Robocalls scandal shows Harper govt. lacks legitimacy: Iran deputy FM

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

John McCain (shown) has put “boots on the ground” in Syria after all – his own.

The senior senator from Arizona and ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee became the highest-ranking U.S. official to enter Syria since the beginning of the two-year-old civil war that has killed an estimated 70,000, the Daily Beast reported. McCain made the unannounced visit Monday, when he crossed the border into Syria from Turkey, accompanied by Gen. Salim Idris, leader of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army. McCain’s has been the most persistent voice in the Senate calling for aid to the rebel army – criticizing the Obama administration for not supplying weapons and air support. He has stressed, however, that he is not calling for American “boots on the ground” to assist the forces fighting to overthrow the regime of Syrian Bashar Hafez al-Assad.

President Obama has called on al-Assad to step down, but has limited direct U.S. assistance to the rebels to non-lethal “humanitarian” aid, such as protective armor and communications equipment. The United States has facilitated shipment of deadly weapons to the rebels from third-party vendors, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

McCain’s visit came less than a week after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 15-3 to begin shipment of U.S. lethal weapons to “vetted” rebel units not dominated by militant, anti-Western Islamists. It is not certain if or when the Syrian Transaction Support Act, sponsored by committee chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and ranking Republican Robert Corker of Tennessee, will come before the full Senate for a vote. 

“What we want from the U.S. government is to take the decision to support the Syrian revolution with weapons and ammunition, anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft weapons,” Gen. Idris told the Daily Beast. “Of course we want a no-fly zone and we ask for strategic strikes against Hezbollah both inside Lebanon and inside Syria.”

McCain, the Republican nominee for president in 2008, has long been an enthusiastic supporter of an interventionist foreign policy, often calling for “regime change” in nations viewed as threats to neighboring countries or as violators of human rights. He was a leading advocate of U.S. “boots on the ground” in Kosovo in the early 1990s and a strong supporter of the invasion and occupation of Iraq to remove that country’s alleged “weapons of mass destruction.” He championed the “surge” of U.S. forces there that has been widely credited with preventing a victory by insurgents against the new government, backed by U.S. and coalition forces. The need for the United States and allies to act in Syria is urgent, he says.

“The U.S. does not have to act alone, put boots on the ground or destroy every Syrian air-defense system to make a difference,” McCain wrote in a recent essay in Time magazine. He has called, however, for not only arming, but also training Syrian rebels, creating a “safe zone” for rebel forces at the Turkish border, bombing Syrian air bases, and enforcing a “no-fly” zone to thwart government air attacks. He also favors supporting the insurgents with U.S. Patriot missiles in Turkey. With arms flowing to al-Assad from Russia and Iran, McCain argues that the United States and other Western nations must come to the aid of the rebels before it is too late. 

“Taking these steps would save innocent lives, give the moderate opposition a better chance to succeed and eventually provide security and responsible governance in Syria after Assad,” he said in the Time article. “However, the longer we wait, the worse the situation gets.”

Vetting the rebel units to be sure the weapons get into the “right hands” would be a tricky proposition, however, given the prominent role of militant, anti-U.S. forces in the Syrian opposition. Al Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate that fought against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq, is a key player among the Syrian rebels. The Syrian group, Ahrar al-Sham, is said to share al Nusra’s extremist ideology. The New York Times last month quoted a rebel commander on the dominant role of the al Nusra fighters.

“They are the strongest military force in the area,” said the commander of a rebel brigade in Hasaka. “We can’t deny it.”

A Reuters report in August of last year noted: “Recent news reports from the region have suggested that the influence and numbers of Islamist militants, some of them connected to al Qaeda or its affiliates, have been growing among Assad’s opponents.” The British Broadcasting Corporation at that time quoted a senior officer of the Free Syrian Army acknowledging that jihadists in the rebel ranks pose “a real threat after the Assad regime falls.”

“Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of,” the Times reported in April of this year.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, responded to the vote in favor of the Menendez-Corker bill by warning of unintended consequences. “This is an important moment,” he warned his colleagues. “You will be funding today the allies of al Qaeda.”

If weapons supplied by the United States end up turned against us, it won’t be the first time. The United States provided military aid to Saddam Hussein during the 1980s, only to find itself at war with the “Butcher of Baghdad” in 1991 and again in 2003 in war that lasted in nearly a decade. The “freedom fighters” the United States armed against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan turned out to be the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces fighting U.S. occupation for the past 12 years. McCain was an early and enthusiastic backer of the air war that saved the rebel forces in Libya, most notably in Benghazi, where last September heavily armed militants attacked a U.S. diplomatic outpost, killing four Americans.

McCain, a Navy pilot captured and imprisoned in North Vietnam for five and half years, might recall that the U.S. role in Vietnam began with military advisors, arming and assisting the South Vietnamese Army. Before that war was over we had more than half a million Americans with “boots on the ground” in Vietnam and about 58,000 under the ground in cemeteries back home. The war took the innocent lives of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese.

If history is any guide, U.S intervention in Syria’s civil war – in which no U.S. interests are at stake – might deliver the Syrian people from the tyranny of Bashar al-Assad into a different kind of lethal and destructive force: the tyranny of good intentions.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

May 27, 2013
 |

One of the all-time greatest hits of right-wing pundits is the insistence on a “liberal bias” in the media. Journalist and historian Eric Alterman exposed this myth in his 2003 book, What Liberal Media? yet it persists, often resulting in mainstream media outlets caving to a strategy known as “working the refs,” in which shrill cries of bias cause journalists and pundits to privilege right-leaning perspectives so they won’t be accused.

A disturbing example of this trend haunts the pages of the New York Times, in which the pernicious work of the decidedly right-wing Peter G. Peterson Institute is treated as ideologically unbiased while that of other organizations across the spectrum are consistently mentioned along with an ideological tag; often one designed to misguide readers on the actual nature of the organization’s agenda.

Let’s take a tour of the NYT archives.

When the Koch-backed Cato Institute is mentioned, the label “libertarian” tends to appear. An article about Ben Bernanke’s stance on China’s currency undervaluation, for example, tells us that “speakers at a conference in Washington, organized by the libertarian Cato Insitute warned that the Fed’s monetary policy could lead to asset-price bubbles….” The ideological tag alerts the reader to take the assertion with a grain of salt. The obviously right-wing Heritage Foundation is usually tag-less and never characterized as “right-leaning,” but occasionally the term “ conservative” will appear when it is mentioned.

The Obama-supporting Center for American Progress is alternatively described as “ liberal” or “ center left” as in this article: “The center-left Center for American Progress opened in 2003 when the Democrats were in political exile.” The Institute for Policy Studies is called a “left-leaning think tank in Washington.” (AlterNet, on the rare occasion it is mentioned, is described as a “left-leaning news site.”)

Third Way, a big money front group whose governing board is totally dominated by Wall Street financiers, is absurdly characterized as a “moderately left-wing think tank,” when in fact, as Bill Black has pointed out, it is dedicated to a right-wing agenda of shredding the social safety net and imposing self-destructive austerity on America.

Which brings us to the case of the Peter G. Peterson Institute, which backs Third Way. Pete Peterson, the founder and principal doner of this “policy center” is a conservative Republican billionaire who made his money as a Wall Street hedge fund manager and served as secretary of commerce under President Richard Nixon. He has devoted himself and his billions to promoting deficit hysteria and convincing the public that programs like Social Security and Medicare will destroy the economy. His economic policies come from the far right and his organization is dedicated to producing propaganda masquerading as serious research. He has a huge and well-paid staff (and one of them will be contacting me after the publication of this article attempting to brow-beat me into telling lies about their boss).

The mythology promoted by Peterson has done incalculable harm to America. His belief in the absurd efficient market theory, in which financial markets magically regulate themselves, has helped produce widespread and continuing fraud epidemics. He has consistently pushed austerity (based, as we now know, on the discredited research of Harvard economists Reinhart and Rogoff) which has led to job loss, economic stagnation and untold misery for millions.

Yet something interesting happens when you type Peterson Institute” into the New York Times online archives. Nowhere do you see the phrase “right-leaning.” When you do see a descriptor at all, it’s one of praise — Adam Davidson of the NYT Magazine, always eager to show off his affection for economic quacks, refers to the Peterson Institute as a “prominent Washington policy group.” The fact that the Peterson Institute never receives an ideogical tag conveys that its positions are neutral, and therefore highly credible.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

Presidential candidate Saeed Jalili attends a Q&A session with Iranian economists in Tehran on May 27, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Dissident republicans are resorting to bogus 999 calls in their attempt to kill police officers in Belfast, Northern Ireland, local media reported.

Police were responding to a 999 call in the early hours of Tuesday in the Ballysillan Road area, northern Belfast, when their vehicle came under attack by two pipe bombs, which were thrown by dissident republicans, media reports said.

It was for the second time in a month that dissident republicans used bogus calls to try to attack police officers.

The officers dived for cover after coming under attack when they left their vehicle around 2am local time, according to reports.

Earlier this month, two police officers escaped injury after coming under fire in west Belfast. The pair were ambushed after arriving in the area to answer a 999 call about a suspected burglary.

Chief Inspector Andy Freeburn of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said it was “a blatant attempt to murder”.

“We are just shocked at how narrowly tragedy was averted,” he said. “They were out protecting the community. It is just sheer good fortune that they were not killed or seriously injured.

Following Tuesday morning’s blast, the homes of a number of families were evacuated in a follow-up security operation. They spent the early hours of this morning in nearby Ballysillan leisure centre.

MOL/HE

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

As the EU voted to halt an embargo on weapons deliveries to the Syrian opposition, the humanitarian situation may reach a critical point, Natalia Alfonso, Head of Oxfam’s EU Office, told RT in an interview

RT: Your agency has warned of “devastating consequences” if more
arms are sent into Syria. What will they be?

Natalia Alfonso: Well, the consequences are quite clear. This is a
conflict that has been going on two years, there are seven million
people who are affected and in need of humanitarian aid within
Syria…and there have been more than 80,000 deaths. So bringing in
more arms and munitions (into Syria) we definitely do not see as an
answer to solve the conflict.

RT: Your group has been advocating bringing the arms flow into
Syria under control, warning against the risks of weapons used for
the violation of human rights – why are your calls not heard?

NA: The officials last night from the EU foreign ministries, we
believe that up to a point our calls have been listened to,
although not followed completely. Why? Well, due to the
non-extension of the embargo…We are disappointed that the arms
embargo was not extended as it stands. So there was kind of a mixed
message that was sent yesterday by the EU: We have good news that
they are not going to do anything until the first of August, so
they’re giving a little bit of time. They’re putting certain
conditions, which is very welcome. And they are placing emphasis on
a political solution, which we believe is where the EU should
actually put its weight. The negative news is that they’ve failed
to extend the embargo, and there is a risk of these arms — if they
get into the country — will fuel the conflict and cause human
rights violations.

RT: What risks are the UK and France running, deciding to arm the
rebels?

NA: Well, it is not really them. We call for the halt of arms to
all parties in Syria. We believe obviously that a political
solution has to be found. This is a conflict of two years, and we
don’t see, really, the point of creating a level playing field. We
will see that these arms and ammunition will just create more
conflict and more of a risk for civilians.

RT: Moscow says the end of the EU embargo undermines peace efforts,
while the UK believes arming the rebels would complement, rather
than work against the peace process – what’s your take?

NA: We need to ensure that all the warring parties, ensure that the
civilians are protected, that they have humanitarian access to the
aid that they need, and that they’re protected because they are
suffering the consequences of this conflict.

RT: What pressure’s put on the rebels to take part in peace talks,
now that they will have weapons?

NA: Well, arming the rebels will not create a level playing field,
because when the rebels get their arms the government will get more
arms so there is going to be an arms race more than a solution.

RT: What would Oxfam like to see done for the people of Syria?

NA: We welcome the initiative for a peace conference from Russia
and the United States. The pressure is put on the rebels and we
really hope they see an opportunity and they will grasp that
opportunity on peace talks, not on a military confrontation that
has been going on for too long with too many deaths.

This article originally appeared on: RT

Russia has defended its decision to supply Syria with sophisticated S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, saying the system will help deter foreign intervention in the Arab country.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Tuesday that the air defense system was a “stabilizing factor” that could dissuade “some hotheads” from entering the unrest in Syria.

“We consider these supplies a stabilizing factor and believe such steps will deter some hotheads from considering scenarios that would turn the conflict international with the involvement of outside forces,” Ryabkov said.

He added that Moscow would go ahead with the decision since the contract for the delivery of the system had been signed several years ago.

Russia’s envoy to NATO Aleksandr Grushko has also defended Moscow’s decision, saying his country was acting “fully within the framework of international law.”

“We are not doing anything that could change the situation in Syria,” Grushko said on Tuesday, adding that “The arms that we supply are defensive weapons.”

US, Israel and several Western countries have been pressing Russia not to go through with a promised delivery of S-300 missiles to the Syrian government.

Meanwhile, Israelâ„¢s Minister of Military Affairs Moshe Yaalon has said the S-300 missiles destined for Syria have not left Russia yet, adding that Israel will know how to react once the missiles get on the way to Syria.

HM/MA/SS

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

(Photo: US Navy)Previously undisclosed sections of a US government report obtained by the Washington Post show that designs for some of the Pentagon’s most advanced weapons systems were “compromised by Chinese hackers” in an act of cyber-espionage that one industry expert called “breathtaking.”

According to the Post:

Among more than two dozen major weapons systems whose designs were breached were programs critical to U.S. missile defenses and combat aircraft and ships, according to a previously undisclosed section of a confidential report prepared for Pentagon leaders by the Defense Science Board.

Experts warn that the electronic intrusions gave China access to advanced technology that could accelerate the development of its weapons systems and weaken the U.S. military advantage in a future conflict.

The Defense Science Board, a senior advisory group made up of government and civilian experts, did not accuse the Chinese of stealing the designs. But senior military and industry officials with knowledge of the breaches said the vast majority were part of a widening Chinese campaign of espionage against U.S. defense contractors and government agencies.

Among the weapon system compromised were the advanced Patriot missile system, known as PAC-3; an anti-ballistic missile sytem, known as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD; the Navy’s Aegis ballistic-missile defense system; the F/A-18 fighter jet, the V-22 Osprey, the Black Hawk helicopter; the Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ship; and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, one of the most expensive weapons systems ever created by the US military, with a staggering development price of $1.4 trillion..

“That’s staggering,” said Mark Stokes, executive director of the Project 2049 Institute, a think tank that focuses on Asia security issues, when told about the list of weapons by the Post. “These are all very critical weapons systems, critical to our national security. When I hear this in totality, it’s breathtaking.”

The hype by the Pentagon and industry analysts aside, however, the revelations about the possible hack shows the growing trend of dueling cyber-attacks between the world’s governments. Though US officials have publicly accused the Chinese for commanding or supporting networks of hackers, the US has also been a leader in executing offensive modes of cyber warfare against its rivals and enemies.

_________________________________________________

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

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

Garment workers in Cambodia, making apparel for the US show and sportswear company Nike, were attacked by police armed with electrified batons on Monday, marking a violent escalation in their battle to receive better ages at a factory on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.

A worker in a Cambodian apparel factory. (Photo: World Bank Photo Collection/ Flickr) Approximately 3,000 workers, almost all women, had staged a sit-in on the road leading to the factory in order to demand an increase in health and living expenses from Sabrina (Cambodia) Garment Manufacturing, the local contractor hired by Nike.

Reuters reports that 23 of the women were injured as police moved in, dressed in riot gear and armed with “stun batons,” which are similar to cattle prods.

Along with Bangladesh–which recently experienced the most deadly sweatshop disaster in the history of the garment industry when over 1,100 workers were killed in a factory collapse near Dhaka–Cambodia is one of the Asian countries where western retail companies have established manufacturing bases, taking advantage of cheap labor and relaxed safety laws.

Reuters adds:

Sun Vanny, president of the Free Trade Union at Sabrina, said the workers making the Nike clothing had been staging strikes and protests since 21 May. They want the US sportswear firm, which employs more than 5,000 people at the plant, to give them $14 a month to help pay for transport, rent and healthcare costs on top of their $74 minimum wage.

Authorities declined to comment on the clash, saying they were still collecting reports. No immediate comment was available from Nike.

_____________________

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

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

Football has scooped the most sponsorship deals in 2012 worth a jaw-dropping $4.5 billion, according to research by IFM Sports Marketing.

The annual World Sponsorship
Monitor report shows other sports struggled for sponsors while
football attracted about $4.5 billion in global sponsorship in
2012, the Financial Times reports.

The largest shirt sponsorship deal in history of sport has been
signed in 2012 between Manchester United and General Motors. The
car maker paid $659 million for a seven-year contract with the UK
champions. 

In April, the club also signed another sponsor deal with Aon
insurance group. The company paid almost $30 million per season for
the rights to Manchester United training ground, training shirts
and overseas tours. 

According to Phil Clement, Aon chief marketing officer, quoted
by the Financial Times, the price is reasonable considering the
international reach provided. “We felt that for global reach it
was good value,” he said. “Compare it to running an
advertising campaign in 120 countries. Advertising is difficult. To
have one program that works globally, externally and internally —
that’s a nice value proposition,” he explained. 

Also last year another leading UK football club, London’s
Arsenal extended its annual shirt and stadium sponsorship deal
worth $45 million annually. Spanish Real Madrid sold its shirt for
€30 million per season.

Considering the wide global reach of big football events,
sponsorship deals for events such as the Champions League, can cost
between $37 million and $45 million per season to a sponsor. For
this money sponsors get advertising on the fence surrounding the
pitch and “break bumpers” before the ad breaks. 

Last season UEFA earned a total $1.6 billion from the worldwide
broadcasting rights and from selling its platform of sponsorships
to Russian gas major Gazprom, as well as to Adidas, Ford,
Mastercard and other companies, the Guardian reports.

Gazprom has become one of the big corporate sponsors of the
Champions’ League. 

Another UEFA partner — Dutch beer maker Heineken — spends around
$77 million annually on sponsoring sports events. 

Marketing experts believe that sports sponsorship still has room
for growth and say fears of a bubble are exaggerated. According to
Julie Clark, head of sport at PricewaterhouseCoopers UK, “there
are still new markets to go for.” 

“There isn’t any evidence that it’s reached the peak
yet,” she said as quoted by the Financial Times.

This article originally appeared on: RT

People gather at the site of a bomb attack in the Syrian capital, Damascus. (File photo)

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Britain’s four biggest banks will have cut a quarter of their staff worldwide by the end of this year from peak staffing levels of 2008.

Thousands of jobs are
targeted as British banks centered in LIBOR rigging and insurance
mis-selling scandals continue to cut costs.

Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC, Lloyds and Barclays will employ
about 606,000 people worldwide by the end of 2013, according to
Bloomberg. That’s 24 percent below the peak of 795,000 in 2008 and
the least since 2004, when they employed 594,000 globally. Bank
layoffs are adding to the UK’s current 7.8% unemployment.

The firms are under pressure to reduce costs as bank’s incomes
shrink due to the Europe’s sovereign debt crisis suppressing
lending. The four firms posted £108 billion ($164 billion) of
revenue for 2012, 13 percent less than in 2008. 

“The continuing cost-cutting announcements you’ve been
getting reflect an incredibly difficult revenue environment and
that’s new,” Bloomberg quotes Simon Maughan, an analyst at
Olivetree Securities Ltd. 

 “The big bulky mass layoffs, such as they were, are
probably gone, but that’s not to say staff numbers wont drift lower
because it’s a struggle to grow the top line”, he adds.

More cuts may follow as RBS and HSBC have recently announced
they are continuing layoffs as part of the restructuring
process. 

The job losses at RBS were announced after the bank’s annual
general meeting was hit with shareholder protests over its £607m of
bonuses awarded to executives last year when it lost
£5.2bn. 

Last year, the British banks have been at the center of LIBOR
rigging and insurance mis-selling scandals , that costs Barclays’ a
$4.1 billion charge.  Reports suggest, increasing litigation
costs and mounting losses have necessitated aggressive cost cutting
— which results in the layoffs.

Last year  RBS, the biggest state-owned British bank, was
fined $610m by UK and US authorities for its part in the Libor
rate-fixing scandal.  The bank’s annual losses ballooned to
$9.05 billion in 2012 from $3.03 billion in the previous year.

During its annual general meeting this month, RBS chairman Sir
Philip Hampton admitted that it had, like other banks, been through
a “chastening” year in 2012 “fixing the mistakes of the past but
also laying the foundations for a secure, profitable
future”

This article originally appeared on: RT

We have truly entered the world of “Alice in Wonderland” when the CEO of a company that pays $16 million a day in taxes is hauled up before a Congressional subcommittee to be denounced on nationwide television for not paying more.

Apple CEO Tim Cook was denounced for contributing to “a worrisome federal deficit,” according to Senator Carl Levin – one of the big-spending liberals in Congress who has had a lot more to do with creating that deficit than any private citizen has.

Because of “gimmicks” used by businesses to reduce their taxes, Senator Levin said, “children across the country won’t get early education from Head Start. Needy seniors will go without meals. Fighter jets sit idle on tarmacs because our military lacks the funding to keep pilots trained.”

The federal government already has ample powers to punish people who have broken the tax laws. It does not need additional powers to bully people who haven’t.

What is a tax “loophole”? It is a provision in the law that allows an individual or an organization to pay less taxes than they would be required to pay otherwise. Since Congress puts these provisions in the law, it is a little much when members of Congress denounce people who use those provisions to reduce their taxes.

If such provisions are bad, then members of Congress should blame themselves and repeal the provisions. Yet words like “gimmicks” and “loopholes” suggest that people are doing something wrong when they don’t pay any more taxes than the law requires.

Are people who are buying a home, who deduct the interest they pay on their mortgages when filing their tax returns, using a “gimmick” or a “loophole”? Or are only other people’s deductions to be depicted as somehow wrong, while our own are OK?

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes pointed out long ago that “the very meaning of a line in the law is that you intentionally may go as close to it as you can if you do not pass it.”

If the line in tax laws was drawn in the wrong place, Congress can always draw it somewhere else. But, if you buy the argument used by people like Senator Levin, then a state trooper can pull you over on a highway for driving 64 miles per hour in a 65 mile per hour zone, because you are driving too close to the line.

The real danger to us all is when government not only exercises the powers that we have voted to give it, but exercises additional powers that we have never voted to give it. That is when “public servants” become public masters. That is when government itself has stepped over the line.

Government’s power to bully people who have broken no law is dangerous to all of us. When Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department started keeping track of phone calls going to Fox News Channel reporter James Rosen (and his parents) that was firing a shot across the bow of Fox News – and of any other reporters or networks that dared to criticize the Obama administration.

When the Internal Revenue Service started demanding to know who was donating to conservative organizations that had applied for tax-exempt status, what purpose could that have other than to intimidate people who might otherwise donate to organizations that oppose this administration’s political agenda?

The government’s power to bully has been used to extract billions of dollars from banks, based on threats to file lawsuits that would automatically cause regulatory agencies to suspend banks’ rights to make various ordinary business decisions, until such indefinite time as those lawsuits end. Shakedown artists inside and outside of government have played this lucrative game.

Someone once said, “any government that is powerful enough to protect citizens against predators is also powerful enough to become a predator itself.” And dictatorial in the process.

No American government can take away all our freedoms at one time. But a slow and steady erosion of freedom can accomplish the same thing on the installment plan. We have already gone too far down that road. F.A. Hayek called it “the road to serfdom.”

How far we continue down that road depends on whether we keep our eye on the ball – freedom – or allow ourselves to be distracted by predatory demagogues like Senator Carl Levin.

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

In a bid to rehabilitate the diminished Lower Jordan River, Israel has begun releasing water from the Sea of Galilee almost 50 years after stopping the flow. The diversion of Jordan Basin freshwater in the 1960s sparked major conflict in the Middle East.

Israel plans to replenish the Lower Jordan, which flows from the
Sea of Galilee north to the Dead Sea, with 30 million cubic meters
annually, when the rehabilitation project gets into full swing in
two years. During the initial stage launched on Sunday
approximately 1,000 cubic meters of water are being discharged per
hour.

At the same time the organizations involved will clean the
riverbed and treat water to remove pollution and reduce salinity of
the river. Earlier Israeli military conducted an effort to sweep
for land mines along the river left there decades ago after the
Six-Day War in 1967. The Lower Jordan serves as the border between
the nation of Jordan in the east and Israel and the
Israeli-occupied West Bank in the west.

The plan is to restore the natural environment of the Lower
Jordan River and make it attractive to tourists. One site has
particular significance for Christians, because John the Baptist is
thought to have baptized Jesus there. Pilgrims flock to the nearby
town of Jericho in the West Bank every year to visit the revered
site.

Lower Jordan was damaged greatly by decades of excessive water
diversion upstream. Israel relied heavily on water taken from the
Sea of Galilee to provide for its agricultural and drinking needs.
Water flow from the lake into Jordan was cut after the
establishment of the Deganya Dam in 1964, as the Jewish states
sought to provide for the arriving immigrants.

But Israel’s move to divert water via its National Water Carrier
project irritated the country’s neighbors. The Headwater Diversion
Plan by Lebanon was launched in 1964 by Syria and Jordan, which
wanted to undermine Israel’s effort by curbing water supply to the
Upper Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee it feeds.

Israel responded with military attacks culminating with in
airstrikes on Syria in April 1967. The water dispute and the
hostilities over the diversion of the precious resource were a
major factor behind the 1967 War, which started two months after
the raid.

The renewal of water release comes after improvements in
technology and water conservation, Alexander Kushnir, Israeli Water
Authority Commissioner, said.

“We have established a system of desalination plants, water
purification and waste water reuse facilities, along with
optimizing the use and conservation of citizens — which has enabled
the Water Authority to significantly increase the amount of water
allocated to nature, along with the ever-increasing restoration of
natural water resources,” he explained as cited by the
Jerusalem Post.

Combined with increased rainfalls after years of draught, those
allowed the Sea of Galilee to raise to 209.96 meters below sea
level, which is close to the maximum capacity of 208.8 meters below
sea level, the body reports.

The move was also hailed by the Jordanian contributors to the
rehabilitation effort. But environmental activists, who generally
favor the effort to help the Jordan River, criticized Israeli
authorities over the small scale and the lack of transparency of
the project.

The target of 30 million cubic meters per year is “not
anywhere near the 220 million cubic meters that we have identified
is necessary — our concern relates to the process,” said Gidon
Bromberg, Israeli director of Friends of the Earth Middle East. He
added that the Water Authority had never done an independent
assessment of the plan.

“We cannot accept the process that is currently moving
forward because it is moving forward in a non-transparent manner
that prevents public debate, which is actually needed for the
ecological rehabilitation of the Lower Jordan,” he said.

This article originally appeared on: RT

File photo shows US soldiers in Kunar province in Afghanistan.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

We have truly entered the world of “Alice in Wonderland” when the CEO of a company that pays $16 million a day in taxes is hauled up before a Congressional subcommittee to be denounced on nationwide television for not paying more.

Apple CEO Tim Cook was denounced for contributing to “a worrisome federal deficit,” according to Senator Carl Levin – one of the big-spending liberals in Congress who has had a lot more to do with creating that deficit than any private citizen has.

Because of “gimmicks” used by businesses to reduce their taxes, Senator Levin said, “children across the country won’t get early education from Head Start. Needy seniors will go without meals. Fighter jets sit idle on tarmacs because our military lacks the funding to keep pilots trained.”

The federal government already has ample powers to punish people who have broken the tax laws. It does not need additional powers to bully people who haven’t.

What is a tax “loophole”? It is a provision in the law that allows an individual or an organization to pay less taxes than they would be required to pay otherwise. Since Congress puts these provisions in the law, it is a little much when members of Congress denounce people who use those provisions to reduce their taxes.

If such provisions are bad, then members of Congress should blame themselves and repeal the provisions. Yet words like “gimmicks” and “loopholes” suggest that people are doing something wrong when they don’t pay any more taxes than the law requires.

Are people who are buying a home, who deduct the interest they pay on their mortgages when filing their tax returns, using a “gimmick” or a “loophole”? Or are only other people’s deductions to be depicted as somehow wrong, while our own are OK?

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes pointed out long ago that “the very meaning of a line in the law is that you intentionally may go as close to it as you can if you do not pass it.”

If the line in tax laws was drawn in the wrong place, Congress can always draw it somewhere else. But, if you buy the argument used by people like Senator Levin, then a state trooper can pull you over on a highway for driving 64 miles per hour in a 65 mile per hour zone, because you are driving too close to the line.

The real danger to us all is when government not only exercises the powers that we have voted to give it, but exercises additional powers that we have never voted to give it. That is when “public servants” become public masters. That is when government itself has stepped over the line.

Government’s power to bully people who have broken no law is dangerous to all of us. When Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department started keeping track of phone calls going to Fox News Channel reporter James Rosen (and his parents) that was firing a shot across the bow of Fox News – and of any other reporters or networks that dared to criticize the Obama administration.

When the Internal Revenue Service started demanding to know who was donating to conservative organizations that had applied for tax-exempt status, what purpose could that have other than to intimidate people who might otherwise donate to organizations that oppose this administration’s political agenda?

The government’s power to bully has been used to extract billions of dollars from banks, based on threats to file lawsuits that would automatically cause regulatory agencies to suspend banks’ rights to make various ordinary business decisions, until such indefinite time as those lawsuits end. Shakedown artists inside and outside of government have played this lucrative game.

Someone once said, “any government that is powerful enough to protect citizens against predators is also powerful enough to become a predator itself.” And dictatorial in the process.

No American government can take away all our freedoms at one time. But a slow and steady erosion of freedom can accomplish the same thing on the installment plan. We have already gone too far down that road. F.A. Hayek called it “the road to serfdom.”

How far we continue down that road depends on whether we keep our eye on the ball – freedom – or allow ourselves to be distracted by predatory demagogues like Senator Carl Levin.

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

Presidential candidate Mohsen Rezaei addresses people in Fatemiyeh Mosque of Bandar Abbas port city in southern Iran on May 27, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Iranian principlist presidential candidate Ali Akbar Velayati speaks at a press conference in Tehran on May 28, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

State Duma MPs are discussing a proposal to allow Russian women to perform military service. The relevant amendments have been submitted to the Ministry of Defense for evaluation, Izvestia daily reports.

The law on military service would feature a new subpoint that
reads: “female citizens aged between 18 and 27…” may join
the Russian services on the same grounds as men should they express
a desire. For men of the same age group military service of one
year is obligatory.

According to the representative of the Ministry of Defense, quoted
by the newspaper, “female military contractors are already
serving in the armed forces, so there’s nothing wrong in this
idea.” The other thing is that the law should be correctly
worded so that it doesn’t provoke a negative reaction in the
community,” they added.

About 50,000 women are already serving in the Russian Armed Forces.
However, the main idea of the proposal to endorse the female
military conscription is to equalize women’s rights with men.

“We should not encourage women to go into the army. But it’s
necessary not to deny that possibility to those who are already
motivated and would like to serve. This is due to gender equality
and the right of women to serve in the Armed Forces,” one of
the authors of the amendments, Tatiana Moskalkova, explained.

Chairman of the Duma Committee on Defense, former Black Sea Fleet
Commander Admiral Vladimir Komoedov believes that women could solve
the Defense Ministry’s personnel problems. He believes the contract
system of recruitment has failed because of the lack of men in
Russia.

According to Komoedov, the changes in the conscription law could
“help equip the army.”

“Soldiers under contract could be replaced with women,” the
Admiral noted, adding that a woman can actually succeed in a number
of mundane army duties.

“They can be radio operators, parachutists, translators, even
snipers. Of course, there’s no need to put a woman in a tank or a
fighter, but there are a number of positions which are too cushy
for men, while a woman would just have been right,” Komoedov
stated. 

He added that after approval by the ministry, the amendment to
the conscription law will be discussed at the meeting with Duma’s
Defense Committee in autumn this year.

This article originally appeared on: RT

Armed Yemeni tribesmen stand guard in a street in the capital Sanaâ„¢a on May 29, 2011.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

On Monday the foreign ministers of the European Union (EU) met in Brussels and agreed not to renew the arms embargo against Syria. This will allow each European country to directly arm the Syrian opposition fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which was previously forbidden under the terms of a one-year EU embargo which is about to expire on Friday.

Europe’s former colonial powers in the Middle East, Britain and France, are leading the offensive to directly arm the Syrian rebels.

British foreign secretary William Hague cynically sought to present European plans to arm the rebels as part of a “political solution” to the conflict in Syria. He claimed that, “in the end there is only a political and diplomatically supported solution,” adding that amending the EU arms embargo was “part of supporting the diplomatic work.”

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius resorted to making bogus charges that Syria has used chemical weapons in order to push for arming the Syrian rebels and pave the way for direct military intervention.

“There is increasingly strong evidence of localized use of chemical weapons,” Fabius claimed. “We are consulting with our partners to see what concrete consequences that we are going to draw from this.”

US President Barack Obama has repeatedly threatened to treat the use of chemical weapons in Syria as a “red line” or a “game changer” that would trigger an aggressive response.

Hague vowed to seek “common ground” with the other EU member states on arming the Syrian rebels, but indicated that Britain would do it anyway if no agreement is reached. He stressed that, “doing the right thing for Syria” is “more important than whether the EU is able to stick together on every detail of this.”

Austria, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Finland claimed to oppose arming the Syrian rebels. Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger declared: “We just received the Nobel Peace Prize, and to now go in the direction of intentionally getting involved in a conflict with weapon deliveries, I think that is wrong.”

Such comments are an example of the utterly cynical character of European imperialism. The war against Syria is precisely showing that Europe is not a power for peace and that last year’s awarding of the Nobel peace prize to the European Union was a farce.

In fact, the EU has backed the Syrian opposition from the start, collaborating closely with US, Turkey and the Gulf States who are arming Islamist opposition fighters in Syria to the teeth and stationing Patriot anti-ballistic missile systems near Turkey’s border with Syria.

The EU recently lifted its Syrian oil sanctions to help fund the Syrian opposition including al-Qaeda linked rebel groups such as Al Nusra Front that have committed horrific crimes against the Syrian population. (See also: “European powers fund Al Qaeda looting of Syrian oil”)

After the wars against Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya–which were partially criticized by some European states–the European powers have lined up behind the war strategy of US imperialism to plunder the vast, resource-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia. Like the US, the European powers regard the Alawite-dominated Assad regime in Syria and its main regional ally Shiite Iran as the main obstacles to securing their interests.

Germany is seeking to rally the “dissident” EU member states behind a more aggressive policy against Syria. “Disagreement in the EU, that would be the wrong signal,” Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle declared. “The more cohesive Europe acts, the more influence we will have on overcoming the current violence in Syria.”

According to a report in Der Spiegel published the same day, Berlin has decided that Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) will resume sending so-called “medipacks”–consisting of medical supplies and hundreds of bulletproof vests–to the opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA). Only months ago, the German Foreign Office had forced the BND to stop, Der Spiegel wrote.

Turkey and the pro-Western Syrian opposition–the most aggressive forces pushing for direct military intervention in Syria–urged the EU to ease the embargo. “I definitely support the lifting of the arms embargo against the Syrian people,” said the Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who attended the talks in Brussels.

In Istanbul, Khaled al-Saleh, spokesman of Syria’s main opposition National Coalition declared: “It is the moment of truth that we’ve been waiting for for months.”

Without any broader support in the Syrian population, the Sunni Islamist opposition is rapidly losing ground against the Syrian army, which is now supported by fighters of the Lebanese Shia Hezbollah militia. In recent days, the Syrian government has been launching an offensive to recapture the key-strategic town of Qusayr, close to the Lebanese border.

Against this background and the Syrian war spreading to Lebanon and Iraq, the imperialist powers are escalating their intervention in Syria and the entire Middle East. A US delegation consisting of US Secretary of State John Kerry and Senators John McCain and Bob Menendez threatened a Libyan-style intervention on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Jordan last Saturday.

Mc Cain, a member of the US senate armed services and foreign relations committees, told the Jordan Times: “We are prepared to take every step to protect the Jordanian regime’s stability, its people and its territory; the provision of Patriot missiles comes under this protection.”

He explained that the missiles’ dispatch may be the “first step” to the establishment of no-fly zone within Syria. “With the use of Patriot missiles we can enforce and sustain a no-fly zone to allow the opposition an opportunity to organize and change the tide of the conflict as we did in Libya,” he said.

Yesterday, McCain reportedly also briefly traveled into Syria from Turkey, accompanied by FSA Supreme Military Council chief General Salem Idris, to meet with 18 opposition militia leaders from across Syria. They reportedly told McCain they wanted increased US support, heavy weapons, and US air strikes in Syria.

Together with the Gulf sheikhdoms of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is one of imperialism’s key strategic allies for its offensive in the region. According to a report in the Jewish Chronicle, a senior Jordanian official close to Jordanian King Abdullah has confirmed that Jordan is allowing Israel to operate unmanned drones over its air space to monitor the situation in Syria.

He also said that, if the need arose, “of course we will allow Israel to use Jordanian air space for another attack on Syria”.

In the past month, Israel already launched three direct strikes on Syria and is preparing a far bigger intervention.

On Monday, Israel staged a massive military drill focusing on coping with chemical weapons. It was part of a week-long nationwide exercise, code-named “Home Front Eitan 1,” preparing the civilian population, the military and emergency services for a war in which large numbers of missiles could hit Israel.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Two rockets have landed in the eastern Lebanese town of Hermel a day after a teenage girl was killed in a mortar attack by militants operating in Syria near the town.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

For the past three years Greece has been at the same time an experiment in neoliberal social engineering and a laboratory of movements and collective struggles. For the first time in many decades we have the case of a country entering a phase of profound social and political crisis that has the potential to turn into a crisis of hegemony opening up the social and political space for a sequence of social transformation. That is why the Greek case brings forward not only the depth of the crisis of the project of European Integration, the extreme violence of contemporary neoliberal policies, but also the need for a redefinition of left-wing or radical politics that could go beyond simply resisting austerity toward a new conception of a socialist alternative.

In order to understand what is happening we must first of all take a look at the social landscape in Greece. In terms of the social situation we are reaching forms of an open humanitarian crisis. Recession has reached proportions that can only be compared to the consequences of major warfare or of the 1930s Great Depression with a -25 per cent GDP contraction in the 2008-2013 period. Unemployment is at 27 per cent with youth unemployment at 64 per cent, creating a “no future” generation and leading to increased migration, including a “brain drain.” Real wage reduction is at -30 per cent for most of the workforce, with new wage cuts coming in the near future. Health indicators are already showing signs of deterioration along with an impressive rise in suicides. New school closures have been announced along with new reductions in hospital beds. Increased homelessness, soup-kitchens and widespread drug use, also give an image of social devastation.

Political Earthquake

In terms of the political crisis there has been a growing estrangement of the large segments of the popular classes from pro-austerity parties and the political system. This found its expression in negative feelings and attitudes toward the political system, mainstream parties and a growing feeling of anger and distrust toward the European Union, including Greece’s participation in the Eurozone. Large segments of the popular classes, of workers, employees, peasants, youths, members of the “professional classes,” small businessmen, have turned their back on mainstream parties, leading to a political earthquake in the May June 2012 elections when both PASOK and New Democracy suffered great losses and SYRIZA came close to winning the June election and gaining governmental power. One can see the same elements of an open political crisis even in opinion polls. SYRIZA and New Democracy are running neck and neck for the first position, whereas the once dominant PASOK is polling between 6 and 8 per cent.

However, treating these tectonic political shifts as the simple result of social crisis and the deterioration of social conditions is far from providing a full image of the situation in Greece. Without a unique and without precedent sequence of struggles and collective practices of resistance and solidarity, without a strong movement, which has been close to a modern version of a “protracted people’s war,” we would not have experienced these political earthquakes. It was exactly through these collective experiences of struggle, this feeling of anger turned into hope, this feeling of confidence and of being part of a people in struggle, expressed in concrete practices such as a demonstration, a clash with the police or a popular assembly, that people were again re-politicized, re-radicalized, moved to the Left. Were it not for the mass strikes, for the continuing struggles in many sectors, for the hundreds of solidarity initiatives, and for the many forms of resistance and disobedience, the political landscape would have been much more different.

I would like to insist that when we talk about the experience of struggle in Greece, we are not talking simply about mass riots and whatever catches the attention of international media, but about a much more complex set of collective experiences and struggles. Apart from general strikes, we have had a whole series of labour confrontations both in the public and the private sector. To give an example, despite efforts from the government including continuous parliamentary ‘coup d’etats’ (in the form of ‘special legislation measures’), the government is far from reaching the quota for public sector lay-offs dictated by the Troika. Teachers in Secondary Education massively voted in favour of striking during the university entry exams, forcing the government to issue an authoritarian ‘back to work’ order. In Universities there have been important struggles in the past months against mandatory closures and mergers of Departments and Schools, struggles that in some cases, such as the Athens University Faculty of Letters, were victorious. In Chalkidiki, in the North of Greece, local communities are still waging a heroic struggle against environmentally disastrous Gold mines, despite being treated as terrorists by the police and the justice system. At BIOME, a factory near Salonika we are already witnessing the first successful example of a self-managed factory. In many cities local citizen initiatives and popular assemblies are working with the farmer’s cooperatives in order for cheap quality agricultural products to be available to working people. Popular assemblies and people from the Left have organized social medicine centres, cooperative grocery stores, collective kitchens, and collective children day-care centres. Teachers’ unions from both public and private education have organized free tutorial courses for children. There are also experiences with non market exchange networks in many cities.

At the same time there has been a flourishing of anti-fascist initiatives and demonstrations, along with struggles against the exploitation of immigrant workers. Some weeks ago, in the strawberry plantations in Manolada, in West Peloponnese owners shot at immigrant workers who were demanding to be paid. The reaction was not only impressive demonstrations which united Greek and immigrant workers, but also an impressive organization drive toward the first such union of agricultural labourers in Greece.

I am stressing this because in many instances the Greek Left and especially SYRIZA acts as if political power and consequently an end to austerity and a beginning of social transformation will simply come as the ‘ripe fruit’ of worsening social conditions. Nothing is further from the truth. Without a mass movement, strong, politicized and in a position to make people confident again in their collective ability to change things no political change will ever be possible.

What is more important, is that time matters! Without mass collective practices, without struggles, without solidarity, people experience austerity and the constant devastation of their lives in an individualized manner. This doesn’t breed rebellion. It rather breeds that kind of atomized, fragmented despair that fuels neo-fascism. If we look at the people following the neo-fascist Golden Dawn we will see that leaving aside these people that come from the traditions of the Greek far right, most of the people supporting Golden Dawn are people who are channeling exactly this kind of individualized despair toward the extreme reactionary discourse of Golden Dawn and its ersatz ‘solidarity only for Greeks.’

I know that many people will raise the objection that simply building a strong movement is not enough, since despite three years of general strikes (more than 25 since the Spring of 2010), mass occupations, impressive protests such as the Movement in the Squares from May to July 2011, big street clashes, various forms of civil disobedience to tax hikes, successive governments have managed to pass one austerity bill after the other. Doesn’t this stress the fact that only through a political solution, only through a change in what concerns governmental and political power, can we find a way out of the vicious circle of austerity, recession and unemployment?

Post-Democracy?

It is obvious that Greece has entered what one might describe as a post-democratic condition. The traditional forms of political pressure that could force a government to step back from introducing reactionary measures through a calculation of the political cost, do not apply to Greece anymore. On the contrary, we have entered a condition of limited sovereignty, with the EU-IMF-ECB ‘Troika’ dictating measures regardless of their social cost and with Greek governments simply capitulating to these demands, under the pressure of the dominant fractions of Greek capital. Without a political breakthrough, without a sharp change in the political balance of forces in favour of the forces of labour and other popular classes, there can be no end in sight in the politics of austerity. We need such a broad popular alliance under the hegemony of the force of labour that will take governmental and political power and open up a political sequence of social transformation in a socialist direction. In sum what we need is to actually try and think how today’s dynamics of anger, contention and protest can be turned into a highly original revolutionary process, revolutionary in the sense that it must challenge fundamental aspects of capitalist social relations and highly original because we cannot think about it in terms of ready-made conceptions.

Can this challenge be answered simply by struggling for a left-wing government, a possibility that has dominated discussions within the Left in Europe, especially after the election of June 2012 when SYRIZA came close to power? First of all, this possibility represents the depth and the extent of the political crisis in Greece, the tectonic shifts in relations of political representation, as a result of the social crisis but also of the impressive series of struggles and collective practices of resistance, protest, disobedience and solidarity. At the same time it brings forward the centrality of the question of political power in the current conjuncture in Greece. However, although the whole question of a possibility of a left-wing government opens up the question of political power, this does not mean that SYRIZA, at least in its current policies and strategic proposals is the answer. That is why it is important to rethink questions of political and governmental power.

The first question arising when discussing such matters refers to the question of the program of any attempt to fight for political power. For many people, questions of political program might seem like a luxury. For them what we need is to unite forces around simple demands, around this necessary ‘no to austerity,’ instead of endless discussions on the program. However, there are aspects of the political program that do not represent ideological obsessions but attempts to come to terms with important material constraints for any potential left-wing politics. Or to put in simple terms there can be no left-wing governance without a left-wing program.

To give perhaps the most important example, the question of the relation of Greece to Eurozone and the European Integration project in general is not an ideological obsession from the part of some tendencies of the Greek radical Left. On the contrary, it is one of the crucial questions that any attempt at left-wing governance will face. The European Union today is not simply turning more neoliberal (especially if we consider the embedded neoliberalism of the European Integration project since the Single European Act of 1986), it is also turning into a highly undemocratic process, openly calling for limited sovereignty for countries in the European South, creating conditions of a ‘race to the bottom’ of austerity, recession and unemployment, using in many instances an openly neo-colonial rhetoric on the need to “reform those lazy Southerners.” The euro is not simply a currency, but represents a whole set of institutional restraints and obstacles to any progressive policies. At the same time it is an imperialist strategy. The euro as common currency in an economic area marked by sharp differences in productivity and competitiveness acted as an extra “comparative advantage” for the capitals of the hegemonic European social formations, such as Germany and as an “Iron Cage” of capitalist modernization for peripheral social formations. In a period of economic crisis it also enhances structural imbalances, inequalities and divergences, thus contributing to the debt and the general economic crisis of countries such as Greece.

The Euro also forms the material ground of all forms of blackmail that any left-wing or progressive government will face in Greece. To put simply it is not possible to negotiate or take a firm stand against the austerity measures imposed upon Greece when the Eurogroup controls monetary policy, when the European Central Bank controls the liquidity of banks, when a country remains dependent upon loans from the ECB and the IMF. Regaining monetary sovereignty, as a form of democratic social control of an important aspect of the economy is a necessary precondition for any potential progressive solution to the Greek problem.

I know that the counterargument is that a left-wing government, armed with the support and aspiration of the electorate will be in a position to take a firm stand against the EU-IMF-ECB Troika, renegotiate successfully, obtain important concessions and put an end to austerity. However, I think that this is as close to a fantasy that we could get! That is why Cyprus offers an important example and a warning that we cannot avoid taking into account. What happened in Cyprus? The EU-IMF-ECB Troika imposed a very aggressive austerity program. The Cypriot Parliament rejected this program, under the pressure of the people who were demonstrating in the streets. The Cypriot government went to Brussels to renegotiate, taking a firm stand and demanding a better deal. However, it was also determined to stay within the monetary and institutional framework of the Eurozone. The result was that it got an even worse deal than the original in terms of recession, austerity and unemployment. How can we be certain that a SYRIZA government determined to get rid of austerity while remaining within the Eurozone, will not get the same treatment and succumb to the same kind of blackmail? The argument that Greece is ‘too big to fail’ does not hold, since by now it is obvious that most countries, central banks and international organizations are in a position to withstand the bankruptcy of a country like Greece.

On the contrary, the unwillingness of the leadership of SYRIZA to even consider the possibility of a rupture with the European Integration process and the mechanism of debt-ridden austerity, leads it to make proposals that are not only out of touch with the reality of power relations in the international plane, such as the proposal for a “New Marshal Plan” for Europe, but would also lead to an even greater dependence of the Greek economy on the funding from international organizations.

Exit From the Eurozone?

There is nothing nationalist or chauvinist in opting for the exit of Greece from the Eurozone. Unless we think that it is nationalist and chauvinist to fight for a rupture with the violence of neoliberalism and the imperialist character of the monetary and fiscal architecture of the Eurozone. As for the argument that it is better to wait for a pan-European movement to get rid of austerity, I believe that this argument misses an important aspect of social struggles in Europe, namely the uneven character of their development. Not all movements are equally radicalized and politicized and adopting such a strategy of waiting for a Pan-European movement will mean that the people in Greece will endure many more years of austerity and social devastation. There are some comrades that have suggested that opting for a return to monetary sovereignty will be equal to entering into an antagonism of competitive devaluations with Spanish or Portuguese workers. I also think that this is far from the truth. Getting Greece out of the Eurozone is not about competitive devaluations but about protecting large segments of the popular classes against the systemic social violence of the free movement of capitals and commodities across the European Union, about regaining democratic social control of the monetary policy and the economy in general, and about attempting to rely on the collective effort of working people to build an alternative future instead of being prey to the embedded neoliberalism of the European Integration Project.

Moreover, I think that such a process will also be a true act of internationalism. Wouldn’t it be a message of hope and a proof that social change is possible if social movements in a country of the European South managed to break away from the Eurozone and begun a process of social transformation? Wouldn’t this be the first step in getting rid of the euro and all the neoliberal and undemocratic framework of the European Union? Wouldn’t this open up the way for new forms of cooperation based on respect for democracy, popular sovereignty and common effort for a better future?

In light of the above, recent interventions in the debates within the European Left in favour of a strategy of exit from the Eurozone, are more welcome. The decision of AKEL to consider the possibility of Cyprus exiting the Eurozone, the report by Heiner Flassbeck and Costas Lapavitsas [Ed.: see below for more on this report] on the crisis of the Eurozone, and the public intervention by Oscar Lafontaine in favour of a potential “Grexit,” all these represent a welcome change and open up the space for a real discussion of radical alternatives.

I do not want to suggest that the question of an alternative policy for Greece is limited to questions of monetary policy. Nor am I criticizing SYRIZA in the name of some abstract ‘anti-capitalism’ like the one offered by the Greek Communist Party who talks about socialism but only in another time, since today ‘conditions are not ripe.’ What I am trying to suggest is that any possibility of an end to austerity must start with a set of urgent measures that are immediately needed in order to avoid social disaster and at the same time open up the way for a radical transformation of Greek society in a non-capitalist direction. These measures should include apart from the immediate exit from the Eurozone and potentially the EU, the annulment of debt, the nationalization of banks and strategic enterprises and redistribution income in favour of the forces of labour including a re-establishment of full trade union rights to organize and collectively bargain. Institutionally, this process should not be conceived in terms of remaining within the contours of existing legality (both national and European). On the contrary it will require a new ‘Constituent Process’ and deep changes that should include limitation to capitalist ownership, the right to occupy and self-manage abandoned or closed enterprises, and new and extended forms of social and workers’ control. It is on the basis of such measures that we can really start thinking about radical changes in a socialist direction, in the sense of extended self-management, alternative forms of non-market distribution, new forms of democratic social planning, socialization of knowledge and expertise, new forms of democratic participation at all levels of decision-making.

Implementing such measures will not be easy and it will require a new collective ethics and a strong sense of common effort and participation. That is why it is necessary to think of this challenge not in terms of governance but of a movement, of a collective process of transformation. Moreover, only a strong movement from below, in the sense of extended forms of trade union action, of forms of popular democracy from below, of networks of solidarity, of forms of self-defence, can mount a successful resistance to all forms of formal and informal sabotage and counter-attacks from the part of the forces of capital, the justice system or the repressive apparatuses of the State.

Revolutionary Strategy

All these bring forward an important question. It is not possible to deal with questions of left-wing government and its relation to the movement without opening up the question of a revolutionary strategy in the 21st century. Contrary to the position held by both SYRIZA and the Communist Party, that today there is no point in talking about revolutionary changes (in the case of SYRIZA in the name of the immediate need to avoid social disaster and in the case of KKE of the situation not being ripe enough), I want to stress that what has been happening in Greece in the past three years in terms of social protest and contention, of open political crisis, of people abandoning mainstream parties and politics and being ready to accept radical solutions, of a demand of profound social and political change, of an acceptance of the need for new social and political configuration beyond ‘actually existing neoliberalism,’ is the closest we could get to potentially pre-revolutionary situation. Of course, the situation is in a way unripe and immature, but hasn’t this been the case with all sequences of major social and political transformation? However, this need for a new — and necessarily original — revolutionary strategy should not lead us to a dogmatic reproduction of either the ‘democratic road to socialism’ position or the traditional insurrectionary conception of the revolutionary process. On the one hand we need to take into consideration that in advanced capitalist societies with developed forms of civil society institutions and extended apparatuses of hegemony it is necessary to conduct a modern version of ‘war of position,’ a complex attempt at creating forms and institutions of counter-power and counter-hegemony from below in a new and original form of a ‘dual power’ strategy. On the other hand we need to find ways to accelerate and intensify processes of political and potentially hegemonic crisis and take advantage of any opportunity to bring reactionary governments down under the pressure of the movement and use the window of opportunity opened by the possibility of a left-wing government along with an escalation of struggles and confrontations with the logic of capital on all levels.

What is needed is an attempt to transform contemporary dynamics within Greek society into something close to an “historical block” to use Gramsci’s term, not simply an electoral alliance, but the encounter between an alliance of the subaltern classes, a radical anti-capitalist program, in the sense of an alternative narrative, and new collective forms of organization and experimentation. Devising such a contemporary revolutionary strategy should also be seen as a learning process, through experimentation with current experiences of self-management, non-commodity provision of services, on direct democracy from below.

However, most tendencies of the European Left do not even attempt to open up this debate, remaining entangled either in “realist” proposals for a progressive governance that will not challenge the power of capital or the current architecture of globalized capitalism, or in revolutionary fantasies about “storming the Winter Palace.”

And this is the problem with SYRIZA leadership’s strategy. They treat the question of governmental power as a means to bring forward progressive reforms and gradually put an end to austerity. To this end they take for granted all the institutional constraints of the Eurozone and the bail-out loan agreements. That is why they moved from a position of complete renunciation of the loan agreements to a position of “renegotiation.” That is why they have been trying to develop a better understanding with representatives of big business, including media barons. That is why there have been references from the part of SYRIZA to sound entrepreneurship and socially responsible ‘investments.’ I do not wish to deny the radicalism and the good will of many comrades in SYRIZA and their commitment to socialist politics, but the truth is that the current strategy by SYRIZA is far from answering these challenges.

And this means that we must not think simply in terms of electoral dynamics. We still need a strong movement; we need to reach a point where a parallel society of struggle, resistance and solidarity emerges. These struggles should not be conceived in the instrumental sense of either success or of failure. As I have already mentioned, traditional calculations of movement pressure do not apply to Greece. We need more to think in terms of a protracted peoples’ war in which the crucial point is not whether there is ‘victory’ in the sense of an austerity bill not passing because of a mass strike, but more in terms of a constant attrition of the government and the Troika, of delays or blockages in aspects of the austerity measures, and of a growing collective confidence within the movement that in the end we can win. Solidarity in the sense that people can be confident that through the collective practices they will avoid having their electricity cut-off, their home auctioned, that they will be able to cater for basic needs from food, to medicine to tutorial courses for their children, is extremely important, since it brings back confidence to collective struggle and the ability to build a better future.

At the same time, these collective practices must be seen also as the emergence of forms of popular power from below, as forms of an emerging contemporary form of dual power, as forms of self-defence against the aggressiveness of the government and the forces of capital. Underestimating the importance of a strong movement and prolonged struggles means underestimating the dynamics of the class balance of forces. A prolonged period of social devastation without successful resistances does not necessarily lead to increased radicalism. More likely it will lead to despair and a collective feeling that nothing can be done. That is why political decisions regarding movements are crucial. The recent developments regarding the Secondary Education Teachers’ strike are in this sense revealing of the deficiencies of tactics of the Left. The decision of the leadership of SYRIZA to agree on calling off the strike, instead of attempting to break the government ‘back to work order,’ was an expression not only of a deep rooted reformism but mainly of a conception of politics as electoral politics, not as an attempt to influence the real balance of forces. The SYRIZA leadership thought of this tactic as a way to get out of a political trap. In reality this decision only reinforced the government’s rhetoric that it is in a position to pre-emptively smash a movement. What can remain after such a confrontation are not only anger and protest against authoritarian measures, but also disappointment and a feeling of futility.

Above all, we need to think of this whole process not simply as an attempt by a progressive or benevolent government to save society but as a mass movement for the experimentation with new forms of organization of production, education, health. We need to make use of the collective experience and knowledge that have emerged in the movements and struggles of the past years for this experimentation that cannot be left to specialists, even from the Left. The crisis and austerity in Greece have been a catalyst for many people, who faced with extremely aggressive policies are obliged to think differently. When the government is dismantling public education, militants in education trade unions are forced to think how we can operate schools differently. When the public health is in ruins and is kept in place only by the efforts of doctors and other health workers, then public health unions face the question of what it means to actually run a truly public health system oriented toward improving the quality of life. This is exactly the kind of collective experimentation that can provide as with concrete answers regarding a contemporary socialist strategy.

Are there signs of such processes in Greece today? Or have we arrived at an impasse and there is no other alternative than simply waiting for the next general election in the hope that the Left will get the mandate to form a government? I think that we are far from this. We may not have had in the past months the kind of social explosion that gain the attention of international media, but everyday struggles continue in the form of small and big battles in various sectors, solidarity initiatives, and anti-fascist demonstrations. At the same time, things are changing in the trade union movement, the Left is on the rise in important unions such as in public education and public health and this opens up the possibility for a radical reorientation. Moreover, there is an open debate regarding the question of the political program and there are signs of mass appeal of a radical anti-EU, anti-euro position, especially after the experience of Cyprus. The current dialogue between ANTARSYA, the front of the anti-capitalist Left, and other radical groups in Greece, opens up the way for a ‘third pole’ in the Greek Left that will insist on the actuality of such a radical political alternative, in an attempt to change the balance of forces within the Left.

What is to be done? I think that the answer, at least for all of us in the Greek Left, in ANTARSYA and other radical formations, that do not opt for a tactic of simply hoping that we will somehow push SYRIZA to the Left, and at the same time do not want to engage in a destructive and sectarian criticism (like the one coming from the part of the Greek Communist Party), is to attempt to deal with the real challenges: To elaborate on the necessary transition program. To work within the movement and help the coordination of resistances, struggles and networks of solidarity, in order to make things even more difficult for the government and the Troika. To experiment with forms of self-management, self-organization and popular democracy from below.

Therefore, we are far from the end of the movement. I think that despite the efforts from the part of the government, the Troika, the forces of capital to suppress collective practices, and despite the effort of the leadership of SYRIZA to channel this dynamic into a fruitlessly ‘realist’ strategy of renegotiating austerity, Greece is still the most advanced laboratory of struggle and radical alternatives in Europe, and I hope that it will soon send a message of hope to working people all over Europe. –

Panagiotis Sotiris teaches social theory and social and political philosophy at the Department of Sociology of the University of the Aegean. This text is based on two presentations at the “Marx is a Must” Conference in Berlin (9-11 May 2013), organized by the Marx 21 network, and first published on his blog at lastingfuture.blogspot.gr.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

The idea that the uprising against the Syrian government is inspired by a grassroots movement thirsting for a pluralist, democratic state is a fiction.

The opposition’s chief elements are Islamists who seek to establish a Sunni-dominated Islamic state in place of a Syrian government they revile for being secular and dominated by Alawi “heretics.” “Al Qaeda-linked groups…dominate rebel ranks,” notes The Wall Street Journal. [1] “There is frustration with the West’s inability to help nurture a secular military or political opposition to replace Mr. Assad,” echoes The New York Times. [2] “Islamic forces seem to be ascendant within the opposition,” observes Gerald F. Seib. [3]

Indeed, almost from the opening moments of the latest outbreak of Islamic unrest in Syria, the government has said that while some protesters have legitimate grievances, the uprising is driven by militant Islamists with foreign backing.” [4] It’s no secret that Saudi Arabia and Qatar- monarchies which abominate democracy–are furnishing Islamist militants with arms, while Turkey, Jordan, Israel, France, Britain and the United States are also lending support.

Syria’s post-colonial history is punctuated by Islamist uprisings. The Muslim Brotherhood organized riots against the government in 1964, 1965, 1967 and 1969. It called for a Jihad against then president Hafiz al-Assad, the current president’s father, denigrating him as “the enemy of Allah.” By 1977, the Mujahedeen were engaged in a guerrilla struggle against the Syrian army and its Soviet advisers, culminating in the 1982 occupation of the city of Hama. The Syrian army quelled the occupation, killing 20,000 to 30,000. Islamists have since remained a perennial source of instability in Syria and the government has been on continual guard against “a resurgence of Sunni Islamic fundamentalists.” [5] The resurgence, touched off by uprisings in surrounding countries, prompted Glen E. Robinson to write in Current History that the rebellion was a continuation of “Syria’s Long Civil War.” [6]

But the Western media, echoing former colonialist powers and high officials in Washington, would call it something different: a popular, grassroots uprising against a brutal dictator. Today, however, the flood of YouTube videos by Islamic terrorists, chronicling their killings of POWs, eviscerations of captured soldiers, and barbecuing of heads, has spoiled the narrative. It’s no longer possible to angelize the Syrian rebellion as a popular insurrection against dictatorship. Now even the Wall Street Journal and New York Times share Assad’s view.

Still, the rebels’ spin doctors aren’t yielding entirely. They insist that while the rebellion may be dominated by religious fanatics with a penchant for terrorism, that it wasn’t always so. Instead, they say, it began as a peaceful plea for democracy that was eventually hijacked by jihadists only after the government used brute force to crush a protest movement. At that point, protesters were forced to take up arms in self-defense.

This view is dishonest. To start, it sweeps aside the reality that the rebellion is dominated by Islamists who care not one whit for democracy and indeed are actively hostile to it. What’s more, it conceals the fact that the Assad government made substantial concessions in the direction of creating the kind of pluralist, democratic society the rebels are said to thirst for. The rebels rejected the concessions, and that they did, underscores the fact that the rebellion’s origins are to be found in Islamist, not democratic, ambitions.

In response to protestors’ demands, Damascus made a number of concessions that were neither superficial nor partial.

First, it cancelled the long-standing abridgment of civil liberties that had been authorized by the emergency law. The law, invoked because Syria is technically in a state of war with Israel, gave Damascus powers it needed to safeguard the security of the state in wartime, a measure states at war routinely take. Many Syrians, however, chaffed under the law, and regarded it as unduly restrictive. Bowing to popular pressure, the government lifted the security measures.

Second, the government proposed a new constitution to accommodate protestors’ demands to strip the Ba’ath Party of its special status, which had reserved for it a lead role in Syrian society. Additionally, the presidency would be open to anyone meeting basic residency, age and citizenship requirements. Presidential elections would be held by secret vote every seven years under a system of universal suffrage.

Here was the multi-party democracy the opposition was said to have clamored for. A protest movement thirsting for a democratic, pluralist society could accept the offer, its aspirations fulfilled. The constitution was put to a referendum and approved. New parliamentary multi-party elections were held. Multi-candidate presidential elections were set for 2014. A new democratic dawn had arrived. The rebels could lay down their arms and enjoy the fruits of their victory.

Or so you might expect. Instead, the insurrectionists escalated their war against Damascus, rejecting the reforms, explaining that they had arrived too late. Too late? Does pluralist democracy turn into a pumpkin unless it arrives before the clock strikes twelve? Washington, London and Paris also dismissed Assad’s concessions. They were “meaningless,” they said, without explaining why. [7] And yet the reforms were all the rebels had asked for and that the West had demanded. How could they be meaningless? Democrats, those seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict, and the Assad government, could hardly be blamed for concluding that “democracy was not the driving force of the revolt.” [8]

Elaborating on this theme, the Syrian president noted:

It was seemingly apparent at the beginning that demands were for reforms. It was utilized to appear as if the crisis was a matter of political reform. Indeed, we pursued a policy of wide scale reforms from changing the constitution to many of the legislations and laws, including lifting the state of emergency law, and embarking on a national dialogue with all political opposition groups. It was striking that with every step we took in the reform process, the level of terrorism escalated. [9]

From Washington’s perspective, the new constitution opened space for alternative political parties. Washington could exploit this new openness to gain leverage in Syria by quietly backing parties that favor pro-US positions–a plus.

From the Islamists’ point of view, however, there were only negatives. First, the constitution was secular, and not rooted in Islam. Second, it proposed to ban political parties or movements that were formed on the basis of religion, sect, tribe, or region, as well as on the basis of gender, origin, race or color. This would effectively ban any party whose aim was to establish an Islamic state.

There were negatives too for Washington, London, Paris and Tel Aviv.

First, the constitution’s preamble defined Syria as “the beating heart of Arabism,” and “the forefront of confrontation with the Zionist enemy and the bedrock of resistance against colonial hegemony on the Arab world and its capabilities and wealth.” This hardly accorded with Washington’s desire to turn Syria into a “peace-partner” with Israel and clashed with the Western project of spreading neo-colonial tentacles across the Arab world.

Second, the constitution formalized the political orientation of the Syrian Ba’athists. This has been summed up by Assad as “Syria is an independent state working for the interests of its people, rather than making the Syrian people work for the interests of the West.” [10] Accordingly, the constitution mandated that important sectors of the Syrian economy would remain publicly owned and operated in the interests of Syrians as a whole. Western firms, then, were to be frozen out of profit-making opportunities in key sectors of the Syrian economy, a prospect hardly encouraging to the Wall Street financial interests that dominate decision-making in Washington.

Ba’ath socialism has long irritated Washington. The Ba’athist state has always exercised considerable influence over the Syrian economy, through ownership of enterprises, subsidies to privately-owned domestic firms, limits on foreign investment, and restrictions on imports. These are the necessary economic tools of a post-colonial state trying to wrest its economic life from the grips of former colonial powers and to chart a course of development free from the domination of foreign interests.

Washington’s goals, however, are obviously antithetical. It doesn’t want Syria to nurture its industry and jealously guard its independence, but to serve the interests of the bankers and major investors who truly matter in the United States, by opening Syrian labor to exploitation and Syria’s land and natural resources to foreign ownership.

Prior to Assad drafting the new constitution, the US State Department complained that Syria had “failed to join an increasingly interconnected global economy,” which is to say, had failed to turn over its state-owned enterprises to private investors, among them Wall Street financial interests. The State Department also expressed dissatisfaction that “ideological reasons” had prevented Assad from liberalizing Syria’s economy, that “privatization of government enterprises was still not widespread,” and that the economy “remains highly controlled by the government.” [11]

Were Assad to demonstrate a readiness to appease Wall Street’s demands he would have departed holus bolus from the dirigiste practices that had irritated the State Department. Instead, he did the opposite, drafting a constitution that mandated that the government maintain a role in guiding the economy on behalf of Syrian interests, and that the Syrian government would not make Syrians work for the interests of Western banks, oil companies, and other corporations. This was effectively a slap in Washington’s face.

He then compounded the sin by writing certain social rights into the constitution: security against sickness, disability and old age; access to health care; and free education at all levels. Now these rights would be placed beyond the easy reach of legislators and politicians who could sacrifice them on the altar of creating a low-tax, foreign-investment-friendly climate. To make matters worse, he included an article in the constitution which declared that “taxes shall be progressive.”

Finally, he took a step toward real, genuine democracy–a kind that decision-makers in Washington, with their myriad connections to the banking and corporate world–could hardly tolerate. He included a provision in the constitution requiring that at minimum half the members of the People’s Assembly are to be drawn from the ranks of peasants and workers.

Therein were the real reasons Washington, London and Paris rejected Assad’s concessions. It wasn’t that they weren’t genuine. It was that they were made to the wrong people: to Syrians, rather than Wall Street; to the Arabs, rather than Israel. And nor was it that his reforms weren’t democratic enough. It was that they were too democratic, too focussed on safeguarding and promoting the interests of Syrians, rather than making Syrians promote the interests of Wall Street, Washington and Tel Aviv.

The Syrian constitution clarifies the orientation of the Syrian Ba’athists and underscores why the Syrian government ought to be supported in its struggle against foreign-backed Islamist rebels. In short, because it is, on balance, progressive, and the forces arrayed against it are retrograde. The Syrian government is pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist, anti-colonialist, and anti-imperialist. It is committed to secularism, non-sectarianism, and public ownership of the commanding heights of its economy. These are values that have traditionally been held high by the political left. Were the Syrian government to fall, it is almost certain that a US-client regime would be implanted in Damascus that would quickly adopt a pro-US foreign policy, abandon the Palestinians, capitulate to Israel, and cater to Western investors and corporations. The left project would, accordingly, be dealt a serious blow, and yet another state, dedicated to national liberation–not to say one with a sufficient democratic orientation to enshrine social rights in its constitution–would be crushed under the steamroller of US imperialism.

Notes

1. Adam Entous, “White House readies new aid for Syrian rebels”, The Wall Street Journal, April 10, 2013.
2. Anne Barnard, “Syria campaigns to persuade U.S. to change sides”, The New York Times, April 24, 2013.
3. Gerald F. Seib, “The risks holding back Obama on Syria”, The Wall Street journal, May 6, 2013.
4. Anthony Shadid, “Assad says he rejects West’s call to resign”, The New York Times, August 21, 2011.
5. US Library of Congress. A Country Study: Syria. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/sytoc.html
6. December 2012.
7. David M. Herszenhorn, “For Syria, Reliant on Russia for weapons and food, old bonds run deep”, The New York Times, February 18, 2012.
8. Zeina Karam, “In rare public appearance, Syrian president denies role in Houla massacre”, The Associated Press, June 3, 2012.
9. Bashar al-Assad May 19, 2013 interview with Clarin newspaper and Telam news agency
10. Bashar al-Assad May 19, 2013 interview with Clarin newspaper and Telam news agency
11. US State Department website. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3580.htm#econ. Accessed February 8, 2012.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

Senator meets with America-hating, Al-Qaeda terrorists

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
May 28, 2013

Given the fact that numerous individuals have been sent to the Guantanamo Bay detention facility for “associating with terrorists,” Senator John McCain has now opened himself up to the same fate after he met with FSA rebels in Syria who are admittedly led by and who have pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda terrorists.

“Republican Senator John McCain, a staunch advocate of US military aid to the Syrian opposition, has made a surprise visit to war-torn Syria and met with rebels. The controversial move comes as Russia and the US are trying to set up a peace conference,” reports RT.

McCain’s visit coincided with an EU decision to scrap the arms embargo on the Syrian opposition, clearing the way for Britain and France to send heavy weaponry to the rebels at a time when Syrian Army troops are scoring key victories.

A list of former Guantanamo Bay detainees reveals that many were detained in the infamous detention facility merely for “associating with terrorists,” which is precisely what John McCain did yesterday as he met with FSA militants who begged him to pressure Barack Obama into sending weapons and launching air strikes against the Assad government.

Despite efforts on behalf of NATO powers to differentiate between FSA rebels and Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists in Syria, the two are now one and the same, with Jabhat al-Nusra commanding FSA rebels. The following facts clearly illustrate how the FSA now bear all the hallmarks of a terrorist organization and by associating with them, John McCain is now not only an associate but also a lobbyist for terrorists.

– FSA rebels are defecting to Jabhat al-Nusra in droves.

– Jabhat al-Nusra is now the leading front line fighting force in Syria and is commanding the other rebel groups.

– Jabhat al-Nusra killed U.S. troops in Iraq.

– Immediately after the State Department declared Jabhat al-Nusra a terrorist organization, 29 different FSA rebel outfits pledged allegiance to the Al-Qaeda group.

– FSA rebels have vowed to “fight the U.S.” once they finish with Bashar Al-Assad.

– FSA rebels have been filmed burning US and Israeli flags on more than one occasion.

– FSA rebels have been filmed singing songs that glorify Osama Bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks.

– One FSA group even calls its fighting unit the “Osama Bin Laden” brigade.

– Another video shows FSA rebels chanting, “We are all with Osama bin Laden!”

– FSA rebels have voiced their desire to see the Al-Qaeda flag fly over the White House once the rebels are victorious across the region.

– FSA rebels have been filmed cutting out people’s hearts on camera and eating them while chanting “Allahu Akbar”.

– FSA rebels have been responsible for innumerable beheadings over the course of the conflict, chanting “Allahu Akbar” as they decapitate their victims.

– FSA rebels have committed innumerable sectarian murders, including beheading a man for being a Christian and feeding him to the dogs.

– FSA rebels have also forced children to behead people and carry out other atrocities.

– FSA rebels have ransacked Christian churches.

– FSA rebels have murdered numerous journalists in targeted killings, including Maya Nasser and most recently Yara Abbas.

– FSA rebels have been pictured numerous times flying the black flag of Al-Qaeda and wearing uniforms with Al-Qaeda insignia.

– FSA rebels have been caught on camera preparing chemical weapons attacks.

– In March, UN human rights investigator Carla del Ponte said FSA rebels had used chemical weapons.

– FSA rebels have forced prisoners to become suicide bombers.

– According to eyewitnesses on the ground, at least half of the so-called “Syrian rebels” aren’t even Syrian and are foreign jihadists sent by the likes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

In visiting FSA rebels, John McCain is repeating the exact same stunt he pulled before the NATO attack on Libya, fraternizing with known Al-Qaeda terrorists who were later involved in the attack on the US consulate.

By anyone’s definition, “bomb bomb bomb Iran” McCain is America’s most prominent and most influential lobbyists for global terrorism and should be sent to Guantanamo Bay immediately.

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

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

<!–

–>

This article was posted: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 at 6:09 am

Tags: terrorism, war

–>

This article originally appeared on: Infowars

A top US national security official has called for deeper military ties with China in areas such as fighting piracy, disaster relief and peacekeeping amid mounting tensions between the two global rivals on security issues.

White House National Security Adviser Tom Donilon reportedly made the remarks during a Tuesday meeting in Beijing with Chinaâ„¢s top military leader Fan Changlong, nearly two weeks before the presidents of the two nations are due to hold summit talks in US state of California, Reuters reports.

Donilon said the two governments should cooperate to face Å“non-traditional security challenges,” namely disaster relief, peacekeeping and counter piracy.

“An essential part of building a new model for relations between great powers is ensuring we have a healthy, stable and reliable military to military relationship,” Donilon said he told Fan at the Chinaâ„¢s ministry of defense, in brief comments to reporters.

Donilon also met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday, during which Xi reportedly said US-China relations were at “an important stage connecting the past and the future.”

However, neither side elaborated on the numerous sensitive areas President Xi and US President Barack Obama plan to discuss in their June meeting, including the intensifying tensions on the Korean peninsula and a persisting exchange of cyber attack allegations between two governments.

The Sino-US presidential summit is set to take place on June 7-8 at an expansive California estate called Sunnylands, located southeast of Palm Springs.

MFB/MFB

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Infowars.com
May 28, 2013

Last week, nationally syndicated radio host and pharmacist Ben Fuchs joined Alex discussing the absurdity of Angelina Jolie’s recent double mastectomy, and pointing out the true culprit causing cancer rates to skyrocket: a nutritionally devoid, GMO-laden food environment.

Pharmacist Ben looks at the human body as a healing and regenerating system, designed divinely to heal and renew itself on a moment to moment basis, but the body needs the raw materials we call nutrition and nutritional supplementation to do its work.

Try Youngevity’s excellent line of natural health products and supplements at InfowarsHealth.com or InfowarsTeam.com and give your body what it needs to stay healthy, while also helping to support our broadcast.

<!–

–>

This article was posted: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 at 5:45 am

Tags: food, gmo, health, infowarshealth, natural health

–>

This article originally appeared on: Infowars

This file photo shows Iranians preparing to cast their ballots in a presidential election.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

This file photo shows Iranians preparing to cast their ballots in a presidential election.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Miqati says the recent attack on three soldiers near the Syrian border will not prevent Lebanon from defending its sovereignty.

Miqati made the remarks on Tuesday shortly after armed men opened fire on a military checkpoint near the town of Arsal, eastern Lebanon, killing three soldiers.

Å“Any attack on the army will not deter us from going ahead with preserving security and defending Lebanonâ„¢s sovereignty and independence,” Miqati stated.

He also said that people in Lebanon support the army Å“at this difficult stage.”

Miqati added that the Lebanese government and the Higher Defense Council had given the authority to the army to take appropriate measures in regard to such attacks.

On Monday, three mortar shells fired by the foreign-backed militants in Syria hit residential neighborhoods in Bdaita, on the outskirts of Hermel in Lebanonâ„¢s Bekaa Valley. A 17-year-old girl was killed and a woman was wounded in the attack.

Two rockets also hit the southern district of Zahyieh in Lebanonâ„¢s capital, Beirut, on May 26, injuring several people. In another incident on the same day, four mortars slammed into the heart of Hermel, which is situated about 100 kilometers (62 miles) northeast of Beirut.

The incidents in Lebanon came amid recent deadly clashes between supporters and opponents of the Syrian government in the countryâ„¢s northern city of Tripoli.

SAB/HSN

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Jon Rappoport
Infowars.com
May 28, 2013

“What is finished is the idea that this great country is dedicated to the freedom and flourishing of every individual in it. It’s the individual that’s finished. It’s the single, solitary human being that’s finished. It’s every single one of you out there that’s finished. Because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals. It’s a nation of some two hundred odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter-than-white, steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings and as replaceable as piston rods.” – Howard Beale, in Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 film,Network

But that was only a movie. Who cares about that? You go into a theater, sit there in the dark for a couple of hours, walk out, and think about something else.

For several years now, I’ve been writing about the decline of the individual. The wipeout.

Every time I write an article on this subject, I receive suggestions. I should go back and re-read Marx. I need to understand the difference between “communal, communitarian, community, communist.” I should research worker-owned businesses. What about trans-substantial transpersonal sub-brain algorithmic psychology? How about the pygmies? Ego? Superego? Id?

I appreciate these and other remarks, but I’m talking about the individual, about Self, beyond any construct, beyond citizenship, beyond membership, beyond sociology or anthropology or archeology.

The individual is enshrined in various political documents, but his rights don’t originate there. Neither does courage nor imagination.

I’ve laid out the enormous psyop designed to submerge the individual in unconscious goo. This psyop depends on the repetition of words like: unity, love, caring, community, family. And phrases like “we’re all in this together.”

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

The individual is characterized as: lone, outsider, selfish,greedy, inhumane, petty. Turn him into an exile, excommunicated from the great body of humanity.

Here, in the usual prose, is a familiar formulation of the grand psyop: “We can no longer afford the luxury of thinking of ourselves as individuals. The stakes are too high. Finally, we must all come together and realize our presence on this planet is a shared experience. The decimation of our resources, through hatred and divisive behavior, the denial of love and community, the cold greed and excessive profit-making, the whole range of social and political injustices–all this can ultimately be laid at the door of the individual who refuses to join the rest of humanity…”

Is this manifesto valid? It’s a deception, BECAUSE it’s aimed at making the individual extinct.

And once that happens, the collective, managed by Globalist princes, will have a clear path to the control of Earth, at the expense of the rest of us. And the cruelties we now witness will pale in comparison to what is in store for us.

“When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse…The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race, or his holy cause…Collective unity is not the result of the brotherly love of the faithful for each other. The loyalty of the true believer [who surrenders Self] is to the whole – the church, party, nation – and not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society.” – Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, 1951

Wait. Isn’t that a bit harsh? Isn’t that too “critical and negative?” Where is the cosmic share-and-care we need to spread like butter over the whole universe? I mean, Eric Hoffer was a wonderful writer, and he was a working man, a longshoreman for his whole life, so we should admire him, but today’s prophets are wired directly into the Unity that will save us all automatically–like a toaster popping up with toast every time…right?

On some mid-west college campus, a wide-eyed kid of 19, full of hope and optimism, is studying political science. His professor is running down the catalog of stunning injustices that populate far-off regions of the planet.

The boy wants to help. His professor gives him the name of a humanitarian group that runs operations in Africa. The boy, in some sort of “personal crisis,” drops out of school and signs on with the group.

Little does he know that the charity he is now working with in Africa has ties to USAID, which in turn is a solid CIA front. The real mission of the charity, unknown to most or all of its members, is gathering information that can be used as intelligence.

Under the banner of justice, help, hope, and unity of all peoples, the charity is providing actionable intell to CIA-backed “rebel forces” who are carrying out assassinations and bombings in advance of a political coup.

The coup will pave the way for new deals with multinational scum, organized as corporations, to enter the scene and plunder natural resources and labor at more formidable levels.

Five years later, the boy leaves the charity and returns to the US. He is confused, looking for another group in which he can submerge himself. He’s hooked on groups…

The naïve have given up the ghost on their own independent existence. That is the key.

Think of some of the messages of recent pathetic presidents. Bush the Elder: “Kinder, gentler.” Clinton: “I feel your pain.” Bush 2: “No child left behind.” Obama: “We’re all in this together.”

Judging by these presidents’ murderous actions, it’s clear they were selling unity and caring and togetherness as cover stories for oppressive business as usual.

The op? Make the individual extinct, present him as a useless and dangerous and outmoded construct. Then, whatever real unity that might exist between individuals will vanish, because the population will take on the shape of a coagulated mass melted down into a cosmic glob of androidal harmony.

Artists have warned about all this. Their so-called supporters say, “Oh yes, he was a wonderful writer. Misunderstood, of course, but brave in the face of utter rejection.” The usual claptrap. Point is, these gushing advocates conveniently and easily forget what the artists actually wrote.

Here is another reminder from an Outsider who was glad to be outside. He was a hero to some. He was reviled by many.

“A bureau operates on opposite principles of inventing needs to justify its existence. Bureaucracy is wrong as a cancer, a turning away from the human evolutionary direction of infinite potentials and differentiation and independent spontaneous action to the complete parasitism of a virus…Bureaus die when the structure of the state collapse. They are as helpless and unfit for independent existence as a displaced tapeworm, or a virus that has killed the host.”

“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.”

“There is simply no room left for ‘freedom from the tyranny of government’ since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare. Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it.”

The author? William S. Burroughs. But not to worry, he was crazy. Of course he was. He didn’t profess utter loyalty to the mass of humanity. He didn’t prostrate himself before “the greater good.” He didn’t preach unity and togetherness.

He was an individual. Therefore, he is obsolete. A cherished memory of a time now wiped from the mind. Now we are all dancing and marching in the psyop.

Here’s another psyop and cultural theme: the distortion of money and the free market.

The psyop goes this way: The making of $$ is a religious event comparable to the arrival of Jesus or the appearance of the Great Buddha. Indeed, isn’t Christmas the season measured by consumer sales?

A life justified is a life of the bottom-line cash register, a poem to make Shakespeare turn pale with envy.

It doesn’t matter what a product is. If it sells, it must be good. It must mean something profound.

Nail polish, a new plastic toy, a little robot that sings songs–they’re Walt Whitman and Michangelo and Bach because they jumped off store shelves.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are geniuses because they and their companies amassed billions. It has to be so.

The team that put together Goofy Bird III, the summer blockbuster hit, are the Chaucers of our time. The box office proved it.

What product makes more money than any other? War. Therefore, Jesus wore a white leisure suit and played golf with generals and made deals for weapons systems.

“If a young man or woman today wants to express his true individuality and succeed with other like-minded individuals who have no fear of failure, the two businesses to go into are war and banking. My father told me that, and it’s stood me in good stead all these years. It’s the apotheosis of America…”

An artist named Paddy Chayefsky, in his film, Network, covered this waterfront pretty well:

“You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and sub-atomic and galactic structure of things today! And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and You Will Atone!”

Hail to the collective, managed from the top. Ah, but as I said, Network was just a movie.

Who cares about American artists? They need monuments and grants here and there, if they’re still alive, but…taking them seriously? Who would want to do that? They’re just…INDIVIDUALS.

Who would want to keep the individual alive, especially the free, independent, and creative individual? We can learn all we need about that by listening to TED lectures!

Here is another quote from an American artist. This one is REALLY not in the politically correct mode. I mean, how dare he!:

“Tomorrow you may bring about the destruction of your world. Tomorrow you may sing in Paradise above the smoking ruins of your world-cities. But tonight I would like to think of one man, a lone individual, a man without name or country, a man whom I respect because he has absolutely nothing in common with you–MYSELF. Tonight I shall meditate upon that which I am.” – Henry Miller, Black Spring, 1936

And this! From the most celebrated American poet of all! Is this what he really wrote?

“I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself/And what I assume you shall assume/For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you/I loafe and invite my soul/I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass/…Creeds and schools in abeyance…I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked…The smoke of my own breath/Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine…The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides/The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.” – Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, I, II, VI & LII

A celebration of self, and self expanded out into limitless dimensions?

And this is is our real poet laureate?

Something must be wrong.

Yes, the individual, the self–these individual artists–far too messy, too uneven, too unpredictable, too complex to fit into a scheme of the future in which we’ll all be subsumed in a cosmic order.

No, the individual, the self, must be shaved and carved so we can all meld together in a simplified enlightenment.

Here, from the universally acclaimed author of Moby Dick, Herman Melville, another quote that sticks out from the great uniform mass of group-think:

“There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,–why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag, – that is to say, the Ego. Whereas those yes-gentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and, damn them! they will never get through the Custom House.”

There is no doubt; these Individuals are too thorny, too different–and even different from each other. How can we build a world of unity and unified enlightenment if we let them in the door?

We must erase the memory that these people ever existed. We need to cut down space and time, leave them out, and outfit a new continuum so it will accept only the brainwashed and reduced and harmonized desires of the collective.

Yes. That’s it.

Let’s cause everyone to accept one of two things. We are either “all in this together forever,” or money is the supreme and final god of all time and space. Those are the two choices. They both flatten out the soul and prepare it for the endless gray day.

The Individual must be put into permanent exile. We can’t even say what he is. We can’t define him. We can’t hold him within borders. We can’t know what he’ll do.

Sometimes he’s up, sometimes he’s down, sometimes he’s sideways. Sometimes he embraces the whole cosmos, sometimes he’s alone in a room.

The new world can’t have him. For sake of the coming glory, he has to exit.

The Great Psyop hath spoken.

So, you see, when it comes to freedom, I’m not talking about columns and columns of people marching in one direction, most of them moving ahead together, and a few dropping out and scattering. I’m not talking about a billion androids, among whom a few thousand defect.

I’m not talking about androids or columns of marchers at all. I’m talking about Self. The individual apart from any coordinated picture, apart from any tedious idea about what a human being is.

I don’t care whether he chooses to live in a one-room apartment in New York or a commune in Georgia. I don’t care whether he votes Republican or Democrat or the Party of Golden Lucifer. I don’t care about any of those distinctions, because they all proceed from some horrendous and mutilated idea, some shrunken desiccated idea of what the Self IS in the first place.

“Well, we’re really all the same, so the choices a person has aren’t that important…”

We’re really all the same AFTER the great curtain has lowered on the individual and his psyche and his imagination and his daring. Yes, THEN we’re all the same. And then it doesn’t matter what the individual thinks or does, or whether he goes left or right or stays down the middle. THEN he begins to concoct systems and counter-systems and parochial visions he wants to impose on everyone else.

The truth is, we’re all different, astonishingly different. So different, in fact, that left to our own devices, over a long enough span of time, how each one of us would express his deepest thoughts and inventions would make the world into a completely different place.

The individual, the Self, isn’t just a little different or moderately different or quite different. The individual is a revolution all his own, a living breathing revolution.

He can become and identify with any other thing or creature in the universe–or not. He can think with seventeen brains and walk on eight legs if he wants to. He can be Self inventing more Self. He can destroy all forms and shapes of slavery–most importantly his own.

He can love and he can hate. He can experience and create emotions that have never been dreamed of. He can dance with the angels on the head of a pin or drift off past the stars.

He knows freedom is real, and he doesn’t have the slightest interest in interfering with another’s freedom.

This is what political and social movements are FOR: to establish enough freedom for the individual, any individual, so that he can then, if he wants to, become what he is, which is to say, invent his existence entirely according to his own fecund imagination. It will not be a copy of anyone else’s existence. It will not even be close.

After enough time has elapsed, it will be astonishing.

I know many people who believe they are already free and are already living life exactly the way they want to. This is preposterous. At a superficial level, yes. But beyond that, there are oceans of potential expression and invention they haven’t begun to fathom. If by “free” they mean relatively unencumbered by outside forces, but locked down tight as a drum from the inside, then yes, they are free, and good luck to them.

I’ve quoted artists in this essay because I want to impart at least some sense of how different we are from each other. This doesn’t mean we can’t bridge the gulf; of course we can. In fact, it becomes far easier when each of us is speaking with a Voice uncoupled from the “wisdom” of this joke of a society in which we currently live.

The ultimate and permanent fusion of all things is a myth and fairy tale. It’s a fairy tale bought by people who have never ventured off the reservation to discover and invent their own Voice.

If all this is true, then why do I write about the crimes of the medical cartel, the crimes of Monsanto, the corrosive destruction wrought by television? Why bother with any of this? Because I’m for authentic movements to end these crimes. The mafias of this world are out to gain as much control as possible…and finally and ultimately, this means a war against the freedom of every individual. It means writing the individual and his enormous untapped potential out of existence.

When the android-uniformity of all individuals is being sold as marvelous unity, that needs to be pointed out. When millions of people believe uniqueness=uniformity=unity, that’s more Orwellian than Orwell, and it needs to be pointed out.

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 atwww.nomorefakenews.com

<!–

–>

This article was posted: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 at 4:58 am

Tags: activism, domestic news, government corruption, police state

–>

This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Michael Snyder
Economic Collapse
May 28, 2013

The financial system of the third largest economy on the planet is starting to come apart at the seams, and the ripple effects are going to be felt all over the globe. Nobody knew exactly when the Japanese financial system was going to begin to implode, but pretty much everyone knew that a day of reckoning for Japan was coming eventually. After all, the Japanese economy has been in a slump for over a decade, Japan has a debt to GDP ratio of well over 200 percent and they are spending about 50 percent of all tax revenue on debt service. In a desperate attempt to revitalize the economy and reduce the debt burden, the Bank of Japan decided a few months ago to start pumping massive amounts of money into the economy. At first, it seemed to be working. Economic activity perked up and the Japanese stock market went on a tremendous run. Unfortunately, there is also a very significant downside to pumping your economy full of money. Investors start demanding higher returns on their money and interest rates go up. But the Japanese government cannot afford higher interest rates. Without super low interest rates, Japanese government finances would totally collapse. In addition, higher interest rates in the private sector would make it much more difficult for the Japanese economy to expand. In essence, pretty much the last thing that Japan needs right now is significantly higher interest rates, but that is exactly what the policies of the Bank of Japan are going to produce.

There is a lot of fear in Japan right now. On Thursday, the Nikkei plunged 7.3 percent. That was the largest single day decline in more than two years. Then on Monday the index fell by another 3.2 percent.

And according to Business Insider, things are not looking good for Tuesday at this point…

In post-close futures trading, the Nikkei has dropped by another couple hundred points, and has dropped below 14,000.

Are we witnessing the beginning of a colossal financial meltdown by the third largest economy on the planet? The Bank of Japan is starting to lose control, and if Japan goes down hard the crisis could spread to Europe and North America very rapidly. The following is from a recent article by Graham Summers…

As Japan has indicated, when bonds start to plunge, it’s not good for stocks. Today the Japanese Bond market fell and the Nikkei plunged 7%. The entire market down 7%… despite the Bank of Japan funneling $19 billion into it to hold things together.

This is what it looks like when a Central Bank begins to lose control. And what’s happening in Japan today will be coming to the US in the not so distant future.

If you think the Fed is not terrified of this, think again. The Fed has pumped over $1 trillion into foreign banks, hoping to stop the mess from getting to the US. As Japan is showing us, the Fed will fail.

Investors, take note… the financial system is sending us major warnings…

If you are not already preparing for a potential market collapse, now is the time to be doing so.

And all of this money printing is absolutely crushing the Japanese yen. Since the start of 2013, the yen has declined 16 percent against the U.S. dollar, even though the U.S. dollar is also being rapidly debased. Just check out this chart of the yen vs. the U.S. dollar. It is absolutely stunning…

The term “currency war” is something that you are going to hear a lot more over the next few years, and what you can see in the chart above is only the beginning.

What the Bank of Japan is doing right now is absolutely unprecedented. It has announced that it plans to inject the equivalent of approximately$1.4 trillion into the Japanese economy in less than two years.

As Kyle Bass recently discussed, that dwarfs the quantitative easingthat the Federal Reserve has been doing…

“What they’re doing represents 70% of what the Fed is doing here with an economy 1/3 the size of ours”

The big problem for Japan will come when government bond yields really start to rise. The yield on 10 year government bonds has been creeping up over the past few months, and if they hit the 1.0% mark that will set off some major red flags.

Because Japan has a debt to GDP ratio of more than 200 percent, the only way that it can avoid a total meltdown of government finances is to have super low interest rates. The video posted below does a great job of elaborating on this point…

It really is very simple. If interest rates rise substantially, Japan will be done.

Investor Kyle Bass is one of those that have been warning about this for a long time…

There’s a fatalism, he says, in everyone he talks to in Japan. Their thinking is changing, and the way they talk to him about debt is changing. They already spend 50% of tax revenue on debt service.

“If rates go up, it’s game over.”

The financial problems in Cyprus and Greece are just tiny blips compared to what a major financial crisis in Japan would potentially be like. The Japanese economy is larger than the economies of Germany and Italy combined. If the house of cards in Japan comes tumbling down, trillions of dollars of investments all over the globe are going to be affected.

And what is happening right now in Japan should serve as a sober warning to the United States. Like Japan, the money printing that the Federal Reserve has been doing has caused economic activity to perk up a bit and it has sent the stock market on an unprecedented run.

Unfortunately, no bubble that the Federal Reserve has ever created has been able to last forever. At some point, we will pay a very great price for all of the debt that the U.S. government has been accumulating and all of the reckless money printing that the Fed has been engaged in.

So enjoy the calm before the storm while you still can.

It won’t last for long.

<!–

–>

This article was posted: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 at 4:56 am

Tags: business, economics, financial, money

–>

This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Jack Kenny
New American
May 28, 2013

A California congressman is preparing legislation to repeal the post-9/11 legislation that two presidents have relied on as justification for waging war in several countries simultaneously against persons or organizations believed to be involved in terrorist attacks or the planning of them. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.; pictured) told Spencer Ackerman of Wired that he plans to introduce a bill to “sunset” the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed by nearly unanimous votes in Congress on September 18, 2001, just one week after terrorists flew hijacked airplanes into the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

“The current AUMF is outdated and straining at the edges to justify the use of force outside the war theater,” Schiff told Wiredmagazine, an online journal on trends in technology. The publication also reports extensively on politics, especially on issues affecting electronic privacy. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have relied on the Joint Resolution as authority for “everything from the warrantless electronic surveillance of American citizens to drone strikes against al-Qaida offshoots that did not exist on 9/11,” Wired noted.

The resolution has also been interpreted to authorize the targeted killing of alleged terrorists, including U.S. citizens in foreign lands abroad who are actively engaged plotting terrorist attacks on the United States. In his speech at the National Defense University May 23, Obama said that to capture such individuals and put them on trial is not always feasible. He described as necessary the September 2011 killing by drone strike of the American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, whom he identified as the chief of external operations for al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula. Al-Awlaki helped oversee a plot to bomb two U.S-bound cargo planes in 2010 and was behind a foiled attempt to detonate explosives aboard a plane when it was landing in Detroit on Christmas Day, 2009, Obama said.

“I would have detained and prosecuted Awlaki if we captured him before he carried out a plot, but we couldn’t,” he claimed. “And as president, I would have been derelict in my duty had I not authorized the strike that took him out.”

In the same speech, the president said he would work with Congress in exploring options for “increased oversight” of targeted killings and to “refine and ultimately repeal” the AUMF. “Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue,” he said. “But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.”

Previous efforts to repeal the AUMF have gone nowhere. Rep. Barbara Lee, another California Democrat, cast the only vote in Congress against the resolution at the time of its passage and has tried several times to repeal it. After Republicans won a majority of the House seats in the 2010 elections, Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), incoming chairman the Armed Services Committee, said it was time to revise the authorization. Noting that it grants authority for using military force against those responsible for the 9/11 attacks, McKeon argued that the administration lacked legal authority to combat al-Qaeda affiliates that have sprung up since then in places such as Yemen and East Africa. But the Obama administration at that time showed no interest in revisiting the authorization. The resolution, as passed, is “sufficient to address the existing threats I’ve seen,” Jeh Johnson, then the senior lawyer for the Department of Defense, told the committee at a March 2011 hearing.

Schiff said the end of the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan, scheduled for the end of next year, might be a good time to repeal the AUMF, but he admits to having “only a less clear idea of what should follow.” The Afghan war was initiated in October of 2011, as the beginning of the war on terror, since the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was believed to be harboring al-Qaeda units and training camps. In 2010, Leon Panetta, then director of the CIA, said there were no more than 50 to 100 al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan. But the war on terror has also included U.S. aerial attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, and some members of Congress seem interested in expanding, rather than limiting, the president’s authority to wage war on other groups designated as terrorist organizations. An aide to the House Armed Services Committee said McKeon is not in tune with his California colleague on repeal.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

“The chairman is far from convinced that’s the direction we need to go,” the spokesman told Wired. “We need to reaffirm our authority with respect to those [al-Qaeda-] affiliated groups.”

Obama said May 23 he will not sign any legislation expanding the AUMF mandate. But he also pledged that the United States will continue “a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America” in places such as Yemen, Somalia, and Mali. The president quoted James Madison’s warning that “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” But when Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Sheehanasked was asked at a recent Senate hearing how much longer the war on terror is likely to last, he replied: “At least 10 to 20 years.”

Given the 12 years since it started, that would add up to “at least” 22 to 32 years of continual warfare. There is no time limit in the Authorization for Use of Military Force, but nearly a quarter to a third of a century in a military campaign without a declaration of war by Congress might be stretching the constitutional authority of the commander-in-chief a bit. Even some of the Senate’s leading hawks in the war on terror have voiced concerns over the breadth, if not the duration, of the war-making authority administration officials claim the president has under the AUMF. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that the authority “has grown way out of proportion and is no longer applicable to the conditions that prevailed, that motivated the United States Congress to pass the resolution in the authorization for the use of military force that we did in 2001.”

“For you to come here and say we don’t need to change it or revise or update it, I think is, well, disturbing,” he told the four senior military officials testifying before the committee. “I don’t blame you because basically you’ve got carte blanche as to what you are doing around the world.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asked if the AUMF gives the president the authority to put “boots on the ground” in Yemen or the Congo.

“Yes, as long as the purpose was targeting a group associated with al Qaeda that intended to harm the United States or its coalition partners,” responded Robert Taylor, acting general counsel for the Department of Defense.

“This is the most astounding and disturbing hearing that I’ve been to since I’ve been here,” said freshman Sen. Angus King (I-Maine). “You guys have essentially rewritten the Constitution today.”

“The testimony I hear today suggests the administration believes that they would have the authority to go into Syria,” said Tim Kaine ( D-Va.), referring to the civil war between rebel forces and Syrian president Bashar Hafez al Assad. “But I don’t want us to walk out of the room leaving an impression that members of Congress also share the understanding that that would be acceptable.”

But would Congress assert its constitutional authority to prevent the president from taking the nation into another undeclared war? On that point the nation’s lawmakers appear to have, in Rep. Schiff’s words, “only a less clear idea.”

<!–

–>

This article was posted: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 at 5:01 am

Tags: domestic news, government corruption, gun rights, police state

–>

This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Anthony Gucciardi
Infowars.com
May 28, 2013

Americans no longer know the purpose of Memorial Day beyond a period of time in which burgers and hot dogs are grilled to perfection in ‘celebration’ of the holiday. So what are they celebrating?

As you can see in Mark Dice’s video below, in which Americans have no idea what they are celebrating through cookouts and family gatherings, the very meaning of Memorial Day is entirely lost. Of course Memorial Day, for those who may be unaware, is a day that is set aside as a holiday in order to remember those who have died while serving in any area of the United States military – a holiday that stems back all the way to the conclusion of the American Civil War in order to honor the Union and Confederate soldiers who were killed by either side. In other words, it’s not some new tradition that was created out of thin air.

As one of the individuals interviewed explained, he simply doesn’t care what the holiday is as long as he gets off from work for one day. Whether it’s celebrating our sovereignty, the countless men and women who died fighting under the nation, or really anything – as long as it means a day off from work, it doesn’t matter! Can you imagine this attitude when it comes to the reality of what’s going on in our countrytoday? It’s no wonder that the banks are getting away with funding Mexican drug cartels and other groups without a hitch.

If it means getting off from work and having some friends over, who really cares? Checkout the video below:

And it’s a holiday that passes through left verses right and even through the war debate when considering its deep roots back throughout United States history. At the very least, just knowing what the holiday represents amounts to a baseline level of elementary knowledge. I must say I am amazed. I’ve seen people sign away their constitutional rights through Mark’s clipboards, petition to ban war, and I’ve even conducted similar experiments myself, but these videos still surprise me.

As it turns out, people are so driven by mainstream media theater that they will actually, in many cases, derive their opinions from their favorite talking head. Such is the case with those who responded to my question of how many people they estimate are killed with rifles each year with ‘over 1 million’ and other wild figures that blew my mind (it’s actually only 348). And why would they think this? Well, many of them cited mass shootings as the reason. The ‘epidemic’ of mass shootings that they see on the 24/7 news cycle following any such incident.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

The same mass shootings that the Department of Justice (DOJ) says kill a maximum of 35 people per year and divert a large amount of precious time and energy from law enforcement away from larger threats. Threats like thousands of deaths from blunt weapons, hands, feet, and knives that outnumber rifle deaths by the thousands.

I decided to cover this video and topic to get across this bottom line point: If we have individuals who simply do not care one bit to think about what they have been ‘celebrating’ each year for their entire lives, especially with Memorial Day representing something of real significance, are we really surprised how many people blindly go along with government and mega corporations? Whether they follow mainstream media theater, or simply live in a ‘pastime paradise’ full of mindless entertainment, remember that these are the people who call critical thinkers ‘conspiracy theorists’ for asking questions.

This article originally appeared at Story Leak

<!–

–>

This article was posted: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 at 4:59 am

Tags: domestic news, government corruption, police state

–>

This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Anthony Gucciardi
Infowars.com
May 28, 2013

The decision by the mainstream media to ignore the thousands of individuals marching down the busiest streets of major cities worldwide may be appalling, but in reality it matters very little at this point. Not only is the movement against Monsanto adding to its number each day thanks to the real alternative media and intelligent activism, but the movement as a whole is driven by an inexorable desire to push the GMO ‘food bully’ out of our food supply.

And in addition to the rapid success, growth, and determination of the movement, we have key players in the alternative media that have decided they’re fed up with the hindered focus of mainstream news agencies. I am extremely glad that we decided to run live coverage on the March Against Monsanto in Philadelphia for its first year, as otherwise the event would not have been properly documented and shared. Couple that with the fact that the mainstream media is on its last breathe of life, and you realize that the alternative news media can actually succeed without the support of the multi-billion dollar news agencies whose ratings are plunging.

What’s truly amazing is that I saw hundreds of pedestrians not taking part in the march use their smart phones to take a few minutes of video. Video that they will likely post on Facebook, Youtube, or Twitter and incite social media activity. Whether it’s asking what is going on via their hundreds of friends on Facebook, or showing support for the march. This is how ideas and movements spread in the modern age, and this is how things like the March Against Monsanto go viral – no television required.

In fact, it really just comes down to strong ideas and topics. We have so much support from so many different groups coming out and standing up against Monsanto that it just goes to show there is a ‘sleeping giant’ of awake individuals who thoroughly understand the challenges we face as a nation. One only needs to tap into that powerful energy of resistance to ignite a movement, like a match to a gasoline-drenched fire pit.

I was extremely impressed and inspired by the support at March Against Monsanto, including the number of readers who came up to voice their support. At the end of the day, even corrupt Monsanto executives and paid-off politicians cannot stand up against a movement like this.

This post originally appeared at Natural Society

<!–

–>

This article was posted: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 at 5:02 am

Tags: domestic news, government corruption, mainstream media

–>

This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Mike Adams
Natural News
May 28, 2013

When Facebook suspended the account of a mom of two autistic children who held anti-GMO signs at the recent rally, it became national news. Drudge Report linked to our Natural News story which documented Facebook censoring multiple accounts for sharing a photo Facebook absurdly called “abusive.”

That photo, it turns out, was nothing more than a picture of two children holding up hand-made signs at the March Against Monsanto. One of the signs read, “Biopesticides = Autism, Say No to GMO” and the other sign read, “Organic Food It’s My Medicine, Label GMOs” (see videos, below).

This defiance against GMOs was apparently too much for Facebook to tolerate, so it took immediate action to censor the account of the mom, Andrea Lalama.

In an exclusive interview, I spoke with Andrea by phone, where she provided more background about her autistic sons, her research into the causes of autism (vaccines and GMOs), and how Facebook’s outrageous act of censorship has actually multiplied global awareness of the corporate conspiracy against moms who seek the truth about autism, vaccines and GMOs.

Here are the first two parts of the interview:

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

Thanks to Ginger Taylor for the above graphic. She also adds, “Just what is the relationship between Monsanto and Facebook? When mom’s like Joni Abbott Cox are having their facebook accounts censored and restricted because they posted pictures of their children at the Millions Against Monsanto March, you have to start asking question. Is Monsanto paying Facebook? Is Monsanto threatening Facebook with legal action? Why is this happening?”

<!–

–>

This article was posted: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 at 5:00 am

Tags: food, gmo, internet, legislation, mainstream media, natural health

–>

This article originally appeared on: Infowars

In yet another US shooting, a father has gunned down his two adult daughters, killing one and critically injuring the other in the presence of his three grand children, before shooting himself dead.

The shooting incident occurred Monday in Californiaâ„¢s Central Valley town of Orosi, near Fresno, where all three lives, according to local authorities.

The gunman was identified as 63-year-old Anthony Alvarez and it is not yet clear what the motive of the shooting was.

Authorities further identified the dead daughter as Jennifer Kimble, 37, the mother of the three children that were reportedly present at the scene of the shooting.

The younger daughter, Valerie Alvarez, 33, was reported in critical condition at a Fresno hospital.

One of the gunmanâ„¢s three grandchildren at the scene, an 8-year-old girl, called local sheriff deputies to report the shooting.

The other two kids were boys, ages 11 and 13. None of the children were harmed during the incident, authorities said, noting that they were reunited with their father, who was at work at the time of the early morning shooting.

Shooting incidents across the US continue unabated as the nationâ„¢s lawmakers have refused to consider legislation to better control guns and even enforce stricter background checks for gun buyers following last Decemberâ„¢s shooting massacre of 20 children and 7 adults at a Connecticut Elementary School.

Every year, more than 30,000 people are shot and killed in the US.

The United States averages 87 shooting deaths per day as the result of gun violence, with an average of 183 injured, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab and the Centers for Disease Control.

MFB/MFB

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

A landslide on a road in Mexicoâ„¢s Hidalgo State has claimed the lives of seven people. (File photo)

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Afghan security forces examine the site of a bomb attack in Parwan Province. (File photo)

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Rosneft, Russia’s state-controlled oil magnate, is buying out partner Itera to gain 100% control of the independent gas trader, for a reported $3 billion.

Rosneft already owns 51% of ‘Itera’, one of the largest
independent producers of gas in Russia and the CIS, and the
takeover deal should be finalised in two months Kommersant
reported on Tuesday.

Rosneft will buy the remaining 49% from founder Igor Makarov
and his partners.

A source close to Rosneft told Kommersant that Makarov is running
short of funds.

“At some point it became clear that Igor Makarov has no capital for
business development,” said the source, quoted by
Kommersant.

“There were two options- either Itera gradually auctions off
shares to Rosneft, or, it fully buys out Makarov. The two companies
agreed on the second option on good terms,” said the
source.

Rosneft plans to continue the company’s operations under the same
‘Itera’ brand, but Makarov will step down from the board of
directors.

Itera was founded by a former member of the USSR cycling team
and a Turkmenistan native, Irgor Makarov. Established in the US in
1992, the company is Moscow-based. The company thrived in the 1990s
as Russia’s main gas exporter from Turkmenistan, a partnership
Makarov himself personally cultivated using his high-profile
connections in Gazprom and his native know-how. In February 2012,
Itera partnered with Rosneft, after nearly going bankrupt as a
result of Gazprom restructuring and a series of asset swaps.

Itera, one of Russia’s few independent contractors, played a key
role in Russia’s transitional economy, but has played less of a
role as gas companies have consolidated under state control.

Marakov started acquisition talks with Rosneft in 2011, and
according to a business acquaintance, he was “an idealist,
believing that, by agreeing to a deal with Rosneft, he would be
able to save his company and further develop.”

Rosneft first acquired Itera shares in 2012, when, according to
analysts, Itera was valued at $5.4 billion. Rosneft received 51% of
ITERA Group’s gas assets — 49 percent of Sibneftegaz, 49 percent of
Purgaz, 67% of Uralsevergaz and several other assets including
Rosneft-owned deposits in the Kynsko-Chaselsk group. The joint
venture combined liquid hydrocarbon and natural gas reserves which
were estimated at 60 million tonnes and 1.2 trillion cubic
meters.

Rosneft became the world’s largest listed crude oil producer in
March after acquiring TNK-BP in a $55 billion deal, which
added about 9 million tons of oil to the company’s production
output.

According to Rosneft president Igor Sechin, Rosneft will produce
210-215 million tons of oil in 2013. Gas extraction will reach 50
billion cubic meters, refined oil will reach 95 million tons, which
will yield a revenue of $160 billion. In 2012, Rosneft increased
oil production by 2.7 percent compared to the previous year.

Earlier in May, Itera and Rosneft proposed jointly modernizing a
chemical plant in Armenia, which was projected to cost between $400
and $500 million.

This article originally appeared on: RT

UK departments agree to 10pct. cuts

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Militants in Syria take positions during clashes with government troops in the city of Aleppo, May 22, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Pakistani volunteers carry the body of a lawyer who was killed with his young sons in an attack by gunmen in Karachi, May 28, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan (L) and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen address a press conference at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, May 27, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Smoke from the wildfire at California’s Los Padres National Forest near Santa Barbara.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

UK departments agree to 10pct. cuts

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan (L) and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen address a press conference at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, May 27, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

UK departments agree to 10pct. cuts

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

The civic body that governs Mumbai has passed a proposal to ban the display of bikini-clad mannequins outside lingerie shops to prevent the growing rate of sex offenders in the city recording the second-highest number of rapes in India.

India’s richest municipal organization, the Brihanmumbai
Municipal Corporation, which features some 227 councilors from
across parties, has unanimously supported the proposal by a female
politician from Shiv Sena party and called on its commissioner to
shape up a new policy on ‘indecent display’ in public areas. Once
approved, civic officials will have a legal right to make local
shopkeepers to remove a mannequin if they find it
‘underdressed’.

“Especially two-piece clothes which barely cover the body have
led to pollution of minds in today’s generation. Such a display
affects the mindset of men. One must think of the awkwardness a
woman will feel standing in front of such a mannequin,” BJP
councilor from Ghatkopar, Ritu Tawade, told The Indian
Express. 

According to the 39-year-old, who has already forced
several shops in her ward to cut short the display of their
indecent mannequins, provisions of the Indecent Representation of
Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986, say that “indecent representation
of women means the depiction in any manner of the figure of a
woman; her form or body or any part thereof in such way as to have
the effect of being indecent, or derogatory to, or denigrating
women, or is likely to deprave, corrupt or injure the public
morality or morals.”

Indian men, including legislators and judges, often blame
‘provocative clothing’ for inciting violence and sexual harassment
against women.

In the final two months of 2012, the International Center for
Research on Women conducted a survey amongst New Delhi residents to
find out their attitudes toward sexual violence. Ninety-five per
cent of the female respondents reported feeling unsafe in public,
due to the perceived threat of sexual violence against women, while
75 per cent of men agreed that “women provoke men by the way
they dress.”

One woman is raped every 20 minutes in India, according to the
National Crime Records Bureau. Anti-rape protests swept the country
with thousands of people, including women lawmakers, calling for
strict and immediate action from the authorities after a
23-year-old medical student was gang raped in a moving bus in
December. The woman was fatally injured in the attack and died in a
Singapore hospital.

Mumbai recorded a more-than-15 per cent increase in incidents of
rape, molestation and sexual harassment in 2011 over 2010,
according to a report cited by The Times of India. Mumbai witnessed
221 incidents of rape, with 39 per cent – or 117 – of these victims
under 18. Forty-one per cent of the total 584 rape cases across
nine police jurisdictions in the state were filed in the city.

A recent survey conducted by Trust Law, showed that India is the
fourth worst country for women to live in, behind only Afghanistan,
the Congo, and Pakistan. India was ranked the worst out of the G20
nations as it had abuse, violence, and murder on scales
unparalleled in the other G20 nations, with reasons behind this
including high rates of forms of slavery and exploitation.

According to the Asian Human Rights Commission, despite an
increase in the number of reported rapes, convictions have dropped
by a third,

“indicating failure on the part of the police to conduct
investigations and prosecutions.” The average wait time for the
judiciary to try a rape case in India is over 600 days, with many
cases taking five to 10 years to complete. As of March 2013, 24000
cases of sexual assault cases are pending before state High Courts
and the Supreme Court of India.

Meanwhile, studies reveal that women are more likely to report
sex crimes if female police officers are on duty. When they report
rape charges to male officers, they are often humiliated. India,
however, has a much lower number of female police than other Asian
countries. In New Delhi, for instance, merely 7 per cent of police
officers are women, according to The Times of India.

This article originally appeared on: RT

Asia’s fourth-largest economy is halting the operations of two nuclear power reactors to replace unauthorized equipment that was supplied using fake documentation, South Korea’s nuclear regulator said on Tuesday.

The Nuclear Safety and Security Commission also delayed the
restart of operations at two other reactors that were closed last
year, also over forged documents, Reuters reported.

Two of the affected nuclear reactors are in Kori, about 320 km (198
miles) southeast of Seoul, and in Wolsong, about 280 km (173 miles)
from the capital. The reactors each have a maximum capacity of
1,000 megawatts.

The shutdown of the reactors is more than just an embarrassment for
the South Korean government, which has said the closures present no
public threat. The country is heavily dependent on outside supplies
of oil, gas and coal, with about a third of its electricity coming
from nuclear power generation.

This is not the first time that Seoul has been forced to shut down
nuclear reactors over false certificates.

Earlier this month, six nuclear engineers and equipment suppliers
were handed prison sentences in connection with the supply of
unauthorized ‘non-core equipment’ (cooling fans, cables and
switches, which require international certification), mainly to the
Yeonggwang complex on the southwest coast.

The nuclear plant was forced to shut down three of the plant’s
six reactors in November, a move that prompted authorities to
inspect equipment at all of the country’s 23 nuclear facilities
nationwide.

The shutdown of Yeonggwang sparked fear among locals as some
2,500 villagers staged a protest outside the sprawling complex.
Hundreds of riot police and security officers were sent to the
demonstration, but there were no reports of violence, the Yonhap
news agency reported.

On February 9, 2012, the Gori-1 reactor near the southern city
of Busan briefly lost power and the emergency backup generator
failed to work.

Public fear over South Korea’s nuclear reactor shutdowns could
have its roots in Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster that occurred
in the wake of the Tokohu earthquake and tsunami of March 11,
2011.

The most powerful earthquake to ever hit Japan (9.0 on the
Richter scale) triggered the largest nuclear disaster since the
Chernobyl accident of 1986. Residents within a 20 km (12 mi) radius
of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant were forced to
evacuate due to the release of radiation.

Meanwhile, the shutdown of the South Korean nuclear plants,
while not a public threat, have sparked fears of widespread power
shortages as the nation braces for the summer season, when public
demand for air conditioning peaks.

The shutdown will begin on Tuesday, according to a spokesman at
Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co Ltd, which runs nuclear reactors
in South Korea and is owned by state-run utility Korea Electric
Power Corp.

A fourth newly-built nuclear power reactor, also in Wolsong,
which is waiting for approval to resume operations, will have its
cables replaced, the statement added.

The latest plant closures present a setback for the South Korean
government, which had been hoping to expand the construction of
nuclear power facilities as energy needs surge.

Robert Bridge, RT

This article originally appeared on: RT

Iranâ„¢s Foreign Ministry has slammed the European Unionâ„¢ decision to lift its arms embargo on the militants operating inside Syria as a Å“hasty and dangerous” measure.

On Monday, European Union foreign ministers agreed, after lengthy talks among divided ministers in Brussels, to lift the arms embargo on the militants in Syria.

In his weekly press conference on Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Araqchi said the decision will simply complicate the situation in Syria and hamper international efforts aimed at finding a political solution to the crisis in Syria.

Å“At a time when different Syrian opposition groups show more willingness to participate in the Geneva meeting to reach a political solution [to the unrest in Syria], such measures are considered disruptive and undermining these diplomatic efforts,” he said.

On May 7, Russia and the United States agreed in Moscow to convene an international conference on Syria, which will serve as a follow-up to an earlier Geneva meeting held in June 2012. The upcoming meeting will reportedly be held in June.

Araqchi also said the crisis in Syria can only be resolved politically, reaffirming Iranâ„¢s readiness to help resolve the situation in such a manner.

Referring to the upcoming Friends of Syria Conference due on May 29 in the Iranian capital, Tehran, Araqchi said that representatives from 40 countries will take part in the meeting, which also aims to find a political solution to the unrest in Syria.

The conference will be held under the banner of Å“Political Solution – Regional Stability.”

Araqchi also noted that the upcoming Geneva meeting on Syria should be all-inclusive and involve all the parties that can help resolve the crisis in the Arab country.

Iran has repeatedly expressed its opposition to any foreign intervention in Syria’s internal affairs, stressing that inclusive dialog and national reconciliation as well as free elections are the keys to resolving the unrest in the Arab country.

The unrest in Syria erupted over two years ago and many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.

YH/HJL

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Lebanese security forces inspect the site of the rocket attacks in southern Beirut, May 26, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

This file photo shows Malaysian security officials standing next to the dead bodies of Indonesian migrants wrapped in black plastic bags on a beach in Kota Tinggi of Malaysiaâ„¢s Johor state.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

An American F-15 fighter jet has crashed in waters off US-run Kadena Air Base on Okinawa Island in southern Japan due to a Å“technical malfunction.”

The incident occurred on Tuesday when the military plane, which flew out of Kadena Air Base, went down in the Pacific Ocean about 70 miles (110 kilometers) east of the island.

Å“A Kadena-based F-15 aircraft developed a problem that ultimately resulted in the pilot ejecting from the aircraft over the Pacific Ocean approximately 70 miles (110 kilometers) east of Okinawa,” the US Air Force said.

Japanese rescuers have reportedly found and saved the American pilot.

Okinawa hosts more than half of the 47,000 American service personnel in Japan.

Most of the Japanese are discontent with the presence of the US forces in Japan due to the crime, noise and risk of accidents associated with their bases.

DB/HJL

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Two war memorials in central London have been spray painted with the word Islam amid speculations that far-right anti-Muslim groups are behind the move to stir up anti-Muslim hatred.

The spray-paint was daubed on the Bomber Command Memorial monument in Green Park and the Animals In War memorial on Park Lane overnight.

The Metropolitan Police has said they are investigating the issue along with officers from Westminster police.

The vandalism comes as the far-right English Defence League prepares to march outside the Prime Ministerâ„¢s office on Downing Street in the wake of the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby in the Woolwich area of London on Wednesday.

The EDL have ever since launched several rallies in different cities exploiting the situation to step up their hate-preaching against Muslims.

The speculations about their involvement in the vandalism gains force when considering the fact that the Muslim Council of Britain, the Islamic Society of Britain and more than 100 mosques in the country have condemned the murder as a Å“truly barbaric” and Å“unforgivable” act.

Police said they are treating the spray paintings as criminal damage.

AMR/HE

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Venezuelaâ„¢s President Nicolas Maduro has said that the CNN in Spanish encourages Venezuelans to Ëœcarry out a coup dâ„¢etatâ„¢ against the government.

Å“CNN en Espanol is a network controlled by those seeking destabilization, which openly urges people to carry out a coup dâ„¢etat in Venezuela, and which is delivering a distorted version of our nationâ„¢s political and social life,” Maduro said in an address aired on national television on Monday.

He added that the CNN in Spanish was part of a wider campaign of Å“brutal psychological warfare” aimed at destabilizing Venezuela.

Å“It is broadcasting 24 hours a day not to tell whatâ„¢s going on in the world but rather to make Venezuela look bad,” the Venezuelan president stated.

Maduro dismissed recent reports about divisions in the Venezuelan leadership.

Maduro was elected president on April 14 after defeating opposition leader Henrique Capriles by receiving 50.7 percent of the votes against 49.1 percent, with a difference of about 235,000 ballots. Capriles claims irregularities took place during the election.

SZH/HSN

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Comments

Add comment

By posting your comment, you agree to abide by our Posting rules

This article originally appeared on: RT

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Russia says that the European Union’s decision to lift a ban on arming the militants in Syria will “directly harm” the prospects of a forthcoming peace conference in Geneva.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Iran hosted a two-day meeting between the representatives of the Syrian government and opposition groups on November 18-19, 2012.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

When she was 24 years old, in 1979, Fahima Vorgetts left Afghanistan. By reputation, she had been outspoken, even rebellious, in her opposition to injustice and oppression; and family and friends, concerned for her safety, had urged her to go abroad.

Twenty-three years later, returning for the first time to her homeland, she barely recognized war-torn streets in urban areas where she had once lived.  She saw and felt the anguish of villagers who couldn’t feed or shelter their families, and no less able to accept such unjust suffering than she’d been half her life before, Fahima decided to make it her task to help alleviate the abysmal conditions faced by ordinary Afghans living at or below the poverty line — by helping to build independent women’s enterprises wherever she could. She trusted in the old adage that if a person is hungry it’s an even greater gift to teach the person how to fish than to only give the person fish.

Last week, our small delegation here in Kabul traveled around the city with her to visit several clinics and “shuras,” or women’s councils that she has opened.

The first clinic we visited has been here since 2006. Two women, a doctor and a midwife, told us that they are part of a staff who work in three shifts to keep the clinic open “24-7.” Not one of their patients has died while being treated at the clinic.

Next we visited two villages, one Pashtun and the other Tajik, on the outskirts of Kabul.

“Why did you pick this village?” asked Jake Donaldson, an M.D. from Ventura, CA who joined us here in Kabul about a week ago. “I didn’t pick them,” Fahima exclaimed. “They picked me.”

A year previously, the villagers had asked her to build a clinic and a literacy center. She had told them that if they would agree to organize a women’s cooperative and pool their resources to hire teachers, midwives and nurses, she herself would build the physical building and help with supplies.

In each village, we visited a newly constructed building which will house a clinic, a women’s cooperative for jewelry-making, tailoring, and canning, a set of literacy classes for children and adults, and even a public shower which families can sign up to use. A young teacher invited us to step inside his classroom where about fifty children, girls and boys, were learning their alphabet in the first week of a literacy class. Several villagers proudly showed us the well they had dug, powered by a generator. The well will help them irrigate their land as well as supply clean drinking water for the village.

Before we left, a male village elder described to Fahima how valuable her work has been for his village. Fahima seemed to blush a bit as she gratefully acknowledged his compliment.

Such appreciative words, along with the children’s eager expressions, seem to be the main compensation for her tireless work. “I and the board members of The Afghan Women’s Fund are 100% volunteers,” Fahima assures me. “Our board members are people of tremendous integrity.”

On the day before our tour, Fahima had come to the Afghan Peace Volunteer home to speak to the seamstresses who run a sewing cooperative here and encourage them to hold on at all costs to their dignity. She urged them never to prefer handouts to hard work in self-sustaining projects.  Fahima had helped the seamstresses begin their cooperative effort at the Volunteer house when she purchased sewing machines for them a little over a year ago.

“Not all of the projects I’ve tried to start have worked out,” said Fahima. “Sometimes people are hampered by conservative values and some families don’t want to allow women to leave their homes. Most often, it is war or the security situation that prevents success.”

She firmly believes that war will never solve problems in her country — or anywhere else, for that matter.

Fahima is outspoken, even blunt, as she speaks about warlords and war profiteers.  She has good reason to be bitter over the cruelties inflicted on ordinary Afghans by all those interested in filling their own pockets and expanding control of Afghanistan’s resources. She advises the Afghan Peace Volunteers with the voice and love of a mother. “The world is gripped by a class war in which the 1% elite, irrespective of nationality or ethnicity and including the Afghan and U.S./NATO elite, have been ganging up to control, divide, oppress and profit from us, the ordinary 99%. Resist these ‘dark times’, resist war and weapons, educate yourselves, and work together in friendship.”

Fahima’s spirit of youthful rebellion clearly hasn’t been snuffed out by age or experience.  Her practical compassion is like a compass for all of us who learn about her work.

For more about the Afghan Women Fund, go to www.Afghanwomensfund.org

Kathy Kelly, (kathy@vcnv.org), co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence. She is living in Kabul for the month of May as a guest of the Afghan Peace Volunteers.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

“The bankers in Tokyo tell me there is a widespread mindset of panic among institutional holders of Japanese Government Bonds (JGBs) and that can’t be a good thing. Panic tends inevitably to lead to crisis, and goodness knows, global financial markets could hardly deal with another crisis without contagion on a massive scale.” Reuters commentary

Japanese markets were whipsawed for a second time in three days while the yields on Japan Government Bonds (JGB) inched higher. The benchmark Nikkei Index shed 469 points in Monday’s session lopping another 3 percent off Thursday’s 7.3 percent plunge. Skittish investors are exiting stocks fearing that Abenomics and the Bank of Japan’s (BoJ) efforts to reflate equities prices and boost inflation will fail.

An unexpected selloff in JGBs pushed the yield on 10-year debt to 1 percent last week increasing the likelihood of higher interest rates which will leave bank balance sheets and JGB-heavy pension funds deep in the red. Investor confidence in the BoJ’s governor Haruhiko Kuroda has begun to ebb as roiled markets and rising yields add to financial instability and deepening crisis. This is from an article at International Finance Review:

“Extreme volatility in the Japanese government bond market could trigger a sell-off on a par with a market rout in the third quarter of 2003. That was when local banks and foreign investors were forced to dump their JGB holdings after heightened volatility caused the assets to exceed internal value-at-risk limits.

According to analysts at JP Morgan, the threat of a so-called “VaR shock” highlights one of the unintended consequences of quantitative easing, and the situation could be exacerbated this time around.” (“QE raises JGB ‘VaR shock’ fears”, IFR)

Hayman Advisors Kyle Bass summed up the problem facing the BoJ like this:

“Abe and the BOJ face what I call the ‘rational investor paradox. If Japanese Government Bonds (JGB) investors begin to believe that Abenomics will be successful, they will ‘rationally’ sell JGBs to buy foreign bonds or equities.”

In other words, if bondholders believe that Kuroda will hit his inflation target of 2 percent, then they will have to jettison their low-yielding JGBs or suffer losses. The uncertainty surrounding long-term interest rates is what’s causing the gyrations in the stock market and the growing sense of unease. And while the Kuroda is currently purchasing over 70 percent of new issuance, the selloff in the quadrillion dollar JGB market has overwhelmed his efforts to keep rates low.

Last Friday, a clearly-shaken Kuroda tried to placate jittery investors saying that “the BOJ will flexibly conduct operations by adjusting frequency, pace and target.” He added, “It is natural for long-term yields to rise as the economic recovery and inflation picks up.” Market-watchers took this simple statement of fact as a sign that Kuroda was no longer fully-committed to keeping rates low. This is what led to Monday’s stock rout.

Liberal economists in the US have praised Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s efforts at ending Japan’s two decades of deflation, particularly the BoJ’s unprecedented Quantitative and Qualitative Easing (QQE) program which will double the base money supply in two years and which purchases financial assets (J-REITs, ETFs) other than government debt. Paul Krugman has been particularly impressed with “Abenomics” and devoted a recent column to singing its praises. Here’s a clip from Krugman article titled “Japan the Model”:

“In a sense, the really remarkable thing about “Abenomics” – the sharp turn toward monetary and fiscal stimulus adopted by the government of Prime Minster Shinzo Abe – is that nobody else in the advanced world is trying anything similar. In fact, the Western world seems overtaken by economic defeatism…

So, how is Abenomics working? The safe answer is that it’s too soon to tell. But the early signs are good…, with surprisingly rapid Japanese economic growth in the first quarter of this year…

Meanwhile, Japanese stocks have soared, while the yen has fallen…, very good news for Japan because it makes the country’s export industries more competitive…

So the overall verdict on Japan’s effort to turn its economy around is so far, so good. And let’s hope that this verdict both stands and strengthens over time. For if Abenomics works, it will serve a dual purpose, giving Japan itself a much-needed boost and the rest of us an even more-needed antidote to policy lethargy.” (“Japan the Model”, Paul Krugman, New York Times)

While Krugman wisely qualifies his praise for Abe’s gigantic stimulus program, it’s clear he thinks that Japan is on the right path. One can only wonder if Krugman would change his mind if he knew that Abe is a right-wing militarist whose real objective in using Keynesian theories is to rebuild imperial Japan’s war machine while clamping down on working people.

There’s been much to-do over Abenomics “three arrows”, that is, monetary (QQE), fiscal and structural policies. But the media’s main focus has been on monetary policy and the reflationist efforts of the BoJ. In contrast, the fiscal component gets hardly any attention at all, even though Keynes emphasized the ineffectiveness of monetary policy in a liquidity trap. (which he compared to “pushing on a string.”)

The reason fiscal policy is downplayed in the media is because Abe’s $116 billion fiscal package (aimed at rebuilding aging infrastructure) is a “one shot” deal that will expire in 2014 leaving working people to face impending economic contraction and the same stagnant environment they find themselves today. In other words, Abe is using Keynes ideas in much the same way as Obama, to revive economic activity (temporarily!) while more and more of the nation’s wealth is transferred to speculators via the equities markets. Here’s a summary of what’s really going on under the radar:

“There has been much public discourse among observers who believe Japan’s weak consumption may be attributed to cultural issues, suggesting that Japanese consumers are frugal by nature and disinclined to spend. I believe this is simply not true. In my opinion, the frugality of Japanese consumers has resulted from their poor outlook for wage growth. Over the past 20 years, average wages in Japan have not grown; they actually peaked in 1998 and have been on the decline ever since. It’s no wonder that Japanese consumers would curb spending if they expected their incomes to continue declining. There is an entire generation of Japanese that have graduated from school and begun careers amid an environment of constantly falling wages. Changing this deflationary mindset will require a sustained period of price increases and wage growth. There is no overnight miracle cure. In fact, the biggest risk may be impatient markets and investors who expect overnight results.” (“Is Japan’s Star Rising Again?”, Morningstar)

Repeat: Wages have been falling for 20 years.

Abe has no intention of increasing wages or improving standards of living. To the contrary, the so-called “reforms” he plans to implement are designed to crush the middle class and further exacerbate inequality. Here’s a clip from Bloomberg which explains:

“(Abe’s) growth efforts will be “disappointing” if they don’t tackle labor laws, the social-security system and energy policy, said Naoki Iizuka, a Citigroup Inc. economist in Tokyo…

Abe said he wants to boost private investment to 70 trillion yen ($683 billion) a year – through deregulation, taxes, spending and equipment-leasing deals. … he’s talked about opening the power market to more competition and restarting nuclear plants, supporting targeted industries such as biotechnology and joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade talks with the U.S. and 10 other Pacific Rim countries.

“To release domestic demand that would stimulate long-term growth, Japan will have to melt the vast regulatory barriers which clog the economy, open the gates to substantial immigration and privatize sectors still in government hands.” (“Abe’s Resurgent Japan Hurt by Lack of Business Spending”, Bloomberg)

Free trade, deregulation, privatization and labor “flexibility”. Where have we heard that before? This is just the Shock Doctrine wrapped in a Keynesian bow.

Abe wants to kick-start the economy and win the upper House in July elections so he can advance his neoliberal agenda; pump up stock prices, privatize more publicly-owned assets and industries, deregulate energy and financial sectors, and pass laws that will allow corporations to fire workers without review. Is that why Krugman is so euphoric?

While there may be some short-term improvement from Abenomics (which could as easily be called “Rubenomics”), the long-term battle against deflation will undoubtedly be lost. Monetary easing and the wealth effect are no substitute for a strong, vibrant economy and solid wage gains. As Waseda University finance professor, Yukio Noguchi, told the New York Times, “Without a revival of the real economy, this is all just voodoo economics.”

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. Whitney’s story on how the banks targeted blacks for toxic subprime mortgages appears in the May issue of CounterPunch magazine. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

US Republican Senator John McCain (center) breifly slips into Syria to meet with leaders of foreign-sponsored militants.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

The austerity measures in France have affected the health sector with regular shortages in medical staff and growing medical costs, Press TV reports.

Medical costs in France have noticeably increased due to the spending cuts, and with a troubled health sector, French people are now facing expensive over-the-counter medicine and high costs of visiting a physician.

Astride Martin, a French nurse, told Press TV on Monday, Å“Overwork, a lack of recognition for our training and really low salaries – these are three big points for us,”.

Commentators say French authorities are turning a blind eye to the issue.

Thomas Laurenceau, a journalist in Paris, said, Å“We think that things are not improving. For years, we have been telling officials that they have to help the sector. The more we say this, the more they say yes. But they do nothing.”

Å“Itâ„¢s happening quietly, but no one wants to talk about it. Prices have risen particularly among specialists like ophthalmologists and gynecologists and they are becoming unaffordable,” Laurenceau added.

Europe plunged into financial crisis in early 2008. The worsening debt crisis has forced the EU governments to adopt harsh austerity measures and tough economic reforms.

During the administration of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, a series of pharmacy reforms were introduced in order to reduce medical costs. The reforms allowed people to gain access to medicine without visiting a doctor.

SZH/HSN

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Araqchi has strongly rejected recent claims by Yemenâ„¢s foreign minister about Iranâ„¢s interference in the Arab country’s affairs.

Expressing surprise at Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbiâ„¢s recent remarks about the smuggling of Iranian arms to Yemen, Araqchi rejected the claims as baseless and said, Å“Unfortunately, the Yemeni foreign minister talks in the same manner as the previous government that was overthrown by the people of Yemen.”

The Iranian official reiterated Tehranâ„¢s respect for Yemenâ„¢s sovereignty and unity, adding that Iran has never withheld any effort to help the Arab countryâ„¢s calm and development.

It is not the first time that Yemen has made unfounded claims about Iranian interference in its domestic affairs.

Earlier in February, Yemenâ„¢s President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, a UK-trained field marshal, accused Iran of smuggling arms into the Arab country. The Yemeni government asked the United Nations to probe a seized ship it claimed contained Å“Iran-made weapons.”

In a letter to President of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Zhang Yesui on February 14, Iranâ„¢s Ambassador to the United Nations Mohammad Khazaei rejected the claim as fabrication.

Khazaei said initial investigations showed that the ship intercepted by the Yemeni government does not belong to the Islamic Republic.

The Iranian official said the ship had been registered in a European country and sailed under the flag of Panama and none of the vesselâ„¢s personnel were Iranian.

MYA/HJL

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

CounterPunch editor Jeffrey St. Clair’s essay, “The Silent Death of the American Left,” succinctly discusses the absence of a left-wing presence and activism in the face of myriad social and ecological disasters. Somewhat surprisingly, this straightforward account elicited sharp criticism–St. Clair’s pessimism was unwarranted and a sign of an intellectual pathology of defeatism, especially in light of the move of some liberal intellectuals toward the left and agitations such as OWS and the Chicago Teachers Union strike.

One troubling criticism of the article was that the author was some sort of “Edward Abbeyist,” a reference to the great writer of the American West. Abbey, it was argued, was a representative of an anti-urban philosophy that was out-of-date, with nothing to offer the 80 percent of the U.S. population living in metropolitan areas. Further, it is in cities that hopeful changes are taking place, and it is in our cities where the intellectuals who are helping to drive this change dwell. While we are told by the media and politicians that the Real America is in the nation’s heartland, it is actually somewhere in Brooklyn and surrounds.

This presumed split between a sophisticated urbanism and backward “hicks from the sticks” is troubling. For one thing, metropolitan areas contain a good deal of diversity. In Pittsburgh, for example, a short drive from the city center takes you to places that you’d be hard-pressed to recognize as urban. The same is true for Portland, Los Angeles, Denver, Miami, St. Louis, Boston, and every other city in the country. For another, how is it that the desires and needs of those in metropolitan areas are radically different than those of the nearly 63,000,000 residents of the so-called “sticks.” This certainly isn’t our experience, gained in twelve years of traveling around the country, closely observing how people live and work in places large and small.

And let’s examine this charge of “Edward Abbeyism.” Consider the multiple environmental disasters now confronting us. Abbey was not only a great writer, a sophisticated thinker who could hold his own with the best intellectuals. He was also a seminal figure in the radical environmental movement, which is surely extraordinarily relevant to everyone in the United States. He fought many worthy battles against the despoliation of our western lands. What is more, his progeny are fighting every day against oil from tar sands, fracking, dams, mountaintop removal for strip mining, deforestation, factory farming, the rampant destruction of plant and animal species, the environmental ravages of tourism, every type of pollution, and global warming. These valiant warriors are in every part of the country, from the remote Navajo nation to Manhattan. To say that none of this is relevant to most of the country is to be willfully ignorant. Tell this to the victims of Hurricane Sandy in New York City or Katrina in New Orleans.

Or consider the Occupy Wall Street uprising. Edward Abbey’s anarchist sensibility, his distrust of hierarchy, and his grasp that the government most often represents the interests of the 1% was everywhere in evidence, all around the country, not least in Zuccotti Park. Those in the forefront of OWS were not liberal and left-wing urban intellectuals, though these were quick to visit and write commentaries for their circular admiration societies. Instead, they were radical anarchists such as David Graeber, willing to put their bodies on the line. Edward Abbey would have been right at home among them.

I could go on and discuss the obvious fact that protests and hopeful signs of radical renewal are almost always in evidence in the United States, but that these have rarely brought about radical change. Or point out that pessimism about the state of the left does not mean that a person is not at the same time hopeful. Instead, let us reflect on the truth that what happens anywhere in the country, or the world, both politically and environmentally, affects everyone. More and more, we are one nation and one world, forevermore intimately interconnected. Deforestation in China and the expansion of desert regions that has followed in its wake affect air quality and weather patterns in the United States. The melting of the polar ice caps is causing the oceans to rise, which will soon enough flood our coastal cities. The nuclear meltdown at Fukushima has imperiled the U.S. food supply. The recent U.S. financial crisis wrought havoc throughout the world.

We have to take the view that either everyone matters everywhere, or no one matters anywhere. Whether you are one of the world’s two billion peasants, a starving urban dweller in Athens, an illiterate street vendor in Cairo, or one of the obscure members of the 99% here in the United States, your life counts. When we arbitrarily divide a country or the world into those parts that are “Real” and those that are not, we are ignoring a large part of humanity. We are assuming that those outside the “Real” parts of the earth have hopes and aspirations that are unworthy or our attention and knowledge of no use to us. Such thinking is profoundly elitist and reactionary. We cannot hope to create the world we desire if we continue to stand superior to the very people who must bring this world into being.

Maybe we should commit to memory John Donne’s great sermon:

No man is an island, entire of itself;

every man is a piece of the Continent,

a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by

the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,

as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were;

any man’s death diminishes me, because I am

involved in mankind. And therefore never ask for

whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

MICHAEL D. YATES is Associate Editor of Monthly review magazine. He is the author of Cheap Motels and Hot Plates: an Economist’s Travelogue and Naming the System: Inequality and Work in the Global Economy. He is the editor of Wisconsin Uprising: Labor Fights Back. Yates can be reached at mikedjyates@msn.com

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

May 23, 2013
 |

The following is an excerpt from the book, ” Through the Gateway of the Heart; Accounts of Experiences with MDMA and Other Emphathonic Substances,” by Ralph Metzner. The first part of the text includes the Foreward to the 2012 edition, and following it, a first-hand experience by a former nun. (Four Trees Publications, 1986. 2012 Edition).

Ecstasy, empathy, openness, compassion, peace, acceptance, being, forgiveness, healing, re-birth, unity, emotional bonding, caring, celebration–these are some of the terms people use to describe their experiences with a class of substances, of which MDMA 3,4-methylenedioxy- amphetamine (also known as Adam, Molly, Ecstasy or XTC) has become the best known. Although related in a general way to the psychedelic “mind-manifesting” substances such as LSD, psilocybin and mescaline, these substances are different in that they do not usually produce visions, hallucinations, or altered perceptions of reality.

Even more importantly, these substances seem to consistently induce a positive affect and reduce or attenuate anxiety–in significant contrast to the classical psychedelics which can amplify and elaborate both positive and negative affects. Because of the high percentage of major positive insight experiences reported with these substances, and the relatively low incidence of undesirable side-effects, these drugs have attracted favorable attention from a number of psychotherapists, who regard them as facilitators of therapeutic insight and change. They have also been used by some teachers and practitioners of meditation, who see them as important amplifiers of emotional and sensory awareness, and as aids to spiritual practice.

The Use of  MDMA in Overcoming Fear and Trauma

The book  “Ecstasy: The Complete Guide,” edited by Julie Holland, MD (Park Street Press, 2001) offers a comprehensive look at the risks and benefits of MDMA, as well as a summary of the pharmacological effects identified thus far. Jessica Malberg and Katherine Bonson in their chapter on “How MDMA works in the brain,” summarize the effects the main brain neurotransmitters as follows:

“MDMA acts in the brain through three main neurochemical mechanisms: blockade of serotonin re-uptake, induction of serotonin release, and induction of dopamine release. With these actions, MDMA is essentially a combination of the effects of fluoxetine, a serotonin reuptake inhibitor and anti-depressant; a serotonin releaser and amphetamine, a dopamine releaser (op. cit. p. 29).”

 More recent studies by Gillinder Bedi and others have used functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques to show that MDMA attenuated amygdala response to (pictures of) angry facial expressions, but did not affect amygdala response to fearful expressions. Responses to happy emotional expressions were enhanced with MDMA. Further studies done with recognition of emotions in facial expressions in photographs suggested to these authors that MDMA reduced the perception of fear in the images, leading to more “pro-social behavior.” Summaries and detailed descriptions of these and other studies may be found by consulting the MAPS website ( www.maps.org), which maintains a comprehensive database of all published research on MDMA and other psychoactive drugs of potential value and interest.

These findings of reduced fear-perception are consistent with anecdotal reports (including many of those in this book) that MDMA significantly attenuates interpersonal fear and anxiety. This is probably the basis for its marked therapeutic utility, especially in the treatment of PTSD, where the perceptual fixations on a real life-threatening situation blocks the normal processing of memories.

The potential applications of MDMA in the treatment of debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is now being researched by Michael Mithoefer and associates at the University of North Carolina, is exemplified in two of the accounts in this book, whose authors were able to confront the traumatic experience of rape. One is called “I Can Now Move through the Trauma.”

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

May 27, 2013
 |

In light of the historic resignation of one pope and the election of another, my Al Jazeera show Empire has travelled to Rome asking after the future of the Catholic Church as it bleeds worshipers and loses influence. As we take stock of the new Pope’s priorities, it’s clear that the role of the women in Church isn’t one of them.

Ever since the 4th century Christianisation of the Roman Empire, which gave birth to an imperial Vatican, the Church has had a global reach like no other.

The Vatican has enjoyed religious authority worldwide, directly controlling more than a million bishops and nuns who are followed by 1.2 billion worshipers: more than any other Christian sect.

However, in recent decades, the Church has been losing the faithful at an alarming rate.

In Latin America, the home of half a billion Catholics, the Church has been losing more than a million adherents each year.

And in North America, US bishops closed down 1,373 churches from 1995 to 2010, according to Jason Berry, author of Render unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church – that’s more than one parish per week for fifteen years.

While there’s been a surge of believers in Africa and Asia, the Church has lost even more in Europe, including in Italy, which has witnessed a two thirds-drop among churchgoers over the last several decades.

Sex abuse scandals

There is little doubt that the latest sex abuse scandals have played a major role in shrinking the Church’s membership and undermining its credibility.

In a recent New York Times article ” Beyond the Bedroom“, columnist Frank Bruni argued that “It’s on matters of sexual morality that the church has lost much of its authority. And it’s on matters of sexual morality that it largely wastes its breath.”

And that’s true to a large degree, Ending mandatory celibacy would go a long way to deal with much of the hypocrisy witnessed over the years. It would also confirm the Church’s pronounced commitment to the family and so-called “family values”.

However, sexual matters in all forms – abusive, excessive, “sinful” – are symptoms of a greater problem facing not only the Vatican but also the other organised Abrahamic faiths.

The problem is the monopolisation of power among old men who are unwilling to change any aspect of religion or matter of faith.

Indeed, it’s the absence of women from the all decisive and leadership roles that sets up the antiquated Vatican and other organised religions against progress.

Keeping the women down

Within the church, it’s the hundreds of thousands of nuns that are the true global foot soldiers for the Catholic empire.

They staff and “man” healthcare centres, hospitals, schools, and orphanages in mostly impoverished Catholic societies around the world where people earn on average less than $2 a day.

But women can’t ever reach senior positions in the church. They can’t become priests, let alone cardinals or popes: positions that determine the governance of the church and the articulation of its doctrines.

The Vatican has rejected pleas by one umbrella group that represents most American nuns to include women “in all ministries of our church”, including the priesthood.

Instead, the Vatican accused the “Leadership Conference of Women Religious” last year of numerous grave breaches of doctrine and decorum.

According to news reports, The Vatican has rebuked the organised nuns for spending extra time “promoting issues of social justice” and not enough time speaking about “issues of crucial importance to the life of the church and society”, such as abortion and gay marriage.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

May 27, 2013
 |

Up to 1,500 protestors gathered in Guatemala City and surrounding Latin American countries on Friday to condemn the Guatemala Constitutional Court’s decision to annul the trial of former Guatemalan military president José Efraín Ríoss Montt.

On May 10, Montt was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity for his role in ordering the deaths of 1,771 people of the Ixil Maya ethnic group while in office from 1982-’83. The court sentenced the ex de-facto president to 80 years imprisonment.

However, 10 days later, the Guatemala Constitutional Court reversed the decision by a 3:2 ruling panel, citing procedural errors during the trial. At issue was the fact that Montt was briefly left without legal representation after his defense team walked out of the court in protest of ” illegal proceedings.” At that time, the court held, the trial should have been halted.

As a result, the court ordered a suspension of the trial pending a resolution of the legal challenges raised by the defense, setting aside the guilty verdict and ruling that the trial would begin from the point it stood on April 19.

Amnesty International said it was a “devastating blow for the victims of the serious human rights violations committed during the conflict,” the BBC reported.

Similarly, Diana Duarte of MADRE told AlterNet that the move was a slap in the face for indigenous rights activists and victims who had faced genocide and crimes against humanity and spent years fighting to obtain justice.

“There was a moment when the verdict was handed down that we felt that impunity had not prevailed, that people would obtain justice. Unfortunately that moment was short-lived and turned around in a matter of days,” Duarte said.

The monumental trial of Montt sets a precedent as the first time an ex-head of state has faced genocide before a national court rather than an international tribunal. Over Guatemala’s 36-year bloody civil war, some 200,000 people were killed with Montt’s time in power described as the most violent period. The decision came 30 years after the crimes had been committed and 13 years after the case was first brought forward for investigation.

While legal proceedings continue, the annulment has placed the entire trial in jeopardy and raised questions about whether there is any real hope for democracy in an already weakened legal system. The judicial reasoning for the annulment is also unclear and confusing even for Guatemalan legal experts, fueling further speculation over the real impetus for the sudden overturn of the decision.

According to International Crisis Group’s (ICG) Mary Speck, based in Guatemala, the full implications of the case are still unknown at this stage.

“The ambiguity around the decision leads to speculation about the real motivations of the case and that is damaging. In order to move forward, the decision needs to be clear — this is essential for transitional justice,” Speck told AlterNet.

Equally puzzling is why the court ordered that the same trial court reconvene to consider the case when this undoubtedly increases the risk of further interruptions should either legal team object on the basis of bias. Questions of fact are also in dispute, with two judges offering very strong dissenting opinions.

Judge Chacon, in his dissent, openly criticized the court’s decision as disproportionate, declaring that there was nothing that rose to a level of a constitutional violation that justified an annulment given that the trial court had already issued a sentence. The judge condemned the actions of Montt’s defense attorney as “ intentionally obstructionist” and went so far as to say that there was no justification for the Constitutional Court to blame the trial court judges when their actions did not invoke anything that suggested a lack of impartiality.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

As U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry attempts to put his particular spin on resolving the generations-old crisis of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, he has travelled to the World Economic Forum. There he waved the possibility of $4 billion investments in the Palestinian economy, from a worldwide conglomerate of investors, over a period of three years. Of course, he hasn’t specified who these investors would be. It was reported that “… Kerry did not identify specific companies with plans to set up shop in the West Bank or how he hoped to remove obstacles to Palestinian commerce.”

The U.S. government in 2013 will give Israel over $3.15 billion, an increase over the billions it gave Israel last year. Yet the U.S. doesn’t ever seem to have any problem determining where that money comes from: the U.S. taxpayer has for decades been funding the apartheid state of Israel.

Regarding removing obstacles to Palestinian commerce, perhaps we could take a look at what some of those obstacles are.

*Israel has established countless checkpoints all over the West Bank. Customers wanting to get to stores that may be a few blocks from their home may have to travel miles to get to them, because IDF (Israel Defense Forces) soldiers arbitrarily close checkpoints whenever the mood so strikes them. Or, they might leave a checkpoint open, but prevent people from passing through by asking countless questions, demanding assorted identification, or simply telling them they have to wait until the soldiers are good and ready to speak to them. That could be today, or possibly, tomorrow. Or maybe the day after. And if a potential customer decides to try a different route, through a different checkpoint, there is no guarantee the response there will be any different. Merchants attempting to get to their own stores face the same checkpoints and challenges.

*Farmers need to plant seeds, irrigate crops, care for them and eventually harvest them. This becomes difficult when they require permits from Israel to plant and harvest on their own land. A Palestinian farmer may request a permit to plant during planting season, but be granted the permit only long after planting season has passed. If he or she is fortunate enough to be given permission to plant at the appropriate time of year, he/she must simply hope that permission to harvest will be granted when appropriate. It is not unusual for Israel to grant permission to a Palestinian farmer to harvest his/her crops long after they have spoiled in the field.

*If a farmer is sufficiently lucky to be permitted to plant and harvest on his/her own land at an appropriate time, the challenges do not end. Once the crops are harvested and loaded onto vehicles to be taken to market, the checkpoints challenge is then faced. Often, farmers are delayed so long by IDF soldiers at checkpoints that their produce spoils before they are allowed to pass through.

*Israel has built an excellent road system all over the West Bank. Unfortunately, Palestinians aren’t allowed to use those roads. If a new Israeli-only road happens to cross over a Palestinian road, Palestinians are then unable to use their own road; they are not permitted to cross over an Israeli road.

*The situation in the Gaza Strip is even worse. Israel controls all the borders, land, sea and air, and permits only a very limited number of imports or exports.

Yet despite these and other unspeakable human rights violations, the U.S. provides Israel with billions and billions of dollars every year. So if Mr. Kerry would like to remove obstacles to Palestinian commerce, perhaps he might want to consider ending U.S. aid to Israel.

As has every recent Secretary of State prior to him, Mr. Kerry is pushing for renewed negotiations, without preconditions. Can anyone tell this writer how that makes sense? Israel is anxious to restart negotiations without any preconditions. Why wouldn’t it? Israel takes whatever it wants from Palestine, oppresses the people, bombs them, kills them, destroys their homes, at will, with no accountability.

Why wouldn’t Israel want to ‘negotiate’, with no preconditions? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can say to the world, managing, somehow, to keep a straight face, that he is willing to return to the bargaining table at any time. Of course, while doing so, he keeps building illegal settlements on Palestinian land, and his IDF terrorists continue to ply their trade on Palestinians.

In order for any two groups to negotiate, each must have something the other wants that can only be obtained by surrendering something the other side wants. Israel has been stealing Palestinian land for over sixty years; Palestine has nothing that Israel wants that Israel can only obtain by giving up something that Palestine wants. Israel has been given free reign, mainly by the United States, although the rest of the world has been complicit in Israel’s crimes, to take whatever it wants from Palestine, with complete impunity. Therefore, no negotiations can exist between Israel and Palestine. For Mr. Kerry to suggest that they can demonstrates either his ignorance or his firm conviction in the stupidity of the world community.

But there are signs that the world community is waking up. Palestine’s admission as a member state in the United Nations last year, passed by a huge majority, was a giant step. Now the weak, spineless Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas must apply to the International Criminal Court. The U.S., of course, opposes such a move, as it opposed Palestine’s admission to the United Nations. One wonders why; if Israel is not guilty of unspeakable crimes against the Palestinians, what does it have to lose if the U.N. investigates? What the U.S. seems to most fear is a loss of financial support from Israeli lobbying groups for individual reelection campaigns. Human rights? The almighty dollar trumps them every time.

ROBERT FANTINA is author of ‘Desertion and the American Soldier: 1776 — 2006.‘

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

For a president that is executing Bush’s “war on terror” against Al-Qaeda and “its affiliates,” it seems odd that President Obama has targeted the secular Syrian government for “regime change.”

Equally odd is that Obama’s strongest military ally on the ground in Syria- the best equipped and effective fighting force against the Syrian Government – is Jabhat al-Nusra, a group that has affiliated itself with al-Qaeda, and aims to turn Syria into an extremist Islamic state that enforces a fundamentalist version of Sharia law.

It’s difficult to know exactly how al-Nursa received its guns, but one can make an educated guess. For example, The New York Times explained in detail how the CIA has been in a massive arms trafficking operation that has already funneled thousands of tons of guns from Saudi Arabia and Qatar to Syria:

“The C.I.A. role in facilitating the [weapons] shipments… gave the United States a degree of influence over the process [of weapon distribution]…American officials have confirmed that senior White House officials were regularly briefed on the [weapons] shipments.”

Where are the guns winding up in this massive arms trafficking operation? An important question to ask is: which rebels in Syria have guns and which ones don’t.  The Guardian reports:

“The [secular] Free Syrian Army’s shortage of weapons and other resources compared with [jihadist] Jabhat al-Nusra is a recurrent theme… ‘If you join al-Nusra, there is always a gun for you but many of the FSA brigades can’t even provide bullets for their fighters,’…3,000 FSA [Free Syrian Army] men have joined al-Nusra in the last few months, mainly because of a lack of weapons and ammunition…Al-Nusra fighters rarely withdraw for shortage of ammunition…”

While it’s difficult to know if CIA trafficked guns are going directly or indirectly to al-Nursa, it’s extremely likely that these guns are going directly into the hands of ideological cousins of al-Nursa, since the Syrian rebels are completely dominated by Islamic extremists.

For example, when the Economist magazine was outlining the most important fighting groups in Syria, “Who’s Who in the Syrian Battlefield,” they noted with regret that the only important non-Islamist group was in the Kurdish areas, which is virtually an autonomous zone. As far as the secular U.S.-backed fighting group, The Supreme Military Command, the Economist conceded it “has little control on the ground.” Keep in mind that the Economist is very much in favor of a U.S.-NATO military intervention in Syria.

The New York Times also confirmed the complete dominance of extremists on the rebel side:

“Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.”

Thus, the minority of secular rebel fighters are not leading the civil war and will not be in power if Assad falls. Instead, honest Syrian revolutionaries will instantly fall victim to the extremists, who will immediately proceed to a mopping-up mission of their former allies.

It’s now clear that Obama’s foreign policy in Syria is actively encouraging terrorism. Many rebel-controlled areas in Syria are now new safe havens for terrorists, and there have been hundreds of terrorist bombing attacks against the Syrian government, many of which have targeted civilian areas.

While the U.S. is pouring arms into the jihadist-controlled areas, they have also downplayed the atrocities committed by these rebels, which are well documented on Youtube and include a multitude of war crimes that include beheadings, group execution of prisoners, ethnic cleansing, and the recent episode where a famous rebel commander was videotaped mutilating a dead Syrian solider and eating his heart.

By minimizing this barbarism the Obama administration ensures that it will continue, since the extremists are empowered by U.S. support and are shielded in the U.S. media and protected from international political pressures.

One question the U.S. media never thinks of asking is: Where did all these Islamic extremists come from and why? The Sunni Islamic opposition inside Syria has long been religiously moderate, implying that many of the extremists are foreigners.

The ideological source of this extremism came from Saudi Arabian religious figures and their allies, who use Islam as a political tool to target nations “unfriendly” to Saudi Arabia and the United States. The most glaring example of this in regard to Syria was the Fatwa (official interpretation/statement) issued by 107 Islamic scholars that denounced the Syrian government and encouraged Muslims to fight against it. The statement essentially encouraged jihad, though the word wasn’t mentioned explicitly.

The statement includes:

“It is a duty for all Muslims to support the revolutionaries in Syria [against the government] … so that they can successfully complete their revolution and attain their rights and their freedom.”

The hypocrisy of such a statement is almost too glaring: the many Saudi figures who signed the document that want “freedom” in Syria are not demanding freedom in Saudi Arabia, by far the country with the least amount of freedoms in the world.

With Saudi Arabia and Qatar providing guns to the Syrian rebels – with help from the CIA – the Saudi religious figures attached to the Saudi regime give religious/political support by misleading devout Muslims to flock to Syria to attack a country of Muslims, thus creating the giant sectarian divisions we now see throughout the Islamic world.

The vast majority of this Islamic sectarian warfare is exported by Saudi Arabia, which funds radical Islamic schools all over the Middle East that attract the downtrodden of these countries by providing basic social services that the host country is too poor – or unwilling – to provide. There is an informative chapter on this dynamic in Vijay Prashad’s excellent book, A People’s History of the Third World.

Now the debate among U.S.-NATO countries is whether to give more sophisticated weaponry to the extremist-dominated rebels in Syria. The Obama Administration is pressuring the European Union to drop its arms embargo on Syria so that a new torrent of weapons can flood the country (apparently the CIA operations haven’t yet completely drenched Syria with guns).

In response to the “drop the embargo” discussion, Oxfam intelligently responded by saying:

“Sending arms to the Syrian opposition won’t create a level playing field. Instead, it risks further fueling an arms free-for-all where the victims are the civilians of Syria. Our experience from other conflict zones tells us that this crisis will only drag on for far longer if more and more arms are poured into the country.”

One EU diplomat gave a scathing rebuke to the Obama Administration’s claim that it could ensure that new weapons wouldn’t wind up in “the wrong hands” in Syria:

“It would be the first conflict where we pretend we could create peace by delivering arms,” the diplomat said. “If you pretend to know where the weapons will end up, then it would be the first war in history where this is possible. We have seen it in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Weapons don’t disappear; they pop up where they are needed.”

In Syria the weapons are needed by those doing the brunt of the fighting. Again, the al-Nursa extremists are widely acknowledged to be the most effective fighting force against the Syrian government, the guns will thus flow to them.

Obama has taken the saying, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” to irrational heights, and in so doing is helping to produce a new generation of Islamic extremists that will help fuel the U.S.-led never-ending “war on terror.” The real intention of the War on Terror is not to stop terrorists, but to target nation states that are opposed to U.S. foreign policy: Iraq and Libya – like Syria – were both secular countries at the time of their being invaded; Afghanistan was invaded even though the vast majority of those involved in the 9-11 attacks were from Saudi Arabia. There was no terrorist problem in Iraq before the U.S. invaded, just like there was no terrorist problem in Syria before the U.S.-backed rebels came onto the scene.

It’s blatantly obvious to most Americans that Syria and Iran are at the top of Obama’s war list, a much higher priority than any terrorist group. This is why Obama is tolerating the terrorist groups inside Syira; they are being used as tools against his real target, Syria and then Iran.

The Syrian people must be left to themselves to decide their future. The United States is utterly incapable of “helping” countries by using military means, as the fractured nations of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya painfully prove. The global anti-war movement must demand Hands Off Syria!

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org) He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

The United States balances its endless war of terrorism with the institution of an endless “peace process” for Palestine, a process valuable for its peaceyness and interminability.

Josh Ruebner’s new book, Shattered Hopes: The Failure of Obama’s Middle East Peace Process, could just as easily have been called “Fulfilled Expectations: The Success of Obama’s Middle East Peace Process,” depending on one’s perspective. Its story could be summarized: Obama’s performance in this area has been of a piece with his performance in every other. Some people became very hopeful about his rhetoric and then very dejected about his actions.

In this case, among those getting hopeful were Palestinian negotiators. But they didn’t just grow depressed and despondent. They felt no obligation to behave like Democratic voters. They swore off the Hopium and went to work on an international approach through the United Nations that has begun to pay off.

Obama began his “peace process” efforts “naively unprepared for the intensity of the pushback from Israel and its supporters in the United States to its demand that Israel freeze settlements,” Ruebner writes. But evidence of Obama’s mental state is hard to pin down, and I’m not sure of the relevance. Whether Obama began with naive good intentions or the same cynicism that he was, by all accounts, fully immersed in by his second or third year in office, the important point remains the same. As Ruebner explains, Obama employs an all-carrots / no-sticks approach with Israel that is doomed to failure.

In fact, suggesting that the White House cease providing Israel with ever more weaponry and/or cease providing Israel with ever more protection from justice following its crimes is liable to get Ruebner himself denounced as naive, along with the rest of us who think he’s right. Obama’s fundamental problem is not one of naiveté, but of “seriousness,” of upholding the solemn seriousness of willful belief in a respectable but doomed approach. If Obama was surprised that Palestinian negotiators didn’t play along with this the way U.S. “journalists” do, that would suggest he had internalized the official point of view. Whether that is naiveté or deep cynicism may be in the eye of the beholder.

Ruebner provides the chronological play-by-play from Obama’s first happy shiny moves in office to his familiar flailing about in search of propaganda that would continue to hold up year after year. And Ruebner includes analysis of what activists were up to along the way.

In fact, Ruebner begins with Obama’s campaign promises, which – upon close inspection – prove, as with every other issue, to have been much closer to the President’s abysmal performance than to the glowing image people recall of his early hope-and-changey self. Obama campaigned placing all blame on Palestinians, supporting Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital, backing resolutions and legislation in the Senate imposing sanctions on Palestinians as punishment for having held an open election, and supporting Israel during its wars on Lebanon and Gaza. Obama’s speeches and his website made his position clear to those inclined to see it. Boycott campaigns against the Israeli government were, according to him, “bigoted.”

As with every other area, on peace in Palestine, Obama’s disastrous approach could also have been read clearly from his selection of individuals to run his foreign policy team. During the transition period prior to his inauguration, Obama took positions on many foreign policy matters, but when it came to the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, he declared himself unable to speak prior to becoming president.

Watching the sequence of events play out post-inauguration is painful. Obama urges an end to Israel’s expansion of settlements. Netanyahu suggests that Obama, with all due respect, stick his proposals where the sun don’t shine. But Netanyahu backs “statehood” (someday, with no rights or power or independence or actual – you know —statehood) for Palestinians, but proceeds to rapidly expand settlements, effectively eliminating territory on which to create any state. Obama announces that victory has come and help is on the way!

Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave up on freezing settlements and announced that slowing the pace of the expansion would be an “unprecedented” accomplishment – a claim that was less credible to people who had lived and suffered through many such claims before. As reward for the same lawless abuses as always, Israel received from the Obama administration more weaponry than ever, and a veto of a resolution at the United Nations opposing more Israeli settlements.

Ruebner rightly concludes:

“Obama’s failure to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace resulted not only from his unwillingness to go to the mat with the Israel lobby over the issue of fully freezing Israeli settlements, not only from the scattershot, frenetic lurching of his policy initiatives thereafter. Obama also foundered because his approach relied solely on providing Israel with carrots. With the trivial exceptions of denying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu photo-ops at the White House on a few occasions and reportedly forcing him to wait for several hours before a meeting, Obama never brandished the proverbial stick. But these personal insults did nothing to create incentives for Israel to cease openly and brazenly defying U.S. policy objectives.”

Hope is so much more popular than reality. But Ruebner is full of hope. He holds it out there in front of us. All that’s required is a little actually useful action:

“[I]f the United States were to pull its backing for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, then Israeli intransigence would melt away in the historical blink of an eye, as it did when President Dwight Eisenhower terminated all U.S. aid programs to Israel after it invaded and occupied the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula in 1956.”

How do we get there? Part of the answer, Ruebner persuasively suggests is Boycott-Divestment-and-Sanctions (BDS), a movement that is making great strides, including in changing the public discourse, altering the sorts of things that even U.S. politicians can get away with claiming with a straight face.

David Swanson is author of War is a Lie. He lives in Virginia.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

Russian floors opened higher on Tuesday following a slow day on Monday. Investors expect a correction to continue, as there are still no drivers to boost investor’s activity.

Russian stocks ended Monday
down, having slowly slid on lack of news and low oil. The MICEX
closed 0.19 percent lower at 1378.29, while the RTS ended the
session 0.25 percent off at 1385.08.

While the US markets were closed for Memorial Day on Monday, and
UK was closed for banking holiday, European stocks rose, cheered by
the automobile and banking sectors.

Germany’s DAX advanced 0.94 percent to 8,383.3 points, while the
CAC 40 index in France gained 0.97 percent to 3,995.16. Italy
closed up 1.55 percent at 17,159 points and Spain ended the session
1.20 percent higher at 8,363.60.

The Stoxx Europe 600 gained 0.3 percent to 304.34, rebounding
from its first weekly loss in more than a month. Last week the
indicator dropped 1.7 percent.

Still no big news is expected for release on Tuesday.
Switzerland is to release official data on jobs creation and the
trade balance. In the eurozone, Italy is to hold an auction of
10-year government bonds.

The US markets will reopen on Tuesday and are expected to
stimulate activity on the global stock exchanges. The US is to
produce private sector data on house price inflation, in addition
to data on consumer confidence, a leading economic indicator.

Markets in Asia climbed moderately on Tuesday. Japan has
remained volatile since Thursday, when Nikkei lost more than 7
percent in one day, and extended losses on Monday losing another 3
percent. Conflict between lowering interest rates and pursuing
inflation unnerved investors.

In Tuesday trade the Nikkei 225 index rose 1.7 percent to
14,384.67 as the yen weakened against the dollar. The dollar rose
to 102 yen from 100.99. The benchmark slipped 3 percent.

In Hong Kong the Hang Seng added 0.1 percent to 22,717.86. South
Korea’s Kospi advanced 0.4 percent to 1,986.14. Australia’s market
gained 0.3 percent to 4,975.50.

Oil is mixed with Brent adding 0.2 percent and trading at
$102.8, while WTI is 0.2 percent lower trading at $93.9 per
barrel.

This article originally appeared on: RT

May 20, 2013
 |

This week, both the House and Senate Agriculture committees adopted their versions of the 2013 Farm Bill. This is the latest move in the long-running attempt to pass a “normal” 5-year farm bill to replace one that was last passed in 2008. Several attempts to pass a farm bill in 2012 were unsuccessful and the farm bill that is currently in effect is a short-term extension that expires in September 2013.

There are some significant differences between the House and the Senate, in both what their bills actually contain and in the process used to get them through the committee. Both sides had an abbreviated process, skipping the normal step of conducting a series of hearings to explore various issues before writing the bill. But the Senate Agriculture Committee took the streamlining even further, managing to discuss, amend and pass its version of the bill in a little under three hours on Tuesday. The House Agriculture Committee finished theirs in a marathon session that took most of the day, wrapping up just before midnight Wednesday night.

Now each bill (HR 1947 and S 954) has to go to the floor for the whole body to vote on. The Senate is going first, with leadership claiming they will do the Farm Bill as early as next week. The full House may see their bill in June.

Here are some key differences between the two versions and things to look out for when the bills are on the floor:

1. Fair Markets for Farmers: It’s been a long battle to get the USDA to stop the abusive practices used by meatpackers and chicken processors to cheat ranchers and livestock producers raged on in this round. The 2008 farm bill directed the USDA to write rules to address commonplace abuses in the meatpacking and poultry sector, and the meat industry has been on the attack ever since. After years of fighting to get those rules in effect, the House Ag committee’s version of the Farm Bill repealed the few provisions of the “ GIPSA Rule” that remained, which prohibited some of the most abusive things chicken companies do to contract poultry growers. The amendment also prohibits USDA from taking any action to curb emerging abuses in the meatpacking and poultry sector. The Senate bill does not contain this provision to repeal the rules.

2. Country of Origin Labeling: Just like livestock fairness rules, the meat industry has been out to kill country of origin labeling ever since it was included in the 2002 Farm Bill. Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE) and Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA) each introduced amendments to repeal mandatory country of origin labeling, using the flimsy excuse that the World Trade Organization decision last year meant the program must end. The USDA is poised to release a technical change to COOL requirements that address the WTO decision, and there is no need for Congress to get involved in COOL at this point. The amendments were withdrawn in committee (probably because the enemies of COOL did not have the votes to win), but this issue will very likely come up again when the bills goes to the floor.

3. Food Safety: The 2008 Farm Bill shifted catfish inspection from the Food and Drug Administration to the USDA. U.S. consumers and catfish farmers wanted to replace the FDA’s lackluster inspection regime that allowed too many dangerous imports, hurting catfish’s reputation in the marketplace. Ever since, seafood importers have been trying to stop this from happening because they don’t want imported catfish to have to undergo the more rigorous inspection that would come with a USDA program. The House version of the bill repeals the catfish inspection program at the USDA and would move it back to FDA.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

May 21, 2013
 |

“It’s always hard to tell for sure exactly when a revolution starts,” wrote John Tierny in The Atlantic recently. “I’m not an expert on revolutions,” he continued, “but even I can see that a new one is taking shape in American K-12 public education.”

Tierney pointed to a number of signs of the coming “revolution:”

• Teachers refusing to give standardized tests, parents opting their kids out of tests, and students boycotting tests.
• Legislators reconsidering testing and expressing concerns about corruption in the testing industry.
• Voucher and other “choice” proposals being strongly contested and voted down in states that had been friendly to them.

Tierney linked to a blog post by yours truly, “The Inconvenient Truth of Education Reform,” explaining how the movement known as “education reform” has committed severe harm to the populations it professes to serve while spreading corruption and enriching businesses and political figures.

Echoing Tierney, on the pages of Slate, The Nation, and elsewhere, David Kirp, education professor and author of a popular new book casting doubt on competitive driven, market-based school reform, declared that cheating scandals and parent rebellions over high stakes standardized testing were proof that much ballyhooed reform policies championed by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are not “a proven — or even a promising — way to make schools better.”

Kirp declared that mounting evidence from school reform efforts in major U.S. metropolitan areas reveals “it’s a terrible time for advocates of market-driven reform in public education. For more than a decade, their strategy — which makes teachers’ careers turn on student gains in reading and math tests, and promotes competition through charter schools and vouchers — has been the dominant policy mantra. But now the cracks are showing.”

In a legislative view, the Progressive State Network, which supports left-leaning state legislators and monitors legislative policy in state houses, noticed “a backlash is brewing in many states as more and more parents and legislators alike start asking questions about corporate education reform.” The post on PSN’s website referenced Tierney’s article and highlighted a Minnesota bill that eliminates testing requirements for graduation and several states that are embroiled in battles to defeat measures known as the “parent trigger,” which enables private takeovers of public schools.

These observations are not alarmist chatter but well-reasoned, valid conclusions that anti-government collectivist actions related to public school policy are scaling up from isolated protests to a nationwide movement of unified resistance.

The movement is widespread among teachers, students, and parents. It is grassroots driven and way out in front of most journalists and political leaders. And it’s scaling up in intensity.

A Teacher-Student-Parent Movement

For quite some time now, education historian and reform opponent Diane Ravitch has written about the ever expanding discontent among teachers over the emphasis on standardized testing and test-based teacher evaluation and school rating systems.

As proof of this discontent, Ravitch has closely followed and commented on a boycott against standardized testing among teachers in Seattle, an ongoing protest among principals in New York state against new teacher evaluations, and objections to the “testing beast” among educators and parents in Texas.

In ever-greater numbers, however, students are also leading the resistance. A recent article in The Nation reported on the growing student resistance movement driven by grievances over austerity budgets and systemic racism.

From all corners of the country — North Carolina to Philadelphia to Louisiana to Chicago — students as young as eight years old are organizing and taking part in a variety of actions including zombie protests, school walkouts and sit-ins, and acts of defiance like the recent rant by a high school student in Texas that went viral over the Internet when he castigated a seemingly indifferent teacher for dispensing education in “packets” rather than engaging the class in meaningful, relevant learning.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

May 23, 2013
 |

The following is an excerpt from the book, ” Through the Gateway of the Heart; Accounts of Experiences with MDMA and Other Emphathonic Substances,” by Ralph Metzner. The first part of the text includes the Foreward to the 2012 edition, and following it, a first-hand experience by a former nun. (Four Trees Publications, 1986. 2012 Edition).

Ecstasy, empathy, openness, compassion, peace, acceptance, being, forgiveness, healing, re-birth, unity, emotional bonding, caring, celebration–these are some of the terms people use to describe their experiences with a class of substances, of which MDMA 3,4-methylenedioxy- amphetamine (also known as Adam, Molly, Ecstasy or XTC) has become the best known. Although related in a general way to the psychedelic “mind-manifesting” substances such as LSD, psilocybin and mescaline, these substances are different in that they do not usually produce visions, hallucinations, or altered perceptions of reality.

Even more importantly, these substances seem to consistently induce a positive affect and reduce or attenuate anxiety–in significant contrast to the classical psychedelics which can amplify and elaborate both positive and negative affects. Because of the high percentage of major positive insight experiences reported with these substances, and the relatively low incidence of undesirable side-effects, these drugs have attracted favorable attention from a number of psychotherapists, who regard them as facilitators of therapeutic insight and change. They have also been used by some teachers and practitioners of meditation, who see them as important amplifiers of emotional and sensory awareness, and as aids to spiritual practice.

The Use of  MDMA in Overcoming Fear and Trauma

The book  “Ecstasy: The Complete Guide,” edited by Julie Holland, MD (Park Street Press, 2001) offers a comprehensive look at the risks and benefits of MDMA, as well as a summary of the pharmacological effects identified thus far. Jessica Malberg and Katherine Bonson in their chapter on “How MDMA works in the brain,” summarize the effects the main brain neurotransmitters as follows:

“MDMA acts in the brain through three main neurochemical mechanisms: blockade of serotonin re-uptake, induction of serotonin release, and induction of dopamine release. With these actions, MDMA is essentially a combination of the effects of fluoxetine, a serotonin reuptake inhibitor and anti-depressant; a serotonin releaser and amphetamine, a dopamine releaser (op. cit. p. 29).”

 More recent studies by Gillinder Bedi and others have used functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques to show that MDMA attenuated amygdala response to (pictures of) angry facial expressions, but did not affect amygdala response to fearful expressions. Responses to happy emotional expressions were enhanced with MDMA. Further studies done with recognition of emotions in facial expressions in photographs suggested to these authors that MDMA reduced the perception of fear in the images, leading to more “pro-social behavior.” Summaries and detailed descriptions of these and other studies may be found by consulting the MAPS website ( www.maps.org), which maintains a comprehensive database of all published research on MDMA and other psychoactive drugs of potential value and interest.

These findings of reduced fear-perception are consistent with anecdotal reports (including many of those in this book) that MDMA significantly attenuates interpersonal fear and anxiety. This is probably the basis for its marked therapeutic utility, especially in the treatment of PTSD, where the perceptual fixations on a real life-threatening situation blocks the normal processing of memories.

The potential applications of MDMA in the treatment of debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is now being researched by Michael Mithoefer and associates at the University of North Carolina, is exemplified in two of the accounts in this book, whose authors were able to confront the traumatic experience of rape. One is called “I Can Now Move through the Trauma.”

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

May 27, 2013
 |

In light of the historic resignation of one pope and the election of another, my Al Jazeera show Empire has travelled to Rome asking after the future of the Catholic Church as it bleeds worshipers and loses influence. As we take stock of the new Pope’s priorities, it’s clear that the role of the women in Church isn’t one of them.

Ever since the 4th century Christianisation of the Roman Empire, which gave birth to an imperial Vatican, the Church has had a global reach like no other.

The Vatican has enjoyed religious authority worldwide, directly controlling more than a million bishops and nuns who are followed by 1.2 billion worshipers: more than any other Christian sect.

However, in recent decades, the Church has been losing the faithful at an alarming rate.

In Latin America, the home of half a billion Catholics, the Church has been losing more than a million adherents each year.

And in North America, US bishops closed down 1,373 churches from 1995 to 2010, according to Jason Berry, author of Render unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church – that’s more than one parish per week for fifteen years.

While there’s been a surge of believers in Africa and Asia, the Church has lost even more in Europe, including in Italy, which has witnessed a two thirds-drop among churchgoers over the last several decades.

Sex abuse scandals

There is little doubt that the latest sex abuse scandals have played a major role in shrinking the Church’s membership and undermining its credibility.

In a recent New York Times article ” Beyond the Bedroom“, columnist Frank Bruni argued that “It’s on matters of sexual morality that the church has lost much of its authority. And it’s on matters of sexual morality that it largely wastes its breath.”

And that’s true to a large degree, Ending mandatory celibacy would go a long way to deal with much of the hypocrisy witnessed over the years. It would also confirm the Church’s pronounced commitment to the family and so-called “family values”.

However, sexual matters in all forms – abusive, excessive, “sinful” – are symptoms of a greater problem facing not only the Vatican but also the other organised Abrahamic faiths.

The problem is the monopolisation of power among old men who are unwilling to change any aspect of religion or matter of faith.

Indeed, it’s the absence of women from the all decisive and leadership roles that sets up the antiquated Vatican and other organised religions against progress.

Keeping the women down

Within the church, it’s the hundreds of thousands of nuns that are the true global foot soldiers for the Catholic empire.

They staff and “man” healthcare centres, hospitals, schools, and orphanages in mostly impoverished Catholic societies around the world where people earn on average less than $2 a day.

But women can’t ever reach senior positions in the church. They can’t become priests, let alone cardinals or popes: positions that determine the governance of the church and the articulation of its doctrines.

The Vatican has rejected pleas by one umbrella group that represents most American nuns to include women “in all ministries of our church”, including the priesthood.

Instead, the Vatican accused the “Leadership Conference of Women Religious” last year of numerous grave breaches of doctrine and decorum.

According to news reports, The Vatican has rebuked the organised nuns for spending extra time “promoting issues of social justice” and not enough time speaking about “issues of crucial importance to the life of the church and society”, such as abortion and gay marriage.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

May 27, 2013
 |

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio is challengingan Ohio school district for considering a “controversial issues policy” that would require teachers to encourage discussions about creationism and conservative conspiracy theories about U.N. Agenda 21.

Springboro Community City School District’s new curriculum – part of an effort to help students think critically and learn to “identify important issues” – mandates that “[a]ll sides of the issue should be given to the students in a dispassionate manner” to help “students to be taught to think clearly on all matters of importance, and to make decisions in the light of all the material that has been presented or can be researched on the issues.” Controversial issues include:

religion when not used in a historical or factual context, sex education, legalization of drugs, evolution/creation, pro-life/abortion,contraception/abstinence, conservatism/liberalism, politics, gun rights, global warming and climate change, UN Agenda 21 and sustainable development, and any other topic on which opposing points of view have been promulgated by responsible opinion and/or likely to arouse both support and opposition in the community.

Teachers would have to provide equal weight to widely-accepted scientific theories like evolution and right-wing conspiracies advanced by Glenn Beck. Under the policy, students could not learn about sustainable development without also assessing the impact of U.N. Agenda 21, a series of non-binding U.N. recommendations for ensuring that economic growth does not undermine the environment, which conservatives believe will destroy American sovereignty and freedom. The Agenda was developed at a summit in Brazil in 1992 with support from President George H.W. Bush.

The ACLU criticized the district for adding evolution to the “controversial issues” list, noting that the policy “appears to explicitly permit the teaching of creationism.” “It has been firmly established that this practice is unconstitutional, in violation of the Establishment Clause,” ACLU legal director James L. Hardiman explained in a letter.

In 2011, the school board “ backed away from plans to teach creationism under public pressure” from the ACLU. It plans to vote on this proposal in early June and is facing similar criticism from parents and students. (HT: Raw Story)

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

May 27, 2013
 |

When President Obama signed a spending bill into law last March, an obscure, anonymously introduced section, the Farmer Assurance Provision, outraged Americans across the political spectrum. Labeled the “Monsanto Protection Act” by critics, the rider strips the Department of Agriculture and federal courts of their powers to stop the planting of genetically modified (GM) crops, even if they are shown to pose health risks. Monsanto’s products are already ubiquitous. The company’s patented GM soybean seeds, Roundup Ready, are grown by 93 percent of U.S. soybean farms, which must also use its accompanying herbicide, Roundup.

Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, claims it is committed to fighting rural hunger and providing sustainable agriculture for a growing population. Supporters like Forbes Magazine, which labeled Monsanto “Company of the Year” in 2010, claim it “has been working to make humanity better fed.” Even nonprofit organizations like the Center for Science in the Public Interest have praised the benefits of GM crops, although the scientific rigor of prominent nonprofits has been questioned as their links to Monsanto have come into view.

The corporation has deep ties to the U.S. government, and it spends millions of dollars each year lobbying American politicians and advertising to defeat local efforts to label GM ingredients in food products. U.S. diplomats push the use of GM products and have sought penalties for European countries that ban Monsanto products.

In recent years, however, international resistance to Monsanto has grown. Vietnamese activists are aiming to prevent Monsanto’s entry into their country, where the company is still notorious for producing Agent Orange, a herbicide that caused severe health problems for more than a million people in the wake of the Vietnam War. In India, environmental activists blame Monsanto for the alarming rise in debt and suicide among farmers. And in Mexico, thousands of peasant farmers are protesting plans to introduce GM corn into the country.

In Argentina, the world’s third-largest producer of GM crops, a group of women calling themselves the “Mothers of Ituzaingó” are fighting against the aerial spraying of Roundup. Residents of Ituzaingó, a working-class neighborhood of Córdoba that borders commercial soy farms, have reported a cancer rate more than 40 times higher than the nationwide average.

The video below shows a recent anti-Monsanto protest in Buenos Aires led by Goldman Environmental Prize winner Sofia Gatica, who has been campaigning against the company since her daughter died of a kidney malformation days after birth. On May 25, people around the world will join her struggle in a global March Against Monsanto, a day of protest slated to happen in hundreds of cities around the world.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

May 27, 2013
 |

Earlier this week, in light of worries that Yahoo’s purchase of Tumblr would mean an end to porn on the micro-blogging platform, I reviewed its most popular adult blogs. I slogged through hours of explicit material – all for you. But then, the sophisticated porn-oisseurs among you were like: Who needs this plebe porn? Show us the best!

Alright, I hear you. But there is only so much of the Internet – even the pornographic Tumblr Internet – that one woman can cover, so I called in some expert help from porn stars, journalists and sexperts. The result is a wildly eclectic bunch of blogs featuring everything from porn superstar Stoya to the indifferent cats of amateur porn. There is something in here for everyone – even if you don’t consider yourself a pornophile.

––––

Art or Porn: You Decide

Because of its “unique twist,” sexpert Emily Morse (she of Bravo TV fame) suggests this Tumblr. “You get to look at beautifully composed photographs that can also be considered pornographic,” says Morse. “The photographs titillate and tell a story. It’s up to you to decide whether you’re enjoying porn or art.”

Lady Cheeky

This blog brands itself as “a curated sensual images site that focuses on sensuality, positive body image, sexual pleasure and beautiful photos depicting desire and passion.” Its tagline: “smart is sexy.” Michael Thomsen, a sex writer, recommends it because of “the looping GIFs of isolated gestures during sex,” he says, “like a stroke of the hand just playing into infinity, or else like pulling down someone’s underwear while their hips rise in anticipation.” It’s this “pretty straightforward, vanilla stuff that often gets rushed over in long-form porn but [which] captures a little more honest and relatable part of sex than just fuck videos,” he says. That’s the magic of GIFs, Thomsen argues: “[They’re] the perfect format for getting around the paradox of needing sex on film to be maximally visual, which also makes it maximally unnatural and mechanistic.”

Underwear Tuesday

Here’s another recommendation from Thomsen: “I also have a soft spot for Underwear Tuesday since they show more normal people and not super-human porn bodies,” he says. “I think that’s, in a way, even more appealing, though I don’t get turned on at all looking at their pictures.” He says “it captures a real basic comfort that comes with along with sex in the lazy, not-super-heated moments of just being naked with someone and not having anywhere to go or any specific agenda to follow.”

Ugly Ugly Emptiness

I’ll leave the description to Conner Habib, a porn performer and writer who says it’s one of his favorites: “Right now, a quick scroll reveals a really sexy picture of Joss Hutcherson wearing a shirt that says ‘I fuck boys who fuck girls,’ homoerotic renaissance paintings, vintage gay porn, photos of guys playing sports with too-tight shorts and more.” He explains that he loves it for “its eclectic choices and its bizarre diversions from porn.” Also, he adds, “Whoever curates this Tumblr gets that porn is a lot of things, not just explicitly sexual imagery.”

BijouWorld

This blog, named after the 1972 gay porn film “Bijou,” is another of Habib’s favorites. ”It’s all vintage porn, featuring the typical-but-still-erotic washed-out colors and grainy quality photos,” he says. “No matter how good Instagram filters get, they’ll never quite evoke the feeling of truly vintage photos.”

Stuff in My Vagina

It’s exactly what it sounds like: an X-rated version of Stuff On My Cat. It features photos of various items – a carnival light, gold coin, plastic mouse, can of cat food, asthma inhaler – inserted into a woman’s vagina. There is some cheating – one photo shows a beer bottle clearly inserted into a different orifice – but the fans seem to care more about ingenuity than anatomical specificity.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

Despite being potentially one of the richest countries in the world, Russia still confronts several challenges such as youth emigration, and demographic and public health issues that hinder the country’s development.

The lack of opportunities and growing economic difficulties entice many young people to emigrate, particularly to Europe and to the United States. Those who emigrate are those who want to broaden their horizons and have better opportunities, and who see them now curtailed by the prevailing climate of corruption in the country.

It is estimated that between 2008 and 2011 more than 1,250,000 Russians emigrated, an even greater number than those who emigrated after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A survey conducted in 2010, for example, found that 21 percent of Russians want to emigrate, compared with 5 percent who wanted to do so in 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed.

During the past two decades, an aging demographic turn and its effect on Russian society has been the focus of debate. There is now universal agreement that unless Russia resolves this serious problem, its status as a world power will be seriously compromised. Russia has recently experienced a phenomenon similar to that of several developed countries, a rapidly aging population with steadily declining birth rates. However, while people living in most industrialized countries have increased life expectancy, in Russia this phenomenon is hindered by the relatively low health status of its population.

These factors, in addition to restrictive immigration policies and low fertility rates, have led Russia to a constant process of depopulation. It is estimated that between 1993 and 2010 the population in Russia was reduced from approximately 149 to 142 million people. If current trends continue, Russia’s population in 2050 will be between 100-107 million, which would be a demographic disaster for such a big country.

Serious health problems among Russians are the result of high rates of smoking and alcohol consumption, as well as high numbers of people living with HIV/AIDS. It is now estimated that more than two million men are HIV positive, and the epidemic doesn’t show any signs of abating. 80 percent of those infected with HIV are under 30, and the epidemic is closely associated with high levels of intravenous drug use.

According to the World Health Organization, heart disease, aggravated by alcohol and tobacco, is responsible for over 1.2 million deaths each year. According to a study, the increase in alcohol consumption since 1987 has caused more than three million deaths nationwide. It is estimated that one is eight deaths can be attributed to alcohol-related diseases.

In Russia, words and symbols are more important than reality. Putin, either as President or as Prime Minister has repeatedly tried to use symbols to rally support for his policies. One of these symbols has been the idea of Russia as an isolated fortress, surrounded by powerful enemies, particularly the United States. However, despite the use of these symbols, there is a great deal of antagonism against Putin, particularly among young people and intellectuals of all ages. Many people believe that although there has always been corruption in Russia, it has never been as great as now. This is compounded by Putin’s maneuvers to stay in power indefinitely, an issue that greatly concerns many Russians.

Since taking power again, Putin has exacerbated the negative aspects of his regime: consolidation of power, strict control of the media and the economy, electoral manipulation, censorship and propaganda in the state-control media, and persecution of political opponents and of industrialists and merchants who oppose his regime.

At the same time, however, the public seems less willing to endure government abuse, and protests against the current regime are constant, despite the huge fines set by the government for any kind of popular demonstration. And there is no doubt that Putin will face increasing criticism for his iron-hand polices. Given these circumstances, it is impossible to predict with certainty the direction events will take. It is clear, however, that Russian leaders face a wide and complex range of problems. How they respond to these challenges will determine the kind of country that Russia will become.

Cesar Chelala, M.D., Ph.D., is an international public health consultant and the author of “Environmental Impact on Child Health,” a publication of the Pan American Health Organization.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

Tanzania intl. film festival to screen Iranian movie

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Gunmen killed three Lebanese soldiers at a checkpoint in eastern Bekaa Valley near the country’s border with Syria. The attackers then fled into the rebel-controlled Syrian territory.

Two soldiers died in the firefight on Tuesday early morning near
the town of Arsal while the third one succumbed to wounds later in
hospital, a source in the Lebanese military reported.

The attackers stormed the checkpoint in a Hummer car,
overpowering and killing the soldiers there, according to Lebanese
media. They took arms from the killed troops and used their vehicle
to flee back across the border.

Ali Hujairi, the municipal chief of the predominantly Sunni
Arsal, told VDL radio that the city’s residents were not involved
in the attack. He added some of the townsfolk pursued the
attacker’s Hummer before it crossed the Syrian border.

The area is used by Syrian rebel forces and their Sunni
supporters in Lebanon to smuggle fighters and arms from Lebanon to
Syria.

Sporadic gunfights between Lebanese military and militants occur
at the border. In February, four Lebanese soldiers and two gunmen
were killed near Arsal.

The killings on Tuesday come days after Lebanon’s militant
movement Hezbollah pledged more support for the government of Syria
in its fight against the rebel forces.

Both the Syrian army and Hezbollah troops are currently engaged
in an operation at the Lebanese-Syrian border aimed at capturing
the area from rebels and their allies and cutting down the flow of
arms and fighters. The border Syrian town of Qusair is in the focus
of the fighting.

On Sunday two rockets hit a Hezbollah-controlled district of
Lebanese capital, Beirut, injuring several people. Many observers
said the attack was a response from pro-Syrian-rebel forces in
Lebanon to Hezbollah support of the Syrian government.

Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli saw deadly clashes between
supporters of the two sides fighting in Syria. But until Sunday,
Beirut was largely untouched by the Syrian conflict.

This article originally appeared on: RT

A man removes a broken door from his shell-pocked apartment in Lebanonâ„¢s northern city of Tripoli, May 27, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Sudan has given South Sudan a Ëœlast warningâ„¢ that it will close an oil pipeline running from the South if Juba supports the Ëœtraitorsâ„¢ in Sudan.

Å“I now give our brothers in South Sudan a last, last warning that we will shut down the oil pipeline forever if they give any support to the traitors in Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile,” Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said on state television on Monday, referring to rebels operating in some regions of Sudan.

On May 26, the Sudanese army clashed with an armed group of Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF) in the Dandor area of South Kordofan. Khartoum says Juba supports the SRF, but South Sudan denies the allegation.

South Sudanâ„¢s Information Minister Barnaba Marial called for the resolution of tensions over oil and land disputes through an African Union panel.

Å“Any problem can be solved through dialogue. We are ready to continue the dialogue. Our president has said several times that we do not support any rebels in Sudan,” the South Sudanese information minister stated.

In March, Sudan and South Sudan struck a deal to resume the flow of southern oil exports through pipelines in the north. They also agreed to withdraw their troops from contested border areas to ease tensions and facilitate the resumption of oil exports.

In January 2012, South Sudan stopped its oil production following tensions over pipeline fees and disputed territory.

South Sudan seceded from the Republic of Sudan on July 9, 2011, after decades of conflict with the north. The new oil-rich nation is one of the least developed countries in the world, with one in seven children dying before the age of five.

MM/HSN

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]British military charity has rejected donations collected by the leader of the racist anti-Islam English Defense League Tommy Robinson.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]A number of eminent Iranian musicians and vocalist are scheduled to present their programs at the 2013 Ethno Port Festival in Poznan, Poland.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Argentineans have condemned the British colonial policies in the South Atlantic region in the May Revolution National Day, which marks the countryâ„¢s independence from Spain 203 years ago.

During the protest held in the capital Buenos Aires, participants praised their governmentâ„¢s success in reviving the Malvinas Islands cause and taking the fight over the sovereignty of the South Atlantic islands to the British, Press TV reported.

Å“In these 10 years, Argentina managed to install the Malvinas cause strategically at a regional and global level. Argentineans are becoming aware of the significance Malvinas have for the future decades,” said Juan Recce, head of Argentine People for Malvinas organization.

Buenos Aires has been locked in a dispute with London over the sovereignty of the territories known in Britain as the Falklands over the recent years after an interval following the 1982 war on the islands.

Britain illegally occupied the Malvinas in the 1830â„¢s and has since kept the archipelago under its control.

Argentinaâ„¢s sovereignty claim to the territory is backed by the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR).

Argentina wants Britain to come to the negotiating table over the sovereignty issue, but London says any such talks should be attended by the Falklands government representatives, which Argentina does not recognize.

The United Nations lists the Malvinas as one of the territories that should be decolonized and has in several resolutions since 1965 called on Britain to resolve the issue at the negotiating table.

AMR/HE

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/declaring_the_9_11_era_over_20130527/

Posted on May 27, 2013

This article originally appeared on: TruthDig

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/congress_still_puts_out_for_wall_street_20130527/

Posted on May 27, 2013

This article originally appeared on: TruthDig

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
var pCount = $(‘#content’).children(‘p’).length;
var position = Math.floor(pCount*0.1);
$(‘#content’).children(‘p’).eq(position).before(html);
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}

function appendBottomAppeal() {
if (!$(‘#content’).is(‘.width72,.category’)) {
var htmlArray = [
‘

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
if ($(‘#article-tools’).length > 0) {
$(‘#article-tools’).before(html);
} else {
$(‘#content’).append(html);
}
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}
$(document).ready(function(){
appendInlineAppeal();
appendBottomAppeal();
});

This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

Victims of child sex abuse by Catholic priests in Australia demand the resignation of the top-ranking cardinal in Australia, George Pell (shown).

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

May 27, 2013
 |

“I’m willing to cut the young lady who interrupted me some slack, because it’s worth being passionate about. Is this who we are? Is that something our founders foresaw?”–President Obama on Medea Benjamin

By now, the world knows Medea Benjamin as either the woman who challenged–or heckled–President Obama last Thursday during his speech on drones and Guantanamo Bay.

“People think you’re rude and crazy,” a CNN reporter told Benjamin, the co-founder of two global peace organizations, CodePink and Global Exchange. But Benjamin, already well-known among peace activists and political progressives (she was a major force during Ralph Nader’s 2000 presidential campaign) has also inspired legions of new fans astonished that someone had the nerve–or the passion–to stand up to one of the most powerful men on earth.

Now Benjamin has been trying to turn her moment in the mainstream media spotlight to the issues that brought her to the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. on Thursday in the first place. We talked to her about what happened and the issues that fuel her activism and her next steps.




Evelyn Nieves: Were you surprised that President Obama actually addressed you on Thursday rather than simply give the nod to the Secret Service to nab you as soon as you spoke out? Do you think it signals a president who is willing to listen? How does his response compare with other presidents and leaders whom you’ve publicly challenged in the same way?

Medea Benjamin: Many politicians try to ignore or belittle the folks who interrupt them. I think President Obama is just a really good politician who recognizes that it is better to address the person than have them dragged out. I was grateful that he said that my voice was worth listening to, though it was quite surreal because as the president and I were “dialoguing,” I was surrounded by army, FBI and Secret Service threatening to arrest me and drag me out.

But every time they touched me I said that the president was talking to me, and if they made a scene by pulling me out, they would really regret it. That bought me some valuable time.

Nieves: You spoke up when President Obama mentioned Guantanamo, which has yet to infiltrate the American consciousness despite the growing crisis there. What are you hoping your exchange with the president will do to foster outrage and pressure to finally close Gitmo and release innocent detainees? 

Benjamin: These detainees are in desperate straits. It’s both a humanitarian and a political crisis. Despite the force-feeding, some of these men could start to die, and this could unleash another huge wave of anti-American riots around the Muslim world. So something must be done right away.

The president is saying that Congress is to blame, and yes, Congress has placed ridiculous roadblocks to closing Guantanamo. But Congress also put in place a waiver system that the president could use immediately to release the 86 prisoners who have been cleared for release. He did announce a lifting of the self-imposed ban on repatriating prisoners to Yemen, and that is positive. But he needs to go beyond nice words and bureaucratic measures: He needs to immediately start authorizing some releases, so that the prisoners will see progress and stop the hunger strike. Then we can tackle the larger issue of giving fair trials to the remaining prisoners.

In the meantime, my colleagues and I at CodePink will be doing more to keep up the pressure, working with the Guantanamo lawyers and groups like Witness Against Torture, Amnesty, The World Can’t Wait and National Religious Campaign Against Torture. We’re planning more protests and civil disobedience at the White House, a vigil at the gates of the Guantanamo prison itself, a delegation to Yemen to meet with family members and government officials. We’ve got many plans.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
var pCount = $(‘#content’).children(‘p’).length;
var position = Math.floor(pCount*0.1);
$(‘#content’).children(‘p’).eq(position).before(html);
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}

function appendBottomAppeal() {
if (!$(‘#content’).is(‘.width72,.category’)) {
var htmlArray = [
‘

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
if ($(‘#article-tools’).length > 0) {
$(‘#article-tools’).before(html);
} else {
$(‘#content’).append(html);
}
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}
$(document).ready(function(){
appendInlineAppeal();
appendBottomAppeal();
});

This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
var pCount = $(‘#content’).children(‘p’).length;
var position = Math.floor(pCount*0.1);
$(‘#content’).children(‘p’).eq(position).before(html);
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}

function appendBottomAppeal() {
if (!$(‘#content’).is(‘.width72,.category’)) {
var htmlArray = [
‘

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
if ($(‘#article-tools’).length > 0) {
$(‘#article-tools’).before(html);
} else {
$(‘#content’).append(html);
}
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}
$(document).ready(function(){
appendInlineAppeal();
appendBottomAppeal();
});

This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
var pCount = $(‘#content’).children(‘p’).length;
var position = Math.floor(pCount*0.1);
$(‘#content’).children(‘p’).eq(position).before(html);
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}

function appendBottomAppeal() {
if (!$(‘#content’).is(‘.width72,.category’)) {
var htmlArray = [
‘

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
if ($(‘#article-tools’).length > 0) {
$(‘#article-tools’).before(html);
} else {
$(‘#content’).append(html);
}
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}
$(document).ready(function(){
appendInlineAppeal();
appendBottomAppeal();
});

This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
var pCount = $(‘#content’).children(‘p’).length;
var position = Math.floor(pCount*0.1);
$(‘#content’).children(‘p’).eq(position).before(html);
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}

function appendBottomAppeal() {
if (!$(‘#content’).is(‘.width72,.category’)) {
var htmlArray = [
‘

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
if ($(‘#article-tools’).length > 0) {
$(‘#article-tools’).before(html);
} else {
$(‘#content’).append(html);
}
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}
$(document).ready(function(){
appendInlineAppeal();
appendBottomAppeal();
});

This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
var pCount = $(‘#content’).children(‘p’).length;
var position = Math.floor(pCount*0.1);
$(‘#content’).children(‘p’).eq(position).before(html);
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}

function appendBottomAppeal() {
if (!$(‘#content’).is(‘.width72,.category’)) {
var htmlArray = [
‘

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
if ($(‘#article-tools’).length > 0) {
$(‘#article-tools’).before(html);
} else {
$(‘#content’).append(html);
}
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}
$(document).ready(function(){
appendInlineAppeal();
appendBottomAppeal();
});

This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
var pCount = $(‘#content’).children(‘p’).length;
var position = Math.floor(pCount*0.1);
$(‘#content’).children(‘p’).eq(position).before(html);
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}

function appendBottomAppeal() {
if (!$(‘#content’).is(‘.width72,.category’)) {
var htmlArray = [
‘

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
if ($(‘#article-tools’).length > 0) {
$(‘#article-tools’).before(html);
} else {
$(‘#content’).append(html);
}
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}
$(document).ready(function(){
appendInlineAppeal();
appendBottomAppeal();
});

This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
var pCount = $(‘#content’).children(‘p’).length;
var position = Math.floor(pCount*0.1);
$(‘#content’).children(‘p’).eq(position).before(html);
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}

function appendBottomAppeal() {
if (!$(‘#content’).is(‘.width72,.category’)) {
var htmlArray = [
‘

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
if ($(‘#article-tools’).length > 0) {
$(‘#article-tools’).before(html);
} else {
$(‘#content’).append(html);
}
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}
$(document).ready(function(){
appendInlineAppeal();
appendBottomAppeal();
});

This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
var pCount = $(‘#content’).children(‘p’).length;
var position = Math.floor(pCount*0.1);
$(‘#content’).children(‘p’).eq(position).before(html);
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}

function appendBottomAppeal() {
if (!$(‘#content’).is(‘.width72,.category’)) {
var htmlArray = [
‘

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
if ($(‘#article-tools’).length > 0) {
$(‘#article-tools’).before(html);
} else {
$(‘#content’).append(html);
}
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}
$(document).ready(function(){
appendInlineAppeal();
appendBottomAppeal();
});

This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
var pCount = $(‘#content’).children(‘p’).length;
var position = Math.floor(pCount*0.1);
$(‘#content’).children(‘p’).eq(position).before(html);
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}

function appendBottomAppeal() {
if (!$(‘#content’).is(‘.width72,.category’)) {
var htmlArray = [
‘

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
if ($(‘#article-tools’).length > 0) {
$(‘#article-tools’).before(html);
} else {
$(‘#content’).append(html);
}
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}
$(document).ready(function(){
appendInlineAppeal();
appendBottomAppeal();
});

This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
var pCount = $(‘#content’).children(‘p’).length;
var position = Math.floor(pCount*0.1);
$(‘#content’).children(‘p’).eq(position).before(html);
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}

function appendBottomAppeal() {
if (!$(‘#content’).is(‘.width72,.category’)) {
var htmlArray = [
‘

‘
];
var html = htmlArray.join(”);
if ($(‘#article-tools’).length > 0) {
$(‘#article-tools’).before(html);
} else {
$(‘#content’).append(html);
}
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘form’).children(‘.more-options’).children(‘a’).click(function() {
$(‘#inline-appeal’).children(‘.initially-hidden’).show();
$(this).parent().hide();
return false;
});
}
}
$(document).ready(function(){
appendInlineAppeal();
appendBottomAppeal();
});

This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site

A group of Iranian Navy vessels will make a stop at the Russian port city of Astrakhan, the naval base of Russia’s Caspian Sea fleet, in the coming months, the Russian military says.

The press service for Russiaâ„¢s Southern Military District said that Iranian naval warships are expected to dock at Astrakhan port this summer, Voice of Russia radio network reported on Monday.

The report added that the visit is part of a plan to expand and strengthen international cooperation between the Caspian Sea littoral states.

According to the report, Iranian naval commanders are expected to meet with the commander of the Caspian Sea fleet and officials in Astrakhan Province.

The exact date of the visit has not been announced.

Earlier in April, a group of Russian Navy warships docked at the southern Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas after a long journey from the Pacific Ocean.

In recent years, Iranâ„¢s Navy has been increasing its presence in international waters to protect naval routes and provide security for merchant vessels and tankers.

On March 21, the 24th fleet of Iranâ„¢s Navy, comprising Sabalan destroyer and Kharg helicopter carrier, docked at the Port of Colombo in Sri Lanka after patrolling Southeast Asia’s Strait of Malacca and successfully conducting a mission in the Indian and Pacific oceans.

The fleet docked at China’s Zhangjiagang port on March 4 after sailing 13,000 kilometers in 40 days.

In line with the international efforts to combat piracy, the Iranian Navy has been conducting anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden since November 2008 to safeguard the vessels involved in maritime trade, especially the ships and oil tankers owned or leased by Iran.

The Islamic Republic has repeatedly asserted that its overseas naval presence is meant to convey a message of peace and friendship to regional countries.

YH/HJL

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Israeli soldiers are seen aboard a mobile artillery vehicle during a military exercise in the occupied Golan Heights, September 19, 2012.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Armed men have killed three soldiers in eastern Lebanon, security services say, following several other recent attacks in the country.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Francois Hollande didn’t expect such vast public outcry when he signed the same-sex marriage law in order to satisfy the small lobby, which sponsored his campaign for French presidency, Bruno Vercken from La Manif Pour Tous movement told RT.

Central Paris has witnessed violence on its streets over the
weekend, a mass rally in protest at laws allowing same-sex marriage
turned into clashes.

Police cracked down on far-right activists who had joined the
demonstration, arresting 350 people for refusing to disperse or
occupying private property. 

Bruno Vercken, regional coordinator of the anti-gay marriage
movement that took part in protests on Sunday, says that so many
Frenchmen are speaking out against the same-sex marriage and
adoption law because it violates the rights of the
children.

RT: Did the police go too far in the way they dealt
with your protest?

Bruno Vercken: Yes, indeed. If you look at the numbers
since last November several millions of people have gone into
street to protest and you won’t be able to provide any picture nor
any film of any broken glass, any burned car, and any violence
during the protests themselves. At the same time, many people have
been arrested. Several hundred people have been arrested by the
police just because they were wearing suits with this logo there
[shows the logo of the Anti-Gay Marriage Movement]. No longer than
last Saturday, people were arrested in Paris because there were two
of them walking together. And, at the same time, many people and no
later than two weeks ago when Paris Saint-Germain celebrated this
title in the soccer league in France, many people ruined some shops
and they were not arrested. 

RT: What are the reasons for the police behaving in
this manner towards the same-sex marriage protestors?

BV: The government is extremely
surprised and annoyed by the breadth and the length, the duration
of the movement. Francois Hollande had not anticipated that
allowing same-sex marriage and adoption would create such a concern
about so many people in France. He did this promise to satisfy a
small lobby, particularly active lobby, who financed his
presidential campaign. He didn’t anticipate that same-sex marriage
was meaning in France adoption and plenary adoption — which
immediately triggers the risk of losing the biological link between
the kid and his parents. And in France this is very unique. And
people are protesting against that to defend the right of
children. 

RT: Was this all about your objection to gay-marriage,
or was it hijacked by groups with other agendas?

BV: Really not, I’m personally a member of a
political party in France, and the takeover of this movement by any
political party is clearly not at stake. Many of these people are,
by the way, from left or from right so it transcends the classical
left-right boundaries.   

RT: France is now the ninth European country to
legalise gay marriage. Why can’t you move with the times?
 

BV: You could put nine ladies together you wouldn’t be
able to create a baby even in one month. And I think people protest
here because they… It’s not a matter of being modern, going along
with times. It’s really against, at one point in time, to say:
Who’s at stake there? Have we thought, have we considered the right
of the weakest person there – who’s the kid? And, you know, when a
kid has lost his parents, probably, his dearest wish is to be
adopted by a man and a woman. You, me are the sons of a man and a
woman and in this law there’s a deep lie — imbedded in the law — is
to make people believe in the future that they can be born from two
men or two women. And this is extremely dangerous and, by the way,
we’ll open soon the rights to medically adopted procreation and
surrogate mothers, which people in France are extremely worried
about and are extremely against.

This article originally appeared on: RT

Afghanistanâ„¢s prominent National Unity Party has condemned the US plans for establishing permanent military bases in the country, Press TV reports.

On May 9, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Washington had demanded to keep nine military bases across Afghanistan.

During a speech at Kabul University, Karzai said that the US planned to keep its nine bases in the main cities of Afghanistan, such as the capital Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat.

The head of the National Unity Party Bismillah Shir said on Monday, Å“We have already made it clear that we do not need American bases in our country. What we need at this point of time is an economic base. They are using the issue of terrorism as a pretext for creating military bases, but we are against such attempts in our soil.”

The National Unity Party leader has called on Karzai to provide further clarifications on the US plan.

On May 2, 2012, Washington and Kabul signed a deal that authorized the presence of US troops for a period of 10 years after 2014, which was the original date agreed earlier for the departure of all foreign combat troops from Afghanistan. Afghanistanâ„¢s parliament approved the pact on May 26.

Shir says the Afghan president should consult with the nation about conditions he set for signing the agreement with Washington.

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001 as part of Washingtonâ„¢s so-called war on terror. The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but after more than 11 years, insecurity remains across the country.

MM/HSN

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Republican Senator John McCain, a staunch advocate of US military aid to the Syrian opposition, has made a surprise visit to war-torn Syria and met with rebels. The controversial move comes as Russia and the US are trying to set up a peace conference.

According to a report by the Daily Beast, Arizona Senator McCain
crossed into Syria form Turkey with General Salem Idris, who leads
the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army, and stayed
there for several hours before returning back. The senator met with
assembled leaders of Free Syrian Army units in both Turkey and
Syria.

Idris told the Daily Beast “We need American help to have change
on the ground; we are now in a very critical situation.”

A senior State Department official has confirmed that the senator
did “cross into Syrian territory” but referred all questions
to McCain’s office. McCain’s spokesman confirmed that the visit
took place but declined to give any details.

The move had come shortly before the EU agreed to end its arms
embargo on Syrian rebels on Monday. Last week, a US Senate panel
voted overwhelmingly to send weapons to forces fighting the Syrian
government, underlining growing sentiment among lawmakers for a
change in the US approach to the Syrian conflict.

Meanwhile Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary
of State John Kerry have met in Paris where they are discussing the
upcoming Geneva peace conference on Syria.

Lavrov, emerging from the talks said that a peace conference on
Syria was a “tall order,” but expressed hope that “when
the United States and the Russian Federation take this kind of
initiative, the chances for success are there.”

Kerry spoke for both countries when he said they were committed to
upholding the principles outlined in the Geneva Communique of 2012,
which proposed a transitional government to be elected by mutual
consent between the government of Bashar Assad and the Syrian
opposition.

McCain’s actions are a dangerous provocation reminiscent of his
actions on Iraq and Libya, says independent researcher and writer
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich. She adds that under the US Constitution,
one of the things that is considered treason is to promote or to
bring about war.

“McCain did the same thing for Iraq. He was a part of a
Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and he met with the Iraqi
opposition and we saw the war there. He was all for this Libyan
opposition group.”  

“McCain does not serve the interests of the American people
or the world at large,” she told RT.

It remains unclear if the Arizona senator and an outspoken
critic of Obama’s handling on Syria crisis had informed the White
House about his plans to visit Syria.

However Sepahpour-Ulrich does not believe the Obama
administration was unaware of the McCain’s move.

“I don’t think that Senator McCain would take it upon himself
to go to Syria and meet with the opposition had he not had a nod
from the government otherwise he would be locked up the minute he
returns because he is acting against America’s interest if indeed
that’s America’s interest.”

The researcher claims that we are seeing two sides here – “We
are seeing the government, the administration, Obama, trying to
play the nice guy. But everything that is going on is what had led
up to all the other wars in the region.”

“I don’t think they want peace — peace doesn’t serve
them.”

This article originally appeared on: RT

The Russian foreign minister has said it is a Ëœvery tall orderâ„¢ to organize the forthcoming international conference in Geneva on the situation in Syria.

Sergei Lavrov said after a meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in the French capital, Paris, on Monday that it would not be easy to organize the Geneva talks on Syria.

Lavrov and Kerry discussed the possible dates and participants in the peace talks in the meeting, which was their sixth since the US secretary of state took office in February.

Å“We discussed how we can proceed… in our efforts to make this conference happen. Itâ„¢s not an easy task. Itâ„¢s a very tall order,” the Russian foreign minister stated.

Lavrov added that those countries present in the Geneva talks of June 2012, or Geneva 1, are likely to Å“have been accepted.”

Å“We believe that this circle could be extended to involve all key outside players who have interest in the situation,” he said.

Lavrov also said top diplomatic staff from the US and Russia would meet soon to discuss Å“how this conference could best be prepared for the possibility of success not failure.”

Å“Thatâ„¢s our goal, and thatâ„¢s what brought us here to Paris.”

On May 22, Lavrov said that the Syrian governmentâ„¢s response to the proposed peace talks in Geneva was constructive.

Å“We value the constructive reaction of the Syrian leadership to this proposal,” the Russian foreign minister said in a meeting with Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Miqdad in Moscow.

The first Geneva talks, which were presided over by former UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, called for a political process to end the crisis in Syria.

Turmoil has gripped Syria since March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on May 18 that militants from 29 different countries were fighting against the government in different parts of the country.

IA/HSN

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

 This past Thursday and Friday, President Obama delivered two speeches designed to outline his new thinking on national security and counter-terrorism. While much was made in the media of the president’s statements at the National Defense University and the US Naval Academy suggesting that the most active phase of US military action overseas was coming to an end, this “new” approach is but the same old policy wrapped in new packaging. In these addresses, the president panders to the progressives, while continually expanding and solidifying the “enabling act” principle.

The president will continue and even expand drone attacks overseas because they are “less deadly” than ground invasions. He promises to be more careful in the future.

He is entertaining the introduction of “kill courts” which will meet in secret to decide who is to be executed without trial or charge. He promises these will have sufficient oversight.

He will seek a new and updated Authorization for the Use of Military Force to expand his legal authority to wage war wherever and whenever he wants. He promises it will one day be repealed.

He will continue to indefinitely detain at Guantanamo individuals who have been neither charged nor convicted of any crime, and who cannot even be tried because they were tortured and thus the evidence is tainted. He promises to “commit to a process of closing GTMO.”

The speech speaks of more war and more killing and more interventionism all masked in the language of withdrawal.

The president warns of the threats of the new al-Qaeda affiliates that have sprung up in places like Iraq without explaining that it was the US invasion of Iraq that opened the door to their entry in the first place. There was no al-Qaeda in Iraq before the US overthrow of Saddam Hussein, just as there was little extremism in Libya before the US attack on that country in 2011.

The president claims that “unrest in the Arab world has also allowed extremists to gain a foothold in countries like Libya and Syria.” However, it was the US-led attack on Libya that resulted in extremists gaining power there, with many fighters afterward spreading unrest and destruction by joining the wars against the Syrian and Malian regimes. The extremists brought to de facto power in places like Benghazi were responsible for the murder of the US ambassador, yet the president says nothing about that unintended consequence of his interventionist policies.

He calls for even more interventionism in the future, but he promises that it will be a different kind of interventionism. He wants the US to shape democratic transitions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya while actively supporting those seeking to overthrow the government in Syria.

He wants to take nation-building to a whole new level, urging that the US “help countries modernize economies, upgrade education, and encourage entrepreneurship.” He promises to battle extremism overseas by “training security forces in Libya, maintaining peace agreements between Israel and its neighbors, feeding the hungry in Yemen, building schools in Pakistan, and creating reservoirs of goodwill that marginalize extremists.”

What the president does not seem to understand is that we do not have the money to build schools, upgrade education, modernize economies, and encourage entrepreneurship overseas at a time when our national debt is $16 trillion. And besides, isn’t it a deeply flawed idea that the US government can achieve all of these remarkable results overseas when we know what a disaster these big government undertakings have produced at home? What we reject at home as Soviet-style central planning is fully embraced as effective foreign policy overseas. Should it really be the US government’s role to “modernize economies” or “encourage entrepreneurs” anywhere? Those are activities best left to the private sector, whether here at home or in far off lands.

President Obama’s speech is not at all what it seems. It is a call for more empire and more power to the executive branch. The president promises that “this war, like all wars, must end.” Unfortunately the war on the American taxpayer never seems to end. But end it will, as we are running out of money.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

British Foreign Secretary William Hague (L) and Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders talk prior to the Foreign Affairs Council on May 27, 2013 at the EU Headquarters in Brussels.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

The Central African Republic has been suspended from the Kimberley Process, an international body responsible for halting the trade in conflict-tainted diamonds, due to the military clashes in the country.

According to a document signed by current Kimberley Process chair South Africa and published on Monday, certified diamond trading with the CAR was suspended with immediate effect, Reuters reported.

The document was sent to the 80 member states of the Kimberley Process.

In early May, South African diplomat Welile Nhlepo, who is the chair ambassador of the Kimberley Process, warned of the conditions in the CAR in regard to the trade in diamonds, saying, “We face a situation where conflict diamonds continue to fuel rebel activities to remove elected officials from office.”

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

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

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

NT/HGL

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Medical personnel remove the body of a victim killed in drug violence in Monterrey, Mexico. (file photo)

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Iranian presidential candidate Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel says putting the Iranian economy on the right track should be the top priority of the next administration.

The principlist candidate said on Monday that he would make efforts to stabilize the currency rate and create a calm atmosphere in the market if elected in the June presidential election.

Haddad-Adel said the unemployment issue could be solved through promotion of investment in the country.

The Iranian MP also made comments regarding foreign affairs, saying, his administration would seek reduction of tensions with other world states. He added that entering into dialog with the United States is possible if the US officials respect the Islamic Republic of Iranâ„¢s rights.

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

The president of Iran is elected for a four-year term in a national election, and the Guardian Council vets the candidates.

NT/AS

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

The Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper has reported that German small arms sales hit an all-time high in 2012.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Iranian presidential candidate Ali Akbar Velayati says it is possible to fix the Islamic Republicâ„¢s economic problems by reforming the country’s foreign policy.

The Iranian former foreign minister made the remarks in a televised interview in Tehran on Monday.

Å“The issue of foreign affairs… and the domestic economy have close ties to one another,” he said.

Velayati, who is currently serving as an advisor to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, stated that he would pursue Iranâ„¢s nuclear rights if elected in the upcoming presidential election.

Å“I would like to assure our dear people that we will solve the nuclear issue by preserving the nuclear rights and we will boost international relations without relinquishing an iota of Iranâ„¢s rights.”

The Principlist candidate added that Iran has Å“billions of dollars in foreign countries,” and that Å“we need an active diplomacy,” to return it.

He also emphasized boosting the countryâ„¢s economy by privatizing state-run sectors, increasing production, and fully implementing the state subsidy program.

Velayati will be contending against lawmaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, Secretary of Supreme National Security Council Saeed Jalili, Expediency Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei, President of the Strategic Research Center of the Expediency Council Hassan Rohani, former First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref, Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, and former Telecommunications Minister Mohammad Gharazi.

Iranians will go to the polls in the nationâ„¢s 11th presidential election on June 14. The 4th city and rural council elections are also scheduled to be held on the same day.

The president of Iran is elected for a four-year term in a national election, and the Guardian Council vets the candidates.

NT/AS

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

A series of 18 major events for the Cuban 5 will take place in Washington DC between May 30 and June 5. The Cuban 5 are five Cuban agents sent to the U.S. in the 1990′s to monitor the terrorist activities of anti-Cuban exile groups in Miami. They have been imprisoned here for nearly 15 years, mostly on conspiracy charges. The highlight of the activities will be a June 1 demonstration in front of the White House saying “Enough is enough, release the Cuban 5 now!” That same evening, well known activist and scholar Angela Davis will deliver a speech on social justice and the case of the Five at 6pm at St. Stephens Church 1525, Newton St. NW.

Along with calling for the freedom of the Cuban 5, the protest at the White House will include demands for ending the travel ban, removing Cuba from the list of countries that promote terrorism, ending the criminal economic blockade of Cuba and closing Guantanamo Prison.

“We are coming to DC to fight for the freedom of the five because in doing that we are standing with our people and our families in Cuba so they can live in peace and be free of terrorism” said Andres Gomez, National Coordinator of the Antonio Maceo Brigade in Miami. The brigade is part of the Martiana Alliance that includes the Jose Marti Association, the ATC, the Bolivarian Circle of Miami, the Christian Women Association in Defense of the Family and the Mariana Alliance. Other groups from Miami that will participate of the Washington actions include the Foundation for the Normalization of Relations between the U.S. and Cuba, Cuban American Defense League and Jewish Solidarity.

Along with Cubans from Miami, parliamentarians, jurists and organizers from Argentina, Barbados, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, England, France, Germany, Greece, Haiti, Italy, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Quebec, Spain, Sweden, and Venezuela will also be participating.

Buses are being organized in New York City and people from all over the U.S. will be coming. Canadian groups have been confirmed from Vancouver, Toronto and Quebec.

René González, who regained his freedom by renouncing his United States citizenship, after having served his sentence, urged President Barack Obama “to have the courage to pardon them by the powers conferred to him” The 5 days for Cuban 5 is being organized by the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

The Christian owners of Hobby Lobby and Mardel Christian book retailer have taken their case against the Obama Administration’s contraception mandate to a federal appeals court, asking to be exempted from the rule requiring businesses to provide free birth control to their employees – including “morning after” pills that are known to cause abortion.

Last September Hobby Lobby’s CEO, David Green, filed a lawsuit to halt implementation of the mandate. Two-months later, a two-judge panel of the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals rejected the company’s request for a temporary injunction against the mandate as litigation in the case proceeded. That ruling prompted Green to announce that his companies, which have a combined total of over 14,000 employees, would defy the mandate, an action that could cost an estimated $1.3 million in federal fines per day. “The government is forcing us to choose between following our faith and following the law,” explained Green. “I say that’s a choice no American and no American business should have to make.”

While Hobby Lobby’s owners say they have no problem with offering their employees contraceptives as part of their health coverage, they have refused to spring for the Plan B-type abortifacient drugs. Kyle Duncan of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the companies, said that the Hobby Lobby/Mardel group would “continue to provide health insurance to all qualified employees. To remain true to their faith, it is not their intention, as a company, to pay for abortion-inducing drugs.”

On May 23 Duncan took the Hobby Lobby/Mardel case before the full 10th U.S. Court of Appeals, arguing that the as Christians, the companies’ owners run the business using Christian values, and so should enjoy the same exemption from the mandate as churches. The stores are a “profit-making company, yes, but also a ministry,” Duncan told the eight judges.

“When the government threatens to ruin a family’s business unless they renounce their faith, the pressure placed on them is unmistakable,” Hobby Lobby’s lawyers wrote in a brief filed in the case. “In other words, ‘Your business or your religion’ is just as effective a threat as ‘Your money or your life.’ ”

World Magazine noted that the latest court appearance for Hobby Lobby “marks the third time the company has made its case in the courts. If it loses this round of its religious liberty fight, it will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Arguing against Hobby Lobby, the federal government insisted giving Hobby Lobby a pass on the mandate would mean that Green would be imposing his religious beliefs on his employees. “If you make an exemption for the employer, it comes at the expense of the employee,” argued federal attorney Alisa Klein.

But Duncan refuted that notion, telling the Catholic News Agency that “the idea Hobby Lobby is oppressing its employees or denying them a significant amount of benefits really doesn’t measure up to the facts. Let’s remember, Hobby Lobby provides generous wages well above the minimum wage, and generous benefits to its employees.”
 He noted that the company “isn’t violating the rights of its employees. Its employees are perfectly free to buy and use these drugs, even to use the generous wages Hobby Lobby gave them, to buy the drugs, so we think the government has the rights question really quite backwards.” Duncan added that the coverage the the company has balked at is for “a very small number of drugs [within its] otherwise extraordinarily generous comprehensive health benefits.”


World Magazine noted that this is “the same argument government lawyers have made in other cases, with mixed results. Fourteen for-profit businesses have won temporary injunctions against the mandate on grounds it violates their religious freedom. Only six businesses have lost their cases. But the mixed rulings from across the country virtually guarantee the issue will end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Hobby Lobby is one of some 60 private businesses, colleges, schools, hospitals, and other non-profit groups which have filed suit to halt implementation of the mandate. On May 6 one of the companies, Tyndale House Bible publishers, won a major victory in its efforts against the mandate, when, at the request of the Department of Justice, a federal appellate court dismissed an Obama administration appeal of an order that had halted enforcement of the mandate against Tyndale. The retreat by the administration marked the first complete appellate victory on a preliminary injunction in any of the cases against the mandate.

The Illinois-based publisher is the world’s largest privately held publisher of Bibles and Christian books, and funnels over 95 percent of its profits to religious non-profit groups and causes around the world. The company filed its suit against the mandate last October, objecting – as has Hobby Lobby and the majority of other groups filing suit – to being forced to provide “morning after” contraceptives that can also act as abortifacients. The Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which administers the mandate, had tried to rule that Tyndale was not a sufficiently religious entity to qualify for the exemption bestowed upon churches and a select few non-profits.

^{Photo: AP Images}

This article originally appeared on: The New American

In less than two weeks, Missouri could join Kansas in enacting a state law refusing to enforce federal gun control measures.

On May 22, the Second Amendment Preservation Act (HB 436) was sent to Governor Jay Nixon. As of this writing, Nixon, a Democrat, has not indicated whether he plans to veto or sign the bill.

Earlier this month, both houses of the Republican-controlled state legislature passed the bill by an overwhelming majority.

When asked about Governor Nixon’s intention, a source inside his office told The New American that in an effort to avoid multiplying the several scandals already plaguing his administration, Nixon would likely let the bill sit on his desk without signing or vetoing it, thus allowing the measure to become law without his participation.

According to Article III, Section 31 of the Missouri state constitution:

Every bill which shall have passed the house of representatives and the senate shall be presented to and considered by the governor, and, within fifteen days after presentment, he shall return such bill to the house in which it originated endorsed with his approval or accompanied by his objections. If the bill be approved by the governor it shall become a law. When the general assembly adjourns, or recesses for a period of thirty days or more, the governor shall return within forty-five days any bill to the office of the secretary of state with his approval or reasons for disapproval. If any bill shall not be returned by the governor within the time limits prescribed by this section it shall become law in like manner as if the governor had signed it.

Therefore, the Missouri gun control nullification bill could become law on June 6 without the governor’s signature.

Should he decide to sign the bill, however, Governor Nixon would join Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas, who recently enacted a similar measure passed with overwhelming support by the Kansas state legislature.

While there are similarities between the Kansas and Missouri measures, the text of the Missouri bill goes much farther in its bold opposition to attempts by the federal government to infringe on the right of Missourians to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

The text of the Missouri bill declares that the state’s General Assembly is “firmly resolved to support and defend the United States Constitution against every aggression, either foreign or domestic.”

Section 2 of the bill goes on to affirm that the state legislature possesses not only the right to check federal overreaching, but that “the general assembly is duty bound to watch over and oppose every infraction of those principles which constitute the basis of the Union of the States, because only a faithful observance of those principles can secure the nation’s existence and the public happiness.”

The bill opens with a brief recitation of the history of the creation of the federal government, a recounting that resounds with a firm grasp on the proper, constitutional relationship between state and federal governments, as well as the legal basis for nullification:

Acting through the United States Constitution, the people of the several states created the federal government to be their agent in the exercise of a few defined powers, while reserving to the state governments the power to legislate on matters which concern the lives, liberties, and properties of citizens in the ordinary course of affairs;

The limitation of the federal government’s power is affirmed under the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which defines the total scope of federal power as being that which has been delegated by the people of the several states to the federal government, and all power not delegated to the federal government in the Constitution of the United States is reserved to the states respectively, or to the people themselves;

Whenever the federal government assumes powers that the people did not grant it in the Constitution, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force;

The several states of the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their federal government. If the government created by the compact among the states were the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers granted to it by the Constitution, the federal government’s discretion, and not the Constitution, would be the measure of those powers.

Specifically, the bill denies to the federal government the authority to enact any statutes, rules, regulations, or executive orders “which restrict or prohibit the manufacture, ownership, and use of firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition exclusively within the borders of Missouri.”

Laudably, the bill as amended by the state Senate does not back down from a fight with the federal government over the Second Amendment. Section 3 of the bill boldly asserts:

All federal acts, laws, orders, rules, and regulations, whether past, present, or future, which infringe on the people’s right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 23 of the Missouri Constitution shall be invalid in this state, shall not be recognized by this state, shall be specifically rejected by this state, and shall be considered null and void and of no effect in this state.

That final phrase echoes a similar statement made by Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist, No. 33:

If a number of political societies enter into a larger political society, the laws which the latter may enact, pursuant to the powers intrusted [sic] to it by its constitution, must necessarily be supreme over those societies and the individuals of whom they are composed…. But it will not follow from this doctrine that acts of the larger society which are not pursuant to its constitutional powers, but which are invasions of the residuary authorities of the smaller societies, will become the supreme law of the land. These will be merely acts of usurpation, and will deserve to be treated as such. [Emphasis in original.]

Passage by the state legislature of the Second Amendment Preservation Act comes at a very tense time in the relationship between the Obama administration and state governments determined to thwart the former’s intent to place greater restriction on the individual’s right to buy, sell, trade, transfer, or own firearms, ammunition, or component parts of weapons.

As The New American has reported, after Governor Sam Brownback signed into law a bill passed by the Kansas legislature excluding Kansas-made and owned weapons from federal regulations, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder fired off a threatening letter to Brownback warning him that the Obama administration would “take all appropriate actions” to enforce federal gun control laws, calling the Kansas statute “unconstitutional.”

To his credit, Brownback told Holder that Kansas was within its rights to protect its citizens’ right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

Something Governor Brownback and lawmakers in Kansas and Missouri understand is that the federal government is the creature, not the creator. The states ceded a portion of their sovereignty to the federal government and they specifically enumerated that authority in the Constitution.

Federal exercise of power, as understood by Madison, Jefferson, et al., is legitimate only if those powers were granted to the national government by the people and listed specifically in the Constitution.

Madison described any attempt by the federal government to act outside the boundaries of its constitutional powers as a “dangerous exercise,” and reminded state legislatures that they were “duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil.”

Considering, then, that the Second Amendment to the Constitution explicitly forbids the federal government from infringing on the right of citizens to keep and bear arms, any movement by Congress or the White House in that direction certainly passes Madisonian muster for state nullification.

^{Photo of Gov. Jay Nixon: AP Images}

Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state. He can be reached at
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

“Ask him about the cemeteries, Dean!”

The speaker, if the story is true, was President Lyndon B. Johnson instructing Secretary of State Dean Rusk on what to say to French President Charles DeGaulle. The year was 1966 and DeGaulle had announced he wanted all U.S. troops out of France. Johnson thought it appropriate to ask if that included the ones in the ground. Rusk was reluctant, feeling perhaps that it would be impolitic to pose that question to the French president. But Johnson was insistent.

“Ask him about the cemeteries, Dean!”

That made it a presidential order. So dutifully, Rusk asked DeGaulle if his order to evacuate American troops from France included the more than 60,000 buried there as casualties of World Wars I and II. An embarrassed DeGaulle reportedly left the meeting without answering.

At ballparks throughout the nation this Memorial Day, fans will pause for a moment of tribute to the men and women serving in our armed forces around the globe, defending “freedom and our way of life.” We rightly, and almost instinctively, honor those who serve, but as Robert Kagan noted in his book, The World America Made, there is also “an unmistakable glint of pride in the nation’s role ‘around the globe.’ ”

Indeed, few, if any, had a second thought about the pride President Kennedy expressed in the men who not only served in lands far from home, but died there. France is not the only nation with Americans in the ground.

“The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe,” Kennedy said in his Inaugural Address. A grateful nation remembers and honors their courage and their sacrifice. But is it really a cause for pride that our nation has sent so many of its youth to fight and die in far-off lands, often for unclear purposes in wars that had little or nothing to do with defending the United States, or our “vital national interests,” or “our way of life”?

“Americans may be ‘imperialists’ in the eyes of many,” Kagan wrote, “but if so, they are reluctant, conscience-ridden, distracted, halfhearted imperialists.” Or so we believe, anyway. Our leaders always speak of going to war “if war is forced upon us.” Our nation “never goes to war because we want to,” Senator John Kerry said in accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination for President in 2004. “We only go to war because we have to.”

Yet Kerry had less than two years earlier voted with the vast majority of his Senate colleagues to authorize what was clearly a war of choice. In what way did we “have to” go to war with Iraq? Even if Saddam Hussein had been in possession of “weapons of mass destruction,” the primary justification given for the war, he could not have used them against the United States or our allies without bringing about his own destruction and his nation’s devastation.

In August of 2004, Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, said that even if he had known no weapons of mass destruction would be found after (by then) nearly a year and a half of U.S. occupation, he would still have voted to give the president the authority to wage war on Iraq. “I believe it is the right authority for a president to have, but I would have used that authority effectively,” Kerry said.

That may be what Kerry believed, and may yet believe, about the authority a president should have, but it is not what the Framers believed, nor what the Constitution requires. The power vested in Congress to declare is not the mere privilege of announcing to the world what the president has decided. That’s a job for a press secretary, not a Congress. The Constitutional Convention left to the commander in the authority, inherent in the office, to repel a sudden attack, not to start a war. It left to the Congress the awesome responsibility of deciding whether to commit the nation to an all-out war, a responsibility Congress pretends to fulfill by passing weasel-worded resolutions “authorizing” the president to decide.

During a Senate hearing in 2005, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), an early and enthusiastic supporter of the war with Iraq, confronted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over the growing disenchantment of the American public with the ongoing carnage, more than two years after President Bush had declared the end of combat operations.

“And I’m here to tell you, sir, in the most patriotic state I can imagine, people are beginning to question,” said Graham. “And I don’t think it’s a blip on the radar screen. I think we have a chronic problem on our hands.”

Many of the bodies buried in those cemeteries in France are the remains of young men who fought in the First World War, the war to “make the world safe for democracy.” Maybe we could make the world a little safer for those who risk their lives to defend us if we begin to question the reasons for going to war before they are sent halfway around the world to fight people who have neither threatened nor attacked us. Maybe we should question the rationale for the next war, before our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are two years into another “chronic problem,” otherwise known as chaos. Maybe it would be nice if those who represent and our states in the U.S. House and Senate did the same.

We could start our questioning when the temptation is to cheer on the next war in another patriotic frenzy, believing we are “supporting the troops” by waving the flag or singing “God Bless America” in the seventh-inning stretch. We might think instead of our countrymen who will come home with sightless eyes or missing limbs or other wounds to mind and body from which many will never recover. We need to ask ourselves about those who won’t come back alive and remember all those graves that “surround the globe.” We should ask ourselves about the cemeteries and the rush to fill them.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

A spokesman for the primary rebel alliance in Syria, known as the “Free Syrian Army,” threatened that opposition forces could start implementing a broad ethnic-cleansing program aimed at Shia Muslims and especially the Islamic Alawite sect to which dictator Bashar al-Assad belongs. As Obama administration-led Western powers and a coalition of Sunni Arab dictators continue to fuel the increasingly ruthless conflict, the rebel FSA spokesperson said in a TV interview that minority communities would be “wiped off the map” if the regime’s forces managed to capture the city of Al-Qusair.

The genocide announcement came shortly after Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) blasted his Senate Foreign Relations Committee colleagues for voting to arm the rebels, many of whom openly fight under the banner of al-Qaeda. “This is an important moment,” Sen. Paul said about the vote. “You will be funding, today, the allies of al Qaeda.” While the U.S. government has been supporting the opposition since before open warfare began, Obama has ramped up that support to unprecedented levels. And now, a Senate committee has expressed its backing for arming groups that openly threaten to exterminate minorities.

According to a report in Bloomberg, rebel Free Syrian Army “Colonel” Abdel-Hamid Zakaria made the threat to exterminate minority-denomination Muslims in Syria during an interview from Turkey last week with Al-Arabiya television. “We don’t want this to happen, but it will be a reality imposed on everyone,” Zakaria said during the interview, referring to his alliance wiping certain minority communities off the map if regime forces succeeded in taking Al-Qusair. “It’s going to be an open, sectarian, bloody war to the end.”

The city in question, located in central Syria’s Homs province, is seen as crucial due to its strategic location along a major highway connecting the capital Damascus to the coast. It is considered extremely important by rebel forces, which rely on it to obtain weapons and supplies from neighboring Lebanon. For the regime, the city’s value is obvious as it continues to wage war on foreign-backed Islamists described by officials as “armed terrorist groups.”

Regime-run media outlet SANA reported that most of the city was captured last week, with troops loyal to Assad reportedly seizing vast weapons stockpiles and destroying tunnels used by rebel forces. Dozens of opposition fighters were reportedly killed in the battles. More than 20 members of the U.S. government-designated terror group Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia that has joined Assad in the effort to stop the rebels, were also killed, according to news reports.

Opposition spokesmen said the fight for Al-Qusair was ongoing, though everyone acknowledges that government troops had at least made very significant inroads in re-capturing the city. “The Syrian Coalition warns about the outcome of these distressing developments, which come as part of an organized and predetermined military campaign,” read a statement released by the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition, an opposition umbrella group dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist forces.

Despite the reported near victory of regime troops in Al-Qusair, it remains unclear whether the ethnic-cleansing plot outlined by the Free Syrian Army spokesman in the TV interview has been formally put into effect. As The New American has documented extensively, minority communities – especially Christians – have long been targeted by rebel forces throughout the ongoing war. However, if the brazen threat of extermination is officially implemented, the results will be unimaginable bloodshed and horror beyond even what has been witnessed so far, experts say.

Sunni Muslims, who dominate domestic rebel forces, make up a significant majority of the population in Syria, possibly as much as three-fourths or more of the 22 million people. Minority groups, however – Shiites, Christians, Jews, and others – represent an estimated 20 to 30 percent of Syrians. Members of virtually all minority communities have been targeted by one rebel group or another due, at least in part, to their perceived support of the secular regime, which largely protected minorities from Islamist violence despite Assad’s iron-fisted rule.     

It is not the first time that foreign-backed Sunni Islamist rebels have threatened to exterminate minorities in Syria. In fact, earlier this month, an opposition brigade commander ate a body organ from a dead government soldier in front of a video camera and promised to do the same with others, boasting about slaughtering – and eating – members of the Alawite community to which Assad belongs.

“I swear to God, soldiers of Bashar, you dogs – we will eat your heart and livers! Takbir! God is Great!” commander Khalid al-Hamad with the “Independent Omar al-Farouk Brigade” says in the video, words that he later defended in interviews with Western media outlets. “Oh my heroes of Baba Amr, you slaughter the Alawites and take their hearts out to eat them!” After the brief speech, the Sunni rebel took a bite out of the organ in a video that drew international condemnation.

The Free Syrian Army and other rebel groups promptly distanced themselves from the cannibal commander, saying cannibalism was against Syrian values. FSA spokesmen and the SNC called on the rebel leader to be held accountable, and human rights groups around the world said the video was yet more evidence of the exploding horror now being felt throughout much of Syria. Despite strongly worded statements against cannibalism issued by other rebel leaders, the monstrous video was hardly the first example of the barbaric sectarianism that has reared its head in the nation amid the ongoing conflict.

As The New American has been reporting virtually since the start of the war, the ethnic cleansing of Christians by rebel forces began quickly after open hostilities broke out. In April of last year, for example, multiple churches, aid organizations, and human rights groups reported that the Christian minority – estimated at about 10 percent of the population before the war started – was being massacred and driven from its homeland in growing numbers. 

At the time, the Syrian Orthodox Church, which represents over half of Syrian Christians, issued a statement saying revolutionary fighters had expelled some 50,000 Christians from the embattled city of Homs. That figure was estimated to account for about 90 percent of the Christian community in the city. Hundreds more Christians – including women and children – were slaughtered, according to charitable organizations operating in the area.

The Orthodox Church referred to the persecution as the “ongoing ethnic cleansing of Christians” by Muslim militants linked to al Qaeda. According to its report, the so-called “Brigade Faruq” was largely to blame, with Islamic extremists going door to door and forcing followers of Christ to leave without even collecting their belongings. Their property was then stolen by rebels as “war-booty from the Christians.”

Christians in Homs were reportedly told by rebels that if they did not leave immediately, they would be shot. Then, pictures of their brutalized dead bodies would be sent to the pro-Syrian-regime-change Al Jazeera – a media broadcaster controlled by the dictatorship ruling Qatar, which is arming and funding the rebels – with a message claiming that forces loyal to Assad had murdered them. It would hardly be the first time opposition fighters perpetrated atrocities and blamed the regime.

Aid agencies also documented the terror aimed at minorities, especially among the church. “Christians are being forced to flee the city to the safety of government-controlled areas,” noted a spokesman for the Christian relief agency Barnabas Fund, which reported that over 200 Christians had been murdered by insurgents at the time. “Muslim rebel fighters and their families are taking over their homes.”

Other reports noted that Christians were being kidnapped by rebels for use as human shields. “Some Christians who tried to escape a week ago were stopped from leaving by the rebels and were instead forced to go to a mosque to act as shields,” a Syrian priest from Hamidiya was quoted as saying by the U.K. Daily Telegraph. “They thought that, because Christians support Assad, the government would not attack them.”

According to reports from sources on the ground, Muslim militias also used churches to attack government forces. “Most of the time militiamen were using the churches and the Christians as shields to protect themselves from shelling,” explained regional director Issam Bishara with the Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA). “It is also important to mention that some icons inside the churches were damaged on purpose by the militias.”

Since then, the brutality has only gotten worse, and countless numbers of Christians have been forced to flee into neighboring countries to avoid the brutality and slaughter. The ancient Christian communities, which were protected by the secular Assad regime, feared genocide if the dictatorship were to eventually fall and be replaced by a Sunni Muslim theocracy – as rebels hope. Analysts said those concerns were well founded.

Such a development would also be in line with what has occurred in other nations where the U.S. government has intervened. In Iraq, for example, the ancient Christian communities were all but eradicated following the American-led, United Nations-approved military invasion and occupation. Many fled to Syria. Following the Obama administration-backed so-called “Arab Spring,” Christians are also under fire in Egypt, Libya, and other nations. President Obama’s unconstitutional war on Libya led to ethnic cleansing of blacks by U.S. government-backed “rebels” as well.

The U.S. and Russian governments are currently planning to host an international conference about the Syrian war in Geneva next month, and the Assad regime has agreed “in principle” to participate. Of course, the Obama administration and its allies, including European powers and ruthless Muslim dictators, have been bankrolling, arming, and training rebel forces for “regime change.” On the surface, Russian authorities have been publicly backing the Assad regime, supplying weapons and international support.  

While foreign powers continue to pour fuel on the already-blazing inferno raging in Syria, estimates suggest as many as 100,000 people have been killed. An estimated 1.5 million have already fled abroad. The number of tragedies and the ferocity of the human rights abuses, meanwhile, continue to soar, with innocent civilians paying the heaviest price.

Whether rebel forces will openly begin an ethnic cleansing program to eradicate non-Sunni Muslims, as threatened by the FSA spokesman last week, remains to be seen. However, it appears that minority communities in Syria are already the most vulnerable, and if rebel forces do eventually seize power, the future of Christians, Jews, Shias, and Alawites in Syria is uncertain at best.

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.
.

^{Photo of “Free Syrian Army” soldiers: AP Images}

Related articles:

Obama-backed Syrian Rebels “Ethnic Cleansing” Christians

Syrian Christians Fear Genocide if al-Assad Falls to Muslim Extremists

Christian Massacres: A Result of U.S. Foreign Policy

Libyan Rebels Accused of “Ethnic Cleansing,” Black Genocide

Rand Paul: Senate Is Arming Al-Qaeda and Rushing to War in Syria

Syrian Rebels Fire on Civilian Protesters

Syrian Rebel Leader Filmed Eating Soldier’s Body Organs

Obama Plots Openly Arming Jihadist Rebels in Syria

Obama Unsure Who’s Behind Syrian Chemical Attacks – or Is He?

Top Syrian Rebel Group Merges With Al-Qaeda in Iraq

Obama Paves Way to Arm Muslim Brotherhood-linked Regime in Somalia

Obama-backed War Making Syria a Jihad Haven; Europe Threatened

Al-Qaeda & the West Back Syrian Rebels Against Assad

Obama-backed Egypt Forging “One Nation” With Sudan Terror Regime

U.S. Involvement in Syrian War Becoming More Apparent

Chemical Weapons Charge May Be Pretext to Put U.S. Troops in Syria

Reports: U.S. Personnel Arming and Training Syrian Rebels

Without Congress, Obama Deepens Overt U.S. Support for Syrian War

Most Arms Shipments to Syria Go to Jihadists

Should Pres. Obama be Detained for Violating the NDAA?

Without Asking Congress, Obama Puts U.S. Troops on Syria Border

Obama Deepens U.S. Support for Syrian Rebels with Secret Order

U.S. to Send Missiles, Troops to “Defend” Turkey From Syria

Obama Surrounds Syria with U.S. Troops; Regional War Nears

U.S.-funded Jihadist “Holy War” in Syria Seeks Sharia Dictatorship

After U.S. Uproar, Another Syrian “Civilian Massacre” Story Falls Apart

U.S.-backed Syrian Opposition Linked to Bilderberg, CFR, Goldman Sachs & George Soros

As War Propaganda Implodes, Calls for Syria Intervention Grow

Possible U.S. Involvement in Covert Warfare in Syria

Syria: From Valued Ally to “Vicious Enemy”

U.S. to Recognize One Syrian Rebel Group, Blacklist Another

Libya: Now What?

This article originally appeared on: The New American

On the heels of the news that they caved in to pressure from the homosexual lobby and will allow participation by boys who identify as “gay,” the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) are facing a new assault, this time from the nation’s organized atheists. On May 24 the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) fired a warning shot over the bow of the BSA concerning the group’s requirement that both participants and leaders express faith in God. The godless group applauded the BSA’s initial surrender to the demands of homosexual activists, but challenged the scouting organization on its decision to retain a policy that “bars atheist and freethinking members.”

The BSA’s stated policy concerning faith comes in the form of a declaration that the “recognition of God as the ruling and leading power in the universe and the grateful acknowledgment of His favors and blessings are necessary to the best type of citizenship.”

Claiming that one in three teens identifies as non-religious, the FFRF complained that “there’s a long trail of boys and leaders who have been kicked out [of the Boy Scouts] simply because they don’t believe in a God. They range from a six-year-old in suburban Chicago whose nonreligious father, Elliott Welsh, lost a suit against the BSA for violating the Civil Rights Act, to exemplary Eagle Scout Darrell Lambert, expelled from a Washington troop in a high-profile case.”

The FFRF claimed that the Boy Scout ranks “have always been full of nonbelievers,” and chided the BSA for lagging “20 years behind the Girl Scouts of America, which announced in 1993 that it would protect the freedom of conscience of all members.” The atheist complainers recalled that the Girl Scouts “adopted a resolution that any of its members may substitute another word or phrase for ‘God’ in its official pledge, a measure enacted to show ‘strength in diversity and that we are an inclusive organization.’ ”

Charging that “no one can grow into the best citizen who discriminates against the nonreligious,” the FFRF encouraged its members to hector the BSA with phone calls demanding that it cave in on its foundational conviction that connects faith in God with its mission of raising up boys into responsible men.

The FFRF was apparently riding the coattails of another atheist group, the Secular Coalition for America, which released its own statement affirming the Boy Scouts for their moral collapse, while criticizing them for retaining faith in God as a key value for participation in their ranks. Edwina Rogers, a spokesperson for the secular group, said she was pleased with the BSA’s cave-in on the issue of homosexuality, but considered it insufficient. “Discrimination is wrong – whether it’s directed at children or adults, atheists or the religious,” Rogers said.

She noted that the while the BSA is a private organization, it receives federal funding through the use of supplies, space, and equipment. “No organization that discriminates on the basis of religion or religious beliefs should receive federal support,” Rogers said, adding in a tone suggestive of ramped up legal pressure: “We look forward to a time when the Boy Scouts will be a completely inclusive organization that does not discriminate at all based on religious belief or sexual orientation.”

Meanwhile, homosexual activist groups reacted to the Boy Scouts’ announcement that they would open their doors to gay-identifying boys, while continuing their ban on homosexual Scout leaders. “They’re not on our good list yet,” said the Human Rights Campaign’s Paul Guequierre of the BSA’s partial policy change on gays, adding that “the new policy doesn’t go far enough. Parents and adults of good moral character, regardless of sexual orientation, should be able to volunteer their time to mentor the next generation of Americans.”

Zach Wahls of the pro-homosexual Scouts for Equality, said that his group would continue to pressure the Boy Scouts to allow homosexual adults access to vulnerable boys, while also looking for opportunities to target the Boy Scouts for discrimination against supposedly gay youth. “We’ll act as a watchdog,” Wahls warned. “If any gay youth feel they’re experiencing harassment or discrimination, we want to be there for them.”

Rich Ferraro of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) said his group would continue to pressure corporate donors to stop giving to the Boy Scouts, and predicted that homosexual teens participating in the Boy Scouts would help to undermine the BSA’s remaining moral barriers to homosexuality. “The BSA now will have to look gay teens in the eye,” he said, “boys who’ve been involved in Scouting for years, and tell them they’re not going to be able to grow into adult leaders.”

Christian leaders and organizations continue to express their sorrow over the BSA’s decision to allow participation by boys who identify as homosexual. In a statement, the Assemblies of God denomination noted that a majority of scout groups throughout the nation “are sponsored by churches or other religious entities, which have as their foundation a belief in biblical teachings that identify homosexual behavior as outside of God’s plan for sexuality. While we agree that youths who experience confusion or same-sex attraction need to be welcomed, in our churches they are confronted with this biblical teaching and will be counseled and prayed with that God will help them to align their lives in conformity to that teaching. We agree with the BSA that we need to demonstrate compassion and welcome those who are struggling with sexuality issues, but not in a way that condones such behavior, which is what the new BSA policy does.”

As have many other Christian and conservative leaders, Randy Sharp of the American Family Association said that the decision made by a vote of 61 percent of the BSA’s voting leaders does not bode well for the future of the storied organization. “I think what we’re going to see in the next year or so is a mass exodus of adults and boys from the Boy Scouts of America program,” Sharp told OneNewsNow.com. “Some of the estimates that I’ve heard are up to 400,000 to 500,000 boys and adults will resign their positions with the Boy Scouts of America.”

Rob Schwarzwalder of the Family Research Council pointed out that such a mass exodus will not be based on a personal hatred or animosity toward people who identify as homosexuals. This isn’t about fear or homophobia, and this isn’t about bigotry,” he said. “This is about the moral values of our Judeo-Christian heritage, which teaches that the only appropriate sexually intimate activity that exists [is] between a man and a woman within marriage. That’s always been the affirmation of Scouts. It is no longer.”

David Cortman of Alliance Defending Freedom emphasized that “those promoting the agenda to change what the Boy Scouts have always been won’t rest until there is complete acceptance of any sexual preference for both leaders and members. With its decision the BSA has rejected its freedom to promote and practice the values that have served to shape our nation’s boys into leaders for the last century.”

^{Photo of statue of Boy Scout in front of the National Scouting Museum in Irving, Texas: AP Images}

This article originally appeared on: The New American

A California congressman is preparing legislation to repeal the post-9/11 legislation that two presidents have relied on as justification for waging war in several countries simultaneously against persons or organizations believed to be involved in terrorist attacks or the planning of them. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.; pictured) told Spencer Ackerman of Wired that he plans to introduce a bill to “sunset” the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed by nearly unanimous votes in Congress on September 18, 2001, just one week after terrorists flew hijacked airplanes into the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

“The current AUMF is outdated and straining at the edges to justify the use of force outside the war theater,” Schiff told Wired magazine, an online journal on trends in technology. The publication also reports extensively on politics, especially on issues affecting electronic privacy. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have relied on the Joint Resolution as authority for “everything from the warrantless electronic surveillance of American citizens to drone strikes against al-Qaida offshoots that did not exist on 9/11,” Wired noted.

The resolution has also been interpreted to authorize the targeted killing of alleged terrorists, including U.S. citizens in foreign lands abroad who are actively engaged plotting terrorist attacks on the United States. In his speech at the National Defense University May 23, Obama said that to capture such individuals and put them on trial is not always feasible. He described as necessary the September 2011 killing by drone strike of the American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, whom he identified as the chief of external operations for al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula. Al-Awlaki helped oversee a plot to bomb two U.S-bound cargo planes in 2010 and was behind a foiled attempt to detonate explosives aboard a plane when it was landing in Detroit on Christmas Day, 2009, Obama said.

“I would have detained and prosecuted Awlaki if we captured him before he carried out a plot, but we couldn’t,” he claimed. “And as president, I would have been derelict in my duty had I not authorized the strike that took him out.”

In the same speech, the president said he would work with Congress in exploring options for “increased oversight” of targeted killings and to “refine and ultimately repeal” the AUMF. “Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue,” he said. “But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.”

Previous efforts to repeal the AUMF have gone nowhere. Rep. Barbara Lee, another California Democrat, cast the only vote in Congress against the resolution at the time of its passage and has tried several times to repeal it. After Republicans won a majority of the House seats in the 2010 elections, Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), incoming chairman the Armed Services Committee, said it was time to revise the authorization. Noting that it grants authority for using military force against those responsible for the 9/11 attacks, McKeon argued that the administration lacked legal authority to combat al-Qaeda affiliates that have sprung up since then in places such as Yemen and East Africa. But the Obama administration at that time showed no interest in revisiting the authorization. The resolution, as passed, is “sufficient to address the existing threats I’ve seen,” Jeh Johnson, then the senior lawyer for the Department of Defense, told the committee at a March 2011 hearing.

Schiff said the end of the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan, scheduled for the end of next year, might be a good time to repeal the AUMF, but he admits to having “only a less clear idea of what should follow.” The Afghan war was initiated in October of 2011, as the beginning of the war on terror, since the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was believed to be harboring al-Qaeda units and training camps. In 2010, Leon Panetta, then director of the CIA, said there were no more than 50 to 100 al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan. But the war on terror has also included U.S. aerial attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, and some members of Congress seem interested in expanding, rather than limiting, the president’s authority to wage war on other groups designated as terrorist organizations. An aide to the House Armed Services Committee said McKeon is not in tune with his California colleague on repeal.

“The chairman is far from convinced that’s the direction we need to go,” the spokesman told Wired. “We need to reaffirm our authority with respect to those [al-Qaeda-] affiliated groups.”

Obama said May 23 he will not sign any legislation expanding the AUMF mandate. But he also pledged that the United States will continue “a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America” in places such as Yemen, Somalia, and Mali. The president quoted James Madison’s warning that “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” But when Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Sheehanasked was asked at a recent Senate hearing how much longer the war on terror is likely to last, he replied: “At least 10 to 20 years.”

Given the 12 years since it started, that would add up to “at least” 22 to 32 years of continual warfare. There is no time limit in the Authorization for Use of Military Force, but nearly a quarter to a third of a century in a military campaign without a declaration of war by Congress might be stretching the constitutional authority of the commander-in-chief a bit. Even some of the Senate’s leading hawks in the war on terror have voiced concerns over the breadth, if not the duration, of the war-making authority administration officials claim the president has under the AUMF. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that the authority “has grown way out of proportion and is no longer applicable to the conditions that prevailed, that motivated the United States Congress to pass the resolution in the authorization for the use of military force that we did in 2001.”

“For you to come here and say we don’t need to change it or revise or update it, I think is, well, disturbing,” he told the four senior military officials testifying before the committee. “I don’t blame you because basically you’ve got carte blanche as to what you are doing around the world.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asked if the AUMF gives the president the authority to put “boots on the ground” in Yemen or the Congo.

“Yes, as long as the purpose was targeting a group associated with al Qaeda that intended to harm the United States or its coalition partners,” responded Robert Taylor, acting general counsel for the Department of Defense.

“This is the most astounding and disturbing hearing that I’ve been to since I’ve been here,” said freshman Sen. Angus King (I-Maine). “You guys have essentially rewritten the Constitution today.”

“The testimony I hear today suggests the administration believes that they would have the authority to go into Syria,” said Tim Kaine ( D-Va.), referring to the civil war between rebel forces and Syrian president Bashar Hafez al Assad. “But I don’t want us to walk out of the room leaving an impression that members of Congress also share the understanding that that would be acceptable.”

But would Congress assert its constitutional authority to prevent the president from taking the nation into another undeclared war? On that point the nation’s lawmakers appear to have, in Rep. Schiff’s words, “only a less clear idea.”

^{Photo of Rep. Adam Schiff: AP Images}

This article originally appeared on: The New American

CNN, quoting The Independent, reports that Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has made the decision to run in 2016 – for reelection to the Senate.

During a visit to Kentucky, Paul told reporters that his decision to seek a second term in the Senate was certain, adding that any decision on a presidential run would “come later.” Paul echoed these remarks in an interview with The New American, saying that the call on his presidential candidacy wouldn’t come before 2014.

In the meantime, however, Paul admitted to The New American that he would continue visiting primary states, feeling out the popularity among Republicans of his libertarian-leaning policy positions.

Earlier this month, Paul began the 2016 tour with an appearance at a Lincoln Day dinner in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Throwing substantial slabs of red meat to the GOP activists gathered to hear the senator, Paul took aim at an easy target: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Speaking of the Benghazi terrorist attack that resulted in the death of four Americans, Paul said, “First question to Hillary Clinton: Where in the hell were the Marines?” Paul’s pillorying of Clinton demonstrates an impressive political savvy. A new Quinnipiac poll shows Clinton leading Iowa voters by a narrow 46-42 percent margin.

Regarding a potential Clinton-Paul contest in 2016, Quinnipiac reports:

In general Sen. Paul appears to be the better GOP candidate at this point in Iowa. Part of the reason may be the publicity from his recent high-profile visit to the state, but more likely is that he begins with a solid base of support – the folks who voted for his father in the 2008 and 2012 caucuses.

First-in-the-nation primary state New Hampshire was the second stop on Paul’s tour to soften the beach for a White House invasion in 2016. As with Iowa, Paul can likely count on his father’s supporters in the Granite State as well. The senator seemed to recognize this, claiming, “We’ve had a lot of friends up here for years.”

CNN reckons that the friends referenced in that statement “are likely the libertarian minded activists who backed his father’s campaign for president – many of whom attended the fundraiser.” In 2012, Paul’s iconic father – Ron Paul – finished second behind eventual Republican nominee Mitt Romney in the GOP New Hampshire primary, garnering nearly 57,000 votes or 22.89 percent of the total votes cast.

While in New Hampshire, Paul repeated what amounts to his stump speech, calling out Hillary Clinton for failing to protect Americans during the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission post in Benghazi, Libya.

Paul’s appeal to constitutionalists consists of more than just hobnobbing with Republicans in critical presidential primary states.

On consecutive days, Paul introduced two very important bills calling for increased protection of fundamental civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.

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

A hot topic issue with many libertarians and constitutional conservatives, rapidly advancing drone technology is driving the construction of the surveillance state. These never-blinking eyes in the sky could be used by an autocratic executive to expose every aspect of the private lives of all Americans to government monitors.

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

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

Paul continued his attempt to prevent federal government violations of the Fourth Amendment, introducing the Fourth Amendment Preservation and Protection Act of 2013. This bill would require government agencies to obtain specific warrants from a judge before snooping into the electronic communications of citizens.

“In today’s high-tech world, we must ensure that all forms of communication are protected. Yet government has eroded protecting the Fourth Amendment over the past few decades, especially when applied to electronic communications and third party providers,” Paul explained. “Congress has passed a variety of laws that decimate our Fourth Amendment protections. In effect, it means that Americans can only count on Fourth Amendment protections if they don’t use e-mail, cell phones, the Internet, credit cards, libraries, banks, or other forms of modern finance and communications.”

“Basic constitutional rights should not be invalidated by carrying out basic, day-to-day functions in a technologically advanced world and this bill will provide much needed clarity and reassert Fourth Amendment protections for records held by third parties,” he added.

Adding to his ever-lengthening constitutionalist and civil libertarian résumé, on May 24 Paul penned an op-ed in the Washington Times advocating an end to calls for an national ID, such as that proposed by the REAL ID Act. Paul wrote:

The controversial immigration-reform bill that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee this week is expected to be considered by the Senate in June. Many see measures contained in this bill, such as a strong E-Verify and a “photo tool,” as a means to control unlawful immigrants’ access to unlawful employment. I worry that they go too far.

I think there are better ideas that err on the side of individual privacy while still strengthening our borders. We should scrap a national identification database and pass immigration reform that secures the border, expands existing work-visa programs and prevents noncitizens from access to welfare. These simple ideas will eliminate the perceived need for an invasive worker-verification system and a government citizenship database.

I am against the idea that American citizens should be forced to carry around a National Identification Card as a condition of citizenship. I worry that the Senate is working to consider a series of little-noticed provisions in comprehensive immigration reform that may provide a pathway to a national ID card for all individuals present in the United States – citizens and noncitizens. These draconian ideas would simply give government too much power.

Forcing Americans to carry around an identification card to affirmatively prove citizenship offends our basic concept of freedom. Wanting to avoid a “papers please” culture in our country is also why conservatives oppose federal universal gun background checks. We oppose such measures not because we don’t believe in common-sense rules or regulation – but because we are wary of giving the federal government this kind of centralized power over our daily lives.

I am against government lists of those who own or have transferred a firearm for the same reason I oppose any pathway to a national ID. I don’t think that government should have the awesome power of monitoring the legal activities of American citizens. That is not a proper role of the federal government – or any level of government, for that matter.

Presidential aspirations aside, Rand Paul is bolstering his libertarian bona fides by blocking every effort by his colleagues in Congress to deprive Americans of their most basic civil rights as protected by the Constitution.

Finally, in an appearance on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanapolous, Senator Paul questioned President Obama’s moral authority to lead the nation in light of the trio of scandals rocking his administration: the IRS’ abuse of power in the targeting of conservative groups, the death of Americans in Benghazi while special forces in the area were told to stand down, and the wiretapping of Associated Press reporters by the Justice Department.

The “moral authority standard” for a president has been progressively lowered over the course of decades. By invoking that requirement, Senator Paul is setting the bar higher for all those who might make a run at the White House – including himself.

^{Photo of Sen. Rand Paul in New Hampshire: AP Images}

Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state. He can be reached at
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

On May 26, the New York Times published an editorial claiming, “Senate Republicans have gone out of their way to make themselves effectively unavailable, refusing to confirm nominees to agencies whose missions they oppose.”

This Republican recalcitrance has, the editorial asserts, forced President Obama to “make many recess appointments.”

Citing several recent judicial setbacks for the president’s interpretation of the Constitution’s Appointment Clause of Article II, Section 2, the New York Times editorial board warned that “If allowed to stand, the two court decisions, both of which hinge on the definition of “recess,” could jeopardize more than 900 rulings by the [National Labor Relations Board].”

Using a potent parliamentary tactic, both houses of Congress have acted to keep the legislative branch in “pro forma” session throughout several breaks in order to prevent President Obama from bypassing the advice and consent of the Senate by making what are known as recess appointments.

First, one must understand the notion of the Congress being in session “pro forma.” According to the parliamentary rules governing the business of Congress, either or both houses of that body may hold a “pro forma” session during which no formal business is conducted. There are a couple of primary reasons why this would be desirable. First, such sessions may be necessary to fulfill the constitutional stricture that:

Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting. [Article I, Section 5]

Additionally, congressional leadership often employs this gambit as a delay tactic in order to foil presidential attempts to execute a pocket veto of a bill, to call a special session of Congress, or to make recess appointments in the executive or judicial branches as per the authority given the president in Article II.

The next step in the analysis of whether recess appointments are constitutionally sound is to examine the constitutional basis for the practice. Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution states:

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

The plain language of that clause seems to authorize the making of what we call recess appointments. That is to say, if the Senate is in recess, then the president is within the sphere of his constitutionally enumerated powers to fill a vacancy that will be valid until the end of the next congressional session.

To constitutionalists, an important next step in the analysis would be to discover the intent of the Founders regarding their inclusion of this clause in the Constitution. In the early days of the Republic, the recess periods between congressional sessions lasted months, sometimes as many as nine. Such lengthy breaks made the use of recess appointments necessary in order to prevent necessary offices from remaining unfilled for so long a period.

For example, George Washington took advantage of this authority when in 1795 he appointed John Rutledge of South Carolina to the Supreme Court during a congressional recess. Upon returning to work, the Senate rejected Rutledge, utilizing its own right to exercise advice and consent over the nomination of federal officers.

By contrast, President Obama has made frequent and controversial use of the recess appointment clause since taking office in 2009. He has made at least 29 recess appointments during his administration. Several of these have been thereafter confirmed by the Senate, while many (including the controversial naming of Donald Berwick to be the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) have not.

Now on to the notion that Senate “pro forma” sessions are obstructionist and unconstitutional. In The Federalist, No. 68, Alexander Hamilton writes of the recess appointment clause:

The ordinary power of appointment is confided to the president and senate jointly, and can therefore only be exercised during the session of the senate; but, as it would have been improper to oblige this body to be continually in session for the appointment of officers; and as vacancies might happen in their recess, which it might be necessary for the public service to fill without delay, the succeeding clause is evidently intended to authorize the president, singly, to make temporary appointments “during the recess of the senate, by granting commissions which should expire at the end of their next session.”

What, then, was the role the Senate was designed to play in the nomination and appointment process? Again, we turn to The Federalist Papers and Alexander Hamilton:

To what purpose then require the co-operation of the senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favouritism in the president, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from state prejudice, from family connexion, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration.

In the preceding quotes from the Federalist Papers, Hamilton makes it clear that while the president is able to make appointments without the advice and consent of the Senate during recesses, there is greater wisdom to be found (and safety for our Republic) in placing the Senate as a check on the “spirit of favoritism” on the part of the president.

A subsequent and important question would be, then, has the current president displayed that spirit of favoritism in his nominations to fill vacancies, particularly those made during Senate recesses? Given the number of rejections of those nominees, it would certainly seem that if nothing else, he has displayed a zeal for naming potential appointees who are very unlikely to be approved by the full Senate. This would seem to indicate an understanding on the part of the president that the only way to get such persons into office and allow them to make official acts according to their own or the president’s controversial agenda is to appoint them during recesses.

Detractors disagree. The New York Times article reported:

In April, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. asked the Supreme Court to review the ruling, arguing: “That decision repudiates understandings of the Recess Appointments Clause that have been maintained and relied on by the Executive for most of the Nation’s history. The limitations imposed by the court of appeals would render many of the recess appointments since the Second World War unconstitutional.”

With all due respect to the “newspaper of record” and to Solicitor General Verrilli, there is no constitutional prohibition on “pro forma” sessions of Congress, and given the president’s predilection for making extremely dubious nominations during Senate recesses, it seems consistent with “constitutional order” and with the intent of the Founders to allow the Senate to continue to use all constitutionally sound means to block this scheme and to prevent “the appointment of unfit characters” to fill federal vacancies.

A quote from an article published last year by the San Francisco Chronicle hints that while the president understands that the Senate has a constitutional duty to check his power, he will not allow the exercise of such to impede the growth of government.

“Administration officials and lawyers insist President Obama made the appointments because Senate Republicans were unfairly blocking Senate confirmation of nominees as a way to limit the [National Labor Relations Board’s] power,” the Chronicle wrote.

Perhaps, but opposition doesn’t qualify as recess.

Neither President Obama’s immeasurable regard for his own moral, legal, and intellectual superiority nor the learned opinion of the New York Times editorial board can convert Senate reluctance into Senate recess.

^{Photo of President Obama: White House}

Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state. He can be reached at
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

A number of neoconservative Republicans spent part of the Memorial Day weekend roundly criticizing the plan announced by President Obama to limit the scope and eventually end the war on terror that was declared by President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.; pictured) called the president “tone deaf” to national security needs.

“At a time we need resolve the most, we are sounding retreat.” Graham said on Fox News Sunday. A strong supporter of the use of unmanned bombers for strikes on selected targets, Graham criticized the president’s statement in his speech at the National Defense University May 23 that stricter guidelines and more oversight are needed for the drone attacks.

“Changing the standards of when you can go after somebody with a drone; it has to be a continuing imminent threat to the American people with no chance of civilian casualties,” Graham said in voicing a catalogue of faults he finds in the way the president is dealing with foreign policy and national security issues.

“Our enemies are emboldened all over the planet. Al Qaeda in Iraq is coming back with vengeance,” Graham said. “Syria is falling apart. We are talking about helping the rebels but doing nothing about it. Iran is marching toward a nuclear weapon. And we show this lack of resolve, talking about that war being over. What do you think the Iranians are thinking?” Graham, who has been in Congress for 18 years, said: “I’ve never been more worried about our national security than I am right now. And the [Obama] speech did not help.”

“I see a big difference between the President saying the war’s at an end and whether or not you’ve won the war,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, (R-Okla). “We have still tremendous threats out there, that are building – not declining, building – and to not recognize that, I think, is dangerous in the long run and dangerous for the world.”

Obama did not say the war on terror is over in his May 23 speech, but he said it must end at some yet-undefined point. He also called for a “refinement” and eventual repeal of the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, passed by Congress a week after the 9/11 attacks. In contrast to “the global war on terror” proclaimed by the Bush administration, Obama rejected the concept of a “boundless” war in favor of a more focused attack on specific terror networks that threaten the United States. With U.S. combat units scheduled for withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of next year, Obama said groups such as the al-Qaeda affiliates on the Arabian Peninsula “must be dealt with, but in the years to come, not every collection of thugs that labels themselves al Qaeda will pose a credible threat to the United States.”

Obama continued: “Unless we discipline our thinking, our definitions, our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight, or continue to grant Presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states.”

Two GOP members of the House Homeland Security Committee, meanwhile took issue with the president’s renewal of his call to close the detention center at the U.S. Naval Base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama promised to close the facility as a candidate for president, but has been blocked by a congressional ban on relocating the foreign terror suspects held there anywhere in the United States.

“Name me one American city that would like to host these guys,” Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said on CNN’s State of the Union. Rep. Peter King of New York, appearing on ABC’s This Week, said he is “very concerned about sending detainees back to Yemen.” More than half of the 166 prisoners still on Guantanamo are from Yemen, and 56 have been cleared for return to their country. Others are deemed too dangerous to be released, but have not been prosecuted because, claims the Obama administration, their trial would compromise security secrets.

Ironically, Republicans have not been heard criticizing another aspect of the president’s speech, calling for an increase in foreign aid and nation building, as Obama described it, “from North Africa to South Asia.”

This means patiently supporting transitions to democracy in places like Egypt and Tunisia and Libya – because the peaceful realization of individual aspirations will serve as a rebuke to violent extremists. We must strengthen the opposition in Syria, while isolating extremist elements – because the end of a tyrant must not give way to the tyranny of terrorism. We are actively working to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians – because it is right and because such a peace could help reshape attitudes in the region. And we must help countries modernize economies, upgrade education, and encourage entrepreneurship – because American leadership has always been elevated by our ability to connect with people’s hopes, and not simply their fears.

So while the president speaks on the one hand of a more limited role for the war on terror, with the other he would draw us deeper into all the turbulence of “democracies” in the Middle East and further into the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. At a time when our own economy is mired in a stagnant “recovery” and burdened with enormous debt, we will be spending more money we don’t have to “help countries modernize economies.” We will help undeveloped nations “upgrade education” when it might e considered a near miracle if we improved our own. Lyndon Johnson’s plans to build a Great Society on the Mekong Delta in Vietnam seem modest by comparison.

If all the efforts the United States has made in trying to manage other people’s political affairs, and all the money spent on efforts to “modernize” and “upgrade” other nations in the past seven decades have not yet produced a more peaceful world, chances are more of the same won’t do it. Yet that part of Obama’s speech seems to have escaped the notice of neoconservative Republican critics, who appear more troubled by a vaguely suggested contraction of the warfare state than by an expanded role for a global welfare state.

^{Photo of Sen. Lindsey Graham: AP Images}

This article originally appeared on: The New American

On Saturday, May 25, an estimated two million protesters turned out in 436 cities in 52 countries to protest genetically-modified (GM) foods and their primary developer, Monsanto Company, Inc. This far exceeded anything Tami Canal could have imagined when she created a Facebook page entitled “The March against Monsanto” back in February.

When Proposition 37 failed in California in November, Canal decided to do something about it. Prop 37 would have required labeling of GM food products so that (according to the bill) “the people of California [would be] fully informed about whether the food they purchase and eat is genetically engineered and not misbranded as natural so that they can choose for themselves whether to purchase and eat such foods.”

“If I had gotten 3,000 people to join me, I would have considered that a success,” Canal said Saturday. “It was empowering and inspiring to see so many people, from different walks of life, put aside their differences and come together today.”

She added: “We will continue until Monsanto complies with consumer demand. They are poisoning our children, poisoning our planet.”

One of the reasons that likely motivated Canal to focus on Monsanto was the discovery that opponents to Proposition 37 outspent supporters by five-to-one, with the biggest contributor to the “No Prop. 37” campaign being Monsanto with its $8 million gift, nearly as much as all the supporters garnered put together. The measure barely lost, 51 percent to 49 percent.

Others opposing Prop. 37 included GM food giants DuPont, PepsiCo, Kraft Foods, Bayer, Dow AgroSciences, BASF Plant Science, and Coca-Cola North America.

Monsanto has been increasingly perceived as a big bully, and the history of litigation on its Wikipedia entry goes on for pages. The first challenge to Monsanto’s claim that GM foods were natural and healthy came from the publishing of a peer-reviewed study by an obscure Hungarian-born scientist, Árpád Pusztai, in 1998. Under the auspices of the Rowett Research Institute in Scotland, Pusztai’s study found that feeding GM potatoes to rats led to “negative effects on their stomach linings and immune systems.” In a World in Action interview, he set off the world community with the statement that, if it were up to him, he wouldn’t eat GM foods. He added that it was “very, very unfair to use our fellow citizens as guinea pigs.” His remarks and his study were opposed with such vigor and vitriol that Pusztai, a 36-year veteran at Rowett with 270 papers and three books on plant lectins on his curriculum vitae, was terminated by Rowett. The controversy became known as the Pusztai Affair.

Investigative journalist Andrew Rowell looked into the incident and concluded that the pressure to sack Pusztai had come from not only scientists who took issue with parts of his study but also Monsanto officials, who had pressured President Clinton to call British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair had then called Rowett Institute Director Philip James and told him to terminate Pusztai.

In 2005 Pusztai, who has continued his work on plant lectins as well as speaking out on GM foods, received the Whistleblower Award from the Federation of German Scientists. In 2009 he received the Stuttgart Peace Prize.

Other studies since the Pusztai Affair have served to heighten concerns about GM foods while exposing Monsanto’s role as a bully trying to salvage its reputation by savaging its opponents. In 2007, 2009, and 2011 Gilles-Eric Seralini, a professor of molecular biology at the University of Caen in France, published the results of other studies that involved feeding Roundup-resistant maize to rats. Those studies found: GM foods caused liver, kidney, and heart damage in rats. Seralini suffered similar indignities from Monsanto and its allies, resulting in the “Seralini Affair.” This time, however, Seralini didn’t have to defend his position by himself; a letter signed by more than 130 of his peers was published in support of his work.

What’s at stake here isn’t Monsanto’s reputation. Monsanto has already been sufficiently tarnished and sullied by its own misbehavior, political manipulations, and thuggery. What is at stake is its position in the market. If the perception that GM foods may be unhealthy is ever accepted by the general population (Vermont and Connecticut just passed their own Prop 37 measures requiring GM labeling on food products), then Monsanto’s near-monopoly sustained through its influence over politicians is in jeopardy.

An estimated two million people took time off from their busy weekends to add their voices to those clamoring to end that monopoly and give people back their freedom to choose what kind of food they eat.

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

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov says Moscow is still concerned about the deployment of US/NATO missile systems in Europe and wants more specific technical guarantees, despite Washington’s latest assurance that the missiles will not be used against Russia.

In an exclusive interview with the state-run Voice of Russia radio network on Monday, Ryabkov said that the latest US proposals on missile systems are “concrete” and “serious,” but Moscow still views them as insufficient.

In April, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow remained concerned about the plans of the United States and NATO to build an anti-missile system around Western Europe.

“We are studying the proposals conveyed by the American side to us to further deepen the dialogue on missile defense cooperation. We are studying these proposals and the current developments and plans of the United States in this field,” Lavrov told reporters at a press conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

“We are ready for dialogue but cooperation could be only equitable with clear-cut guarantees” that the system would not be used against Russia, Lavrov said.

In February, the Pentagon announced that the United States would be stationing additional missile interceptors in Alaska in response to North Korean threats. At the same time, it announced that the plan to deploy a new type of interceptor in Europe had been shelved.

Ryabkov also noted that developments in the Middle East region, including the Syrian crisis, will be on the top of the agenda in the discussions when Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Barack Obama meet on the sidelines of the G8 summit in the Lough Erne, Northern Ireland on June 17 and 18.

He went on to say that the two leaders will also review Russia-US cooperation on Afghanistan and the Middle East and devote time to other regional issues.

He also stated that the United States would like to discuss a number of other things at the talks with Russia, such as the renewal of arms reduction talks and joint efforts to resolve the crises in the Middle East.

Moscow wants Washington to scale down its use of unilateral sanctions against sovereign states and to agree that the world is now multilateral, the Russian deputy foreign minister said.

Ryabkov also advised US officials to take Russiaâ„¢s interests into account.

MP/HGL

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

There is a great controversy raging between good and evil at the soda fountain or pop machine but the general public does not seem to be aware of it. The consequences of the dietary changes that have occurred since the introduction of artificial sweeteners into our lives since the early 1980′s has likely increased dramatically but in many cases, silently. However, there is a coterie of medical doctors and research scientists that are aware of the effects and have published volumes. Unfortunately, their voices are largely drowned out by the industry.

As in politics and other endeavors where mind-control plays a prominent role, advertising and propaganda are the most effective tools of those who are pitching a program or a product. The reasons for large infusions of cash could be to cover corporate wrongdoing, agency corruption, incompetency or just to hide plain carelessness but usually, profit motive is the driving force.

Ethical business practices should promote periodic reviews but it appears that the only aspartame reviews have been on the annual reports. Of course, there are reports of side effects but why would that not have triggered an ongoing review by the agency responsible for approval in the first place? The FDA says that they monitor scientific literature for indication of potential health issues but they are not aware of credible evidence at this time to reverse the approval of aspartame. Perhaps they have not heard of Dr. Morando Soffritti?

On April 23, 2007, Morando Soffritti, MD was honored with the Collegium Ramazzini’s third Irving J. Selikoff Award at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, USA. Dr. Soffritti was recognized for his “outstanding contributions to the identification of environmental and industrial carcinogens and his promotion of independent scientific research.”

The attitude of the FDA and industry would present the case that the only credible scientific evidence comes from government agencies or from corporate sources. Danger signs anyone? Could it be that we are so taken in by the all-encompassing custodial nature of total government that we have lost the ability to think and act on matters that concern our most vital possession, our health?

On a personal level there is no in-between on diet drinks, either you like them or you hate them. No matter what the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says or what any critical medical study shows, people are fiercely loyal to their diet drinks. There are also unimaginable numbers of other products that contain aspartame besides diet drinks but these products do not generate the intense loyalty as the fizzy cola thirst-quenchers. Included in these unnecessarily altered products are medicines, toothpaste, yogurt, baked goods and other specialty drinks.

Commercialism forges ahead of good science and another man-made substance of questionable value has been added to the food chain. The detractors don’t buy it but those addicted purchase it with an irrational compulsion. Like those with a narcotic habit, they don’t seem to mind paying to satisfy the craving. And pay they do, to the tune of billions of dollars a year.

Just what is this magical potion, aspartame? It is a combination of methanol and two amino acids, phenylalanine and aspartic acid. In 1965, James Schlattler, a chemist working at G.D. Searle discovered the substance quite by accident while working on a drug for another medical purpose. It was found to be many, many times sweeter than sugar but without the calories.

The chemistry of aspartame as it breaks down in the human body is well documented but acceptance of the science depends on one’s alliance with the industry or with the skeptic side. Regardless of one’s position on the subject, metabolism of aspartame in the human body and the side-effects, or lack thereof, continues to be a intensely controversial subject.

National Institutes of Health (NIH) describes a metabolite as any substance produced during metabolism (digestion or other bodily chemical processes). In medical terms, a metabolite usually refers to the product that remains after the drug is broken down (metabolized) by the body.

Virtually all industry funded studies discount any adverse effects of aspartame metabolites. Typical “friendly” clinical reviews of aspartame toxicity will most likely find the authors are closely related to the producers of aspartame. Conversely, and almost without fail, independent studies claim serious and deleterious consequences as result of aspartame consumption.

A similar parallel could be drawn from the life-cycle of a popular non-food product. The Model 35 Beech Bonanza airplane was fast, comfortable, sexy and was immediately recognizable with its unique v-tail. Together, these attributes made it an easy sell to eager post-war consumers. It quickly became the darling of those who could afford the luxury and prestige of traveling in their own Rolls-Royce with wings. It was also very deadly.

From its initial debut in 1947, to its end of production in 1982, the plane had suffered about 250, in-flight structural failures which resulted in hundreds of deaths of its pilots and innocent passengers.

An engineering ethics study done at the University of Texas found that depending on year model, either the wings separated or the v-tail assembly failed. In 1952, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) conducted a 12-year study and found out what they already knew; the airplane had an unusually high incidence of in-flight structural failures. No further action was taken and the study was terminated.

As compared to the aspartame controversy a similar triumvirate of players were involved; the designer/manufacturer, the government agency that certified the design and the consumer. In the aviation example, Beech presented their design to the FAA; the FAA did their certification which assured the public that the product was airworthy and the aviation community quickly made it one of the most successful private airplanes ever produced. Never mind it also produced an inordinate number of fatalities.

Concerning the lethal attributes of this airplane, the manufacturer could say the design was approved by the FAA so it was certified safe, therefore any crash must have been due to pilot error. The FAA said that it followed routine design certification procedures so they could find no reason to ground the airplane. Someone has to be culpable so it was necessary to shift the blame to the last one holding the controls. And so it was for about 35 years.

After the introduction of the Model 33 and later, the Model 36 (same airframe except both of these models had the more conventional straight tails), it was found that the v-tails had 24 times the number of in-flight structural failures. So much for the engineering ethics and invincibility of manufacturers and government agencies. Admitting mistakes and correcting deficiencies comes hard for these two groups. Now, back to the controversial aspartame story.

The diet food and drink industry is a multibillion dollar industry and the ravenous consumption by the thirsty public defies comprehension. As in the airplane example, success and profit motives are not necessarily bad things but any industry can be its own worst enemy if its ethics are less than scrupulous.The story of aspartame, its evolution and time-line from its discovery to FDA approval is replete with political maneuvering, suspected malfeasance and intrigue. It is rather difficult not to suspect wrong-doing when all the parts of the puzzle are laid on the table.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as the final authority to control the introduction of certain additives into the food chain should have exercised the most extreme caution in blessing this product which could conceivably effect the lives and health of millions of people. Many of these people are children and other trusting or unsuspecting individuals incapable of exercising caution. However, in all fairness, this is indeed exactly what they did from the mid-sixties until 1983, when greed, ego and politics triumphed over sound judgment, good science and ethics.

As we have seen before, sometimes as little as five thousand dollars worth of potential personal gain can trigger an unethical act, especially if it is thought that no one is watching. When potential profits range in the neighborhood of hundreds of millions of dollars the temptation for concealing critical information about one’s products might become too much to resist.

When greed, gain and other human frailties are considered, a cynical person could suspect therein exists a possible root-cause for wrongdoing. A colossal industry is at stake and it is only natural for those companies that manufacture it or those that use it in their products to protect their industry and cash flow, even when their products have the potential to harm untold numbers, including children.

Early testing was conducted in the fall of 1967 when Dr. Harold Waisman, a biochemist at the University of Wisconsin, led aspartame safety tests on infant monkeys on behalf of the Searle Company. Of the seven monkeys that were being fed aspartame mixed with milk, one died and five others had grand mal seizures. The entire file can be found online at dorway dot com/raoreport.pdf.

On January 21, 1981, the day after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, Searle re-applied to the FDA for approval to use aspartame in food sweeteners, and Reagan’s new FDA commissioner, Arthur Hayes Hull, Jr., appointed a 5-person Scientific Commission to review the board of inquiry’s decision. It soon became clear that the panel would uphold the ban by a 3-2 decision, but Hull then installed a sixth member on the commission, and the vote became deadlocked. He then personally broke the tie in aspartame’s favor. Hull later left the FDA under allegations of impropriety, served briefly as Provost at New York Medical College, and then took a position with Burston-Marsteller, the chief public relations firm for both Monsanto and G.D. Searle. Since that time he has never spoken publicly about aspartame.

The preceding three paragraphs were reported by the National Institute of Science, Law, and Public Policy, Washington, D.C.

While the components of the additive are well known, the team that pushed the approval process were perhaps not quite as well known. Donald H. Rumsfeld was Chief Executive Officer at G.D. Searle from 1977 to 1985 which was during the aspartame approval process. As a hard-driving business executive at Searle he was awarded the “Outstanding Chief Executive Officer” in 1980 and 1981 for his efforts to reshape the company. He may have helped reshape America too with the help of the FDA and the diet food and drink industry. Cronyism scored a direct hit.

Since 1983, when the FDA approved aspartame for human use in diet drinks, the public has taken the bait for an easy fix to get rid of a flabby gut and extra pounds. Why not drink yourself out of obesity? It would seem, at the onset, a completely rational thing to do; watch the pounds float away by drinking a sugar-free can or bottle of pop, many times a day.

Ka-ching, ka-ching, the profits roll in on a mix of carbonated water, caramel flavoring and coloring, sweetened with a white crystalline powder called aspartame. The FDA says it’s safe so every day millions of people drink, eat and brush their teeth with concoctions laden with aspartame. As noted earlier, many medications even contain the substance. A Massachusetts pharmacist created a list of about 150 aspartame-containing drug products of which many are targeted for children (not including generics).

The retailers wrap the package with usual advertising gimmickry and the campaign rolls on with insidious get-thin quick implications. It even goes to war; we supply our troops with a refreshing drink of home, never mind that it has been reported to trigger aggressive behavior and anger. On the other hand, maybe a little bottled road-rage on the battlefield is desirable? Not to worry, any long-term medical consequences to our best and brightest can be shoved over to the Veterans Administration where the budget is already strained to the breaking point.

It is unfortunate that studies like the following have to be done after and not before the genie gets out of the bottle. Studies such as those done by the Ramazzini-Soffritti group in Italy and by P. Humphries, E. Pretorius and H. Naudé at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, show that aspartame is a potent neurotoxin and endocrine disruptor. The latter study was published in European Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2008. A neurotoxin is like rattlesnake venom or poison from a black widow spider. Endocrine glands include the thyroid, adrenal and pituitary glands.

On the pro-aspartame side, company scientists report that certain fruits contain more methanol than does aspartame. While this fact may be true, what they don’t say is that ethyl alcohol is also found in natural fruits which is the antidote for methanol. On the left side, independent medical doctors, scientists and chemists say that is an essential and critical difference. When consumed alone, methanol (wood alcohol) is extremely dangerous and can cause blindness and even death.

According to the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), animal data and human historical epidemiological information show that methanol may produce acute toxicity. Casarett and Doull’s Toxicology (Klaassen et al 1986) points out that whenever access to ethanol had been restricted (e.g., during Prohibition in the 1920s), the incidence of methanol poisoning has increased. “The characteristic results of an epidemic are that a third of those exposed to methanol recover with no residues, a third have severe visual loss or blindness, and a third die. Thus in sufficiently high doses methanol has profound systemic effects.”

The General Foods study by Roak-Foltz and Leveille, found that the average adult will ingest approximately 87 mg of methanol on a daily basis when substituting artificial sweeteners in their food. Since this date was gathered in 1977-1978, it is likely the amounts have increased substantially.

Both the U.S. Air Force magazine “Flying Safety” and the U.S. Navy magazine, “Navy Physiology” published articles warning about the many dangers of aspartame including the cumulative deleterious effects of methanol and other reactions. The articles note that the ingestion of aspartame may make pilots more susceptible to seizures and vertigo (U.S. Air Force 1992). Many pilots appear to be particularly susceptible to the effects of aspartame ingestion, probably because of trying to stay hydrated in a low-humidity atmosphere. They have reported numerous serious toxicity effects including grand mal seizures in the cockpit. A grand mal seizure is caused by abnormal electrical activity throughout the brain. If it is not a good idea to see a pilot at the controls experience a grand mal seizure one would assume it would be equally disturbing to see a passenger at 30,000 feet undergo the same physical incapacitation.

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) published a study done by the Department of Experimental Physiology, Medical School, University of Athens, Greece, on the the effect of aspartame metabolites on human erythrocyte membrane acetylcholinesterase (AChE) activity. It is concluded that low concentrations of ASP (aspartame) metabolites had no effect on the membrane enzyme activity, whereas high or toxic concentrations partially or remarkably decreased the membrane AChE activity, respectively. Additionally, neurological symptoms, including learning and memory processes, may be related to the high or toxic concentrations of the sweetener metabolites.This was a short-term study done on healthy adults. It is therefore not difficult to predict the same or even more dramatic effects when infants and children consume diet products throughout their formative years.

The same information was published by the EPA at their Health & Environmental Research Online (HERO) website. Their stated purpose is to provide an easy way to view the scientific literature behind EPA science assessments. HERO is an EVERGREEN database which means that scientists can keep abreast of new research. There are more than 300,000 scientific articles from peer-reviewed literature and new studies are continuously added. HERO is part of the open government directive to conduct business with transparency, participation and collaboration. Through HERO, the public can participate in the decision-making process. One would assume that the FDA and the EPA would share or coordinate scientific studies.

Need we go further? The academic and medical community apparently thought yes, the safety of aspartame must be fully explored since it is being offered in a wide variety of food and drink products which are consumed by the general public and heavily used by children.

An aspartame study by C. Trocho et al, was conducted by the staff of the Biology Department at the University of Barcelona. It clearly shows that aspartame which was labeled with carbon 14 isotope was transformed into formaldehyde in the bodies of the living specimens and that when they were examined later, the radioactive tagged formaldehyde was found throughout the vital organs of their bodies.

This conclusively proves that aspartame does indeed convert to formaldehyde in the bodies of aspartame consumers, and that many of the symptoms reported by victims of aspartame toxicity are indeed those associated with the poisonous and cumulative effects of formaldehyde.

Merriam-Webster describes formaldehyde as a colorless, toxic, potentially carcinogenic, water-soluble gas, CH 2 O, having a suffocating odor, usually derived from methyl alcohol by oxidation: used chiefly in aqueous solution, as a disinfectant and preservative, and in the manufacture of various resins and plastics. What would renowned French Chef Julia Child have had to say about this metabolite of aspartame? You can be assured it would not have been “bon appétit”. Beyond Ms. Child, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an intergovernmental agency part of the United Nations World Health Organization classifies formaldehyde as a Group 1 carcinogen.

In a study at the Cesare Maltoni Cancer Research Center of the European Ramazzini Foundation it was demonstrated for the first time that aspartame is a multipotent carcinogenic agent when various doses are administered with feed to Sprague-Dawley rats from 8 weeks of age throughout the life span. In the second Ramazzini-Soffritti study it was concluded that the results reinforced the first study and when life-span exposure to aspartame begins at fetal life, its carcinogenic effects are increased.

When considering what should have been done to protect the public there is little doubt in many minds that the ethics of the FDA and its safety net for the general public were severely compromised at best, non-existent at worst.

Some of the adverse symptoms that have been reported include the following: impotence, reduced female response, numbness, tingling nerves, aggressive behavior, spontaneous anger, anxiety, aggravation of phobias, depression, grand mal seizures and a combination of symptoms that mimic a heart attack. Since another aspartame constituent (phenylalanine) tends to inhibit serotonin process in the human body, it might be important to examine another phenylalanine/serotonin imbalance. That imbalance shows cause for concern.

Professor Michele Ernandes and colleagues at the University of Palermo offer an explanation of the relationship of reduced brain serotonin synthesis and behavioral consequences. In their studies the reduced brain serotonin synthesis was brought on by a specific dietary imbalance. Could it be that a similar dietary imbalance occurs when large amounts of aspartame are introduced into the diet? Ernandes states that serotonin deficiency involves several behavioral consequences such as tendency towards aggressive behavior, increase of intraspecific competition, increase of magic thought or religious fanaticism. The professor focuses on cereals utilized for human feeding. His target is maize which has a very low “trp/LNAAs” value (tryptophan/Large Neutral Amino Acids ratio).

Maize was firstly and largely utilized by Native American peoples and this is particularly interesting in the study of the Aztec human sacrifice/cannibalism complex. Historical data reveal that cannibalism occurred in period of the year when maize dependence was greater, supporting the hypothesis of Ernandes and his associates that serotonin deficiency among the Aztecs might have accentuated their religious and aggressive behavior patterns on the one hand, and on the other it might have led them unconsciously, towards anthropophagy in order to attenuate it (rising “trp/LNAAs” value by means of human proteins) when it became too strong.

It would seem that the study by the Ernandes group would have a correlation with many of other studies that show adverse behavioral consequences of aspartame consumption.

There are also numerous other neurological symptoms that have been reported. If any of these conditions are present, would it not be beneficial to eliminate consumption of any product that contains aspartame? It will take some label-reading but it is a cost-free endeavor. After a few months of abstention from all products that contain aspartame you may feel like a new person or perhaps your mate will feel like you’re a new person. If not, you’ve possibly lost nothing but a few pounds. Could it be that the low pH of soft drinks (around 3.0) causes the body to retain fluids trying to re-balance the body’s natural pH balance of 6.5 or so?

The Harvard School of Public Health reports that a eight-year study conducted by Department of Medicine, Division of Clinical Epidemiology, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Texas, found that of nearly 3,700 residents of San Antonio, Texas, those who averaged three or more artificially sweetened beverages a day were more likely to have gained weight over an eight-year period than those who didn’t drink artificially sweetened beverages. Although this finding is suggestive, keep in mind that it doesn’t prove that artificially sweetened soft drinks caused the weight gain.

The San Antonio study group went on to say that their findings raise the question whether AS (artificial sweeteners) use might be fueling—rather than fighting—our escalating obesity epidemic.

If you are a regular or long-time consumer of artificially sweetened products and have not yet experienced any side effects of aspartame and its metabolites, perhaps you are just lucky or have a natural immunity to carcinogens and/or neurotoxins. If however, you don’t like the odds or have doubts about natural immunity or about the controversial science, there might be an easy way to protect yourself.

For fundamentalists there is a long-term, pragmatic approach; simply drink water. God created it to be used for human consumption about the same time he created man, some 6,000 years ago. For those who believe in the Big-Bang theory of evolution, water has a phenomenal record of satiating the thirst of man, beast and fowl for millions of years.

For the person climbing the corporate ladder or for an individual on the fast-track to the top of the class, there are some sheik, expensive and exotic waters from many parts of the world that will make a statement on fashion or status while at the same time quenching one’s thirst.

By choosing clear, uncontaminated natural waters as your favorite thirst-quencher you just might be rewarded with serene composure, vitality, good mental and physical health, strength and stamina, a steady hand and freedom of pain.

Stay thirsty my friends! But remember, “caveat emptor” is the catch-phrase when reading the labels on products that you intend to introduce into your body.

Charles Foerster is a former Naval Aviator and professional pilot. jcfoers@msn.com

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

May 26, 2013
 |

The Census Bureau has reported that 15% of Americans live in poverty. A shocking figure. But it’s actually much worse. Inequality is spreading like a shadowy disease through our country, infecting more and more households, and leaving a shrinking number of financially secure families to maintain the charade of prosperity.

1. Almost half of Americans had NO assets in 2009 

Analysis of Economic Policy Institute data shows that Mitt Romney’s famous 47 percent, the alleged ‘takers,’ have taken nothing. Their debt exceeded their assets in 2009.

2. It’s Even Worse 3 Years Later 

Since the recession, the disparities have continued to grow. An OECD report states that “inequality has increased by more over the past three years to the end of 2010 than in the previous twelve,” with the U.S. experiencing one of the widest gaps among OECD countries. The 30-year decline in wages has worsened since the recession, as low-wage jobs have replaced formerly secure middle-income positions.

3. Based on wage figures, half of Americans are in or near poverty. 

The IRS reports that the highest wage in the bottom half of earners is about $34,000. To be eligible for food assistance, a family can earn up to 130% of the federal poverty line, or about $30,000 for a family of four.

Even the Census Bureau recognizes that its own figures under-represent the number of people in poverty. Its Supplemental Poverty Measure increases, by 50%, the number of Americans who earn between one-half and two times the poverty threshold.

4. Based on household expense totals, poverty is creeping into the top half of America. 

A family in the top half, making $60,000 per year, will have their income reduced by a total tax bill of about $15,000 ($3,000 for federal income tax and $12,000 for payroll, state, and local taxes. The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau agree that food, housing, and transportation expenses will deduct another $30,000, and that total household expenditures will be about $50,000. That leaves nothing.

Nothing, that is, except debt. The median debt level rose to $75,600 in 2009, while the median family net worth, according to the Federal Reserve, dropped from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010.

5. Putting it in Perspective 

Inequality is at its ugliest for the hungriest people. While food support was being targeted for cuts, just 20 rich Americans made as much from their 2012 investments as the entire 2012 SNAP (food assistance) budget, which serves 47 million people.

And as Congress continues to cut life-sustaining programs, its members should note that their 400 friends on the Forbes list made more from their stock market gains last year than the total amount of the food, housing, and education budgets combined. 

Arguments about poverty won’t end. Neither should our efforts to uncover the awful truth.

Note: This is an updated, corrected version of the original article, approved by the author. 

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has dismissed US-backed talks to resolve the Middle East conflict and said the talks would bring no peace for the Palestinians.

Haniyeh made the remarks on Monday at a meeting with a Moroccan delegation in Gaza City.

“We do not have any confidence in these meetings, aimed at bringing back normalization and renewing what are already non-existing talks. We think America has nothing to offer to the Palestinians, and Israel doesn’t even think to grant the minimum of Palestinian rights,” Haniyeh said

.

The presence and continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestine has created a major obstacle for the efforts made to establish peace in the Middle East.

Israel agreed to freeze settlement construction under the Roadmap for Peace plan in 2002. But it has failed to comply with that commitment despite repeated and widespread international condemnation.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 illegal settlements built since Israelâ„¢s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds (Jerusalem) in 1967.

The UN and most countries regard the Israeli settlements as illegal because the territories were captured by Israel in the war of 1967 and are hence subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbid construction on occupied lands.

IA/AS

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Mali sets the date for presidential elections on July 28.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Iranian presidential candidate Hassan Rohani says he will improve the situation of business and production in the country if elected in the June presidential election.

The reformist candidate made the remarks in a televised speech on Monday, saying the countryâ„¢s economic woes originate from production problems.

He stated he has plans to boost the economy in a way that the people would not need subsidies any more.

Rohani, who is the president of the Expediency Council’s Center for Strategic Research, also commented about the 2009 post-election unrest in Iran, blaming it on what he called extremism.

Rohani is facing seven rivals in the upcoming election. Tehran Mayor Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, Former Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Velayati, lawmaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Saeed Jalili, Secretary of Expediency Council Mohsen Rezaei, former First Vice President Mohammad-Reza Aref, and former Telecommunications Minister Mohammad Gharazi are also running for president.

Iranians will go to the polls in the countryâ„¢s 11th presidential election on June 14.

The president of Iran is elected for a four-year term in a national election, and the Guardian Council vets the candidates.

NT/AS

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Mediator pill is believed to have killed hundreds of people in France.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Opposition supporters throw rocks during clashes with police in Conakry, on May 24, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]British Foreign Secretary William Hague has said the expiry of the European Union’s arms embargo on Syria effectively ends the arms embargo on the foreign-sponsored militants operating in the country.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/beware_capitalist_tools_20130527/

Posted on May 27, 2013

This article originally appeared on: TruthDig

US Congress should legalize attacking hacker’s computers with malware, physically destroy networks and take photos of data thieves and copyright violators with their own cameras in order to punish IP thieves, the IP Commission recommends.

The commissioners – former US government officials and military
men – say that the “scale of international theft of American
intellectual property (IP) is unprecedented”. However, the US
government response has been “utterly inadequate to deal with
the problem.”

“Almost all the advantages are on the side of the hacker; the
current situation is not sustainable,” the commissions’s report says.

“New options need to be considered,” the authors call, then
adding that current laws are limited and “have not kept pace
with the technology of hacking.”

Thus, the commission suggests allowing active network retrieving
stolen information, “altering it within the intruder’s networks,
or even destroying the information within an unauthorized
network.”

For example, locking down the computer of unauthorized users and
forcing them to come out to police could be one of the options.

“The file could be rendered inaccessible and the unauthorized
user’s computer could be locked down, with instructions on how to
contact law enforcement to get the password needed to unlock the
account,” the commission recommended.

In other words, authors suggest legalizing ransomware – an
extortion tool used by organized criminals, when malware that
blocks access to the computer system it infects, and demands a
ransom paid to the creator to remove the restriction.

Such measures, the commissioners stressed, do not violate existing
laws, but still might help to prevent attacks and even provide both
time and evidence for law enforcement to investigate the
cyber-crime.

As additional measures, the report recommends “physically
disabling or destroying the hacker’s own computer or network,”
implanting malware in the hacker’s network or photographing the
hacker using his own system’s camera.

“The legal underpinnings of such actions taken at network speed
within the networks of hackers, even when undertaken by
governments, have not yet been developed,” the authors say.

So, if counterattacks against hackers were legal, companies could
use a variety of techniques and cause severe damage to the
capability of IP pirates.

“These attacks would raise the cost to IP thieves of their
actions, potentially deterring them from undertaking these
activities in the first place,” the report concludes.

However, if counterattacks were legalized, this would not be just
about companies and hacker. Some pirated movies or songs on private
computers, could be deemed an IP theft and allow rights holders to
do horrible things to suspected systems.

This article originally appeared on: RT

On Saturday, May 25, an estimated two million protesters turned out in 436 cities in 52 countries to protest genetically-modified (GM) foods and their primary developer, Monsanto Company, Inc. This far exceeded anything Tami Canal could have imagined when she created a Facebook page entitled “The March against Monsanto” back in February.

When Proposition 37 failed in California in November, Canal decided to do something about it. Prop 37 would have required labeling of GM food products so that (according to the bill) “the people of California [would be] fully informed about whether the food they purchase and eat is genetically engineered and not misbranded as natural so that they can choose for themselves whether to purchase and eat such foods.”

“If I had gotten 3,000 people to join me, I would have considered that a success,” Canal said Saturday. “It was empowering and inspiring to see so many people, from different walks of life, put aside their differences and come together today.”

She added: “We will continue until Monsanto complies with consumer demand. They are poisoning our children, poisoning our planet.”

One of the reasons that likely motivated Canal to focus on Monsanto was the discovery that opponents to Proposition 37 outspent supporters by five-to-one, with the biggest contributor to the “No Prop. 37” campaign being Monsanto with its $8 million gift, nearly as much as all the supporters garnered put together. The measure barely lost, 51 percent to 49 percent.

Others opposing Prop. 37 included GM food giants DuPont, PepsiCo, Kraft Foods, Bayer, Dow AgroSciences, BASF Plant Science, and Coca-Cola North America.

Monsanto has been increasingly perceived as a big bully, and the history of litigation on its Wikipedia entry goes on for pages. The first challenge to Monsanto’s claim that GM foods were natural and healthy came from the publishing of a peer-reviewed study by an obscure Hungarian-born scientist, Árpád Pusztai, in 1998. Under the auspices of the Rowett Research Institute in Scotland, Pusztai’s study found that feeding GM potatoes to rats led to “negative effects on their stomach linings and immune systems.” In a World in Action interview, he set off the world community with the statement that, if it were up to him, he wouldn’t eat GM foods. He added that it was “very, very unfair to use our fellow citizens as guinea pigs.” His remarks and his study were opposed with such vigor and vitriol that Pusztai, a 36-year veteran at Rowett with 270 papers and three books on plant lectins on his curriculum vitae, was terminated by Rowett. The controversy became known as the Pusztai Affair.

Investigative journalist Andrew Rowell looked into the incident and concluded that the pressure to sack Pusztai had come from not only scientists who took issue with parts of his study but also Monsanto officials, who had pressured President Clinton to call British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair had then called Rowett Institute Director Philip James and told him to terminate Pusztai.

In 2005 Pusztai, who has continued his work on plant lectins as well as speaking out on GM foods, received the Whistleblower Award from the Federation of German Scientists. In 2009 he received the Stuttgart Peace Prize.

Other studies since the Pusztai Affair have served to heighten concerns about GM foods while exposing Monsanto’s role as a bully trying to salvage its reputation by savaging its opponents. In 2007, 2009, and 2011 Gilles-Eric Seralini, a professor of molecular biology at the University of Caen in France, published the results of other studies that involved feeding Roundup-resistant maize to rats. Those studies found: GM foods caused liver, kidney, and heart damage in rats. Seralini suffered similar indignities from Monsanto and its allies, resulting in the “Seralini Affair.” This time, however, Seralini didn’t have to defend his position by himself; a letter signed by more than 130 of his peers was published in support of his work.

What’s at stake here isn’t Monsanto’s reputation. Monsanto has already been sufficiently tarnished and sullied by its own misbehavior, political manipulations, and thuggery. What is at stake is its position in the market. If the perception that GM foods may be unhealthy is ever accepted by the general population (Vermont and Connecticut just passed their own Prop 37 measures requiring GM labeling on food products), then Monsanto’s near-monopoly sustained through its influence over politicians is in jeopardy.

An estimated two million people took time off from their busy weekends to add their voices to those clamoring to end that monopoly and give people back their freedom to choose what kind of food they eat.

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

General Sultani Makenga, the military leader of the M23 rebels, looks on while surrounded by his bodyguards in Mutaho, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on May 27, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

This article originally appeared on: RT

Cross-border mortar shells fired by foreign-backed militants in Syria have killed one, injured one and caused material damage near the eastern Lebanese town of Hermel.

On Monday, three mortar shells targeted residential neighborhoods in Bdaita, on the outskirts of Hermel in the northern Bekaa region, AFP reported.

A security official said that Loulou Awwad, a 17-year old girl, was killed and another woman was wounded by the shells.

The area is a stronghold of the Lebanese resistance movement, Hezbollah.

The mortar shells hit the area after Hezbollah Secretary-General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah gave a speech in which he pledged victory in Syria to his supporters.

On Sunday, the Lebanese National News Agency (NNA) said four mortars slammed into the heart of Hermel, which is situated about 100 kilometers (62 miles) northeast of the capital, Beirut.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour stated that the security situation in Lebanon was deteriorating due to the ongoing turmoil in the border region.

Å“Lebanon security and stability are being threatened. We are preparing a memo to hand out to the Arab League on the violations… on our borders. Last week, two Lebanese civilians lost their lives due to shelling from armed Syrian opposition,” the Lebanese foreign minister said.

In another incident on Sunday, two rockets hit the southern district of Zahyieh in Lebanonâ„¢s capital, Beirut. According to Lebanese security sources, several people were wounded in the incident and some vehicles and homes were also damaged.

Lebanonâ„¢s caretaker Interior Minister Marwan Charbel, who visited at the site of the rocket attack, said it was an Å“act of sabotage.”

Å“The rockets were fired from a secluded area, southeast of the scene of the incident,” he stated.

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

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

IA/AS

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

The Battle for the Arctic is part of a global military agenda of conquest and territorial control. It has been described as a New Cold War between Russia and America. 

Washington’s objective is to secure territorial control, on behalf of the Anglo-American oil giants, over extensive Arctic oil and natural gas reserves. The Arctic region could hold up to 25% of the World’s oil and gas reserves, according to some estimates. (Moscow Times, 3 August 2007). These estimates are corroborated by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS): ”The real possibility exists that you could have another world class petroleum province like the North Sea.” (quoted by CNNMoney.com, 25 October 2006)

From Washington’s perspective, the battle for the Arctic is part of broader global military agenda.

It is intimately related to the process of North American integration under the Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement (SPP) and the proposed North American Union (NAU). The SPP envisages, under the auspices of a proposed “multiservice [North American] Defense Command”, the militarization of a vast territory extending from the Caribbean basin to the Canadian Arctic.

It also bears a relationship to America’s hegemonic objectives in different parts of the World including the Middle East. The underlying economic objective of US military operations is the conquest, privatization and appropriation of the World’s reserves of fossil fuel. The Arctic is no exception. The Arctic is an integral part of the “Battle for Oil”. It is one of the remaining frontiers of untapped energy reserves.

The Arctic nations (with territories North of the Arctic circle) are Russia, Canada, Denmark, the US, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland. The first three countries (Russia, Canada and Denmark) possess significant territories extending northwards of the Arctic circle. (see Map).

Copyright BBC

Directed against Russia, which is in the process of claiming part of the Arctic shelf, Washington’s Arctic strategy is tied into a broader process of militarization and territorial integration.

UN Convention on the Law of the Sea

The United States has adopted a unilateral approach to Arctic development. It has refused to approve the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which was ratified by both Russia and Canada. A United Nations Committee currently administers the Law of the Sea Convention.

The US transpolar territory is much smaller than that of Russia, Canada and Denmark. US territories bordering the Arctic are limited to the North Alaskan coastline, extending from the Bering straits to the Northeastern Alaskan US-Canadian border. The US has a number of US military bases and installations in Alaska. There are several human settlements on the Northern Slope ( Northern Alaska coastline bordering the Arctic Ocean), including Prudhoe Bay, Barrow and Cape Lisborne. This Northern Slope is rich in oil. It was among the first areas of development of Arctic oil. The Alaskan pipeline links Prudoe Bay on the North Slope to the port of Valdez in Prince William Sound on the Gulf of Alaska.

Russia

Russia, in contrast, has by far the largest border with the Arctic, from the Northwestern city of Murmansk on the Russian-Finnish border, extending over the entire Northern Siberian region, to the Bering Straits, which separate Alaska from the Russian Federation. Murmansk is the largest city north of the Arctic Circle, with a population of more than 400,000 inhabitants. In other words, a large part of the Russian Siberian continental shelf borders the Arctic.

Russia, going back to the Soviet era, had established scientific-military stations on the island of Northern Zemlya as well as in the Francois Joseph archipelago (Franz Josef Land), which is also under Russian jurisdiction. (See map.) Northern Zemlya was used during the Soviet era for underground nuclear testing.

Russia is now claiming sovereignty (under the International Convention on the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS) over a vast 1,191,000 sq km territory which is part of the Arctic shelf.

This territory claimed by Russia submitted to the UN Committee that administers UNCLOS is said to contain substantial hydrocarbon reserves, on the Arctic seabed:

The 1982 International Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) establishes a 12 mile zone for territorial waters and a larger 200 mile economic zone in which a country has exclusive drilling rights for hydrocarbon and other resources.

Russia claims that the entire swath of Arctic seabed in the triangle that ends at the North Pole belongs to Russia, but the United Nations Committee that administers the Law of the Sea Convention has so far refused to recognize Russia’s claim to the entire Arctic seabed.

In order to legally claim that Russia’s economic zone in the Arctic extends far beyond the 200 mile zone, it is necessary to present viable scientific evidence showing that the Arctic Ocean’s sea shelf to the north of Russian shores is a continuation of the Siberian continental platform. In 2001, Russia submitted documents to the UN commission on the limits of the continental shelf seeking to push Russia’s maritime borders beyond the 200 mile zone. It was rejected.

Now Russian scientists assert there is new evidence that Russia’s northern Arctic region is directly linked to the North Pole via an underwater shelf. Last week a group of Russian geologists returned from a six-week voyage to the Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater shelf in Russia’s remote eastern Arctic Ocean. They claimed the ridge was linked to Russian Federation territory, boosting Russia’s claim over the oil- and gas-rich triangle.

The latest findings are likely to prompt Russia to lodge another bid at the UN to secure its rights over the Arctic sea shelf. If no other power challenges Russia’s claim, it will likely go through unchallenged. (See Vladimir Frolov, Global Research, July 2007)

Russia is basing its claim on the grounds that this portion of the Arctic sea shelf is connected to Russia’s continental shelf, through the 2000 km long underwater Lomonosov ridge. ”According to Russian media, the physical connection to the Russian intercontinental shelf means that the ridge is technically a part of Russia, and therefore open to exploitation.”

( http://www.oilmarketer.co.uk/2007/07/04/russia-seeks-un-approval-on-artic-oil-grab/

The Strategic Role of Canada and Denmark’s Arctic Territories 

After Russia, Canada and Denmark have the largest transpolar territories.

To effectively challenge and encroach upon Russian territorial claims in the Arctic, Washington requires not only the collaboration of Canada and Denmark, but also jurisdiction over their respective Northern territories, which are considered by Washington as strategic from both a military and economic standpoint.

The US has a military presence in both Canada and Denmark (Greenland). Both countries play an important role in Washington’s Arctic strategy.

Canada’s territory, extends northwards to the Queen Elizabeth archipelago which includes Ellesmere Island bordering onto the Sea of Lincoln, which is part of the Arctic Ocean. Ellesmere Island is part of the Canadian territory of Nunavut.

Alert on Ellesmere Island (located at 82°28′N, 62°30′W) is considered the northernmost human settlement in the world. In practice it operates as a military intelligence station (Canadian Forces Station Alert) is under the jurisdiction of the Canadian military. CFS Alert is 840 km from the North Pole.

The militarization of the Arctic is part of the process of North American integration under the Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement (SPP). The proposed North American Union (NAU) constitutes a means for the US to extend its sovereignty over Canada’s Arctic territories.

When the creation of US Northern Command was announced in April 2002, Canada accepted the right of the US to deploy US troops on Canadian soil, extending into its Arctic territories:

“U.S. troops could be deployed to Canada and Canadian troops could cross the border into the United States if the continent was attacked by terrorists who do not respect borders, according to an agreement announced by U.S. and Canadian officials.” (Edmunton Sun, 11 September 2002)

In April 2006, Canada formally ratified a renewed North American Aerospace Defense Agreement (NORAD), (“renewed NORAD”), which allows the US Navy and Coast Guard to deploy American war ships in Canadian territorial waters including its Arctic seabed territories. (For further details, see Michel Chossudovsky, Canada’s Sovereignty in Jeopardy: The Militarization of North America, Global Research, August 2007)

Greenland

Greenland, which is under Danish jurisdiction, constitutes a sizeable landmass bordering the Arctic Ocean.

The Thule Air Force base in Northern Greenland is under the jurisdiction of the US Air Force 821st Air Base Group. It constitutes the US’s northernmost military facility (76°32′N, 68°50′W). The military base lies approximately 1118 km north of the Arctic Circle and 1524 km south of the Terrestrial North Pole. The Thule base is 885 km east of the North Magnetic Pole.

The Thule US Air Force base also “hosts the 12th Space Warning Squadron, a Ballistic Missile Early Warning Site designed to detect and track Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) launched against North America.”

The Thule base links up to NORAD and US Northern Command headquarters at the Peterson Air Force base in Colorado. The Thule base is also “host to Detachment 3 of the 22d Space Operations Squadron, which is part of the 50th Space Wing‘s global satellite control network.”

Denmark is member of NATO, firmly allied with the US. Both Danish and Canadian territory will be used by the US to militarize the Arctic. Denmark has also been a firm supporter of the Bush administration’s military agenda in the Middle East.

Canada’s Arctic Military Facilities 

Ottawa’s July 2007 decision to establish a military facility in Resolute Bay in the Northwest Passage was not intended to reassert “Canadian sovereignty. In fact quite the opposite. It was established in consultation with Washington. A deep-water port at Nanisivik, on the northern tip of Baffin Island is also envsaged.

The US administration is firmly behind the Canadian government’s decision. The latter does not “reassert Canadian sovereignty”. Quite the opposite. It is a means to eventually establish US territorial control over Canada’s entire Arctic region including its waterways.

Under the renegotiated North American Aerospace Defense Agreement (NORAD), the US military has access to Canada’s domestic territorial waters including Canada’s sea shelf with the Arctic, which coincidentally also provides Washington under the guise of “North American sovereignty” with a justification to challenge Russia in the Arctic.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

A series of blasts ripped through Iraq’s capital on Monday, killing more than 70 and leaving many wounded, marking the latest in over 350 deaths this month as sectarian violence continues to overwhelm the country.

The precise number killed in the bombings Monday is uncertain,
with agency figures ranging between 58 and “more than 70,”
with a further 180 wounded, according to security and medical
officials cited by AFP. Kuwaiti news agency KUNI placed the figure
as high as 82 dead, with another 130 injured.

Approximately twelve different blasts struck markets and shopping
districts in Baghdad’s Shi’ite areas. The explosions included twin
bomb attacks just a few hundred meters apart in the Sadr City area
of the capital, which killed 13.

“A driver hit another car and left pretending to bring traffic
police. Another car rushed to take him away and right after his car
exploded among people who had gathered to see what was
happening,” one bystander, Hassan Kadhim, told Reuters.
“People were shouting for help and blood covered their
faces.”

Two of the blasts, instigated by vehicles fitted with
explosives, went off in the vicinity of used car dealerships in the
northeastern district of Habibiyah, destroying dozens of cars as
Iraq’s national football team were playing Liberia in a friendly at
Shaab stadium a short distance away.

“Guards are here, and a car explodes here,” Fadhel Hanoun, a
used car dealer told AFP, voicing anger at the loss of savings tied
up in unsold cars, alongside the many deaths. “This is a failed
state,” he added.

No one group has yet claimed responsibility for the simultaneous
attacks. However, they mark the latest in a series of assaults in
both Sunni and Shiite regions, prompting fears that widespread
sectarian violence is once more gripping the country.

A series of bombings only a week ago killed left at least 95 people
dead on one single day. 76 people were killed in a string of
bombings just outside Baghdad on May 17, and explosions in the
capital left more than 35 dead on May 15.

Across April, more than 700 people, including 595 civilians, died
in Iraq “acts of terrorism,” making it the deadliest month since
June 2008, the UN’s mission in the country said. The capital
Baghdad has become the worst affected city.

Ten years after the US declared its victory over Saddam Hussein,
Iraq is still mired in violence, with tensions between Sunnis and
Shiites elevated since both the 2003 US led invasion of the
country, and subsequent withdrawal of US troops in 2011.

“Americans have to take the blame for that because of the system
they imposed in Iraq, giving independence to Kurds in the North,
who of course were allies with them against Saddam Hussein, and
then they are suggesting they would split the Shia alliance in the
rest of Iraq and that opened up a Pandora’s box, which really is
almost impossible to stop now. But this is not going to stop
sectarian violence,” political analyst Chris Bambery told RT earlier this month.

Since US withdrawal, the Iraqi army and police force have faced
severe difficulties in preventing an increase in insurgency and
sectarian tensions.

Majority Shiites dominate the power centers in post-Saddam Iraq,
amid Sunni complaints that some laws unfairly target them as a
group and that they are treated as second-class citizens.

This article originally appeared on: RT

A number of neoconservative Republicans spent part of the Memorial Day weekend roundly criticizing the plan announced by President Obama to limit the scope and eventually end the war on terror that was declared by President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.; pictured) called the president “tone deaf” to national security needs.

“At a time we need resolve the most, we are sounding retreat.” Graham said on Fox News Sunday. A strong supporter of the use of unmanned bombers for strikes on selected targets, Graham criticized the president’s statement in his speech at the National Defense University May 23 that stricter guidelines and more oversight are needed for the drone attacks.

“Changing the standards of when you can go after somebody with a drone, it has to be a continuing imminent threat to the American people with no chance of civilian casualties,” Graham said in voicing a catalogue of faults he finds in the way the president is dealing with foreign policy and national security issues.

“Our enemies are emboldened all over the planet. Al Qaeda in Iraq is coming back with vengeance,” Graham said. “Syria is falling apart. We are talking about helping the rebels but doing nothing about it. Iran is marching toward a nuclear weapon. And we show this lack of resolve, talking about that war being over. What do you think the Iranians are thinking?” Graham, who has been in Congress for 18 years, said: “I’ve never been more worried about our national security than I am right now. And the [Obama] speech did not help.”

“I see a big difference between the President saying the war’s at an end and whether or not you’ve won the war,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, (R-Okla). “We have still tremendous threats out there, that are building – not declining, building – and to not recognize that, I think, is dangerous in the long run and dangerous for the world.”

Obama did not say the war on terror is over in his May 23 speech, but he said it must end at some yet-undefined point. He also called for a “refinement” and eventual repeal of the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, passed by Congress a week after the 9/11 attacks. In contrast to “the global war on terror” proclaimed by the Bush administration, Obama rejected the concept of a “boundless” war in favor of a more focused attack on specific terror networks. that threaten the United States. With U.S. combat units scheduled for withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of next year, Obama said groups like the al-Qaeda affiliates on the Arabian Peninsula “must be dealt with, but in the years to come, not every collection of thugs that labels themselves al Qaeda will pose a credible threat to the United States.”

Obama continued: “Unless we discipline our thinking, our definitions, our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight, or continue to grant Presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states,” the President warned.

Two GOP members of the House Homeland Security Committee, meanwhile took issue with the president’s renewal of his call to close the detention center at the U.S. Naval Base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama promised to close the facility as a candidate for president, but has been blocked by a congressional ban on relocating the foreign terror suspects held there anywhere in the United States.

“Name me one American city that would like to host these guys,” Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said on CNN’s State of the Union. Rep. Peter King of New York, appearing on ABC’s This Week, said he is “very concerned about sending detainees back to Yemen.” More than half of the 166 prisoners still on Guantanamo are from Yemen, and 56 have been cleared for return to their country. Others are deemed too dangerous to be released, but have not been prosecuted because, claims the Obama administration, their trial would compromise security secrets.

Ironically, Republicans have not been heard criticizing another aspect of the president’s speech, calling for an increase in foreign aid and nation building, as Obama described it, “from North Africa to South Asia.”

This means patiently supporting transitions to democracy in places like Egypt and Tunisia and Libya – because the peaceful realization of individual aspirations will serve as a rebuke to violent extremists. We must strengthen the opposition in Syria, while isolating extremist elements – because the end of a tyrant must not give way to the tyranny of terrorism. We are actively working to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians – because it is right and because such a peace could help reshape attitudes in the region. And we must help countries modernize economies, upgrade education, and encourage entrepreneurship – because American leadership has always been elevated by our ability to connect with people’s hopes, and not simply their fears.

So while the President speaks on the one hand of a more limited role for the war on terror, with the other he would draw us deeper into all the turbulence of “democracies” in the Middle East and further into the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. At a time when our own economy is mired in a stagnant “recovery” and burdened with enormous debt, we will be spending more money we don’t have to “help countries modernize economies.” We will help undeveloped nations “upgrade education” when it might e considered a near miracle if we improved our own. Lyndon Johnson’s plans to build a Great Society on the Mekong Delta in Vietnam seem modest by comparison.

If all the efforts the United States has made in trying to manage other people’s political affairs, and all the money spent on efforts to “modernize” and “upgrade” other nations in the past seven decades have not yet produced a more peaceful world, chances are more of the same won’t do it. Yet that part of Obama’s speech seems to have escaped the notice of neoconservative Republican critics, who appear more troubled by a vaguely suggested contraction of the warfare state than by an expanded role for a global welfare state.

^{Photo of Sen. Lindsey Graham: AP Images}

This article originally appeared on: The New American

As Venezuela continues to suffer shortages in many key food items and a dependence on food imports, some officials are pointing poor land utilization as a key cause of the problem.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

Woman complains of sexual molestation after fronting TSA opt-out protest

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
May 27, 2013

An activist who fronted a national TSA opt-out campaign last year has released a video of a pat down during which she accuses a TSA agent of touching her vagina.

Ashley Jessica, who led the Infowars Opt Out & Film the TSA campaign last Thanksgiving, is shown in the clip undergoing an invasive pat down having exercised her right to refuse to go through a body scanner machine.

Although the two lines at the security gate initially led to a body scanner and a metal detector, the metal detector was roped off as soon as Ashley and her mother joined the queue. When the two opted out, they were told they would receive, “an extensive pat down which would involve going all the way up the leg,” according to Ashley.

After first filming her mother receiving a pat down, a separate TSA agent arrives to perform the same ludicrous procedure on Ashley, first patting down her hair.

The TSA screener then puts her hand on Ashley’s breast to which she responds, “sorry, you just touched my boob.”

When Ashley tells the screener she is not comfortable with having her breasts fondled, the TSA screener threatens to stop the screening process and bar Ashley from flying.

The screener then runs her hand up the inside of Ashley’s thigh and appears to touch her vagina as Ashley recoils.

“She just touched my vagina, seriously, that was not my upper thigh,” complains Ashley.

The TSA agent completes the procedure and America has been protected from another potential terrorist (while a plethora of other travelers pass through body scanners which it has been proven can easily be fooled).

“Having the camera on empowered me to interrupt the pat down when I was being violated and tell them what was and wasn’t acceptable,” Ashley told Infowars.

Hundreds of complaint letters about the TSA’s invasive security procedures which were released last year under the Freedom of Information Act include numerous horror stories about TSA screeners directly touching people’s genitals during pat downs. There have also been numerous cases of public figures having their “junk” touched.

We first reported back in 2010, that the TSA’s new security procedures for “advanced pat downs” include literally touching and in some cases groping the genitals of travelers.

Whether Ashley was deliberately targeted for her involvement in anti-TSA activism is unknown, although other critics of the federal agency have admittedly faced retribution through invasive pat downs and other forms of harassment.

The TSA has characterized people who do not fully comply with airport screening procedures, no matter how bizarre or invasive, as “domestic extremists.”

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

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

<!–

–>

This article was posted: Monday, May 27, 2013 at 2:04 pm

Tags: tsa

–>

This article originally appeared on: Infowars

China is trying to stave off a trade war with the EU that could cost both sides billions, as premier Li Keqiang dashes between European capitals persuading leaders not to vote for a punitive tariff on Chinese imports.

On June 5, European Union member states will cast ballots on
whether to impose a massive 47 percent tariff on solar panels on
its second-largest trading partner, in what appears to be an
undecided vote.

As he made his first foreign trip since being appointed in
March, Li Keqiang dismissed the proposed sanctions as
“protectionism” and warned the EU that they “will hurt
Chinese industries, business and jobs and also damage the vital
interests of European users and consumers.”

Less than ten years ago China controlled about 10 percent of the
world solar panel market, now it has more than 50 percent, with
most of its exports going to the EU, which has some of the world’s
greenest policies. Supplies to the EU brought Chinese companies
more than €21 billion last year.

But a wide-ranging fifteen-month EU investigation, which is due
to present its final results at the end of this year, has already
concluded that Chinese authorities are subsidizing their companies
so they can undercut European competitors and eventually force them
out, by ‘dumping’ cheaper panels onto the European market.

EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht has said that the Chinese
government provides these subsidies through cheap land and energy,
and huge loans given to industrial leaders at below-market rates,
creating “a distorted playing field”.

“At this stage, any potential temporary measures are an
emergency response to rebalance the market place for European
companies facing life-threatening dumping and unfair competition
from China’s solar panel industry,” said de Gucht.

The vote next Wednesday would only put the tariffs in place
until December, but if China does not comply with EU demands, it
could then be made permanent for up to five years.

But despite censure from official Brussels, Li has managed to
get the backing of a powerful supporter — Angela Merkel.

“Germany will get involved and engage in negotiations to
ensure that we don’t come to a point where there are permanent
levies,” promised the German Chancellor.

“There is no need for more sanction measures,” said an
even more emphatic Economy Minister Philipp Roesler, once talks
with Li had concluded.

While Germany initially supported the tariffs, and appeared to
be isolated when it made a volte face, by Monday evening news
agency Reuters said that 15 of the 27 EU member states would vote
against the tariffs. Only six countries are definitely in favor,
though the situation appears fluid.

A Chinese delegation held “informal” talks with EU officials in
Brussels on Monday evening to try to take advantage of the changing
tide.

Italy and France are leading the faction of those remain firmly
against letting China off, as solar panel makers around the world
continue to go bankrupt, engulfed by the torrent of Asian
supplies.

“We want to see a balanced relationship between China and the
European Union. Countries that use protectionism, and China is one
of them, should accept reciprocal rules,” said French Industry
Minister Arnaud Montebourg.

“The Commission was presented with prima facie evidence that
dumping occurred. They can’t just ignore that,” Stuart Newman,
a legal advisor to the Foreign Trade Association, told Reuters.

But China is unlikely to watch impassively.

While it can appeal to the WTO over the tariffs, instead it has
already unleashed a series of what can be seen as tit-for-tat
anti-dumping investigations. Beijing has announced that it is
investigating European chemicals companies for the practice, a
fortnight after it said that makers of unwelded pipes from the
region were also selling their goods below price.

On the other hand, the EU says that Chinese telecommunications
makers — whose share has also risen rapidly – could be the next to
be investigated for dumping.

The escalation of the conflict over what is a relatively paltry
if growing industry could be disastrous for both regions. Last year
total trade between the EU and China amounted to €434
billion.

This article originally appeared on: RT

On May 26, the New York Times published an editorial claiming, “Senate Republicans have gone out of their way to make themselves effectively unavailable, refusing to confirm nominees to agencies whose missions they oppose.”

This Republican recalcitrance has, the editorial asserts, forced President Obama to “make many recess appointments.”

Citing several recent judicial setbacks for the president’s interpretation of the Constitution’s Appointment Clause of Article II, Section 2, the New York Times editorial board warned that “If allowed to stand, the two court decisions, both of which hinge on the definition of “recess,” could jeopardize more than 900 rulings by the [National Labor Relations Board].”

Using a potent parliamentary tactic, both houses of Congress have acted to keep the legislative branch in “pro forma” session throughout several breaks in order to prevent President Obama from bypassing the advice and consent of the Senate by making what are known as recess appointments.

First, one must understand the notion of the Congress being in session “pro forma.” According to the parliamentary rules governing the business of Congress, either or both houses of that body may hold a “pro forma” session during which no formal business is conducted. There are a couple of primary reasons why this would be desirable. First, such sessions may be necessary to fulfill the constitutional stricture that:

Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting. [Article I, Section 5]

Additionally, congressional leadership often employs this gambit as a delay tactic in order to foil presidential attempts to execute a pocket veto of a bill, to call a special session of Congress, or to make recess appointments in the executive or judicial branches as per the authority given the president in Article II.

The next step in the analysis of whether recess appointments are constitutionally sound is to examine the constitutional basis for the practice. Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution states:

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

The plain language of that clause seems to authorize the making of what we call recess appointments. That is to say, if the Senate is in recess, then the president is within the sphere of his constitutionally enumerated powers to fill a vacancy that will be valid until the end of the next congressional session.

To constitutionalists, an important next step in the analysis would be to discover the intent of the Founders regarding their inclusion of this clause in the Constitution. In the early days of the Republic, the recess periods between congressional sessions lasted months, sometimes as many as nine. Such lengthy breaks made the use of recess appointments necessary in order to prevent necessary offices from remaining unfilled for so long a period.

For example, George Washington took advantage of this authority when in 1795 he appointed John Rutledge of South Carolina to the Supreme Court during a congressional recess. Upon returning to work, the Senate rejected Rutledge, utilizing its own right to exercise advice and consent over the nomination of federal officers.

By contrast, President Obama has made frequent and controversial use of the recess appointment clause since taking office in 2009. He has made at least 29 recess appointments during his administration. Several of these have been thereafter confirmed by the Senate, while many (including the controversial naming of Donald Berwick to be the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) have not.

Now on to the notion that Senate “pro forma” sessions are obstructionist and unconstitutional. In The Federalist, No. 68, Alexander Hamilton writes of the recess appointment clause:

The ordinary power of appointment is confided to the president and senate jointly, and can therefore only be exercised during the session of the senate; but, as it would have been improper to oblige this body to be continually in session for the appointment of officers; and as vacancies might happen in their recess, which it might be necessary for the public service to fill without delay, the succeeding clause is evidently intended to authorize the president, singly, to make temporary appointments “during the recess of the senate, by granting commissions which should expire at the end of their next session.”

What, then, was the role the Senate was designed to play in the nomination and appointment process? Again, we turn to The Federalist Papers and Alexander Hamilton:

To what purpose then require the co-operation of the senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favouritism in the president, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from state prejudice, from family connexion, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration.

In the preceding quotes from the Federalist Papers, Hamilton makes it clear that while the president is able to make appointments without the advice and consent of the Senate during recesses, there is greater wisdom to be found (and safety for our Republic) in placing the Senate as a check on the “spirit of favoritism” on the part of the president.

A subsequent and important question would be, then, has the current president displayed that spirit of favoritism in his nominations to fill vacancies, particularly those made during Senate recesses? Given the number of rejections of those nominees, it would certainly seem that if nothing else, he has displayed a zeal for naming potential appointees who are very unlikely to be approved by the full Senate. This would seem to indicate an understanding on the part of the president that the only way to get such persons into office and allow them to make official acts according to their own or the president’s controversial agenda is to appoint them during recesses.

Detractors disagree. The New York Times article reported:

In April, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. asked the Supreme Court to review the ruling, arguing: “That decision repudiates understandings of the Recess Appointments Clause that have been maintained and relied on by the Executive for most of the Nation’s history. The limitations imposed by the court of appeals would render many of the recess appointments since the Second World War unconstitutional.”

With all due respect to the “newspaper of record” and to Solicitor General Verrilli, there is no constitutional prohibition on “pro forma” sessions of Congress, and given the president’s predilection for making extremely dubious nominations during Senate recesses, it seems consistent with “constitutional order” and with the intent of the Founders to allow the Senate to continue to use all constitutionally sound means to block this scheme and to prevent “the appointment of unfit characters” to fill federal vacancies.

A quote from an article published last year by the San Francisco Chronicle hints that while the president understands that the Senate has a constitutional duty to check his power, he will not allow the exercise of such to impede the growth of government.

“Administration officials and lawyers insist President Obama made the appointments because Senate Republicans were unfairly blocking Senate confirmation of nominees as a way to limit the [National Labor Relations Board’s] power,” the Chronicle wrote.

Perhaps, but opposition doesn’t qualify as recess.

Neither President Obama’s immeasurable regard for his own moral, legal, and intellectual superiority nor the learned opinion of the New York Times editorial board can convert Senate reluctance into Senate recess.

^{Photo of President Obama: White House}

Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state. He can be reached at
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

A new survey has found that almost two thirds of Britons – 61 percent – believed that activities by far-right groups such as the so-called anti-Islam English Defence League (EDL) make terrorist attacks more likely.

The survey, carried out for the Mail on Sunday by Survation, also showed 64 percent of voters believed that the UK needed more stringent terrorism laws to prevent such attacks as the one happened a few days ago in Woolwich, southeast London, where two assailant hacked off-duty soldier Lee Rigby to death in broad daylight.

The poll, meanwhile, found that 63 percent would support the death penalty for convicted terrorists.

And just 40 percent of people said they felt the government should revive plans for the “snoopers’ charter”, the ditched

Communications Data Bill, to secretly monitor communications such as emails.

The survey showed good news for the Prime Minister, with the UK public giving strong backing to his response to the incident in Woolwich.

His handling of the situation brought David Cameron a plus 19 rating, but his deputy Nick Clegg was awarded zero. The opposition Labour Party chief Ed Miliband received a plus six rating.

MOL/HE

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

At least 6 people have been killed and 30 others injured after a car bomb exploded in the western city of Homs.

The bomb exploded on Monday near a gas station in al-Waar neighborhood of Homs causing huge material damage to the station and the buildings surrounding it.

Meanwhile, the battle between Syrian government troops and foreign-backed insurgents over the strategic city of Qusayr continues for the eighth straight day

Sources inside Qusayr say 80 percent of the city is now under the control of government troops and Syrian soldiers have arrested the Moroccan leader of a terrorist group after he was injured.

The remaining districts controlled by foreign-backed militants in Qusayr are believed to be the last bastion of the insurgents.

The Syrian army also says that clashes still continue at Dabaâ„¢a military airport in the north of the Qusayr, which is a border city in Syriaâ„¢s western province of Homs, linking the capital Damascus to the Mediterranean port city of Tartus.

On Sunday, Syrian forces managed to retake control of a media center and Ahli Hospital, which was being used by the militants as a field hospital.

The army also cleared al-Hamidiyeh town, in al-Qusayr countryside.

Syria has been gripped by unrest for over two years and many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security personnel, have been killed in the foreign-sponsored militancy.

President Assad said on May 18 that militants from 29 countries are fighting against the government in different parts of Syria.

PG/SS

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

UN.org
May 27, 2013

Although Japan has made progress towards stabilizing the damaged reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant crippled by a devastating earthquake two years ago, there are still issues to be resolved before it can begin its deactivation, the United Nations atomic agency said in a report released today.

The report was released after an expert team from the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) completed an initial review of Japan’s efforts to implement a Mid-and-Long-Term Roadmap to decommission the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. The visit was the first of what is planned to be a two-mission review, at the request of the Japanese Government.

“Our final report reflects that the Roadmap was developed early after the accident and that Japanese workers have achieved reasonable stable cooling of the damaged reactor cores and spent fuel pools,” said the Director of the IAEA’s Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology, Juan Carlos Lentijo.

Read full article

<!–

–>

This article was posted: Monday, May 27, 2013 at 12:46 pm

Tags: radiation

–>

This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Julian Borger
The Guardian
May 27, 2013

The Obama administration has warned British officials that if the UK leaves Europe it will exclude itself from a US-EU trade and investment partnership potentially worth hundreds of billions of pounds a year, and that it was very unlikely that Washington would make a separate deal with Britain.

The warning comes in the wake of David Cameron’s visit to Washington, which was primarily intended as a joint promotion of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with Barack Obama, which the prime minister said could bring £10bn a year to the UK alone, but which was overshadowed by a cabinet rebellion back in London.

The threat by Cameron’s ministers to back a UK exit in a referendum on the EU raised doubts in Washington on whether Britain would still be part of the deal once it had been negotiated. More immediately, Obama administration officials were concerned that the uncertainty over Britain’s future would further complicate what is already a hard sell in Congress, threatening a central pledge in the president’s State of the Union address in February.

Read full article

<!–

–>

This article was posted: Monday, May 27, 2013 at 12:36 pm

Tags: economics, foreign affairs

–>

This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Press TV
May 27, 2013

South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se says Pyongyang should first show signs of sincerity to resume six-party talks on nuclear disarmament.

“Our stance is that there should not be talks for the sake of talks and North Korea must show its sincerity to the international community by implementing its past denuclearization pledges,” Yun told reporters on Monday.

The remarks come in response to reports by Chinese media that North Korea is willing to resume talks over nuclear disarmament.

The six-party negotiations include Russia, China, the United States, Japan, South Korea and North Korea.

Washington and its allies in the region, Seoul and Tokyo, have questioned North Korea’s recent willingness to come back to the negotiating table, saying Pyongyang has no intention of giving up its nuclear weapons.

China has, however, expressed optimism about negotiations.

The Korean Peninsula has been locked in a cycle of escalating military rhetoric since March 1, when the US and South Korea began two months of joint military maneuvers, which included nuclear-capable B-52 and B-2 bombers.

Pyongyang has warned that if Washington and Seoul launch a preemptive attack, the conflict will develop into a nuclear war, adding that its military is prepared to attack “all US military bases in the Asia-Pacific region, including the US mainland, Hawaii, and Guam.”

<!–

–>

This article was posted: Monday, May 27, 2013 at 12:39 pm

Tags: foreign affairs

–>

This article originally appeared on: Infowars

BBC
May 27, 2013

At least 57 people have been killed in a series of car bombs targeting mainly Shia areas in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, police say.

Many more were wounded as at least a dozen bombs hit busy shopping areas and markets in the city.

The violence comes amid a recent marked rise in attacks linked to growing political and sectarian tension.

Read full article

<!–

–>

This article was posted: Monday, May 27, 2013 at 12:28 pm