were throwing stones and shouting against the government and the (American) special forces, saying, `We want the killers of these innocent civilians to be prosecuted,'” Fahimi said.

The demonstrators tried to get into the governor’s office, and police fired in the air to stop them, he said.

He added that at least two protesters were killed but he was unsure if they had been shot or trampled.

The U.S. has repeatedly denied accusations that people arrested by special forces in Wardak province died in American custody. However, villagers accuse the Americans and their Afghan partners of intimidation through unprovoked beatings, mass arrests and forced detentions.

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

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

Jonathan Weisman
New York Times
June 4, 2013

The Internal Revenue Service spent $4.1 million on a single conference in Southern California in 2010, paying top dollar for luxury suites, $27,500 for a keynote speaker and tens of thousands of dollars for gifts to the 2,600 people who attended, according to a newly released Treasury Department audit.

But the audit also shows that such expenditures fell dramatically when the Obama White House clamped down on travel and conferences as budgets tightened and a scandal erupted over how much the General Services Administration had spent on conferences. I.R.S. spending on such meetings fell to $4.8 million in the 2012 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, from $37.5 million in fiscal 2010.

The audit, conducted by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, has given Republicans a new reason to be outraged at the nation’s tax-collecting agency, which is already under fire for targeting conservative groups for special scrutiny when applying for tax-exempt status.

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Should your child go to school and make a gesture with his hands resembling a gun, under zero-tolerance policies you can be 100% assured that  he or she will be promptly suspended or expelled.

However, if a student bully or random attacker should throw a desk at your child’s head, leaving a hole in his skull, that sense of urgency turns to apathy and indifference.

A mother is outraged after she says no one called 911 when her teenage son suffered a skull fracture at the hands of another student. The alleged incident happened on campus during school hours.

…

Victoria Canales says what happened to her son at Beechnut Academy is unacceptable.

“They should have called 911 when my child had a big hole in his head instead of waiting for me to go pick him up,” she said.

The seventh-grader did not want to be shown on camera. His skull was fractured on Friday when a classmate hurled a desk at his head. He says it was the fifth attack he endured at the hands of school bullies.

“I was pretty freaked out and scared,” her son said. “It’s violent, it’s a violent school.”

Canales said she’d repeatedly contacted the school, but was ignored.

KTRK Houston

This so-called movement against bullying touted by school districts across the country is nothing more than propaganda:

The schools like to talk a good talk about their firm stances against bullying.  They make a big deal of having  the kids wear pink to school for International Stand Up to Bullying Day.  They hang colorful posters and spend classroom time discussing bullying.

They even have the students sign pledges saying that they will stand up for the victims of bullying.

But what happens when a kid takes the message to heart?

Source: The Organic Prepper

If you are 13 year old Brian MacLean, who disarmed a knife wielding bully by body slamming him and leaving him incapacitated as he attempted to harm another student, you get to spend the entire day in the principal’s office, have your locker searched and undergo questioning for your heroic actions.

In fact, the school attended by MacLean issued an official statement in response to the incident in which he may have well saved the life of another student, saying that they do not “condone heroics.”

What they do condone, however, is being a victim.

And that’s exactly what they are teaching our children is the proper behavior. Common sense in our schools, as stated so succinctly by former teacher Ellie Rubenstein, is extinct.

Early in the school year our 10 year old son, having just entered a new school, was attacked by a classmate. It was a typical 5th grade scuffle. The other student ran towards him and started kneeing him in the ribs and leg. Our son, who has trained Karate for nearly two years, simply threw up a ‘block’ (in our style of Karate, a block is equivalent to a strike). The closed fist block struck the attacking student in the jaw, laying him out on the pavement.

As you may have guessed, we subsequently received a phone call from the principal’s office advising us that our son was being suspended over the incident. After further questioning, the principal admitted that our son acted in self defense (according to reports from student witnesses), but stressed that the proper response would have been for him to contact a ‘yard duty’ teacher.

When I pressed the principal on how that would have been possible under the circumstances, he simply responded with, “Sir, our policy is that students who engage in physical confrontation, regardless of the circumstances, will be suspended or expelled.”

Would the principal have taken the same stance as our son had he come under attack in the ‘real world,’ or would he have responded according to his school policy and ran for police help in the middle of being beaten? Maybe he can take Janet Napolitano’s advice, and just ask the attacker to stop.

When he returned home from school that day our son was terrified about the consequences he would face at home.

Suffice it to say, he not only didn’t get into trouble, but was commended for taking his personal safety into his own hands.

I explained to him… when a bully is attacking you and causing you bodily harm, your teachers are minutes away.

There’s a saying I related to him:

It’s better to be judged by twelve, than carried by six.

This article originally appeared on: SHTF Plan

The April edition of the monthly public radio program America Abroad, “Global Energy and Innovations,” sounded like an infomercial for the natural gas “fracking” industry. Which, in essence, is what it was.

The show, which is distributed by Public Radio International (PRI), began with host Madeleine Brand declaring:

Thanks to a breakthrough in the technology known as “fracking,” the hydraulic fracturing of rock, the United States is enjoying a boom in cheap natural gas.

She went to say that “supporters argue that the new technology not only brings new jobs but also provides cleaner energy than coal.”

And what do fracking opponents say? That’s unclear; the counterpoint to fracking’s boosters—”natural gas will do everything we want it to do,” as one soundbite put it—is the observation that “some experts” think that cheap gas means “there’s less incentive to develop clean, renewable energy.”

The tilt in the episode isn’t that surprising, considering who was paying for it. The show was underwritten by the Qatar Foundation International, controlled by the ruling family of the oil-rich nation, and the Stuart Family Foundation, funders of an array of conservative think tanks and advocacy groups.

LNG tanker (cc photo: Amanda Graham)

Qatar’s oil company, QPI, is a world leader in exporting liquefied natural gas (Bloomberg, 12/13/10) and partners with Chevron in “export-oriented LNG facilities.” QPI just invested $1 billion in Canadian natural gas fields, whose fracking-extracted products would be primarily marketed to North American consumers. And QPI recently signed a major deal with ExxonMobil to construct a $10 billion natural gas export terminal in Texas (Bloomberg, 5/9/13).

Are you surprised to learn that ExxonMobil and Chevron are both among America Abroad‘s general funders?

The show’s lead interview was with MIT professor Henry Jacoby, co-chair of an MIT Energy Initiative study titled “The Future of Natural Gas.” Jacoby heralds fracking as a clean technology, discounts renewable energies as currently unrealistic and supports the U.S. market switch to exporting liquefied natural gas.

The segment doesn’t reveal that the MIT Energy Initiative’s governing board and founders include executives from major gas and oil corporations such as Chevron, BP, Shell and Saudi Aramco. Multiple members of the research team were also working for oil and gas companies during the project (Public Accountability Initiative, 3/13).

One of the main messages of the program is that fracking can be a “bridge to the future,” a fossil fuel to exploit until renewables are finally ready to be widely used. As Brand put it, several high-profile solar industry failures “came at the same time fracking technology was fueling a boom in American natural gas production.”

The show also tapped former Shell CEO John Hofmeister, who now runs a group called Citizens for Affordable Energy, to send the same message: Sure, clean energy would be great, “but in the meantime, the most affordable are clearly the traditional hydrocarbons, as well as nuclear, as well as hydropower. I’m talking about oil, natural gas and coal.”

And it was especially revealing to see how the show engaged criticism of fracking. “The controversy over fracking,” Brand commented, “as well as concerns about climate change, in part, led to a renewed and invigorated interest in all things green in political circles.” That led to a mention of Al Gore’s climate activism—but only to make the point that this “politicized the issue of climate change and, by extension, the renewable energy industry to the point where it harmed that industry’s ability to connect with Republicans in certain states.”

America Abroad should have done a better job of balancing the guest list of this program to include more critical voices. But that would have meant directly challenging the business interests of the show’s funders.

ACTION:

Ask America Abroad ombud Jeffrey Dvorkin to investigate the show’s report on fracking and the multiple conflicts of interest of the show’s funding.
CONTACT:

America Abroad Media
Ombudsman
Jeffrey Dvorkin
ombudsman@americaabroadmedia.org

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

Adam Beam
Island Packet
June 4, 2013

South Carolina this week could become the first state in the country to restrict the enactment of Obamacare since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld that law last year.

A proposed bill, on special order in the state Senate, would allow the state attorney general to take businesses, including health insurers, to court if he “has reasonable cause to believe” they are harming people by implementing the law. The bill already has passed the House.

If it passes, the bill could push South Carolina to the forefront of Obamacare resistance, giving the state’s Republican leaders a national stage. It also could push South Carolina into yet another costly legal battle in the federal courts that, critics say, is unnecessary and avoidable.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 at 2:31 pm

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Tanya Lewis
Live Science
June 4, 2013

Someday soon, judgments of guilt or innocence in a courtroom might be determined from a brain scan, scientists say.

Technologies for imaging the brain have advanced rapidly, to the point where it’s possible to infer, for example, what object a person has stolen based on that person’s neural activity. But how reliable is the science, and should it determine criminal fate? A panel of scientists and legal experts discussed these issues Saturday (June 1) at the World Science Festival, an annual celebration and exploration of science held here.

The panel discussion was based on an upcoming PBS documentary called “Brains on Trial with Alan Alda,” expected to air in September, and moderated by Alda himself.

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

The coming elections in Zimbabwe are no mere referendum on the leadership of the coalition government. Instead, the decision before Zimbabweans is a clear one: continue on the revolutionary path of Mugabe and ZANU-PF or follow Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T and their pro-US, neoliberal economic agenda.

While much of Africa has been turned into a chaotic, war-ravaged continent stuck in the destructive cycles of violence, terrorism, and dependence on imperial powers, Zimbabwe has managed to maintain the fierce independence and commitment to revolution espoused by President Mugabe stretching all the way back to the post-colonial liberation struggle. However, in order to fully understand the sustained campaign of destabilization and subversion by the Western imperialist ruling class, one must first examine the policies of Mugabe and ZANU-PF that have earned them the ire of Washington and London.

Mugabe’s “Crimes”

Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party emerged from the post-independence conflict as the dominant political party in Zimbabwe, promising to finally address the most pressing issues facing black Zimbabweans who, despite making up the vast majority of the population, continued to be mostly landless, while the white, landowning class maintained their grip on the most arable land. This gross disparity in land ownership, a vestige of the colonial system, became one of the primary needs that the new leadership intended to address. However, the terms of the negotiated settlement of the war of liberation in 1979, known as the Lancaster House Agreement, essentially allowed the white farmers to retain their land if they chose to do so under the “willing buyer, willing seller” principle.

This system continued until 2000 when President Mugabe shifted the policy to a “fast track” land program that sought to unseat white privilege and restore ethnic balance to land ownership. It was precisely this policy shift that earned Mugabe the ire of the imperial powers, particularly the British, which then sought to punish Mugabe and the people of Zimbabwe by instituting crippling sanctions that destroyed the Zimbabwean economy. However, this only strengthened the resolve of ZANU-PF, teaching them a number of important lessons. As Francis Chitsike of Midlands State University in Zimbabwe points out:

What the Zimbabwean government learnt from its own experience is that in an  agriculturally based economy, no development program will succeed if people are not                                 given access to land. Equitable access to means of production is vital to the success of any development program. There is a direct link between poverty reduction and land reform, and issues of poverty reduction cannot be tackled without addressing issues of land reform.[i]

After twenty years of playing by the rules set forth by the British, Mugabe and ZANU-PF realized that in order to achieve the true goals of the revolution (poverty reduction, land redistribution, expanded social services, etc.), they would have to reinvent the country, not simply reform it gradually. And so, ZANU-PF adopted as its slogan “Land is the economy and the economy is land” in order to underscore the government’s commitment to true land redistribution. The results of the fast track land program are impossible to ignore. In a new book entitled Zimbabwe Takes Back Its Land, the authors explain how:

In the biggest land reform in Africa, 6,000 white farmers have been replaced by 245,000 Zimbabwean farmers. These are primarily ordinary poor people who have become more productive farmers. The change was inevitably disruptive at first, but production is increasing rapidly. Agricultural production is now returning to the 1990s level, and resettled farmers already grow 40% of the country’s tobacco and 49% of its maize.[ii]

This incredible accomplishment of land redistribution has far-reaching implications for the people of Zimbabwe. Not only are they finally able to enjoy the fruits of their revolution, but they have charted a course of self-sufficiency that allows the country and its elected officials to be less dependent on foreign powers, giving them a greater degree of autonomy in political and economic matters. However, the significance of the land redistribution goes much further than simply its impact on the people of Zimbabwe. The successful redistribution of land provides a “dangerous” model for other African nations still struggling with the legacy of colonial rule.

Although land remains at the center of the continued revolution, there are other key economic issues which Mugabe and ZANU-PF have addressed in ways that are antithetical to the exploitative goals of Western corporations and their government servants. Perhaps one of the most shocking to financiers and capitalists in the West was the decision to nationalize the mining sector, as the government took majority stakes in most mining companies operating in the country. Naturally, this was yet another slap in the face to corporate interests that saw in Zimbabwe yet another African cash cow to be milked dry. The imperialist mentality in Africa views the resources as belonging to white Europeans and Americans rather than the people of Africa. This fundamental divide is what distinguishes Mugabe and ZANU-PF from many other leaders in Africa who, at every turn, grovel at the feet of their former oppressors.

Perhaps the central principle in Mugabe and ZANU-PF’s economic program is “indigenisation”. This process of reclaiming the economic destiny of the country for the people of Zimbabwe has been difficult, even problematic at times, but has been successful. Not only has the government moved to nationalize the mining sector, it has expanded the program to include banks and other important businesses.

Although this process has been mocked by so-called “experts” in the West, the reality is that the program has been a resounding success, not only economically, but also with the people. As Saviour Kasukewere, Minister of Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment noted in 2011:

This is an imperative we cannot avoid…they [foreign corporations] have been having it too good for too long…if they think by closing a mine they are affecting us, tough luck. Closing a mine doesn’t change anything…Brazil is coming, India is coming…what we have a problem with, is companies with a colonial ownership structure.”[iii]

Kasukewere here articulates perhaps the most important point of all: that the revolution in Zimbabwe is not merely cosmetic, but rather is a decades-long process of unwinding the structures of colonial control — the very imperialist infrastructure which to this day forms the foundation of white capitalist domination of Africa.

Unlike nearly every other African country, Zimbabwe does not play host to US military bases or any AFRICOM presence. No military “advisors” have entrenched themselves in the armed forces as they have throughout the continent. There is no US drone base as in Niger, Djibouti and elsewhere. Zimbabwe has maintained a steady, if somewhat fragile, peace since independence, choosing to maintain support for independent African nations such as Libya while it was free under the leadership of Muammar Qaddafi, and Eritrea which, like Zimbabwe, is vilified by Western imperialists for its unwillingness to be made part of the imperial system. Essentially then, Zimbabwe has in nearly every way asserted its independence from the US-UK sphere.

Naturally though, the imperial powers do not sit idly by and allow this to happen. They have their counter-revolution in Zimbabwe, led and embodied by Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC-T.

Tsvangirai, the MDC-T, and the Subversion of Zimbabwe

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T) led by current Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is no mere opposition party. Rather, they are the Zimbabwean face of neoliberal capitalism and continued subservience to corporate-imperial power. Although Tsvangirai’s party shrouds itself in the flag of anti-corruption and “sustainable development”, the truth is that these are merely the rhetorical cover for rolling back the gains made by the people of Zimbabwe under the leadership of Mugabe and ZANU-PF.

Despite the obvious need, and overwhelming support, for the land redistribution programs of the last decade, Tsvangirai and his Western puppet party came out against the program and squarely on the side of the entrenched white landowners. In 2011, as the land redistribution and indigenization programs were beginning to take root, Tsvangirai stated publicly that, “We don’t support grabbing property and seizing companies. We support a process of willing seller, willing buyer.” This revealing statement illustrates clearly the degree to which Tsvangirai and MDC-T represent the interests of the British and the imperial-corporate powers who themselves created the “willing seller, willing buyer” concept in the Lancaster House Agreement. Essentially then, when Tsvangirai speaks it is the voice of London, Washington and Wall St.

However, this ideological connection is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Tsvangirai and his relations with the West. A 2010 leaked cable, published by WikiLeaks[iv], revealed that Tsvangirai collaborated with President Obama and the US establishment against the interests of Zimbabwe and the people. The document[v] “showed that he [Tsvangirai] had had been privately urging Washington to maintain sanctions against Harare, while taking the opposite position in public.” This revelation, though certainly not a surprise to many in Zimbabwe and ZANU-PF, reveals the degree to which Tsvangirai and the MDC-T is, for all intents and purposes, a US front group masquerading as political opposition. Of course, were this the only example of the relationship, the case against Tsvangirai would be incomplete. Rather, one must examine the role of US intelligence in shaping the entire agenda of the MDC-T.

Earlier this month, the Zimbabwe Herald reported that:

MDC-T has reportedly invited three Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents to attend its policy conference set for [Friday May 17, 2013] as part of last ditch efforts to formulate an appealing election manifesto…the Herald is reliably informed that the three CIA agents were also behind MDC-T’s security policy document titled ‘Policy Discussion Papers — Security Sector Cluster: 1. Defence and National Security, 2. Home Affairs’ [in which] MDC-T announces plans to fire all serving security chiefs…and hire what is termed senior police staff from Western countries to instill ‘professionalism’ in the force.[vi]

The intimate relationship between the MDC-T and US intelligence illustrates the degree to which Tsvangirai is not merely compromised but, in many ways, an outright agent of the United States and the other imperial powers. The MDC-T would seek to transform Zimbabwe into little more than another compliant African client state where the needs of the poor majority would be trumped by the power of the wealthy minority serving the needs of multinational corporations.

The WikiLeaks cables also reveal how the United States has been actively working and preparing for regime change in Zimbabwe. Former US Ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell wrote that:

Our policy is working and it’s helping drive changes here. What is required is simply the grit, determination and focus to see this through. Then, when the changes finally come we must be ready to move quickly to help consolidate the new dispensation…He [Mr. Tsvangirai] is the indispensable element for regime change, but possibly an albatross around their necks once in power.[vii]

The cables show the intimate working relationship that exists between the so-called opposition and their Western backers. Although this is no secret in Zimbabwe, it comes as news to many in the West who have been thoroughly propagandized to believe that the MDC-T and Tsvangirai represent substantive change and a move toward increased democracy. On the contrary, the MDC-T is the quintessential counter-revolutionary movement specifically designed to destroy the tremendous gains made by ZANU-PF and Mugabe since liberation.

What’s Next?

Zimbabwe’s immediate future is going to be shaped by the impending national elections. Naturally, ZANU-PF and MDC-T will be vying for the leadership mantle in what will be a hotly contested election. That being said, we are seeing the usual forces of “soft power” aligning themselves in preparation for a major destabilization effort around the elections. As we saw most recently in Venezuela, disputing elections is one of the favorite tactics of the imperialist ruling class, allowing them and their minions to engage in protracted subversion of democratic institutions in order to foment civil unrest and thereby delegitimize the elected government.

One well known organ of imperialist propaganda is the George Soros-funded International Crisis Group which recently issued a report entitled “Zimbabwe: Election Scenarios”, laying out in great detail the various ways in which the United States and its allies and clients must intervene in the elections. In particular, the report states that:

The pervasive fear of violence and actual intimidation contradicts rhetorical commitments to peace. A reasonably free vote is still possible, but so too are deferred or disputed polls, or even a military intervention. The international community seems ready to back the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which must work with GPA partners to define and enforce “red lines” for a credible vote…That the elections are likely to be tense and see some violence and intimidation is clear; what is not yet clear is the nature of the violence, its extent, and the response it will generate.[viii]

To the layman, such a description might seem innocuous — a paper outlining the possible outcome of the election. However, even a cursory examination of recent similar episodes in Venezuela, Iran, and elsewhere shows that “disputed elections” are the favorite tool of subversion by the imperial powers which use NGOs such as the International Crisis Group as their unofficial mouthpieces. When the ICG speaks, it is with the voice of US intelligence and the ruling class.

If the experience of Venezuela is any indication, we are likely to see violence in the streets should MDC-T lose the election, particularly if the margin of victory is small. As with Capriles and the US-funded opposition in Venezuela, the creation of violence in the streets is merely a trick employed for the purposes of destabilizing the government in a time of transition, with the goal of creating enough chaos to delegitimize the rule of the victors. And so, ZANU-PF and the Zimbabwean people must remain vigilant as the country heads into these all-important elections

Zimbabwe has come a long way since the official end of the liberation struggle. As years have passed, the nation and its people have been transformed from servants to masters, dependent children to independent and free human beings. In that same time, the former masters have attempted to employ countless strategies to continue their exploitation and domination of the resources and the people. Because of the leadership of Mugabe and ZANU-PF, as well as the determination of the Zimbabwean people, Zimbabwe has metamorphosed into the envy of Africa. Of course, there are very real problems in the country, with wealth not nearly approaching that of other African states that have remained loyal to the imperial system.

However, when wealth is concentrated in the hands of a kleptocratic ruling elite, is that really wealth? Looking at Zimbabwe, we see a true model for Africa: an independent path to progress and equitable development. It is for this reason that the imperial powers look to destroy all that has been built in Zimbabwe…and for this same reason, we must stand to defend her.

 Eric Draitser is the founder of StopImperialism.com. He is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City. You can reach him at ericdraitser@gmail.com.

Notes

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

The US government has inadvertently revealed the details of a top-secret Israeli missile base in published bid requests, leaving military officials in Tel-Aviv in the state of shock.

Israel has turned to the US government with its plans to build a
state-of-the-art facility to host the new ballistic-missile
defense system, the Arrow 3, McClatchy’s Washington Bureau
reports.

In accordance with its usual procedure, the US Defense Department
has published the details of the $25 million project on a federal
business opportunities website so that contractors could bid on
it.

Over 1,000 pages of specifications included a thorough
description of the future base from the depth of the underground
complex to building materials to be used in construction.

The information on the facility at Tel Shahar is classified in
Israel, with the local military even refusing to officially
confirm its location between the cities of Jerusalem and Ashdod.

“If an enemy of Israel wanted to launch an attack against a
facility, this would give him an easy how-to guide. This type of
information is closely guarded and its release can jeopardize the
entire facility,” an unnamed Israeli military official
commented, refusing to say if the plans for the base will be
altered as a result of the disclosure.

“This is more than worrying, it’s shocking,” he added.


According to the bid requests, the Arrow 3 system will include
six interceptor missiles in vertical launch positions to be
placed at the base, with a gantry crane to be erected for further
missiles.

High-grade concrete reinforced with steel mesh grids will be used
to build the structures encasing the interceptor system, which
will have steel blast doors and a system to protect electrical
wiring from the pressure during the launch.

The Arrow 3 is a defense system designed to intercept ballistic
missiles outside the Earth’s atmosphere. It’s expected to become
operational in 2015-16 to tackle possible threats from the
nuclear weapon program developed by neighboring Iran.


“We’re thinking mostly about the nuclear threat,” Col. Aviram
Hasson, who heads the Arrow 3 project, is cited as saying by
UPI.com. “We want to reach a situation in which Israel has a
ready defense for any threat, present or future.”

Earlier, the head of the bidding process at Israel’s Defense
Ministry, Lt. Col. Peleg Zeevi, told Reuters that the project was
given to the Americans as the IDF needed “a player that has the
knowledge, ability and experience” in the field.

Since 1998, the US had built military facilities worth $500
million for the Israeli army, which, according to Zeevi, was
“aware of the security issues that arise in deals with foreign
firms.” But it seems that the scale of the disclosure of a
top-secret facility was too much to handle for the Israeli
officials.

This article originally appeared on: RT

According to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 20 percent of children in the United States – one out of five – has a mental disorder. Perhaps even more sobering, the latest edition of the “psychiatric Bible,” the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), claims there is more than a 50-percent chance that an American will develop a mental disorder in his or her lifetime. The CDC reported that 25 percent of adults already suffer from mental illness and affirmed the idea that the number will rise to 50 percent, as the DSM-5 predicts.

These claims are disputed, however. Dr. Allen Frances, author of the DSM-4, has challenged the claims of the new manual, specifically those concerning ADHD. Frances stated the following about the proliferation of claims of mental illness:

We’re already over diagnosing ADHD. Almost 20 percent of teen boys get the diagnosis of ADHD, and about 10 percent of boys are on stimulant drugs. We don’t need to make it easier to diagnose ADHD. If we decided as a society that the use of stimulants is good, it shouldn’t be done through a fake medical diagnosis.

ADHD, according to a recent study by the CDC, “was the most prevalent current diagnosis among children aged 3-17 years,” and although “scientists are studying the causes … there is no test to diagnose ADHD.” In other words, the most common form of mental illness in children is not testable. Yet both children and adults are still being medicated.

The situation becomes more disturbing when connected with gun control.

While it seems reasonable to prohibit the “dangerously mentally ill” from owning firearms, the high prevalence of mental illness diagnoses is likely to be the slippery slope that leads to widespread gun confiscation.

In fact, merely using present and proposed legislation and tweaking the meaning of a few words would do the trick. New gun-grabbing laws already require some people who have “mental illness” to hand over their weapons to the government – so anti-gun legislators merely need to find an excuse to take guns away from all people with “mental illness.”

Actions by authorities show how close we are to that reality.

New York resident David Lewis received a letter from the Erie County clerk on April 1, informing Lewis that his gun license was being suspended and that failure to comply and hand over his firearms would result in the revocation of his gun license altogether.

The reason for his license suspension and removal of his firearms was that Lewis had taken anti-anxiety medication. Even though he had a clean record, was not reported to be mentally ill, and had stopped taking the prescribed medication the previous year, the New York SAFE Act allowed the government to obstruct his Second Amendment right.

Erie County Clerk, Chris Jacobs, representing the office that sent Lewis the letter, explained that there had been a mistake. “When the State Police called to tell us they made a mistake and had the wrong person, … it became clear that the State did not do their job here, and now we all look foolish.” After an Erie County Supreme Court judge determined that the letter was sent in error, Lewis’ privileges were reinstated.

Similarly, in California, a resident near Los Angeles recently felt the full brunt of a new law Governor Jerry Brown signed last month requiring citizens who legally purchased handguns and assault rifles to surrender them to the government if they have since committed a crime or suffer from mental illness. Nine agents from the California Justice Department, armed with pistols, paid a visit to the man’s home and walked out with his three registered firearms because the gun owner had recently spent two days in a mental hospital.

Another California resident, Lynette Phillips, voluntarily admitted herself to a mental hospital last December, where she spent two days. Phillips says that her medication had been adjusted and that, subsequently, she could not stop crying. A nurse noted in her file, however, that Phillips was involuntarily admitted and suggested that she might be suicidal. Phillips was shocked at these claims. “I kept telling her I had a grand-baby at home and had to be better for Christmas,” she said. “Does that sound like the words of someone who is a risk to themselves and others?”

Nevertheless, nine police officers with the California Justice Department, armed and wearing bulletproof vests, showed up on her doorstep and asked to enter her home. Phillips and her husband, David, had never had problems with the law before, so they let the officers inside without asking for a warrant. Although invasive and unconstitutional, this new gun law does not actually give warrants for officers to look through homes for firearms.

After the couple had politely directed them to where their guns were kept, the officers left with all three of the Phillips’ legally owned firearms.

In Phillips’ case, not only was her gun confiscated, but her husband’s guns as well. Though David Phillips is a law-abiding citizen with no criminal history and no record of mental illness or use of psychotropic drugs, his guns were still taken.

Michelle Gregory, a spokeswoman for the California attorney general’s office, attempted to shed light on the issue. “The prohibited person can’t have access to a firearm,” she said, indicating that the “prohibited person” does not have to be the registered owner of the gun. Since David lived under the same roof as someone who is “mentally ill,” his firearms were taken by the government. After all, his wife could have access to them.

The definition of someone who is officially “mentally ill” could be changed at a moment’s notice once these types of laws are in place, making them an extreme danger to rights. So far, California and New York have implemented them, but other states may follow. California Attorney General Kamala Harris even wrote a letter to Vice President Biden, who was leading a White House review of firearms policy, suggesting that he consider California’s methods an example for the entire nation.

As the situation stands now, the New York law mandates that all mental health professionals, psychiatrists, and psychologists must report any patient they believe may be “dangerous” to local officials, who will then have the authority to seize all firearms that individual might own – don’t make your psychiatrist angry. The dangerous person’s name will then be entered into state and national registries so that no future gun purchases can occur, not legal purchases anyway.
 

This article originally appeared on: The New American

Infowars.com
June 4, 2013

Dorothy Thornhill, the mayor of Watford, presented Prime Minister David Cameron with a letter this week criticizing the government for passing the bill for Bilderberg security on to Hertfordshire taxpayers.

The Watford Observer reports today that Ms. Thornhill found it “galling” that the government would pass the bill for protecting some “the wealthiest people in the world” on to hapless commoners.

“The police have been forced to make quick arrangements with minimal consultation with residents, and these have had ramifications,” Thornhill explained.

“I am also very concerned about the additional strain this must put on Herts Police’s budget, which had already been set for the year ahead,” she added.

“While I realize the conference is funded by a cocktail of contributors, the local constabulary will surely have to pick up a substantial part of the tab, which is all the more galling when the participants in the conference are among the wealthiest people in the world.”

This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Shobhana Chandra
bloomberg.com
June 4, 2013

The trade deficit in the U.S. widened in April from a more than three year low, reflecting a rebound in imports of consumer goods and business equipment that eases concern about the degree of slowing in economic growth.

The gap grew by 8.5 percent to $40.3 billion from a $37.1 billion in March shortfall that was smaller than previously estimated, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of 68 economists called for the deficit to grow to $41.1 billion. Imports climbed by 2.4 percent, twice the gain in exports.

American demand for foreign-made mobile phones, automobiles and computers accelerated, pointing to gains in household and business spending that will help the world’s largest economy weather government cutbacks. Record U.S. exports of autos and parts and consumer goods also indicate global growth is stabilizing.

Read more

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This article was posted: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 at 2:06 pm

Tags: domestic news, economics

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

International Socialist Review columnist Phil Gasper challenges the myth that Marxism has nothing useful to say about the environment—with help from the old man himself.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

Part one of the DeSmogBlog investigation of “FrackNation” – a film made in response to “Gasland 2” – honed in on the past track records and funding streams of co-directors Phelim McAller and Ann McElhinney.

We revealed that Donors Trust/Donors Capital – the “dark money ATM of the right” – partially funded their first two films, “Mine Your Own Business” and “Not Evil, Just Wrong.”

We also revealed that “Not Evil,” a climate change denial documentary, was utilized by a partner of Americans for Prosperity (AFP) to push the Balanced Education for Everyone (BEE) campaign.

That campaign calls for a “balanced” scientific teaching of the climate change “controversy” and parallels ones pushed for via an American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model bill, by the Discovery Institute, and by the Heartland Institute.

Yet, what about “FrackNation”? Who bankrolled it and are the screenings and is the tour really a grassroots endeavor? 

It might seem that way based on its marketing, but as Jean de La Fontaine once said, “Beware, so long as you live, of judging men by their outward appearance.”

Grassroots or Astroturf? Follow the Email List

Interested in where “FrackNation” and its film-making team are getting their funding from, I signed up for its email list. In so doing, I learned that Market Aces LLC runs it. 

“From the start, Market Aces had a vision to offer low-cost website development solutions to small businesses and a niche market within the political and non-profit sector — but only those who are dedicated to protecting the American Dream and freedom,” its website reads. 

Market Aces LLC shares an office with The Leadership Institute (LI). 

According to LI’s website, it “teaches conservative Americans how to influence policy through direct participation, activism, and leadership.” Its website also explains that “since 1979, [it] has trained more than 119,000 conservative activists, leaders, and students.”

Playing by API’s Employee Advocacy Playbook?

Beyond getting email list building help from one of the key “feeder” nodes in the right-wing network, it’s also questionable how many of the funders of “FrackNation” were of the grassroots variety. As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette explained, 

[T]he roster of “executive producers” who have donated at least $1 includes scores of energy industry associates. The filmmakers said Thursday they plan to return any donations given by “senior” workers in the industry, which they define as executives. 

Among those who donated money to the KickStarter campaign: “the director of an Ohio-based oil and gas outreach program and the head of external affairs at Cabot Oil and Gas, the company that’s fought accusations of water contamination in Dimock, Pa., for the past several years,” according to the Post-Gazette.  

Within four weeks of the Kickstarter fundraising campaign’s launch, “FrackNation” had already raised over $150,000, raising over $22,000 in the first two days of fundraising. 

Perhaps “FrackNation” is playing by the American Petroleum Institute‘s employee advocates’ “corporate citizen” playbook.

In a presentation given at an industry PR conference attended by DeSmogBlog in Houston, TX titled, “Educating Employees On Key Issues To Encourage Brand Management Energy Nation: Empowering Employee Advocates,” API’s Director of External Mobilization Tara Anderson explained how – in essence – to create an armada of fracking advocates from within the employee base of oil and gas corporations. 

“Employees are the best brand ambassador you can come by…The most important principle to remember is to create a culture of advocacy,” she said in Houston. “This is really a community that regularly communicates and engages in the political process. It gives them all the necessary tools and empowers them to get involved and make a difference.” 

This may explain why the film not only raised money with such rapidity, but also has full industry backing for its nationwide tour

“FrackNation” Tour’s Americans for Prosperity Pitstops  

For an alleged grassroots-funded film, “FrackNation” has enjoyed robust support from Big Oil and other corporate interests in the first several months of its roadshow. Both Energy in Depth and the Marcellus Shale Coalition – for example – are also promoting the film.

“The film is a case of the good guys hitting a home run that changes the entire game,” exclaimed Energy in Depth in a Jan. 2013 review of the film. 

Former Big Tobacco lackey Grover Norquist – now head of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) – also wrote a favorable review of the film to coincide with the film’s premiere on the Mark Cuban-owned AXS TV in Jan. 2013 and ATR’s hosting of the filmmaker’s for lunch.

Ezra Lavant of “Ethical Oil” infamy has also aided in promoting the film. “FrackNation” co-director Magdalena Segieda will speak on Levant’s “Freedom Cruise” in August and he also had McElhinney and McAleer on his show in February.  

In Feb. 2013, Joint Landowner’s Coalition of NY Inc. (JLCNY) hosted two “FrackNation” screenings in upstate New York, both of which McAleer attended. Just three months later in May, JLCNY announced its new partnership with AFP. 

Later, in March, AFP-Michigan played host to a “FrackNation” screening, a fracking battleground state where the toxic process has yet to commence. In April and May, AFP—Illinois hosted a total of eight screenings of “FrackNation,” another state with an ongoing fracking battle. AFP-MT and the Montana Petroleum Association – a state-level API – also screened the film. 

Most recently to coincide with the launch of the grassroots launch of “Gasland 2,” McAleer has taken “FrackNation” on-tour to bird-dog it.

On May 22, AFP-Colorado hosted a “FrackNation” screening at the same time University of Colorado hosted a showing of “Gasland 2,” and the next “showdown of the century” – as the “FrackNation” promoters put it – will take place on May 31 in Santa Barbara, CA. Young America’s Foundation will play host to the “FrackNation” Santa Barbara screening.  

AFP-Maryland also hosted a screening of “FrackNation” on June 2.  

“FrackNation” Screens at House Committee, Josh Fox Arrested in Hearing of Same Committee

“FrackNation” also screened at CPAC in March 2013 and in front of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in Feb. 2013.   

“It’s important that politicians educate themselves about fracking. It’s the future of American energy,” McAleer wrote in an email promoting the Capitol Hill screening. “With all the lies and misinformation out there, we’re excited to bring the truth about fracking to Capitol Hill.” 

Dave Weigel of Slate reported that “around 40 Republican staffers and members of Congress made time for a private movie screening.”

Among those in the room, according to Weigel, was Committee Chair U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), a climate change denier who took $10,000 from Koch Industries and $83,750 from Big Oil for his 2012 electoral campaign.  

“He was glad to have these points made in an easily digestible way, on screen,” McAleer told Weigel of Smith’s reaction to seeing the film. “People know there’s something smelly about Gasland, but people are suspicious about how it smells.”

As a direct juxtaposition, “Gasland 2” director Josh Fox was arrested at this same Committee’s hearing in Feb. 2012 while filming for his then-upcoming film for “unlawful entry.” Though he had a pass to do the filming during the hearing, he was was slapped with this charge anyway.

“This is a public hearing. I’m within my First Amendment rights, and I’m being taken out,” Fox calmly stated to those in the hearing room while being escorted out during his arrest. 

Independent Journalists? Oh, Really?

Then there’s the big question: how do two so-called independent journalists afford to pay for a $1 million condo off the Pacific Ocean in Marina Del Rey, CA?

This condo was purchased by them in May 2010, according to property records matching the listed address for Hard Boiled Films LLC, the listed producer of “FrackNation.”

And though it’s obvious from the filmmaker’s track-records that they have ties to powerful right-wing upper-level circles, sources told DeSmogBlog that McAleer interviewed them under deceptive pretenses. 

McAleer’s Interview Requests Under Misleading Pretenses

One of the featured interviewees in the film is Dimock, PA’s Craig Sautner alongside his wife, Julie. The Sautners were interviewed for the first “Gasland” and had their water contaminated by Cabot Oil and Gas in 2008.

“Trees were cleared and the ground leveled to make room for a four-acre drilling site less than 1,000 feet away from their land,” an account in Vanity Fair explained. “The Sautners could feel the earth beneath their home shake whenever the well was fracked. Within a month, their water had turned brown. It was so corrosive that it scarred dishes in their dishwasher and stained their laundry.”

In an interview with DeSmogBlog, Sautner said McAleer approached him under misleading pretenses, claiming to be an anti-fracking filmmaker hoping to help out in Ireland’s fracking fight. 

“I was hesitant at first to do the interview, but he begged us and we said ‘okay.’ Everything he ended up using in the video he took out of context. He had it all set up from the beggining of what he wanted to show and he wasn’t going to show the truth,” Sautner told DeSmogBlog.

Victoria Switzer, another Dimock victim of Cabot interviewed for “FrackNation” who spent four hours speaking with McAleer in her house (her interview did not appear in the film), also expressed similar sentiments to DeSmogBlog.  

He called he assured me he was doing an unbiased documentary both sides of the issues. I think it is significant because it goes to his lying, his manipulation of the truth, and misrepresentation of his agenda. I never would have let him in my home if I knew what his agenda was. Later when I saw some of his other work I was sickened that this man sat at the table my husband built in the home that is now threatened by the industry he serves! 

McAleer mislead interviewees during the filming of “Mine Your Own Business,” too. Stephanie Roth – a 2005 recipient of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize and a grassroots activist who has helped in the anti-mining fight in Romania – was also approached by McAleer for an interview for that film.

The catch: he did so – according to one account – under a psudonym and Roth refused to speak to him because McAleer was uninterested in interviewing any of the local grassroots activists she suggested should be interviewed besides her.

Big Tobacco Player, Climate Changer Deniers Makes Film Apperances

“FrackNation” itself features numerous fossil fuel industry shills-for-hire, climate change deniers, as well as one former Big Tobacco apologist, all posing as “independent experts.” The roster of hired guns is robust: 

–Bruce Ames – Ames sits on the Advisory Board of Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a climate change denial, fossil fuel industry-funded group on college campuses nationwide. He also formerly sat on the Advisory Board for The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), created by Philip Morris, as explained in the book “Trust Us We’re Experts” by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber.

In the film, Ames compares the chemical compounds found in fracking fluid to those found in cabbage.

“If I gave you all of the long names of the chemicals in cabbage that give cancer to rats in high levels, you could get scared, but there’s really no danger in cabbage,” he stated in the film. “If people say fracking’s causing cancer, then they don’t know what they’re talking about.” 

–Robert Bryce – Bryce’s analysis was also featured early-on in the film, though his fellowship at the Manhattan Institute Center for Energy Policy and the Environment – heavily funded by the oil and gas industry – goes unmentioned. Bryce was also interviewed extensively in the industry propaganda film, “Haynseville.” 

–James Delingpole – Delingpole is an infamous climate change denier and columnist for the UK Telegraph. In the film, Delingpole hints that the U.S. anti-fracking movement might be funded by Russia for geopolitical purposes. 

“In fact, I would say Russia is screwed if it can’t export its gas,” Delingpole said in the film. “So, it really is very important for Russia that the shale gas revolution does not happen. It is also in Russia’s interest to fund those environmental groups which are committed to campaigning against fracking. That’s how it works.”

–Terry Engelder – Engelder is viewed by many as a shale gas industry spokesman. He is the co-founder of Appalachian Fracture Systems, a natural gas consulting firm and was interviewed in “Truthland,” a documentary made in response to “Gasland” by Energy In Depth. 

–Jon Entine – Entine is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, which The Guardian revealed takes millions to deny climate change from, among others, ExxonMobil. He also has a fellowship at George Mason University, heavily funded by the Koch Brothers.

Mother Jones referred to Entine as an “agribusiness apologist” in a Feb. 2012 piece pointing to some his unsavory advocacy on behalf of multnational agribusiness corporation, Syngenta.   

–Bryan Shaw – Shaw serves as head of the Texas Center for Environmental Quality (TCEQ). He’s also a notorious climate changer denier whose fellow climate change denying boss – TX Republican Gov. Rick Perry – took $5,204,795 from Big Oil before his 2010 electoral victory. Perry has already raised $671,069 in advance of his forthcoming 2014 electoral efforts.  

“Merchants of Doubt” At It Again

McAleer can best be described as a favorite corporate third-party advocate, a hired gun to sow seeds of doubt on the ecological impacts of fracking. 

“[Third party advocacy] offers camouflage, helping to hide the vested interest that lurks behind a message,” wrote Rampton and Stauber in “Trust Us We’re Experts.” “Putting the same message in someone else’s mouth gives it a credibility that it would not otherwise enjoy.”

Thus, while many critics write McAleer off as a convoluted goof ball, there’s more to the story than originally meets the eye: it’s the story of the Tobacco Playbook’s redux and the stakes of the climate crisis couldn’t be higher. 

In Dec. 1953, PR hegemon Hill and Knowlton formed the Tobacco Industry Committee for Public Information, also forming the Tobacco Institute in 1963. The U.S. Dept. of Justice would later say that “deceive[d] the American public about the health impacts of smoking.”

60 years later, more of the same. Hill and Knowlton now represents America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA), the unconventional oil and gas industry’s lobbying tour de force. 

With influential news outlets ranging from The New York Times, Variety, New York Post, National Review, and the Associated Press all covering the film favorably, whoever is bank-rolling “FrackNation” understands how the dark arts of PR are utilized. That is, when “both sides” of a one-sided scientific debate are covered in a news story, the “merchants of doubt” always wins.

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

Ruth Sherlock
telegraph.co.uk
June 4, 2013

Faced with striking unions, continuing mass protests, and efforts to storm the prime minister’s office in Istanbul, Bulent Arinc, the deputy prime minister took a conciliatory tone, trying to “reason” with the protesters.

“The use of excessive force shown against the people who initially started this protest with the motive of protecting the environment was wrong,” he said.

“And it was unfair. So I apologise to those citizens,” Mr Arinc said at a news conference in Ankara.

Read more

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This article was posted: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 at 1:38 pm

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Daniel Strauss
thehill.com
June 4, 2013

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Tuesday said the Senate’s immigration bill does not have 60 votes, contradicting Democrats who say it would pass the chamber in its current form.

Asked by Fox News if the bill approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee had 60 votes, Rubio replied: “No, and I think even the Democrats would concede that.”

Actually, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the opposite in an interview last week.

Read more

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This article was posted: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 at 1:45 pm

Tags: domestic news, legislation

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Raf Sanchez
telegraph.co.uk
June 4, 2013

The decision means the 25-year-old will undergo months of mental evaluations but will still face trial and could eventually be executed.

Jurors will be asked to weigh evidence of Holmes’s mental state and could press ahead with the death penalty if they do not accept he was insane at the time of the shootings.

The decision by Judge Carlos Samour is the is the latest development in a long-running legal battle that began when Holmes was arrested outside the Century 16 cinema minutes after the rampage in July last year.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 at 1:35 pm

Tags: domestic news, terrorism

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Protestors cheer at Halifax Mall in support of “Moral Mondays” protests at the General Assembly in Raleigh on June 3, 2013. At least 1,000 people attended a rally on Halifax Mall, and 151 people were arrested when they refused to leave the Legislative Building. The group is protesting the policies of the Republican lawmakers. (Photo: Chris Seward)Doubling the number of people arrested overall in a single day, 151 people were arrested at this week’s ‘Moral Monday’ protest as they tried to enter the Senate chamber at the state house in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Yesterday’s protest, according to local outlet WRAL, was the largest demonstration yet since the state chapter of the NAACP and other civil rights groups began protesting “GOP policies on social programs, education, criminal justice and taxes” more than five weeks ago. Smaller groups of people had been arrested at previous actions, but each time the number grows as more people attend and the group’s energy increases.

“The people are awake now, and we have decided to stand up,” state NAACP chapter president Rev. William Barber told the crowd Monday. “We are a movement. This is not a moment.”

“We are a movement. This is not a moment.” —Rev. William Barber

Welcoming the comparison of the populist energy in North Carolina to that witnessed previously in Wisconsin in 2011, Barber said there were also differences. “This ain’t Wisconsin,” he told the crowd. “This is the South, where justice was hammered out.”

This video released by the coalition articulates their grievances in North Carolina as it seeks to capture the energy feeding the movement:

This slideshow used the recorded words from Monday’s rally along with images of those gathered:

The civil disobedience action by the more than 150 people arrested was a planned event and the Raleigh News & Observer recounts just one woman’s story about why she participated:

Jennifer Ferrell stopped so her husband could take her picture. Then she waved goodbye to her 3-year-old twins and marched into the Legislative Building to get handcuffed.

“I’m excited. I’m not nervous,” the 34-year-old Raleigh resident said as she walked in a line of demonstrators. “I’m passionate. I’m not crazy.”

For weeks now, Ferrell heard about protesters getting arrested at the statehouse to demonstrate against the Republican majority’s legislative agenda. And like many Monday, she felt compelled to add her voice to the chants and her wrists to the handcuffs. “I knew it was time to stop watching and do it myself,” she said.

Later, as those place under arrest after their attempt to enter the chamber were led away by police, the gathered crowd of hundreds cheered them as they passed to busses waiting to take them to jail for processing.

__________________________________________

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

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

The United States Department of Justice has responded to allegations that Attorney General Eric Holder lied to Congress, but lawmakers on Capitol Hill aren’t impressed.

Mr. Holder’s reputation within the Justice Department has been
tarnished in recent weeks in the wake of a number of DoJ
scandals, including his office’s investigation of journalists
with the Associated Press and Fox News.

After it was revealed last month that AP journalists were
targeted in an intelligence leak investigation, Holder testified
before Congress on May 16 that he had no involvement in “the
potential prosecution of the press.” But in the weeks since,
the attorney general has been linked directly to the Justice Department’s investigation
of Fox News reporter James Rosen, a journalist believed to have
received sensitive details leaked by a State Department staffer.

Congress said previously that Holder had until this Wednesday to
clarify his involvement, citing the possibility of lobbing
perjury charges against Holder for lying under oath. Late Monday
night, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik
responded on behalf of Holder.

“At no time during the pendency of this matter – before or
after seeking the search warrant – have prosecutors sought
approval to bring criminal charges against the reporter,”
Kadzik said. “The attorney general’s testimony before the
disclosure of classified information was accurate and consistent
with these facts.”

Only hours after the Justice Department released its statement,
the chairman of the

House Judiciary Committee issued a response of his own expressing
his dissatisfaction with DoJ’s remarks.

“Today’s response from the Justice Department’s Office of
Legislative Affairs raises more questions than it answers,”
Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said in his statement.

“By having a subordinate send this response rather than
Attorney General Holder himself, this response begs the question
of whether Holder has something to hide,” Goodlatte added.
“Discrepancies in Attorney General Holder’s congressional
testimony made on the record need to be corrected on the record
to Congress by Attorney General Holder himself.”

“Attorney General Holder still has yet to respond to our
letter. He can’t outsource the responsibility for his actions to
lower level staff–the buck stops with him. The American people
and Congress deserve answers and accountability from Attorney
General Holder. The House Judiciary Committee anxiously awaits
his response to our May 29 letter by this Wednesday’s
deadline,” Goodlatte said.

According to a statement made by others on the Hill, the
Committee chairman isn’t alone.

“This response is insulting and further proof that Attorney
General Holder refuses to hold himself accountable,” Rep.
James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) added in a statement of his
own. “Not only did the letter come from a low-level staffer at
DOJ, not Holder himself, it fails to answer the questions raised
by his misleading testimony.”

“Congress and the American people deserve an explanation from
the Attorney General,” said Sensenbrenner. “It is
increasingly obvious that Eric Holder has something to hide. I
still expect a response from the Attorney General before the
deadline of Wednesday, June 5.”

Rep. Goodlatte said over the weekend that the subcommittee would
refrain from taking action against Holder unless he declines to
respond personally before this Wednesday’s deadline. Commenting
on potential charges of perjury, Goodlatte told Fox News Sunday
that Congress would consider giving the attorney general an
opportunity to explain himself, even if his remarks so far have
failed to add up.

“Those remarks were made under oath. But we also think it’s
very important the attorney general be afforded the opportunity
to respond,” Goodlatte said.

Meanwhile, Holder told members of the media last week that the
Justice Department would make changes to its policies in regards
to investigations involving American journalists. Following a
meeting last week initially scheduled to be off the record,
Martin Baron told the Washington Post that Holder and his aides
“completely endorsed the president’s statement that reporters
should not be at legal risk for doing their job.”

“They acknowledged the need for changes in their own
guidelines and the need to have a more rigorous internal
review,” he said.

This article originally appeared on: RT

Jill Kelley, the Florida socialite who received threatening emails that exposed former CIA Director David Petraeus’ affair, has filed a lawsuit against the FBI and the Defense Department for leaking and defaming her name.

The lawsuit has thrust the woman back into the spotlight one year
after she received threatening emails that were eventually linked
to Petraeus’ biographer and mistress, Paula Broadwell.

The 65-page lawsuit filed this week in US District Court in
Washington alleges that Kelley and her husband were dragged into
the sex scandal for revealing cyberstalking threats attributed to
Broadwell. According to the plaintiffs, Kelley was subsequently
made into “an object of ridicule, morale opprobrium, scorn and
derision, causing her shame, public notoriety, egregious loss of
privacy and security.”

While investigating the Petraeus scandal, the Pentagon last year
discovered emails between Gen. John Allen and Kelley,
correspondence largely reported to the media as “flirtatious,”
raising suspicions that the two had also engaged in a separate
affair. In January, the Defense Department determined that Gen.
Allen did not have an inappropriate relationship with Kelley, but
at that point the woman said her reputation had already suffered
and her name had been defamed.

“Today is an unforgettable day because one year ago
threatening emails shook my life, and ultimately changed our
country’s leadership,” Kelley wrote in a statement released
by her publicist on Monday.

“It was under the faithful direction of our concerned military
leaders, that I went to the law enforcement to seek the proper
protection for my family, our commanders and top US officials.
But unfortunately, we did not receive the confidentiality and
protection. Instead we received highly hurtful and damaging
publicity from willful leaks from high level government officials
that were false and defamatory,” she added.

The complaint argues that authorities should have kept her name
confidential after she reported the emails, since she was a
‘victim’ of harassment and therefore should have had the right to
privacy.

Since the Petraeus scandal, Kelley has labeled herself as a
privacy advocate and has written about her support for reform in
a Washington Post op-ed published in January. In a statement
released by her publicist on Monday, she said that she hopes her
lawsuit will strengthen privacy procedures for future law
enforcement investigations. 

“Our government can and should do better than intrude on the
privacy and dignity of citizens like my family and yours, and our
public officials should treat our personal lives with the respect
that our Constitution, laws like the Privacy Act and
standards of common decency require,” she wrote. “Until our
privacy laws and practices truly give us both privacy and
protection, I’ll continue to advocate for reform, so others don’t
go through the challenges my friends and family endured.”

But rather than shield her name from public ridicule, filing the
lawsuit has to some extent already had the opposite effect, and
Kelley’s name has been thrust back into the spotlight. Tampa Bay
publicist Glen Selig told ABC News that the lawsuit is likely to
shed further negative light on the socialite.

“I think the public views her as an opportunist and I think
this lawsuit will reinforce that belief,” Selig told the
station, explaining that it is unlikely that Americans will
perceive Kelley as the victim in this case.

“She filed a lawsuit on the anniversary and she released a
statement through a publicist,” he added. “It seems to me
she wants attention.”

Kelley and her husband are seeking a public apology, attorney’s
fees, monetary compensation and a declaration that the FBI
violated the Stored Communications Act.

This article originally appeared on: RT

Michael Snyder
theeconomiccollapseblog.com
June 3rd, 2013

Did you know that Barack Obama has been secretly negotiating the most important trade agreement since the formation of the World Trade Organization? Did you know that this agreement will impose very strict Internet copyright rules, ban all “Buy American” laws, give Wall Street banks much more freedom to trade risky derivatives and force even more domestic manufacturing offshore? If you have not heard about this treaty, don’t feel bad. Obama has refused to even give Congress a copy of the draft agreement and he has banned members of Congress from attending the negotiations. The plan is to keep this treaty secret until the very last minute and then to railroad it through Congress and have it signed into law by October. The treaty is known as “the Trans-Pacific Partnership”, and the nations that are reported to be involved in the development of this treaty include the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Peru, Brunei, Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia. Opponents of this treaty refer to it as “the NAFTA of the Pacific”, and if it is enacted it will push the deindustrialization of America into overdrive.

The “one world” economic agenda that Barack Obama has been pushing is absolutely killing the U.S. economy. As you will see later in this article, we are losing jobs and businesses at an astounding pace. And each new “free trade” agreement makes things even worse.

For example, just check out the impact that the recent free trade agreement that Obama negotiated with South Korea is having on us…

—A 10 percent decline of U.S. exports to Korea
—The U.S. trade deficit with Korea has climbed 37 percent
—U.S. auto industry has been crippled
—Loss of U.S. control where international trade, banking and finance is concerned
—A projected 159,000 jobs will be lost

Wait a second — I though that “free trade” agreements were actually supposed to increase exports.

So why have they declined by 10 percent?

Did someone make a really bad deal?

And of course we have all seen the economic devastation that NAFTA has wrought.

When NAFTA was pushed through Congress in 1993, the United States actually had a trade surplus with Mexico of 1.6 billion dollars. By 2010, we had a trade deficit with Mexico of 61.6 billion dollars.

And “free trade” with China has turned out to be a complete and total nightmare as well.

Back in 1985, our trade deficit with China was approximately 6 million dollars (million with a little “m”) for the entire year.

In 2012, our trade deficit with China was 315 billion dollars. That was the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world.

But instead of learning from the mistakes of the past, Barack Obama is pressing for more “free trade” agreements.

The New York Times is calling the Trans-Pacific Partnership “the most significant international commercial agreement since the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995“. It is reportedly going to include a whole host of provisions which would never be able to get through Congress on their own. Even though this treaty will affect all of our daily lives, the Obama administration is keeping this treaty a total secret. In fact, Obama won’t even show it to Congress even though members of Congress have asked repeatedly to see it…

The agreement, under negotiation since 2008, would set new rules for everything from food safety and financial markets to medicine prices and Internet freedom. It would include at least 12 of the countries bordering the Pacific and be open for more to join. President Obama has said he wants to sign it by October.

Although Congress has exclusive constitutional authority to set the terms of trade, so far the executive branch has managed to resist repeated requests by members of Congress to see the text of the draft agreement and has denied requests from members to attend negotiations as observers – reversing past practice.

While the agreement could rewrite broad sections of nontrade policies affecting Americans’ daily lives, the administration also has rejected demands by outside groups that the nearly complete text be publicly released.

So exactly who in the world does this guy think that he is? Why won’t Obama let us know exactly what is in this treaty?

Fortunately, there have been a few leaks. One thing that we have discovered is that this new treaty would reportedly ban all “Buy American laws“.

That certainly would not be popular if it got out.

And do you remember SOPA?

The American people wanted nothing to do with the very strict Internet copyright provisions of SOPA and loudly expressed their displeasure to members of Congress.

Unfortunately, now the provisions of SOPA are back. It is being reported that most of the provisions of SOPA have been quietly inserted into this treaty. If this treaty is enacted, those provisions will become law and the American people will not be able to do anything about it.

And according to the New York Times, there are all sorts of other disturbing things that have been slipped into the treaty…

And yet another leak revealed that the deal would include even more expansive incentives to relocate domestic manufacturing offshore than were included in Nafta – a deal that drained millions of manufacturing jobs from the American economy.

The agreement would also be a boon for Wall Street and its campaign to water down regulations put in place after the 2008 financial crisis. Among other things, it would practically forbid bans on risky financial products, including the toxic derivatives that helped cause the crisis in the first place.

Are you starting to understand why the Obama administration is keeping this treaty such a secret?

If the details of this treaty were revealed to the American people right now, it would create such an uproar that Congress would never approve this treaty.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

So please share this article with as many people as you can. We have got to get the American people educated about this.

Enough damage has already been done to the U.S. economy by “free trade” agreements. Just consider the following statistics…

-The United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.

-Back in the year 2000, there were more than 17 million Americans working in manufacturing. Now there are less than 12 million.

-There are less Americans working in manufacturing today than there was in 1950 even though the population of the country has more than doubled since then.

-According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.

-According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.
’
-Today, corporate profits as a percentage of U.S. GDP are at an all-time high, but wages as a percentage of U.S. GDP are near an all-time low.

-Without enough good jobs, more Americans are becoming dependent on the government. If you can believe it, the number of Americans on food stamps has gone from about 17 million in the year 2000 to more than 47 million today.

-Overall, the United States has run a trade deficit of more than 8 trillion dollars with the rest of the world since 1975.

And things continue to get even worse. The Institute for Supply Management manufacturing index declined to 49.0 in May. Any reading below 50 indicates contraction.

That was the lowest reading that we have seen since June 2009. Just like most of the rest of the world, we are rapidly heading toward another major economic downturn.

And if you want a perfect visual example of what deindustrialization is doing to America, just look at the city of Detroit.

It was once one of the greatest manufacturing cities in the history of the world, but now it is a rotting, decaying, festering hellhole.

According to the New York Times, there are now approximately 70,000 abandoned buildings in Detroit, and at this point the city is so broke that there is talk that the female giraffe at the Detroit Zoo could be sold off to help pay the bills.

For much more on how deindustrialization is ripping the guts out of the U.S. economy, please see the following articles…

1) “55 Reasons Why You Should Buy Products That Are Made In America”

2) “40 Ways That China Is Beating America”

3) “Show This To Anyone That Believes That ‘Things Are Getting Better’ In America”

4) “10 Amazing Charts That Demonstrate The Slow, Agonizing Death Of The American Worker”

5) “22 Stats That Show How The Emerging One World Economy Is Absolutely Killing American Workers”

What Barack Obama is trying to do is a mind blowing mistake.

The “one world” economic agenda that he is pursuing is destroying the American worker and the American middle class.

U.S. workers are being thrown into a global labor pool with workers on the other side of the planet that live in countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages.

Do you want to directly compete with a worker on the other side of the globe that is doing your job for a dollar an hour with no benefits?

If not, you need to stand up and make your voice be heard.

There is no way in the world that American workers should have to compete for jobs with workers making slave labor wages in communist China.

What we desperately need are some red-blooded economic patriots to arise and to tell both political parties that we do not want this “one world” economic agenda.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 at 1:07 pm

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

RT
June 4, 2013

Monsanto claims it has no idea how its herbicide-resistant strain of wheat made its way onto an Oregon field. The global biotech giant based in Missouri says it abandoned research on it in 2004 and is mystified by its emergence nearly a decade later.

Monsanto tested the GMO varieties in 17 US states between 1998 and 2004. Although it also tested the GM wheat in Oregon, the company claims it destroyed all of the material upon the conclusion of the program and that it never grew the wheat strain on the farm where it was found last month.

“The company’s internal assessments suggest that neither seed left in the soil nor wheat pollen flow serve as reasonable explanations behind this reported detection,” the biotech giant said in a news release Friday.

The company claims that even if the wheat seed had been left in the ground, it would not have survived longer than one or two years in the soil. Monsanto also states that its seed varieties could not have possibly traveled across the state, since 99 percent of wheat pollen is deposited within 10 meters of the plant.

“This report is unusual since our program was discontinued nine years ago, and this is the only report after more than 500 million acres (200 million hectare) of wheat have been grown,” the company said in its statement.

Since May 29, the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has conducted a multi-state investigation to determine how the GM wheat reached the Oregon farm.

A local farmer discovered it after dousing his field with Monsanto’s “Roundup Ready” pesticide and realizing that some of the wheat plants were resistant to it. He alerted the USDA, which soon determined that the herbicide-resistant wheat crop was the same variety Monsanto tested nearly a decade ago.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

The USDA never approved the strain, and environmentalists have expressed deep concern about potential health risks involving the mysterious GM crop. The finding has already had a detrimental impact on US trade: Japanese authorities last week announced that they would suspend imports of US wheat.

Shortly after the announcement, wheat for July delivery fell by 8.25 cents to $6.945 per bushel on the Chicago Board Trade.

And Monsanto’s asserted bewilderment serves as no comfort to those concerned about the presence of unapproved GM crops in the US, particularly foreign importers who fear that the GM variety may have been present in their crop purchases.

A USDA spokeswoman told Reuters on Monday that there are “no indications that there is any GE wheat in commerce.” But if investigators find any more of the unapproved wheat variety growing on US farms, the agriculture industry could take an even harder hit.

Genetically modified wheat has not been approved for commercial growing, and Asian and European buyers have expressed little interest in it, which in large part influenced Monsanto’s decision not to market the GM crop after testing it.

A team of 15 investigators is continuing its probe into the mysterious crop’s emergence — a phenomenon that Monsanto says it cannot explain.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 at 12:36 pm

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Japan Times
June 4, 2013

An anti-nuclear power rally Sunday near the Diet building drew 60,000 people, according to the three groups that organized the event, including one led by Nobel literature laureate Kenzaburo Oe.

The Metropolitan Police Department, which provided security for the event, estimated the number of participants at 20,000 to 30,000.

The protesters marched to the Diet after staging rallies in a park and a site near the Diet building earlier in the day.

Read full article

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This article was posted: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 at 1:06 pm

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

June 4, 2013
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How did genetically modified wheat produced by the agricultural corporation Monsanto end up in Oregon? That’s the question many people want answered after the discovery of the wheat by a farmer in Oregon, according to a report in the New Scientist.

Genetically modified wheat has not been cleared for commercial use anywhere in the world, though the Federal Drug Administration approved it as safe for human consumption in 2004. It was never put on the market in the U.S., though, since Monsanto dropped it after citing a lack of demand. The Associated Press reported that the wheat was also not developed because “wheat growers did not want to risk retaliation from their biggest export markets.”

Now, the question is how that wheat ended up in Oregon. Raw Story notes that the farmer who found the wheat discovered it after trying to clear the field it was growing in. The wheat didn’t die, though, even after the farmer used the Monsanto-produced herbicide called Roundup.

Monsanto says it is working with the FDA to discover how the crop, known as Roundup Ready wheat, wound up in Oregon. Production of the wheat occurred in 17 states, including Oregon, but not at the farm where it was discovered, according to Raw Story.

The discovery of the genetically-modified wheat has had international implications. South Korea and Japan temporarily suspended imports of U.S. wheat in response to the news. Monsanto says it doesn’t think the wheat entered into the commercial supply strain, the New Scientist reports.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

On May 30, Lou Dobbs had a panel discussion with Fox News colleagues Doug Schoen, Juan Williams, and Erick Erickson over a Pew Research Center study showing that women are now the primary or sole wage earners in 40 percent of American homes. 

Dobbs views this phenomenon as a function of “society dissolving around us.” Erickson, observing that all throughout the animal kingdom males “typically” assume “the dominant role,” remarked that “having mom as the primary breadwinner is bad for kids.” Williams sees this correlating with “the disintegration of marriage,” while Schoen characterized it as “a catastrophic issue” that threatened to “undermine our social order.” 

Bear in mind, while Erickson of redstate.com leans to the Right, Dobbs is an independent, and Williams and Schoen are both long-time Democrats. Yet whatever political differences they have over other issues were forgotten while discussing this one. As Williams asserted: “Left, right, I don’t see how you can argue” that Pew’s findings are a good thing.

Well, another Fox News celebrity, Megyn Kelly, did indeed try to do what Williams thought impossible. The very next day, she had Dobbs and Erickson on her show.

Kelly wasted no time in getting to the point. To Erickson, she asked: “What makes you dominant and me submissive and who died and made you scientist-in-chief?”

When the imperturbable Erickson replied that the much respected Pew Research Center determined that many in their own study were no less concerned about its findings than he, Kelly shot back: “Just because you have people that agree with you doesn’t mean that it’s not offensive.”

She continued: “I didn’t like what you wrote one bit. To me you sound like somebody who’s judging and then wants to come out and say, ‘I’m not, I’m not, I’m not,’ and now let me judge, judge, judge.”

Kelly alluded to studies that supposedly suggest that children of homosexual parents and single mothers are just as well adjusted as the children of stay-at-home mothers. She also mentioned that once upon a time “science” established that the offspring of interracial unions were inferior. “Tell that to Barack Obama,” she said.

Notice, Kelly didn’t just disagree with her colleagues’ assessment of the Pew study. She was angry at them for it. She found their comments “offensive,” judgmental, and, in short, “didn’t like” them “one bit.” From beginning to end, her exchange with Dobbs and Erickson was marked by sarcasm and hostility.

Yet it was also marked by illogic and irrationality. 

It may come as a newsflash to Kelly, but the truth of a proposition doesn’t depend upon whether she – or anyone – is offended by it. There are still other lessons that she would be well served to learn.

In bullying one’s interlocutor by making insinuations against his character, one neither strengthens one’s own view nor weakens that of one’s opponent. Moreover, even if the charges are accurate, even if, say, one’s opponent really is the jerk, idiot, “sexist,” or “racist” that one suggests, he may still be correct. 

The left-wing blogosphere lionized Kelly for combating “the sexism” of her colleagues. If this is indeed the target upon which she set her sights, then Kelly must be deemed to have failed abysmally, for she only fueled the stereotypical image of the hyperemotional woman. 

Meanwhile, Dobbs and Erickson remained as calm as could be and in good cheer.

That 40 percent of women are primary or exclusive wage earners is no cause for celebration. It is cause for concern. It may not be an occasion for tears – or it may be so. But this is the point: We simply don’t and can’t know for certain the effect that a shift this dramatic, this unprecedented, in an institution as central as the family will have on the fate of civilization. The prudent and wise would never think to treat any change of this magnitude as cavalierly as they would regard a change in bed sheets or lipstick brands.

And they certainly wouldn’t demonize those, like Dobbs and Erickson, who are reasonably pessimistic about such changes.

But Kelly has proven that she is neither prudent nor wise.

Nor, for that matter, is she particularly charitable to those with whom she disagrees – especially when they dare to deviate from the politically correct line on gender relations.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

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This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

Protesters shout anti-government slogans during a demonstration in Ankara on June 4, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard meets members of the Australian Army 1st Mentoring Task Force during her visit to Multinational Base Tarin Kowt in southern Afghanistan October 2, 2010.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Reformist presidential candidate Hassan Rohani waves to his supporters in the southwestern city of Ahvaz on June 3, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Presidential candidate Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel speaks in a televised program.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Presidential candidate Mohammad Reza Aref says he will create one million jobs a year if he wins the upcoming presidential election.

Speaking in a radio program on Tuesday, the reformist candidate stressed that his top priorities would be tackling unemployment and price hikes.

Aref, a former First Vice President, also said the state subsidy reform plan is a national scheme, which must be implemented fully by the next administration.

The candidate further called on all Iranians to take part in the countryâ„¢s upcoming presidential and city council elections.

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

Iranians will go to the polls in the countryâ„¢s 11th presidential election on June 14. The fourth city and rural council elections are also scheduled to be held on the same day.

Voters will cast their ballots at over 66,000 polling stations across the country, and some 285 polling stations will be set up for Iranian nationals in other countries.

Nearly 50.5 million Iranians are eligible to vote in the upcoming presidential election, with more than 1.6 million first-time voters.

MKA/KA/SS

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Elements of the Seleka rebel alliance have attacked a number of villages in the central part of the Central African Republic (CAR), killing dozens of people.

On Tuesday, over 12 people were killed by the rebels in and around the town of Bouca situated some 300 kilometers (240 miles) north of the capital Bangui, DPA reported.

Å“They [Seleka rebels] arrived in three vehicles full of weapons and ammunition and attacked the village,” said a merchant who spoke on condition of anonymity.

On May 27, a Red Cross worker said that the rebels have killed at least 25 people, including a pregnant woman and a child, in attacks on different villages near the city of Bossangoa.

The Seleka rebels launched an offensive against the CAR government in December 2012 and have since been accused of killing the civilians and looting.

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

However, Seleka rebels led by Michel Djotodia captured the capital city, Bangui. Djotodia, immediately proclaimed himself president after seizing power from Bozizé on March 24.

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

MAM/PR

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Infowars.com
June 4, 2013

Alex and company come upon a field of grazing Obama supporters and test whether they’ll feel inclined to scatter at the least provocation.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 at 12:42 pm

Tags: bilderberg

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Reuters
June 4, 2013

Relatives of workers killed when fire engulfed a chicken processing plant in rural northeast China blocked traffic and scuffled with police on Tuesday, demanding answers to one of China’s worst industrial disasters in recent years. At least 120 people died, and more than 70 were injured.

A handful of men and woman knelt in the middle of the road in Dehui in Jilin province to stop cars, while a crowd of more than 100 people gathered around them. Police dispersed the protesters after about an hour.

Zhao Zhenchun, who lost his wife and sister in the fire, said human error was to blame for the death toll. “I don’t think safety was being managed properly. This should never happen again. They paid the price with their blood. So many of these big disasters in China are caused by lax supervision,” he said.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 at 12:53 pm

Tags: foreign affairs

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

foxnews.com
June 4, 2013

The Illinois legislature agreed Friday to allow people to carry concealed guns, which if signed into law would make the state the last in the country to allow the public possession of concealed firearms.

The compromise plan by the House and Senate followed a federal appeals ruling that stated Illinois’ concealed carry ban is unconstitutional and that the state must change it by June 9.

Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, has not said whether he will sign the legislation into law. However, the bill has enough votes in the legislature to override a gubernatorial veto.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 at 12:39 pm

Tags: constitution, domestic news, gun rights, legislation

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

In a landmark act, Connecticut has become the first state to require the labeling of genetically modified (gmo) foods.

(Photo: MillionsAgainstMonsanto/cc/flickr) The gmo labeling bill overwhelmingly passed in the House in a 134 – 3 vote on Monday.

As the Hartford Courant reports, the bill entails a sort of trigger in order for it to take effect:

For the legislation to take effect four states – including those bordering Connecticut – must pass a similar bill. In addition, any combination of northeastern states (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania or New Jersey), with an aggregate population of at least 20 million people, must approve labeling legislation.

Immediately after the vote, cheers could be heard outside the Hall of the House from advocates who had been pushing the labeling requirement.

The Center for Food Safety (CFS) said the trigger “unnecessarily puts on hold what consumers and lawmakers have already validated as important legislation,” but still welcomed the passage of the legislation as a victory in the food movement, and hoped Connecticut’s action would prove a catalyst for other states to enact similar measures.

Mark Kastel, co-director of the Cornucopia Institute, told the New York Times that the trigger may not be entirely negative.

“The hurdles in the Connecticut bill, if surmounted, would mean a critical mass in the marketplace that would emulate the impacts that would have materialized if California had passed its ballot initiative,” said Kastel.

“Numerous other states in the Northeast and around the country are actively considering pending GE food labeling bills. Connecticut’s leadership provides momentum and an incentive for these other states to move forward,” Rebecca Spector, who works on state GMO labeling legislative efforts at CFS, said in a statement. “Other states should now pass GE labeling laws, providing millions of U.S. consumers with the basic right to know how their food is produced.”

The legislation now heads to Gov. Malloy, who is expected to sign it.

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

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

Passau, Germany (Photo: CNN)At least a dozen people are dead as floods continue to damage central Europe. 

As water levels rise, tens of thousands of people have had to leave their homes. The inundation of water is due to heavy and ongoing rainfall.  According to CNN, these floods are the worst since 2002, when Germany, the Czech Republic and communities in Austria, Slovakia, Russia, and Romania experienced severe damage that killed an estimated 17 people. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel traveled to the region on Tuesday, promising an estimated 100 million euros in aid for the devastated areas. Chancellor Merkel told the press, “even if the water level is slowly retreating…the effects will be felt for a long time.”

Across central Europe, the work of volunteers has been essential in preventing further damage. In the Czech Republic, volunteers worked alongside authorities Monday to construct metal barriers beside the Vltava river and positioned protective sandbags in the capital. In Germany, almost two thousand soldiers have been helping across the affected area.

Sky News reports that forecasters are predicting that decreasing rain will allow water levels in the Czech Republic to drop, while Germany, Slovakia, and Hungary “will be hit in the coming days.”

A statue by British sculptor Kaivalya Torpy depicting Indian spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy is partially submerged by the rising waters of the Vltava River, Prague. (Photo: CNN)

The flooded city centre of Grimma, eastern Germany, on Monday. (Photo:AFP)

Lucia Brown is a summer editorial intern at Common Dreams.

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

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

Tear gas envelops protestors in Istanbul. (Photo: Sedat Suna / European Pressphoto Agency)When a nation’s security apparatus amasses a 62 ton stockpile of tear gas, it’s only a matter of time before they’re likely to use it. And as recent events in Turkey have shown, the results can be frightening.

“Protests in Turkey once again expose these links between capitalist interests and police violence at the heart of tear gas history.” —Anna Feigenbaum, expert

When protests erupted across the country last week, the police responded with massive force–deploying thousands of riot police and armored carriers mounted with water cannons. In addition to standard gear, the police were also armed with tear gas and pepper spray. And plenty of it.

As RT reports, citing the Turkish newspaper Sozcu, the Ankara government “has bought $21 million” worth of “tear gas and pepper spray — mainly from US and Brazil — over the past 12 years.” The amount of both, the news agency reported, was equivalent to 62 tons of noxious, eye-burning, cough-inducing chemical agents either pressurized into canisters or available for the spray guns used by police.

As images of cloud-filled streets in Istanbul and other cities circulated the globe, some used the occasion to once again spotlight the US role as the dominant player in the global tear gas business.

According to RT:

The US has a history of selling tear gas and other crowd control munitions to countries wracked by widespread protest. Amnesty International harshly criticized the US State Department for approving export licenses for the shipment of crowd control munitions and tear gas to Egypt amidst the violent and often lethal crackdowns on protesters by security forces in 2011.

Amnesty confirmed that one US companies had shipped 21 tons of ammunition to Egypt — enough for 40,000 rounds of tear gas grenades and canisters — in addition to a separate shipment of 17.9 tons.

And Anna Feigenbaum, lecturer at Bournemouth University and an expert on the tear gas industry, calls the events in Turkey only the most recent example of a long history in which governments–and sometimes private industry–violently suppress popular uprisings by employing such weapons.

Writing at Common Dreams on Tuesday, Feigenbaum explains:

It is not difficult to trace these tear gas deployments back to corporate profiteers. The majority of the world’s tear gas trade comes from the United States, along with Brazil and Israel. The tear gas industry was founded on alliances between military officers, university chemists and businessmen. Take the example of Federal Laboratories, a major tear gas supplier started by a WWI veteran back in the 1920s with donated samples from the US Chemical Warfare Service. Marketed to local police forces with the help of enlisted PR experts, tear gas was first used on a mass scale to break down worker’s strikes and quell uprisings in colonized territories. Today, as US leaders publicly condemn the so-called ‘weaponization’ of tear gas abroad, its corporations continue to cash in on the profits of mass uprising.

Protests in Turkey once again expose these links between capitalist interests and police violence at the heart of tear gas history. The all too familiar images of streets covered in poison clouds should echo as a message from the trenches. Those soldiers knew all too well that when tear gas filled the air, there was likely something more deadly to follow. Far from a humanitarian weapon, it is time that we see tear gas as a sign of just how inhumane capital-driven visions of peace-keeping have become.

A man runs as riot police use tear gas and pressurized water to quash a demonstration against the demolition of Taksim Gezi Park in Istanbul. (Photo: AP)

__________________________________________________________

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

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

Kabul has advised Afghan nationals to obtain a visa for immigration into Iran and avoid illegal border crossing into the neighboring country, Press TV reports.

The Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs urged Afghan nationals to enter the Islamic Republic of Iran through legal channels to prevent any border incidents.

It warned against crossing through human trafficking cartels given the tightened security at the borders in the run-up to Iranâ„¢s presidential election in mid-June.

Iranian officials say it is impossible to recognize whether those who are trying to cross the border illegally are rural Afghans or they are terrorists, drug smugglers or even spies.

Iranâ„¢s Ambassador to Afghanistan Abolfazl Zohrevand said border issues are considered as one of the most important priorities of Tehran, especially when it comes to its borders with Afghanistan — a country where thousands of US-led foreign troops are stationed.

Iran is currently hosting over three million afghan refugees, but the figure is on the rise given the rampant unemployment in Afghanistan – an issue Zohrevand said the US and its allies which invaded the country must address.

Å“Since 2001, the foreign forces have stayed here in Afghanistan under several pretexts like maintaining peace and security … and creating jobs. But now the question is why thousands of rural Afghans prefer to leave their country to find jobs and are ready to cross any border illegally and accept its negative consequences,” he asked.

Experts believe that observing the immigration laws by Afghan nationals would result in a noticeable decrease in human trafficking, drug smuggling and terrorist operations not only in Afghanistan but in the neighboring Iran and consequently the entire region.

MRS/KA/SS

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

A class-action lawsuit alleging harassment of female members within the Canadian police force has begun at the Supreme Court in the British Colombia province.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) member Janet Merlo filed the lawsuit alleging that she and other female staffers have experienced gender-based discrimination and that the force has failed to do anything about it.

The lawsuit is one of a number of suits alleging harassment or sexual abuse within the force.

The RCMP, however, has issued denials in several of the lawsuits brought up against the force and its officers.

On Monday, at a Senate committee probing harassment and bullying within the force, Commissioner Rob Paulson criticized some of those who have gone public with their allegations against the RCMP.

“I can’t be continually defending against outlandish claims that have not been tested or established, but yet are being put forward as though they are gospel and representative of the modern workplace experience of the RCMP, because they are not,” said Paulson.

An internal report published last year, showed that gender-based harassment was common among female members, who participated in the study.

Police officers within the RCMP in British Columbia have also been accused by Human Rights Watch in February for intimidating and sexually assaulting aboriginal women and girls.

CAH/PR

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

The second day of Pfc. Bradley Manning’s trial commenced Tuesday.

Three of the witnesses scheduled to testify against the U.S. war crimes whistleblower include two Army Computer Crimes Investigative Unit agents involved in forensic examinations of evidence.

Adrian Lamo, the known hacker turned government informant who turned Manning into federal authorities, will also testify today.

Follow live tweets from journalist on the inside of the courtroom:

On Monday around 20 Manning supporters were allowed into the small courtroom including Princeton University professor and civil rights activist Cornel West and Medea Benjamin from CODEPINK.

However, many of the supporters, hwo wore black t-shirts with the word TRUTH printed across the front, were asked by the military to turn their shirts inside out before entering.

“It’s important to support him,” said Anne Wright, a retired Army colonel and CODEPINK activist. “I spent 29 years in the military, and what Bradley Manning has done is exposed government corruption and brutality.”

In the defense’s opening statements on Monday, lawyer David Coombs outlined Manning’s moral compass which had informed his sense of duty to report the wrong-doings of the U.S. military, saying that Manning felt he “needed to do something to make a difference in the world. He needed to do something to help improve what he was seeing .”

The defense also argued that Manning specifically selected documents that could not be used “against the United States” and “could not be used” to the advantage of a foreign nation.Court sketch of the opening of Bradley Manning’s trial (Reuters)

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

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

In a landmark act, Connecticut has become the first state to require the labeling of genetically modified (gmo) foods.

(Photo: MillionsAgainstMonsanto/cc/flickr) The gmo labeling bill overwhelmingly passed in the House in a 134 – 3 vote on Monday.

As the Hartford Courant reports, the bill entails a sort of trigger in order for it to take effect:

For the legislation to take effect four states – including those bordering Connecticut – must pass a similar bill. In addition, any combination of northeastern states (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania or New Jersey), with an aggregate population of at least 20 million people, must approve labeling legislation.

Immediately after the vote, cheers could be heard outside the Hall of the House from advocates who had been pushing the labeling requirement.

The Center for Food Safety (CFS) said the trigger “unnecessarily puts on hold what consumers and lawmakers have already validated as important legislation,” but still welcomed the passage of the legislation as a victory in the food movement, and hoped Connecticut’s action would prove a catalyst for other states to enact similar measures.

Mark Kastel, co-director of the Cornucopia Institute, told the New York Times that the trigger may not be entirely negative.

“The hurdles in the Connecticut bill, if surmounted, would mean a critical mass in the marketplace that would emulate the impacts that would have materialized if California had passed its ballot initiative,” said Kastel.

Dave Murphy, founder and executive director of Food Democracy Now!, cheered the bill’s passage as a victory of people power over corporate agriculture, saying, “The grassroots have won in Connecticut for a key victory over Monsanto and the biotech lobby.”

“It was inspiring to watch Connecticut legislators supporting GMO labeling stand strong in the face of the biotech industry’s effort to kill the bill,” said Murpy.

“Numerous other states in the Northeast and around the country are actively considering pending GE food labeling bills. Connecticut’s leadership provides momentum and an incentive for these other states to move forward,” Rebecca Spector, who works on state GMO labeling legislative efforts at CFS, said in a statement. “Other states should now pass GE labeling laws, providing millions of U.S. consumers with the basic right to know how their food is produced.”

The legislation now heads to Gov. Malloy, who is expected to sign it.

_________________________

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

Tear gas envelops protestors in Istanbul. (Photo: Sedat Suna / European Pressphoto Agency)When a nation’s security apparatus amasses a 62 ton stockpile of tear gas, it’s only a matter of time before they’re likely to use it. And as recent events in Turkey have shown, the results can be frightening.

“Protests in Turkey once again expose these links between capitalist interests and police violence at the heart of tear gas history.” —Anna Feigenbaum, expert

When protests erupted across the country last week, the police responded with massive force–deploying thousands of riot police and armored carriers mounted with water cannons. In addition to standard gear, the police were also armed with tear gas and pepper spray. And plenty of it.

As RT reports, citing the Turkish newspaper Sozcu, the Ankara government “has bought $21 million” worth of “tear gas and pepper spray — mainly from US and Brazil — over the past 12 years.” The amount of both, the news agency reported, was equivalent to 62 tons of noxious, eye-burning, cough-inducing chemical agents either pressurized into canisters or available for the spray guns used by police.

As images of cloud-filled streets in Istanbul and other cities circulated the globe, some used the occasion to once again spotlight the US role as the dominant player in the global tear gas business.

According to RT:

The US has a history of selling tear gas and other crowd control munitions to countries wracked by widespread protest. Amnesty International harshly criticized the US State Department for approving export licenses for the shipment of crowd control munitions and tear gas to Egypt amidst the violent and often lethal crackdowns on protesters by security forces in 2011.

Amnesty confirmed that one US companies had shipped 21 tons of ammunition to Egypt — enough for 40,000 rounds of tear gas grenades and canisters — in addition to a separate shipment of 17.9 tons.

And Anna Feigenbaum, lecturer at Bournemouth University and an expert on the tear gas industry, calls the events in Turkey only the most recent example of a long history in which governments–and sometimes private industry–violently suppress popular uprisings by employing such weapons.

Writing at Common Dreams on Tuesday, Feigenbaum explains:

It is not difficult to trace these tear gas deployments back to corporate profiteers. The majority of the world’s tear gas trade comes from the United States, along with Brazil and Israel. The tear gas industry was founded on alliances between military officers, university chemists and businessmen. Take the example of Federal Laboratories, a major tear gas supplier started by a WWI veteran back in the 1920s with donated samples from the US Chemical Warfare Service. Marketed to local police forces with the help of enlisted PR experts, tear gas was first used on a mass scale to break down worker’s strikes and quell uprisings in colonized territories. Today, as US leaders publicly condemn the so-called ‘weaponization’ of tear gas abroad, its corporations continue to cash in on the profits of mass uprising.

Protests in Turkey once again expose these links between capitalist interests and police violence at the heart of tear gas history. The all too familiar images of streets covered in poison clouds should echo as a message from the trenches. Those soldiers knew all too well that when tear gas filled the air, there was likely something more deadly to follow. Far from a humanitarian weapon, it is time that we see tear gas as a sign of just how inhumane capital-driven visions of peace-keeping have become.

A man runs as riot police use tear gas and pressurized water to quash a demonstration against the demolition of Taksim Gezi Park in Istanbul. (Photo: AP)

__________________________________________________________

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

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

This article originally appeared on: RT