Iraqis inspect the site of a blast in a car park at the rear gate of the state-owned North Oil Company, about 15 kilometers (nine miles) from the northern city of Kirkuk. (file photo)

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Experts determined an active geological fault line lies underneath a reactor on Japan’s west coast, a discovery which will likely result in the first permanent shutdown of a nuclear power plant since the 2011 Fukushima crisis.

The report by the panel of five seismologists advising the
Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) is the first issued on its
investigation into active fault lines at the Tsuruga plant, which
is located on the Japan Sea coast. The Tsuruga plant — which has
been operating for 43 years — has two reactors, with the fault line
having been discovered directly under the idled No. 2 reactor.

“Safety levels [at Tsuruga] have been low and it is really just
a matter of luck that there hasn’t been an accident,” Reuters
cites Kunihiko Shimazaki, the head of the panel and a commissioner
of the NRA, as saying after the report was finalized. “We are
taking the first steps to correct the situation.”

The NRA is set to determine the Tsuruga plant’s fate at its regular
meeting scheduled in a week’s time. The experts’ finding is
likely to kill any chance the reactor will ever be reactivated, as
government regulations prohibit the construction of reactor
buildings directly above any active fault line.

NRA chairman Shunichi Tanaka has previously said that no evaluation
for the resumption of operations at the Tsuruga plant would be
conducted if an active fault was found, Japan’s Asashi Shimbun
reported.

Japan Atomic Power Co., which operates the two-reactor Tsuruga
station, reacted to the findings with disbelief, accusing the panel
of bias.

“We deeply regret that they made such a conclusion this time and
it is absolutely impossible for us to accept it,” the company
said in a statement.

“We hereby ask the panel of experts to come to a fresh
conclusion after reviewing existing data with a neutral and fair
point of view, with discussion on a strictly scientific basis and
clarification of the grounds of understanding.”

The mayor of Tsuruga Kazuharu Kawase said on Monday he was worried
nuclear regulators were rushing “towards a conclusion”
regarding the atomic plants fate, adding that Japan Atomic Power
had yet to finish its own investigation.

“I want the NRA to cautiously deliberate the matter from a broad
viewpoint, reflecting the outcome of the operator’s investigation
and various opinions in and outside the country,” the Japan
Times cites him as saying.

Japan Atomic Power has claimed the fault is inactive based on its
analysis of volcanic ash, which they say shows no signs of recent
movement. The panel has dismissed the claim as unreliable.

The experts determined that the fault, a zone of pebbles and
sediment dubbed D-1, could shift simultaneously with two others:
one known as K and the other an active major called Urazoko.

The K fault, which has apparently moved within the past 130,000
years, is therefore considered to be technically active. They
further say that the D-1 fault is also active as it is a part of
this structure, while the Urazoko fault is located some 200-300
meters from the reactor buildings.

Japan’s nuclear operators have faced massive losses following an
earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, which caused three reactor
meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Currently, 48 of the country’s 50 nuclear reactors are suspended
from operations, although the country’s nuclear industry had
expected early restarts based on past experience with
regulators.

“It is no longer business as usual. This is the beginning of a
long-term restructuring of the nuclear power business in
Japan,” a senior adviser on atomic policy told Reuters on
condition of anonymity.

The experts will conduct a total of six studies on faults at six
locations near nuclear plants.

With the atomic industry faltering, last week Japan’s ruling
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) promised to bring the country’s
nuclear reactors back into service once they had been verified as
safe.

The country’s public remains ambivalent about the government’s
nuclear plans, according to a poll published in the Tokyo Shimbun
newspaper in March.

While 79.6 per cent of those questioned were at least moderately in
favor of parting with nuclear power eventually, 69 per cent said
they would support the restarting of some nuclear reactors to
fulfill the Japan’s current power needs.

The same month the poll was conducted, some 13,000 people gathered
in Tokyo to protest the continued use of nuclear power in Japan
nearly two years after the Fukushima disaster.

This article originally appeared on : RT

The prospects of a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis is still a long way off. We won’t get an end to the violence until the foreign powers who have been fuelling the conflict, the US included, radically change their policies towards the country.

RT reports that following the visit of US Secretary of State
John Kerry to Moscow this week, the US and Russia have
“reiterated their commitment to bringing the sides of the Syrian
conflict to the negotiating table, and that they have announced an
international conference to be called by the end of May which will
serve as a follow-up to the Geneva communiqué. The Geneva
communiqué should be a roadmap to a new Syria, not a forgotten
piece of paper, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US
Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters after their
Tuesday Moscow meeting.“

So is it time to toast the imminent end of a terrible, bloody
conflict which, according to a UN estimate in February, has cost,
up to then, around 70,000 lives?

As Sergey Lavrov pointed out on Wednesday, the Syrian government
has for a long time shown a willingness to talk, but their
readiness to make compromises to find a peaceful, political
solution to the conflict has not been matched by the so-called
‘rebels’. Instead of using their influence to pressurize
anti-government militia to lay down their arms and to negotiate
directly with Damascus, the foreign supporters of the rebels have
been egging them on to intensify their campaign to violently
overthrow the Syrian government. It’s a campaign which has involved
some appalling acts of terrorism, such as last week’s bombing of a
main square in Damascus in which at least 13 people were
killed.

These countries stoking the conflict in Syria have, up to now,
not been interested in compromises, or in allowing the Syrian
people to decide their own future, as the new 2012 Constitution
allows them to do, but have been hell-bent on achieving ‘regime
change’ for geo-strategic reasons- most importantly to ‘knock
out‘ the strongest regional ally of Iran.  

Despite John Kerry’s support for an international conference, he
has still to rule out direct US military aid to the rebels. When
asked about the bill recommending the direct arming of the rebels
which is before Congress, Kerry said that the future of the bill
would depend “to some degree on the state of the evidence in
respect to chemical weapons”. Yet only a few days ago, Carla
Del Ponte of the UN Commission of Inquiry said that there was
“no, no indication at all” that the Syrian government had
used chemical weapons, on the contrary she said there were
“strong, concrete suspicions” that the opponents of the
government themselves had used them.

If the US stance still leaves a lot to be desired, the position
of the UK in relation to Syria is arguably even worse. The UK’s
neo-conservative dominated government is trying all it can to
pressurize other EU countries to lift the Syrian arms embargo.
Today we hear that they have sent a ‘discussion paper’ to
other EU members making the case either for a total lifting of the
ban or an easing of it.

But the UK government’s line is deceitful. They claim they
want to help the ’good’ i.e. non radical Islamist rebels,
yet a report in the New York Times claimed that “nowhere in
rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak
of.” We’ve already had the al-Nusra front, one of the largest
groups which make up the ‘rebels’ openly pledging their
allegiance to al-Qaeda but that still isn‘t enough to change the
UK’s policy. The double standards are breathtaking: the UK
government which gave support to the French military action against
al- Qaeda linked radical Islamists fighting the authorities in
Mali, is spending British taxpayers’ money on helping an uprising
dominated by radical Islamists to topple a secular government in
Syria.

Peace will only come to Syria when the foreign countries
currently menacing it start acting as fire-fighters and not
arsonists. That means telling the rebels that its time to end their
campaign of violence and to negotiate directly with Damascus. It
also means accepting that whether or not President Assad and the
Ba’ath Party continue to rule Syria, is up to the Syrian people
alone, and not the US, Turkey, Qatar, Britain, France, Saudi
Arabia, Jordan, Israel or indeed anyone else. 

The trouble is that the countries concerned have invested so
much time and money into trying to topple Bashar al-Assad that it’s
highly unlikely that they’ll change direction now, even though
continuing with their destructive, destabilizing policies towards
Syria only means that the bloodshed will continue.

Neil Clark for RT

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

This article originally appeared on : RT

A file photo shows destruction after an attack by foreign-backed militants on the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Iraqis inspect the site of a blast in a car park at the rear gate of the state-owned North Oil Company, about 15 kilometers (nine miles) from the northern city of Kirkuk. (file photo)

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

NATIONAL TEACHERS Appreciation Week, traditionally the first full week of May, passed this year without even a token statement from Barack Obama. Instead, the White House issued a presidential proclamation honoring the same weeklong period as…National Charter Schools Week.

Yep, you read that right. Barack Obama—who got the votes of millions of teachers last November and whose party depends on hundreds of millions of dollars in political spending by teachers’ unions and the rest of organized labor—not only couldn’t be bothered to utter a symbolic good word about teachers. He went out of his way to celebrate an initiative of the Republican Bush administration that spotlights a centerpiece of the anti-teacher school deform agenda.

If you’re a regular reader of SocialistWorker.org, you’ll know that there’s a long history of the Democrats talking populist when they’re asking for the votes of their working-class and liberal base of support—but acting quite differently when “the party of the people” is in office.

But Obama and Co. seem almost eager to rub their supporters’ faces in it.

Teachers aren’t the only example. At election time, one of the most reliable appeals for voting Democratic is to raise the specter of Republicans taking away a woman’s right to choose. The urgent pleas of pro-choice supporters in 2008 and 2012 to vote for Obama were a stark contrast to his administration’s neglect of the issue.

This week, though, the Obama administration took action on reproductive rights, appealing in court for…continued restrictions. In April, a federal judge struck down an Obama-era rule barring women younger than 17 from obtaining the Plan B “morning-after” pill without a prescription. This Monday, the Justice Department of a pro-choice Democratic president asked a higher court to overturn that decision.

Its reasoning for stopping the judge’s order from going into effect—that women would become “confused” if they gained unrestricted access to Plan B, only to have it taken away later if the Obama administration succeeded in its appeal—was a glaring and infuriating display of contempt for women and their rights.

There are plenty more examples. The willingness of Obama and the Democrats to give ground to Republicans on issue after issue while kicking their own base in the teeth has come into particularly sharp focus this spring. It’s worth pointing out that these are also the opening months of Obama’s second term, during which the president was, according to some liberal commentators writing before the election last year, supposed to prove he was a true progressive after all.

This isn’t a new insight into the nature of the Democratic Party, by any means. But the importance of the lesson that flows from it—anyone who wants to see change must rely not on allies in high places, but the collective strength of our struggles and our movements—is all the more crucial to remember as activists mobilize around the urgent issues we face today, from immigrant rights to climate justice and more.

– — – — – — – — – — – — – — – –

THE REPUBLICAN Party and the Democratic Party aren’t identical. If they were, there wouldn’t be any reason to have two of them.

Most of the time, most Democrats stand to the left of most Republicans. That’s a big part of why Democrats are effective in carrying out an agenda that serves the political and social status quo. They can win the votes and political support of masses of ordinary people well to their left who fear even worse from the other guys.

But some of the time, there’s not even the proverbial dime’s worth of difference between Democrats and Republicans. Charter schools and the corporate school deform agenda are a prime example.

The standardized testing mania, scapegoating of teachers and encroachment of private interests into public education began in earnest under George W. Bush with his No Child Left Behind law. But Obama took over the Bush program for public schools and kicked it into high gear. His administration’s Race to the Top program dangled billions of dollars in front of state governments, in return for passing “reform” laws that tied teacher evaluation to test scores and opened the way for more charter schools, among other measures.

Obama and his Education Secretary Arne Duncan were speaking glowingly about charters long before National Charter Schools Week. The language of Obama’s proclamation is typical: “These learning laboratories give educators the chance to try new models and methods that can encourage excellence in the classroom and prepare more of our children for college and careers.”

Every part of that statement flies in the face of the facts. Charter schools prepare fewerof our children for anything at all, because the private operators who run schools with public funds get to exclude the students they don’t want.

For example, a 2011 study of 14 Florida school districts found that more than 86 percent of charter schools didn’t have a single student with a severe disability, compared to more than half of district public schools that did. The pattern is similar with homeless students. As education expert Diane Ravitch reported at a 2010 hearing, “New York City has 50,000 homeless students, but only about 100 are enrolled in a charter school. If a proportionate number were in charters, there would be 1,500, not 100.

In other words, charter schools on the whole take the students they want from public schools—preferably, those without special needs that cost more money—and leave the rest behind in a system that’s even more starved for financial resources, thanks to the subsidies for charters.

And even so, charter schools can’t demonstrate that they do any better at educating the students they do take. On the contrary, a 2009 study by the respected RAND Corporation, for example, analyzed charter schools in five major cities and three states, and found that in every location, students in the charter schools performed no better at best, and demonstrably poorer at worst.

So why the zealous cheerleading for charter schools? The answer: Follow the money.

Follow the money in a direct sense—more than one-third of charter schools were run by for-profit companies as of 2010, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Public school privatization is proving to be an even bigger bonanza in other areas—companies like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. are scrambling to get their hands on the billions to be made off the standardized testing bonanza.

But you can also follow the money in an indirect sense. The charter school crusade is aimed squarely at the power of the teachers’ unions—according to Diane Ravitch, 90 percent of charters are non-union. Charterization has become a dependable way to get rid of well-paid, veteran, union teachers—and replace them with educators who labor under the conditions described by one Ohio teacher in a comment at Ravitch’s website:

I’ve been an educator in Columbus, Ohio, since university. In my eighth year, I currently earn $34,000 before taxes at a 9-12 charter school. I can be fired at any time. I have no tenure, no union and scarce resources to teach…My family needs the money I earn, so I must teach, but I just pray a public school gives me a chance.

Teachers and education workers are one of the last remaining strongholds of the union movement—around three in every 10 union cards in the U.S. are held by members of the American Federation of Teachers or National Education Association. An injury to those unions through charterization is an injury inflicted on the whole working class, to the benefit of the bosses.

Plus, there’s the ideological angle. Charter schools are promoted by free marketeers, liberal and conservative alike, who claim that the private sector always does a better job than wasteful, corrupt, bloated big government.

Actually, it’s abundantly clear that the private sector is a cesspool of waste, corruption, bloat and worse—which is why the charters need a vigorous, pay-no-attention-to-that-man-behind-the-curtain public relations campaign, with the president of the United States serving as cheerleader-in-chief.

– — – — – — – — – — – — – — – –

REPUBLICANS AND their media mouthpieces like Fox News still like to portray the Democrats as tools of organized labor, but it’s hard to believe anyone buys that any more.

Labor’s political power has been shrinking with its membership numbers for decades, while business’ spending advantage in elections expands with each cycle. But more to the point, the leadership of the Democratic Party has molded itself so completely into the role of servants to Corporate America that it doesn’t even bother with the old symbolic gestures any more.

As historian Van Gosse wrote after last year’s election, “The mass party of the center, birthed 20 years ago by Bill Clinton triangulating his way into a ‘socially liberal’ version of neoliberalism (or what used to be ‘liberal Republicanism’ in the days of Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney), has been brought to fruition by Barack Obama’s savvy Chicago apparatchiks.”

So it shouldn’t be any surprise that the Obama administration’s policies are bent and twisted in whatever ways are necessary to serve the interests of Corporate America, at the expense of the people who make up the main base of support for the Democrats.

But even as Obama and the Democrats thank their most devoted supporters with betrayals and insults, they won’t tolerate the least criticism from their base.

On this score, the Obama White House is every bit as belligerent as Democratic administrations that came before it—maybe more so. Thus, Joe Biden told anyone dissatisfied with the multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street to “stop whining”; Obama himself mocked liberal critics of his health care law for “seeing the glass as half empty”; and White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs sounded off against the “professional left” that would only “be satisfied when we have Canadian health care, and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon.”

In stark contrast to their timid attitude in confrontations with Republicans, the Democrats save their real venom for anyone to their left who dares to hold them accountable for the policies and principles they claim, usually at election time, to stand for.

You don’t have to go far on the Internet to find a liberal commentator who fumes about this two-faced behavior. But all too often, even critical voices accept that the only “realistic” course in a two-party system is to seek to influence their Democratic “allies.”

But is it realistic to expect working people to get a hearing from a party that is so intent on listening only to the demands and dictates of Corporate America?

Or is it more realistic to rely—as the most important struggles for change in history always have—on the power of mass mobilization and action at the grassroots to build a political alternative that breaks out of the confines of the two-party political system?

This article originally appeared on : Global Research

Part of ‘Intellistreets’ rollout?

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
May 15, 2013

Strange new street signs being installed across Las Vegas are prompting suspicions from concerned readers, one of whom sent us the following images. Are these new signs part of the nationwide ‘Intellistreets’ rollout of so-called “smart” hubs that eavesdrop on conversations?

Image: Infowars.com

“My neighbor brought it to my attention that these very suspicious-looking road signs are being installed throughout Las Vegas on the major streets,” David wrote to us. “The enormous amount of road construction they are doing to install these must cost someone (the taxpayers, I’m sure) a fortune. My neighbor was quite alarmed when he saw these. He took photos and has been asking everyone if they know anything about them-no one will say anything; even the construction workers actually installing have no info about them. The signs are obviously electronic with large control boxes and antennae attached.”

Although it was reported last year that 41,000 new LED street lamps were being installed throughout Las Vegas, these devices don’t appear to be for lighting, they appear to be for displaying digital messages.

As we previously reported, the Intellistreets system which is currently being installed in cities across the US relies on “smart” street lamps connected by a ubiquitous wi-fi network that have numerous “homeland security applications,” including the ability to “engage captive audiences” via a loudspeaker system and give audible warnings to individuals.

The system is “also capable of recording conversations,” according to a report by ABC 7.

The lights can also be fitted with a digital display similar to the one seen in the photos below which can be used for both advertising and security announcements.

The company behind the street lights, Illuminating Concepts, responded to the controversy over ‘Intellistreets’ last year by ludicrously claiming the system did not represent a “big brother” intrusion. ABC 7 confirmed that the company was “working with Homeland Security” to implement the high tech network.

If any of our readers are aware of the purpose of these new street signs in Las Vegas, please let us know in the comments below.

Click for enlargements.

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

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

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This article was posted: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 at 10:00 am

Tags: big brother, domestic news

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This article originally appeared on : Infowars

Todd Sperry and James O’Toole
CNN Money
May 15, 2013

Image via Facebook.

The mobile-payment service, run by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, amended its terms of service for retailers last week to ban sales of “firearms, firearm parts or hardware, and ammunition; or… weapons and other devices designed to cause physical injury.”

A Square spokesman declined to comment on this specific change, but said: “From time to time we revisit our policies governing the use of Square to ensure they are consistent with our values and in the best interests of our customers.”

He denied that the move was related to the recent debate over gun control in Washington, calling the timing “completely coincidental.”

Read full article

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This article was posted: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 at 9:58 am

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This article originally appeared on : Infowars

dailymail.co.uk
May 15, 2013

Attorney General Eric Holder went on the defensive on Tuesday explaining why the Justice Department secretly obtained two months worth of reporters’ telephone records in an ‘unprecedented’ search for a confidential source.

‘This was a very serious leak and a very, very serious leak,’ Holder said at a press conference explaining the department’s actions which have been criticized for going against the constitutional right to a free press.

Holder said that he recused himself from the making the controversial decision to subpoena the phone records of Associated Press journalists, saying that it was made by Deputy Attorney General James Cole.

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This article was posted: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 at 9:56 am

Tags: domestic news, government corruption

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This article originally appeared on : Infowars

DANIEL HALPER
weeklystandard.com

“If I could then go back to the IRS issue,” said a reporter from the AP. “The president did use the word ‘if these activities had taken place,’ but there has been an acknowledgement on the part of the IRS leadership that these things did indeed occur. I wondered why the president used that phrasing in claiming that it was outrageous?”

“Those from the IRS that have spoken about this obviously have much greater insight into what took place than we do. We have not seen the report. We have not independently collected information about what transpired. We need the independent inspector general’s report to be released before we can make judgments. One person’s view of what actions were taken or what that individual did is not enough for us to say something concretely happened that was innapropriate,” said Carney.

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This article was posted: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 at 10:03 am

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This article originally appeared on : Infowars

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Police and protesters were injured as Palestinians clashed with the IDF in Jerusalem and across the West Bank during rallies to commemorate the Nakba, or the ‘catastrophe’ of the displacement of Palestinians after the creation of Israel in 1948.

This article originally appeared on : RT

A senior official at International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says the IAEA will work hard to resolves differences with Iran over the Islamic Republicâ„¢s nuclear energy program.

Å“As you know differences remain but we are committed to dialogue and we are determined to solve these issues so we will be working hard today to resolve the differences,” IAEA Deputy Director General Herman Nackaerts was quoted by Reuters as saying upon his arrival for talks at the Iranian diplomatic mission in the Austrian capital, Vienna, on Wednesday.

The Islamic Republic and the IAEA have opened fresh talks in Vienna to negotiate a technical framework for cooperation

Iran’s Ambassador to the IAEA Ali Asghar Soltanieh heads the Iranian delegation to the talks, while the IAEA delegation is led by Nackaerts, who is also the head of the Agencyâ„¢s Safeguards Department.

The ongoing talks are the 10th round of the negotiations between Iran and the IAEA over the Islamic Republicâ„¢s nuclear energy program since early 2012.

The previous round of the negotiations was held in mid-February in Iranâ„¢s capital, Tehran.

Meanwhile, Secretary of Iran Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Saeed Jalili is also in the Turkish city of Istanbul for a meeting with EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, over the Islamic Republicâ„¢s nuclear energy program.

The United States, Israel and some of their allies falsely claim that Iran is pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program, with the US and the European Union using the claim as pretext to impose illegal sanctions against Iran.

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

MKA/SS

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

In an effort to double gold production by 2018, Russia’s largest gold producer, Polyus, has attracted $1bn in investment for the 3rd largest undeveloped gold deposit in the world.

Russian Federation Deputy Minister for the Development of the
Far East Dmitry Shelekhov confirmed the 32 million rouble
investment, but would not disclose the source, ITAR-TASS
reported.

The Natalka mine is the newest development from Polyus, and is
located 400 km from the seaport of Magadan, in the remote and
barren northeast corner of Russia.

The mining of precious metals is a lifeline for the local
economy, Magadan Oblast Governor Vladimir Petcheny told
ITAR-TASS.

Polyus, which accounts for nearly a quarter of Russia’s gold
mining, forecast the mine, which is slated to become Russia’s
largest, will have the capacity of 15 tons (1.3 million ounces) by
next year.

In total, the company has 1,836 tons (40.8 million ounces) in
gold reserves, and is the world’s third largest by this
criterion.

Since 2009 gold production in the Far East and Russia has
increased sharply, aided by a state-sponsored effort to boost gold
production after a steep decline from 2000-2009. Gold production in
the first quarter of 2013 increased 6% year-on-year to 320,000
ounces. Sales were estimated at $524 million, according to a
company trading update from April 2013.

Also according to the report, gold production in 2013 has been
reconfirmed between 1.59 and 1.68 million ounces, excluding assets
in Kazakhstan.

Billionaire oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov is the Chairman of the
Board, and approved the $31.3 million Natalka capital expenditure
in 2008. The company said it would spend $14 million throughout May
to install a ‘pilot plant’ and another $8.7 million to complete a
feasibility study.

Refined Gold Production

Chief Executive Yevgeny Ivanov told Reuters in January he
expected the Natalka plant to be fully operational by 2012-2013, a
launched which has been repeatedly postponed. In the second quarter
of 2013, Polyus will review the option to start production at
Natalka in winter 2013-2014.

Presently the pilot plant is equipped with mining equipment,
drilling rigs, trucks, loaders, and cranes.

Two dormitories that sleep 275 were commissioned last year and
were completed in the first quarter of 2013, and currently 1,400
personnel are employed, according to the company’s website. By
2014, the plant will staff 2,000, and by 2023 upwards to 3,500.

On the New York Mercantile Exchange, June gold futures lost
$13.3, down to $1,412 per troy ounce. Prices fell on the news of
unemployment in Britain.

In April, the price of gold fell by 7.8%.

The company already operates many large-scale gold production
operations near the Natalka mine (see map).

This article originally appeared on : RT

politico.com
May 15, 2013

The Internal Revenue Service asked tea party groups to see donor rolls.

It asked for printouts of Facebook posts.

And it asked what books people were reading.

A POLITICO review of documents from 11 tea party and conservative groups that the IRS scrutinized in 2012 shows the agency wanted to know everything – in some cases, it even seemed curious what members were thinking. The review included interviews with groups or their representatives from Hawaii, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas and elsewhere.

The long-awaited Treasury Department inspector general report released Tuesday says the agency itself decided some of its questions to conservative groups were way over the line – especially the one about donors.

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This article originally appeared on : Infowars

Keeping troops in Mali, the French leadership seeks to ensure its position in the continent it once used to dominate, not merely protect the Mali population from violence, Danyel Dubreuil, an activist against the French actions in Africa, told RT.

Dubreuil is also a spokesperson for Survie, an organization that
battles against colonialism.

RT: Given the security situation in Mali, is this
summit aimed at funding reconstruction good timing?

Danyel Dubreuil: It’s only the next stage in the
operation… At the beginning, the French government said that it was
meant to be only a military operation, and a short military
operation. However, after a few days they said they would have to
stay for a long time to rebuild the country, so now their goal is
to rebuild the country. So they have to find money anyway to do
that. 

RT: Mali is seeking 2 billion euro in compensation. Do
you think that pouring money into Mali help bring stability and
democracy as promised, or will we see another Afghanistan where
lots of money has little result?

DD: I don’t know about the comparison with Afghanistan,
but bringing so much money into a country never led to any results
in terms of development. If you look 50 years back, we did these
kinds of policies in countries like Mali. So it’s all the
conception of development policies that they have to change. And
pouring money into the system that is greatly corrupted [means
that] the money never goes to the people who really need them…You
have to have strong political institutions, strong policies that
aim to improve the conditions, the worst conditions of the
people.

RT: Let’s turn to the French operation in Mali – why
exactly is Paris planning to keep a thousand troops in the country
even after UN peacekeepers take over later this year? Are we
looking at an occupation here?

DD: It depends on the side you’re looking at. If you’re
at the side of the French people, at the traditions we have since
1960, at the colonization time, we kept thousands of soldiers on
the African soil. We still have four permanent bases and 5,000
soldiers there. So now the question is whether they will
permanently stay in Mali. They spoke about 1,000 soldiers for an
indefinite period of time. The French government didn’t say they
would settle a new base in Mali, but they say they will stay there
as long as they need.

RT: What are the true intentions of Paris in this
ongoing conflict? Are we talking about sowing the seeds of
democracy, or are we talking, more simply, about protecting the
natural resources in the best economic interest of France?

DD: It’s to restore the French position in Africa, as
this part of the world has been directly targeted by a lot of
powerful countries who were looking for natural resources. And
France has a traditional strong position in this continent. They
are looking not to lose this position, they are showing [their]
muscles, if you want.

This article originally appeared on : RT

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Kremlin has expressed regret over the Moscow spy scandal, saying signals sent by the US leadership were not heard by the CIA. Russia is to contact the CIA director over the matter.

This article originally appeared on : RT

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Kremlin has been surprised by the “crude and clumsy” US espionage activities in Russia, an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin says.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Criminals who kill police officers in England and Wales will receive whole-life sentences, Britain’s Home Secretary Theresa May has announced.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Human Rights Watch demands Bahrain immediately probe numerous allegations of torture, saying its refusal could signal the country has become a haven for torturers. This comes as six more tweeters get jail terms for ‘abusing freedom of expression.’

This article originally appeared on : RT

Global Research Editorial Note

In the interest of sharing diversity of opinions and promoting an open atmosphere of exchange and critique with our colleagues we bring to the attention of our readers the following text by Jorge Capelán and Toni Solo.

This text is a response to my work. It  should be read after the following texts:

The Pink Tide in Latin America: An Alliance Between Local Capital and Socialism?

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, May 03, 2013

Post-Chavez Latin America Will Continue to Drift Away from the United StatesBy Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, April 01, 2013

Although I think that the text misconstrues some of my points and I have disagreements with it, such as about the orientation of the Brazilian government as a socialist one, the critique provided in Jorge Capelán’s text is important and valuable for a frank discussion about Latin America. Overall, the position below and mine have more in common than differences.

Some very important points are raised by the authors. This includes the critique on the distance from reality that the theories of academia can embody and the importance of context. Their concluding remarks are also a testimony that Latin America is progressing.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, May 15, 2013

Correction and apology: In an earlier version of this article we incorrectly asserted that James Petras co-signed a letter in 2008 with Noam Chomsky and other leading intellectuals which, in the article, we criticize. This is not the case. We apologize to James Petras for this mistake on our part. We request anyone who has re-posted this article to add this text to the top of wherever they posted our article.

For the imperial propaganda machine, leftist Latin American governments and political leaders are either too leftist, not really leftist, or blind fanatics, as well as being shrewdly machiavellian, capitalists in red clothing, enemies of the market and scores of other contradictory pairs of things all at once.

This is so because the purpose of propaganda is to render unusable the intellectual capacity of the target population to understand reality. By promoting mistrust, anxiety and confusion among those sections of the public in the imperialist countries that might oppose the designs of their rulers, the war planners seek to neutralize any effective solidarity efforts.

Sadly, most European and North American progressive and radical movements and intellectuals have problems coming to terms with this, no matter what their experience, reputation or insights into what the Empire routinely does to humanity.

Without direct involvement in them, virtually none of those intellectuals can offer a true and fair view of Latin America’s various revolutionary processes. They may offer plausible theories and schemas, but the nitty gritty of achieving power and effecting radical change will always elude them. Examples of this fact abound.

Depending entirely on academics like Noam Chomsky, or James Petras, for example, for a grasp of events in Latin America is a mistake. Those writers theoretical preconceptions tend to fall apart when applied to specific realities. One need not follow the anti-Stalinism of the historian E.P.Thompson into its ultimate social-democrat cul-de-sac to acknowledge the central argument of “The Poverty of Theory” against idealist theory.

The article “Pink Tide in Latin America: An Alliance Between Local Capital and Socialism” by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya published on May 3 by Global Research is an example of this sad truth. In the final paragraphs of his article, a series of reflections on the future developments in the region after Chavez’ death, the author writes:

“It can be argued that the political current in Latin America is mostly a question of financial and economic independence, rather than a socialist project challenging the capitalist world-system.”

Without developing further this thesis, Nazemroaya’s piece actually is an exercise in inconsequential and superficial dissection of the progressive/radical governments in the region, with the purpose of questioning the anti-capitalist character of the process of integration taking place in Latin America. Since Nazemroaya’s analysis spreads many biases and mistaken views that are functional to the imperial propaganda efforts against those governments, we will deal with it in this article, but first let us address the core thesis the author put forward in his piece without thoroughly grounding it.

Indeed, there is a (conflictive) synergy between (some) Capitalist and anti-capitalist interests behind the movement for Latin American unity and independence. There is a huge amount of money in the hands of the Latin American oligarchies which, under the right circumstances, might be interested in investing in the regional market rather than, say, in the Swiss banking system or in regional tax havens. The emergence of China as a major lender and investor in the region, the stagnation of the US and European economies and the massive development projects carried out thanks to the initiative of governments which Nazemroaya designates under the derogatory term “Pink Tide”, explain some of the central drives behind this process. But does this mean that what is going on in Latin America today is not the emergence of “a socialist project challenging the capitalist world-system”?

Whoever doesn’t see the anti-capitalist value of ending the hegemony of Western imperialism once and for all and of building a multi-polar world order should start writing science-fiction novels instead of feigning engagement in actual anti-capitalist struggle. It’s really puzzling that an editor of Global Research has problems grasping this point. However, there is much more to the anti-capitalist ambitions of the Latin American integrationist efforts than the multi-polar dimension alone.

In Latin America, it is impossible to engage in the construction of socialist and anti-capitalist alternatives without at the same time struggling to integrate the region politically, economically and even culturally. “I desire to see America fashioned into the greatest nation in the world, greatest not so much by virtue of her area and wealth as by her freedom and glory” (1). That is the legacy of Bolivar, as was the legacy of Martí, of Sandino, Mariátegui, Gaitán, Che, Fidel Castro and many other Latin American revolutionaries since Independence. This is so because the colonial and imperial powers needed to split the region up into small countries in order to exploit its resources and labor. This is not something Chavez made up, it is an old insight down here.

At the core of the Latin American process of independent integration is the Bolivarian Alliance, ALBA, which comprises 8 full members with a total population of 70 or 80 million (some 15% of the region’s population) plus an ever-growing list of countries participating as guest members and observers.

ALBA’s economic relationships are not based on profit but on solidarity and complementarity among its members. Nor is it an alliance of convenience, but a project aimed at consolidating a higher political unit beyond Capitalism. It is not based on Venezuelan charity either, but on the use of common resources as a lever enabling its member countries to leave Capitalism behind.

Through ALBA and schemes such as PETROCARIBE (18 member countries), Venezuelan oil imports are re-invested by non oil-producing countries in social and economic programs financed by almost interest-free long-term loans. Thus, agricultural countries such as Nicaragua widen their list of trade partners, but most importantly, they develop and diversify their economies, becoming less dependent on the export of agricultural products.

Exchanges at all levels between Venezuela, Cuba and the rest of the ALBA member countries aim at sharing experiences on all fields. For example, Nicaraguan rural workers travel to Venezuela to share their experiences of cooperative organization in order to help Venezuela increase its food production. Cuban personnel from many different fields, specially health care and education, play a very important role in many social programs, but they also share their experience and know-how while at the same time gathering many experiences from their colleagues in the other member countries. ALBA members have started using their own national currencies instead of the US dollar to trade with each other through a financial arrangement called SUCRE, the Unified System of Regional Compensation. This scheme helps protect the ALBA’s economies from the financial collapse of Capitalism.

From the examples above, it is foolish to deny the anticapitalist dynamics of ALBA. Even more foolish would be to deny ALBA’s influence on the rest of Latin America.

ALBA was founded in 2004 after an agreement between Venezuela and Cuba. The following year, in 2005, the US plan to build a “free trade” zone in the Americas, the FTAA, was buried at the Summit of The Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina, when most Latin American governments refused to hail Bush’s offer of “open up your customs or else…” Without the joint leadership of Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Lula da Silva and late Argentinean president Néstor Kirchner, this strategic defeat of imperialism in Latin America would not have been possible.

With the establishment, on February 23rd, 2010, of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, CELAC, the 33 countries in the region, for the first time in history, created an organization outside the control of the United States and Canada. Without the role played by Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua, CELAC’s profile would not be as integral as it is today. Actually, Venezuela’s contribution was crucial, not only because of the strategic dimension of the Bolivarian revolution, but also because of its intelligent handling of the most reactionary sectors of the Colombian oligarchy represented by Alvaro Uribe.

It is quite clear that some Capitalist interests see important opportunities in all these developments, but they are not politically organized. The Latin American right is dominated by highly aggressive, reactionary pro-imperialist political parties, right-wing networks and corporate media. On a daily bases, these groups conspire and carry out disinformation campaigns against almost all governments in Latin America and the Caribbean, especially those with progressive and radical inclinations.

In his article, Nazemroaya questions these government’s leftist and anti-capitalist credentials. Although he warns against “oversimplification and romanticization”, and although he tries to define what he understands as “left”, Nazemroaya confuses the concepts and decontextualizes the facts, ending up with a list of more or less flattering aspects which he then uses to build up a negative portrait of the developments in Latin America.

Let us start with the concepts. Correctly, Nazemroaya defines “left” and “right” as political positions within a given context, but he then almost immediately abandons all interest in understanding the multiplicity of the contexts that compose the reality of the region to focus on the fact that there is “a Plethora of ‘Lefts’ in Latin America”, an “eclectic bunch” as the author’s derogatory style defines them.

Nazemroaya goes even further and states that “Latin American left-wing governments do not strictly operate to the ‘left’”: So, according to his actual view, there is a “real left” (a context-independent Left he feels he is entitled to define as such) and some kind of “fake left” (another context-independent left he thinks one is entitled to denounce as false). As “proof” of his assertion, the author refers to an alleged “debate over whether the Cuban socialist project is genuinely reforming or if it will eventually follow the paths of capitalist restoration like China and Vietnam”.

A debate where? In some cafe in Toronto? That is not a serious argument, for two reasons. Firstly, the existence of debates about the future course of a revolution are no proof of the actual orientation of that revolution. Secondly, Nazemroaya passes as received truths his opinions on socialism in China and Vietnam without feeling it necessary to go into any further details.

Actually, as true as the fact that there are many “lefts” in Latin America, is the fact that there is a vast experience of collective discussions among those “lefts”. An example of this is the Forum of Sao Paulo, which since 1990 has gathered more than 90 political organizations from almost all countries, including Puerto Rico. Most countries are represented by several political parties, and in cases such as Argentina and Uruguay, by 12 or 13 organizations.

For over 20 years, those organizations, ranging from the Chilean Socialist Party to the Cuban Communist Party, from various Peronist parties in Argentina to Peruvian nationalists, just to mention a few examples, have been able to carry out many debates and achieve consensus around key issues such as the struggle to end the US genocidal blockade of Cuba, the support to the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela and ALBA as well as the project of continental integration.

The huge continental wave of solidarity with the Bolivarian revolution after Hugo Chavez’ death, especially in face of the fascist violence unleashed by Capriles Radonski’s thugs, is another case in point in relation to the capacity of this variegated array of “leftist” movements to very quickly set aside their differences for a common cause. Without the existence of similar mechanisms and processes, it would have been impossible, in recent months, to mobilize a movement capable of denouncing the Cuban CIA agent Yoani Sanches World Tour. In capital after capital where the CIA blogger attempted to smear Cuba, she was received by large groups of activists that on several occasions managed to force her to desist from her activities.

Another case in point, The existence of the Network of Intellectuals in Defence of Humanity, composed of hundreds, if not thousands, of intellectuals from all over the world and from a broad ideological spectrum, routinely organizing campaigns in defence of Cuba, Venezuela and ALBA, as well as against imperialist putschist moves in countries such as Honduras, Ecuador or Paraguay. Without denying the differences between various political movements, it is necessary to stress that there exists an ever-growing common understanding of the problems and challenges ahead.

Nazemroaya warns against easy generalizations but goes on to make sweeping generalizations such as the following:

“Latin America’s comprador elites are the local representatives of the foreign corporations, governments, and interests that have exploited Latin America for centuries. These comprador elites can frankly be described as either the ‘House Negros’ or racist upper class that have historically ruled Latin America and managed its wealth and resources for the changing centres of power in other parts of the world that have controlled the area. Today, the regional comprador elites are mostly aligned with the United States and prefer Miami or New York City to Caracas or Quito”.

One first commentary about this description is obvious: If the Latin American “comprador elites are mostly aligned with the US and prefer Miami or New York to Caracas or Quito”, how can they actually be a driving force behind a process of regional integration that is not to the liking of the US, NATO and Europe? Are they really a driving force behind this process as Nazemroaya implies?

This is the kind of sweeping, oversimplifying generalization that makes it impossible to understand the contexts and the particular traits of the various countries in the region. This in turn explains why there are so many “lefts” which, incidentally, show a startling capacity to cooperate with each other and to reach a common consensus around key issues. Also, such oversimplifying generalizations make it impossible to understand the complexities of the international relations among the region’s countries, for example, in the case of the relations between Colombia and Venezuela and the Peace Process taking place between FARC-EP and Santos.

The 33 nations that compose Latin America and the Caribbean show a common situation of dependence on imperialism, but they also show startling differences. Countries like Chile, Argentina or Uruguay have very strong European cultural influence, while other countries, such as Bolivia or Guatemala have big indigenous majorities. Some oligarchies are richer than others, some of them have had more freedom than others to carry out policies of import substitution.

Some countries, such as Honduras and Paraguay, have been ruthlessly subjected to a state of utmost political underdevelopment for decades by repressive dictatorships, while others, such as Ecuador or Uruguay, have enjoyed relatively long periods of successful reformism. Although Latin America is the world’s most unequal region, not all countries and societies are equally poor and not all of them are equally underdeveloped. Different forms of dependent economic insertion in the World Market, different political cultures, different social realities explain the differences among the political subjects.

Are “Latin America’s comprador elites … the local representatives of the foreign corporations, governments, and interests that have exploited Latin America for centuries” as Nazemroaya puts it? They are many other things besides that. They are mediators between the Western multinational interests and the local markets, but in many cases, they are players on their own right as well. Think about the example of Mexican Carlos Slim, the world’s richest man. Think about the financial Colombian capitalists represented by Santos or even sectors of the Brazilian oligarchy. They fear Socialism and most progressive politics, but they also fear the prospects of a sociopolitical meltdown that would make their profits vanish into thin air. In many cases, they have to reluctantly accept many of the progressives’ and radicals’ policies, even if their newspapers routinely pour bile on those governments.

Lacking a better political reference frame, Nazemroaya lays hand on James Petras’ typology on the Latin American left — one the weakest intellectual products of the US-American sociologist. With this typology, an otherwise sharp analyst such as Petras cannot resist the Western temptation of handing out small stars of revolutionary approval to movements he fancies more than others, irrespective of the concrete circumstances of their struggles. Incapable of understanding many of the true challenges of social transformation in the real world and the actual limits of political power, Petras projects his romanticized revolutionary ideals on various movements and subjects. When those movements in real life do not behave according to Petras’ wishes, they are either ditched or condescendingly tapped on the back with some scornful comment on having “sold out”. Apparently unable to understand the value of nation-building for the materialization of any sort of socialist project, he rejects movements such as Peronismo, irrespective of how stubbornly the working-class masses support them.

Petras’ schematic division between “radical left”, “pragmatic left”, “pragmatic neo-liberals” and “doctrinaire neo-liberal regimes” is seriously flawed when confronted with reality. If FARC were in the same situation as PSUV in Venezuela, it would certainly act along much the same lines. In fact, it supports the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela and shares its inspirational force, namely, the heritage of Simon Bolivar.

In Brazil, the Landless Workers’ Movement gives critical support to the Worker’s Party (PT). While it rightly criticizes the agribusiness-oriented development strategy of Lula’s and Dilma Roussef’s party, the Landless Workers’ Movement also understands the various constraints the PT government faces being dependent on alliances with other political forces, in an inmense country where the oligarchy retains considerable power at all levels. They are also well aware of what it would mean were the neo-liberal right to return to political power in Brazil.

In Argentina, to call Cristina Fernández a “pragmatic neo-liberal” is an outright insult, not to mention an irresponsible lack of solidarity with a progressive government subject every day to the most vicious destabilizing campaigns from the oligarchy. No neo-liberal regime increases minimum wages, raises pensions, improves education or fights poverty. Nor does any neo-liberal regime say “Good-bye” to IMF the way Argentina has done.

The same goes for Mauricio Funes’ government in El Salvador, where the FMLN is on its way to win the coming elections with a candidate of its own. Incapable of identifying processes and accumulation of forces, dogmatic analysts such as Petras/Nazemroaya see only traitors, sell-outs and capitalists everywhere. The superficiality of Petras’ analysis becomes sheer bad faith when it comes to certain countries he simply doesn’t mention such as Nicaragua, where cooperatives account for about 40% of the country’s GDP and about 70% of the work force.

Back in mid-2008, a group of leading left-wing Western intellectuals, most prominently Noam Chomsky, wrote a letter supporting a hunger strike held by ex-FSLN leader Dora Maria Tellez in Nicaragua. Tellez was protesting the elimination of her MRS political alliance from the municipal elections in November of that year for having failed to comply with the electoral law. So Noam Chomsky and the other well-respected intellectuals concerned demonstrated the loyalty and solidarity of their intellectual-managerial class and spoke out on her behalf.

In fact, as it transpired, the MRS immediately entered into an electoral alliance with the Nicaragua’s corrupt extreme right-wing PLC party. They campaigned in particular in support of reactionary banker, Eduardo Montealegre who to this day uses his parliamentary immunity to avoid indictment for multi-million dollar banking fraud. Clearly, the MRS suckered Noam Chomsky and his fellow intellectuals into misguidedly supporting her 2008 charade, because those intellectuals had no idea of the political realities in Nicaragua. Anyone who doubts MRS’ allegiance to the US Embassy in Managua, should read some of the diplomatic cables recently released by WikiLeaks on the subject.

That particular case only highlights the pitfalls of depending on the neat schemas of the managerial class who dominate intellectual production in North America and Europe. So when Nazemroaya cites James Petras as his theoretical reference point in his recent article on Latin America, one needs to apply extreme scepticism to his arguments so as to try and discern the reality. Among the typical omissions of James Petras and his colleagues, Nicaragua understandably looms large by its absence.

They see that a given country still is in the grip of IMF loans, but they are incapable of seeing that the country is becoming less dependent on such loans. They see that a given country is depending on agro-exports, but they don’t see how that country is diversifying its economy and becoming less dependent on those exports. They see capitalists and State-Capitalism and cry “Neoliberalism! Extractivism!” without even proposing a workable alternative that might to develop a country’s productive forces. Or else when they actually see those alternatives being implemented by those governments, they shout “It is not enough!”.

To revolutions applies an old Latin American saying: “It is easy to look at the lady from afar, but quite a different story to go ahead and talk to her”.

A superficial and disrespectful treatment of developments in Latin America poses two sets of problems. The first one is that it makes practical solidarity more difficult, especially now, when Washington is engaging in a fascist continental crusade against Latin America. The second set of problems has to do with the crucial importance of the Latin American experience for any new projects beyond Capitalism anywhere else in the world.

This article originally appeared on : Global Research

[unable to retrieve full-text content]At least 10 people have been killed and 14 others injured in several bomb blasts across Iraq, security and medical officials say.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Russian academics say the country has entered a technical recession, as its basic industries contracted for 6 months in a row. The same dynamic was seen in 2008, when everybody denied the lurking crisis.

The key Russian industries that comprise about two thirds of the
country’s GDP contracted for the first two quarters of 2013. This
serves as a formal indication of a technical recession say
professors from Russia’s High School of Economics (HSE).

The integral index tailored by HSE to track the dynamics in
Russia’s key areas including agriculture, extraction of mineral
resources and manufacturing has remained in the red
since October. Since then the indicator has lost 4.5%. The last
time total production started to slide the same way was in August
2008, when everybody was trumpeting the economy as sound and
safe.

This time around officials are not too optimistic, with Russia’s
Minister for Economic Development Andrey Belousov warning that a
recession could hit the country in autumn. But at the same time
Belousov is questioning whether the HSE index is indicative and
reliable. Talking to Vedomosti daily the minister said it was too
early to talk about a formal recession in Russia.

“The situation is obviously on the brink of a recession, but
the data accuracy doesn’t let us tell about this confidently,”
agreed Vladimir Salnikov, an expert from the Center for
Macroeconomic Analysis and Short – Term Forecasting (CMSTF). The
more relevant indicator would be industrial output, that’s
balancing on the verge of recession, the expert added.

At the moment Russia’s economy resembles a bogged down
off-roader — it’s neither sinking nor moving, as Dmitry Belousov
from CMSTF put it. Recession isn’t likely to come to Russia as
early as this year, with the worst case scenario implying a 1 —
1.4% GDP growth in 2013, Dmitry Belousov said. Either a rebound of
the world economy or “very large scale” governmental action
could add speed to that off-roader, he added. The latter could
include a cut of credit rates or tax incentives, which should be
done urgently.

On Thursday, May 15, Russia’s President is due to get a plan to
stimulate the country’s economy ready. The government has so far
discussed the scope for cutting the tariffs of monopolies, as well
using money from sovereign funds to fill the investment gap.

The best case scenario sees the maximum economic growth of 3%
this year, Dmitry Belousov said. “The current economic
construction has a very small margin of safety — not even in terms
of a crash but in terms of readiness for growth,” the expert
concluded.

This article originally appeared on : RT

British oil companies are accused of a price-fixing, which led to millions of drivers having paid too much for their petrol, something that has been described by the UK government as Å“deeply worrying”.

Energy Secretary Ed Davey pledged to punish with “the full force of the law” any company that has imposed more costs on drivers by rigging the price.

Meanwhile, parliamentarians demanded a full probe by the UK authorities after officials from the European Commission raided companies like BP, Shell, a price-reporting agency, and Statoil, a Norwegian oil company.

The Office of Fair Trading was also blamed by politicians and experts for reporting that the petrol market was “working well” in January.

Robert Halfon, MP for Harlow, has accused the market regulator of a “limp-wristed, lettuce-leaf” inquiry that failed to get to the bottom of inexplicable price rises over the last few years.

Halfon said that the companies have been distorting the oil price since 2002, which means drivers have potentially been ripped off for more than 10 years.

Over that time, petrol prices have risen dramatically by more than 80 per cent to around 135p per litre.

The allegations were described as “extremely concerning” by the Prime Minister’s spokesman.

“The European Commission is investigating, we could expect any companies which it wants to talk to fully comply with the investigations,” he said. “It would be deeply worrying if prices have been driven up for consumers.”

European investigators, who raided the London offices of BP and Shell, said the alleged price-rigging could have had a Å“huge impact” on the cost of oil, including the price of fuel for consumers.

MOL/HE

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

A man looks for job opportunities in newspapers in a downtown Naples shop. (file photo)

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Palestinian women hold symbolic keys and chant “the right of return will not die,” during a rally to mark the Nakba Day in the West Bank city of Ramallah, May 15, 2013.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

A session of the UN Conference on Disarmament held in Geneva, Switzerland (file photo)

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Police attend to a bomb call at the Centaurus high school in Lafayette, Colorado on May 13, 2013.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Iran Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi says the meeting of the Friends of Syria will be held in Iranian capital, Tehran, in the near future.

Salehi said on Wednesday that the meeting will be held in Tehran on May 29 and a number of countries have been invited to attend.

Å“With agree with the outlines of Egyptâ„¢s proposal on Syria,” Salehi added.

During a summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Mecca in August 2012, Egypt President Mohamed Morsi presented an initiative to establish a contact group on Syria comprising Iran, Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.

A high-level meeting of the group was held on September 17, 2012, about a week after preparatory talks in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, by lower-ranking officials from the four countries.

Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of Syrian troops and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.

Commenting on his trip to Saudi Arabia, Salehi said, Å“We had clear and transparent talks with [Saudi Foreign Minister] Saud al-Faisal on bilateral, regional and international issues.”

Å“God willing, a new chapter will soon open in bilateral relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia,” the Iranian foreign minister said, adding that certain disagreements would be resolved through continuous talks.

Salehi visited Saudi Arabia earlier this week to attend ministerial meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Contact Group on the crisis in Mali.

MYA/SS

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

British PM urges oil giants to Å“fully comply” with a probe into oil price rigging allegations.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

At least one person has been killed and several others injured in an attack on a police station in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.

Police sources said on Wednesday that the attack took place in an area of Benghazi on Tuesday night, resulting only in the attackerâ„¢s death.

The police station was subsequently set on fire, most probably in retaliation for the attacker’s death by his relatives.

The perpetrators of the raid are still unknown, but are likely to be militants or affiliated with armed groups.

The incident happened after a Tuesday blast outside a hospital in the city killed three people and injured 14 others.

Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city, has seen a wave of violence in recent weeks. At least four police stations have been bombed in the eastern city since last Friday, causing damage but no casualties until Wednesday.

Benghazi is the cradle of the 2011 uprising which toppled the long-time ruler Muammar Gaddafi. The city has been the scene of numerous attacks and assassinations since then.

JR/KA

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/where_has_all_the_money_gone_20130515/

Posted on May 15, 2013

This article originally appeared on : TruthDig

British bank HSBC says it could slash another 14,000 jobs.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

President Putin’s office is composing an answer to US President Obama’s letter on missile defense, nuclear disarmament and transparent interaction. The Kremlin promises to have the answer ready no later than May 20.

The exact content of the personal message from Obama to Putin
remains secret, but Russia’s Kommersant daily has learnt the main
topics of the letter.

The central idea of the letter delivered to Moscow by the
National Security Advisor in the Obama Administration, Thomas
Donilon, on April 15 is that the two great states should not waste
time on insignificant quarrels and concentrate on global issues.
That is why the letter does not even mention such troubling matters
as the Magnitsky List, Russia’s so-called Foreign Agents law and
the matters of Russian citizens jailed in the US on controversial
accusations.

Instead, Washington proposes that Moscow focuses on managing
strategic issues and the Obama administration is full of
determination to reach a number of breakthrough agreements this
year.

Reportedly, Obama proposes to sign a mutual legally binding
agreement that would make American and Russian missile defenses
transparent to each other to ensure that the countries are not
planning aggressive moves against each other.

According to Interfax, Obama can sign such agreement without
approval from Congress, but that would make the document highly
time-sensitive: it would be valid as long as Barack Obama remains
in office — and not a minute longer.
The American president also proposed further denuclearization of
the US and Russia, following the Measures to Further Reduction and
Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms treaty signed on 8 April,
2010, by Obama and then-President Dmitry Medvedev.

Obama’s letter also contains some sort of proposals aimed at
strengthening economic ties between Washington and Moscow. The
Obama administration proposed to establish a new consultation body
on a ‘US vice-president — Russian PM’ level to achieve this
economic objective, Kommersant reported.

The daily’s sources in the Kremlin shared that the answer is
halfway through and there are no obstacles that might interfere
with completing the reply by May 20, when Russian Security Council
Secretary Nikolay Patrushev is expected to hand over Putin’s answer
to the US president.

Whether or not the exchange of personal letters between the two
presidents becomes lost in the labyrinth of mutual distrust between
the two countries remains to be seen.

The first round of negotiations is set to take place in June at
the G8 summit in Northern Ireland.

Moscow suggested that President Obama might visit Russia on a
special visit, but Washington initially turned the proposal down,
scheduling another round to take place on the sidelines of the G20
summit in St. Petersburg in September.

Still, there is a possibility that the most principal issues
will be finalized at the bilateral meeting of two presidents in
Moscow — if President Obama agrees to come to the Russian capital
two days ahead of the G20 summit.

In the meantime, on May 15, President Vladimir Putin chaired a
council of country’s military top brass. The meeting has been
specifically dedicated to development of home-grown missile defense
systems and penetration of missile defenses of potential
adversaries.

This article originally appeared on : RT

Iran presidential hopeful Ali Akbar Velayati addresses people in Ershad Mosque, Ahvaz, on May 14, 2013.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Clashes have erupted outside the Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank on the 65th anniversary of the Nakba Day.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

The weekly news is like a recurring bad dream that is becoming an even worse nightmare. While the investor class cheers a rising stock market, the rest of us sink.

The headline that jumped out at us this week came from Bloomberg News, CEO Pay 1,795-to-1 Multiple of Wages Skirts U.S. Law. Is that possible? Can they have gotten that outrageous? Bloomberg reports that it’s true.

One example of where that big income is coming from is the health care profiteers, those that treat our health like it is a commodity from which they can profit rather than a human right. This week, Big Pharma executives get the headline, Big Pharma CEOs Rake in $1.57 Billion in Pay. Since the passage of Medicare Part D, with the provision forbidding Medicare administrators from negotiating bulk prices, Pharma has ripped off the elderly and the government producing $711 billion in profits over the last decade.

Another rip-off of Medicare is the private insurance portion known as Medicare Advantage. It added an excess $34.1 Billion to the cost of Medicare in 2012 alone. Between insurance companies and pharmaceuticals, it is no wonder Medicare is struggling in this system. Medicare keeps its overhead at a low 2% to 3%, but the profiteers rip the system off.

It is not only Medicare patients that are in trouble, more and more Americans are not getting needed healthcare because the out-of-pocket costs are too high, as insurance covers less and charges us more. Supporters of Obamacare applaud the lower health costs, but in reality it is coming at the cost of the health of Americans. It is no victory in health policy for Americans not to get the healthcare they need because it is too expensive.

One reason for the increased costs, for-profit hospitals charge as much as they can get away with creating runaway costs and vast discrepancies. As a result, more Americans are going abroad to get healthcare, often to developing countries where the cost of health services is much lower.

They say that a fish rots from the head. When it comes to low-wage workers, while President Obama is saying people should have a living wage, it turns out the federal government employs more poverty-level workers than McDonald’s and WalMart combined. Obama could end it with a stroke of a pen, but will he?

As has been true for a long time, women workers make up half of the minimum wage earners in the United States, meaning single parent mothers, really struggle — as do their children. All of the challenges of unemployment, underemployment and stagnant wages are leading to a big increase in suicides, now more death from suicides than auto accidents.

Government policies are making the employment situation and race to the bottom for wages worse. Mistaken austerity programs have cost the U.S. economy 2.2 million jobs according to the Brookings Institution. This loss of jobs due to austerity is occurring despite rapidly falling deficits in the federal budget. In other words, Congress and the administration could be investing in the economy, rather than shrinking it. And, the courts are siding with employers, overruling the NLRB and saying the bosses don’t have to notify workers of their rights.

While workers struggle, the big banks keep racking in government subsidies, $102 billion in subsidies since 2009, but that’s not enough. In addition to shaking down taxpayers, they are also shaking down customers. Banks are using robo-signing to create false credit card debt, suing customers — without giving them notice — and then getting judgments against customers for debts they really don’t owe. California is suing JPMorgan Chase over this practice, but the other big banks do it too. And, as the investor class watches cities fail, they look for opportunities to profit, like vultures circling cities for meat to pick off the bones of urban decay.

Some good news: there is some pressure on JP Morgan CEO and Chairman, Jamie Dimon. The combination of reckless training, lawsuits and lots of bad PR is leading some to say he should not keep both jobs, maybe even lose both. Dimon is threatening to quit if he loses one of his jobs at the shareholders meeting on May 21^st. Institutional Shareholder Services recommends rejection of three of management’s proposed board members, a majority, and big investors in JP Morgan are undecided about Dimon, although they supported him a year ago.

All of these problems point to the reality that the too-big-to-fail banks are on shaky ground and pose a danger to the economy. Is Washington doing anything about it? Well, it doesn’t look good. We’ll see how far it goes, but the House Financial Services Committee voted for three bills that would gut the already weak Dodd-Frank bill with just six members of the 61-member committee voting against all of them. Just in the last election cycle, members of this committee received $14.8 million in donations from the financial services industry.

And, the Obama administration is working to build the power of transnational corporations. This week he met with UK Prime Minister David Cameron. The two were talking about beginning negotiations on the corporate trade agreement between the European Union and the US. Like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) we have been warning you about, this trade deal will also give corporations the power to challenge government policy in rigged trade tribunals.

More people are waking up and taking action. Register to participate in the Trade Justice Training Camp and protest the TransPacific Partnership this summer. If you think corporate personhood is bad, wait till you see the impact of corporate nationhood. These Obama trade agreements are global corporate coups that need to be stopped and can be stopped.

And Food Justice advocates recently joined the growing opposition to the TPP, pointing out ten reasons why food eaters and food justice activists should oppose the TPP.  In short, corporate trade agreements give big agribusiness control over food supplies, drive famers off their land, collapse domestic production around the world and drive up food prices. Profit before people when it comes to food means more hunger and food scarcity.

Food giant, Monsanto, won a Supreme Court victory protecting its genetically modified seeds. Monsanto dominates the commercial seed market and is pushing genetically modified food into the market aggressively. Indeed, the U.S. Department of State virtually markets seed giant’s products throughout the world. Worldwide protests against Monsanto are scheduled for May25^th. We discussed the reasons to protest Monsanto on Clearing the FOG this week.

All of this shows that in order to create an economy that works for us, people must work together. In the battle against austerity, we are seeing too much division, people fighting for their own project to be funded. We can’t let the actions of the government divide us. We must hang together or we will surely hang separately. The root causes of the problems we face are all shared — the power of concentrated wealth exercised through corporate interests. That is our political enemy. We must stand in solidarity against it.

Look for our new project this June, Popular Resistance; a news, information and resource clearinghouse for the growing culture of resistance. People are fighting back and there are ways for everyone to become informed, get involved and work together in solidarity. Sign up here to be notified about Popular Resistance.

We hope to see you at the Public Banking Conference in June. And we are organizing the Economic Democracy track for the Democracy Convention in August.

This article is based on a weekly newsletter for ItsOurEconomy.us. To sign up for the free newsletter, click here.

Kevin Zeese JD and Margaret Flowers MD co-direct It’s Our Economy and are organizers of the Occupation of Washington, DC. They co-host Clearing the FOG on We Act Radio 1480 AM Washington, DC and on Economic Democracy Media. Their twitters are @KBZeese and @MFlowers8.

This article originally appeared on : Global Research

A chilling tape of a Syrian rebel apparently eating the lung of a slain government soldier has prompted calls on the opposition to prevent such abuses. However the fighter has also reportedly had support from within his ranks for his “act of revenge.”

The video, 27 seconds of footage, was first spotted in April,
with the TIME magazine conducting a probe into whether it had been
faked for propaganda purposes. On Sunday, the clip emerged on a
pro-regime website, triggering a wave of rage online.

Human rights organizations, as well as his fellow rebels, have
condemned the rebel.

However, Khalid Hamad, known by his war nickname Abu Sakkar, didn’t
seem to regret his behavior much, labeling it as revenge: “an
eye for eye, a tooth for tooth.”

In an interview with TIME magazine, he commented on his actions:
“We opened his cell phone, and I found a clip of a woman and her
two daughters fully naked and he was humiliating them, and poking a
stick here and there.”

Hamad says as a Sunni he hates Alawite Muslims, which once again
signals of the increasingly sectarian side of the Syrian conflict.
UN warned of it as early as in December last year.

“Hopefully we will slaughter all of [the Alawites]. I have
another video clip that I will send to them. In the clip, I am
sawing another shabiha [pro-government militiaman] with a saw. The
saw we use to cut trees. I sawed him into small pieces and large
ones,” Hamad said in the interview.

The Supreme Military Council has already compiled a poster
calling for Hamad’s arrest, saying it wants him “dead or
alive” on official Damascus’s behalf.

On Monday, Human Rights Watch issued a report on the matter,
saying the rebel was also to blame for the cross-border bombing of
a Lebanese village that left two killed not long ago.

“It is not enough for Syria’s opposition to condemn such
behavior or blame it on violence by the government,” Nadim
Houry, the watchdog’s deputy director for the Middle East, told
TIME magazine.

“The opposition forces need to act firmly to stop such
abuses.” However with recent reports showcasing lack of unity
in the opposition ranks, a unified response to such acts may stay
only in the form of calls. The Red Cross for instance brings the
following report from within Syria.

“Sometimes it can take more than two weeks of negotiations
with both sides. With armed groups, maybe half of them will accept
and with half we still have to negotiate. Even if you get the green
light from both sides, you would have some groups or snipers who
would not really follow instructions and would shoot at anyone who
is trying to cross,” head of the International Committee of the
Red Cross (ICRC) team Marianne Gasser told Reuters.

But while some of the opposition factions denounce Hamad’s
actions, there are supporters who make portraits of him with the
inscription “We Love You.”

“These types of atrocities have been happening in Syria since
the beginning of the crisis. The international community just
didn’t want to admit it,” Ali Haider, Syria’s minister for
reconciliation, told the Telegraph.  

The minister also pointed out that they had documents that were
as “horrific” as the video featuring Hamad.

“We have seen one of our pilot’s heads cut off and cooked on
a grill. We have seen rebels toasting their success by drinking the
blood of their victims,” he claimed.

All this comes as the UK and France urge for the arms embargo on
Syria to be lifted in order to supply the opposition with weapons.
This has already drawn criticism from allies, with Austria
reportedly circulating a discussion paper among the EU member
states on Tuesday pressing that such a move would violate the
international law.

Lifting the embargo would “constitute a breach of
international and EU law” and be contrary to the “principle
of non-intervention and non-use of force” laid down in the UN
Charter, Austrian press quoted the document. If the weapons fall
with al-Nusra Front opposition group, it would also violate UN
Security Council resolutions on Al-Qaeda, given al-Nusra’s recent
affiliation claims.

At least 70,000 people have been killed since the uprising
against President Bashar Assad began just over two years ago,
according to the UN, putting the number of displaced Syrians at
more than 850,000.

This article originally appeared on : RT

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Palestinians have held a rally in al-Quds (Jerusalem) to mark the 65th anniversary of the Nakba Day, also known as the Day of Catastrophe.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

US$ dollars have been flooding the financial markets ever since Bernanke launched quantitative easing allegedly to turnaround the US economy. These huge amounts of US$ toilet papers are mainly in financial markets (and in central banks) outside of the United States. A huge chunk is represented as reserves in central banks led by China and Japan.

If truth be told, the real value of the US$ would not be more than a dime and I am being really generous here, as even toilet papers have a value.

That the US dollar is still accepted in the financial markets (specifically by central banks) have nothing to do with it being a reserve currency, but rather that the US$ is backed/supported by the armed might and nuclear blackmail of the US Military-Industrial Complex. The nuclear blackmail of Iran is the best example following Iran’s decision to trade her crude in other currencies and gold instead of the US$ toilet paper.

If today, the United States is no longer a military threat and the global bully that can blackmail with impunity the oil exporting countries in the Middle East, the global financial system which hinges on the US$ toilet paper would have collapsed a long time ago.

The issue is why has the US$ not collapsed as it should have by now?

When we apply common sense and logic to the state of affairs, the answer is so simple and it is staring at you.

But, you have not been able to see the obvious because the global mass media, specifically the global financial mass media controlled mainly from London and New York, has created a smokescreen to hide the truth from you.

Let’s analyse the situation in a step by step manner, and apply common sense.

1. The US is the world’s biggest debtor. The biggest creditors are China and Japan, followed by the oil exporting countries in the Middle East. With each passing day, the value of the US$ toilet paper is worth less and less. Like I said earlier, even toilet paper has some intrinsic value. It reaches zero value when everyone has to carry a wheelbarrow of US$ to purchase anything.

2. For the US$ toilet paper creditors, they cannot admit the fact that they have been conned by the global Too Big To Fail Banks (TBTFs) acting in concert with the FED and the Bank of England to accept US$ toilet papers. The central bankers of these countries have a reputation to preserve (not that there is in fact any reputation, for their so-called financial credibility is also part of the scam) and the political leaders that relied on them is in a bigger bind. How can the political leaders be so very stupid to trust these central bankers (who have stashed away in foreign tax havens huge US$ toilet papers as a reward for their complicity). This is the current state of affairs in plain English. They are having sleepless nights worrying if and when the citizens would wise up to this biggest con in history i.e. the promotion and acceptance of fiat currencies, the US$ being the ultimate fiat currency.

3. The global financial elites led by the FED know that this state of affairs is to their advantage and they are exploiting it to the hilt! They also know that no country or organisation has the military resources to threaten the US to stop this global ponzi scheme which has been going on since 1945 and intensified since 1971 when President Nixon de-coupled the US$ from gold. The pound sterling is another story but, it is not relevant for the purposes of this analysis.

4. Additionally, and as a result of the above-stated scam, countries were led to believe and to accept the false economic theory that export generated growth (GDP) should be the foundation of economic development, as the United States having limitless US$ toilet paper has the ability and the means to purchase the global exports, it being the largest consumer market in the world. In the result, the world’s factories and their workers, including those in the developed world such as France and Germany worked their butts off to be rewarded with US$ toilet paper whose value is less than the paper and ink that produce it! The financial frolic went on for more than forty years and came to an abrupt and foreseeable end in the 2008 global financial tsunami.

5. When the party ended, the United States was up to her eyeballs in debts as a result of reckless financial speculation in the global derivatives casino and the consumption binge financed by housing mortgages. Debts must be repaid. But, the US has no means to do so. They cannot produce enough goods to earn the revenue to pay the debts because US manufacturing has been outsourced to the developing world — China became the world’s number 1 factory. So, the financial elite appointed helicopter Bernanke to lead the charge for the US and the UK to use the printing press (digital or otherwise) to print more US$ toilet papers to pay off the debt. In economic jargon, this is “monetising the debt”. It is outright fraud, but no one (i.e. central bankers) in his right mind would admit to this fraud as they would be hung from the lamp-posts if the truth is discovered as was the case when the Italian fascist leader Mussolini was hung by the Italian partisans.

6. Initially, central bankers confronted with this situation and having to face a restless populace embarked on a regime of competitive easing/ devaluation of their currencies. But, the price was horrendous. Inflation spiked in all these countries. But, this scheme of things did not work out as planned for the simple reason, the US$ toilet paper continued to be lower as a result of more QE by Bernanke. China realised the danger and adopted other means to overcome this situation, one of which was to enter into bilateral arrangements with her trading partners to finance trade in their respective currencies. Such agreements were entered between China and Japan, members of BRIC, Malaysia etc. This counter-measure was perceived as a threat to the continued dominance of the US$ toilet paper regime. In the result, Obama declared at the urging of the financial elites (he does not have the grey cells to think) a foreign policy shift — the Asia Pivot to prevent a further deterioration of US$ dominance.

7. When Japan entered the agreement with China, her behaviour was deemed unacceptable since Japan was under the nuclear protection of the US. Japan was caught between a rock and a hard place. It was expected that sooner or later the US would apply the squeeze on Japan to behave in a proper manner. Applying geopolitical strategies, the US towing South Korea along provoked North Korea by launching a military exercise which included flying B-2 bombers which are capable of carrying nuclear weapons. North Korea responded in the manner that was expected. Japan was exposed and in like manner reacted by seeking US protection. To muddy the waters and complicate the situation, the US engineered a Idispute between China and Japan over the sovereignty of the Diaoyu Islands. This was followed by the installation of a new regime in Japan by the election of the Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the appointment of Haruhiko Kuroda as the Governor of the Bank of Japan (BOJ).

8. Now comes the mechanics of US counter-measures in shoring up the artificial dominance/value of the US$ toilet paper. Japan was ordered to do its part as a quid pro quo for being protected by the US’s nuclear umbrella. A new version of the Plaza Accord must be put in place — a “reverse Plaza Accord”.

9. Let me explain. In the 1985 Plaza Accord, the dollar was devalued to reduce the current account deficit and to help the US recover from the recession of the early 1980s. It was a managed devaluation and the exchange value of the Dollar versus the Yen declined by 51 per cent from 1985 to 1987 — reaching ¥151 per US$1 in March 1987. The dollar continued to slide till 1988. The effect of the strengthened Yen depressed Japan’s exports and brought about the expansionary monetary policies that resulted in the infamous asset bubbles of the late 1980s. The G-6 countries then gathered in 1987 in Paris to arrest the slide of the dollar and to manage and stabilise the international currency markets. The end result was the Louvre Accord. In the next 18 months the dollar strengthened to ¥160 per US$1.

10. However, in the current situation, the devaluation of the US$ toilet paper was the result of massive QEs so as to enable US to monetise her debts. However, for US to continue to monetise her debts and have the world’s central banks agreement to continue to hold dollar reserves, the value of the dollar must appreciate, failing which the dollar would collapse, the US
defaulting on her debts, as creditors would no longer accept US$ as payment. The trick was to artificially inflate the value of the dollar without arousing any suspicions.

11. In the 1970s, following the de-coupling of the dollar from gold by President Nixon, the dollar would have collapsed in like manner as it was not backed by gold. It became pure fiat money! The trick then was to create an artificial demand for dollar which would in turn raise the value of the currency. This was effected by the proposal of Kissinger to the Arabs that if they would dollarize their oil exports, the US would guarantee their safety and survival even from the threats of Israel. When the Arabs agreed to this arrangement, every country in the world had to buy oil in US$. Countries have to exchange their currencies into US$ to buy oil. This demand for US$ strengthened the currency and prolonged the US fiat money monopoly.

12. However, this option is no longer available presently as oil is now being sold in other currencies besides the US$. The petro-dollar is no longer in dominance. In any event, the continued use of petro-dollars would spike the oil price and this would be inflationary and detrimental to the US economy as well as the world’s economy in the present economic climate — i.e. deep recession. Another means must be used.

13. This is the reason for the sudden “shock and awe” monetary policy of the new Japanese regime of Shinzo Abe and Haruhiko Kuroda. My detractors will accuse me of indulging in conspiracy theories. But, the facts speak for themselves. I had said earlier, that the G-7 countries have collectively attempted to devalue their currencies but, it did not stem the slide of the US$ because Bernanke was increasing the intensity of QE since 2008. And the EU was not willing and or able to adopt a suicide policy of massive QE as Germany was well aware of such a risk having suffered the negative effects of hyperinflation. China would not kow-tow to the US and in fact together with fellow members of BRIC was adopting counter-measures to confront Bernanke’s QE financial weapon. That left only one country who can be compelled to do the US bidding, to commit Hara-kiri to save and or prolong the US$ toilet paper regime — Japan!

14. And so, Japan launched its sudden massive QE and the desired effect is that now the US$ toilet paper has artificially appreciated in value vis-a-vis the Yen and less so with other currencies. This cannot be disputed by my detractors because:

On May 11, the financial elites of G-7 countries explicitly agreed with this kamikaze policy of Japan.

Koichi Hamada has also declared earlier that the target for this policy is to allow the dollar to rise to ¥110 per US$1 and this rise would be managed in a staggered fashion in small increments (step by step approach) thereby controlling the rate of inflation in Japan which would not be allowed to exceed the agreed target rate.

It is suggested that Japan can do this because it can utilise its huge dollar reserves of US$1.2 Trillion to manage the devaluation! According to Alan Ruskin, the global head of Group of 10 foreign-exchange strategy in New York at Deutsche Bank ASG, he said “I think we are opening up the door to look at 105 in the next few months and 110 by the end of the year …” and this surely must be interpreted to mean that Koichi Hamada’s strategy is definitely in play.

In conclusion, it is my view that such “managed artificial appreciation” of the US$ toilet paper while effective in the short run would fail in the long run because the fundamental issues of the US economy have not been addressed and resolved. Only real economic growth can reverse the dollar’s demise.

Seriously, would Bernanke stop further QE when the yen exchange rate reaches ¥110 by the year end? Has not Bernanke declared that QE would continue till 2015? And since Japan has drawn the Red Line at ¥110, can Japan risk further damage to its economy and continue to back-stop US beyond ¥110?

The US$ quadrillion derivative casino is the millstone around the US and the global economy, and as long as this is not resolved, the crisis would only get worse. Like water, after sufficient heat, the boiling point would be reached.

While I cannot forecast the precise date of the implosion, I am of the view that the end is near, sparked by a black swan event and then snowballed to its final devastation.

This article originally appeared on : Global Research

The UK government has announced a £40 million aid package to foreign-backed terrorists fighting the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, local media reports.

The package was announced during a meeting between British Prime Minister David Cameron and US President Barak Obama in Washington on Monday, when the two exchanged views about the ongoing conflict in the Middle Eastern country they both have strongly enhanced and promoted in a desperate attempt to change the regime there.

“During a joint press conference with US President Barack Obama today, Prime Minister David Cameron announced that the UK would be providing an extra £30 million [$45.9 million] of humanitarian support for the victims of the Syria crisis, and an additional £10 million [$15.3 million] in non-lethal support to strengthen the Syrian opposition, to help reduce the effects of the conflict spilling over into neighboring countries and to support human rights and civil society,” British prime minister’s office claimed in a statement.

Britain and its allies have been playing an “unconstructive role” in the region by lending support to same terrorist groups they have been fighting in Afghanistan as part of the so-called US-led “war on terror.”

The British government is also accused of supplying weapons to insurgents and dispatching mercenaries to Syria’s neighboring countries like Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan, where they receive special training by MI6 and CIA officers and then are transferred into Syria illegally to fight the Syrian government.

Diplomatic discussions on the Syrian conflict is set to continue this week, with President Putin due to hold talks in Russia with Israeli regime’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over issues surrounding the conflict in Syria.

The talks come as the US and Britain claim they have found common ground with Russia on how to proceed in Syria.

At their meeting in Washington, President Obama and David Cameron promised to make diplomatic efforts to find a political solution to the two-year crisis in Syria, AFP reported.

However, Obama and Cameron revealed their true intention when they said that the rule of President al-Assad must end in Syria.

“If in fact we can broker a peaceful political transition that leads not only to Assad’s departure but a state in Syria that is still intact (…) and that ends the bloodshed, stabilizes the situation, that’s not just going to be good for us – that will be good for everybody,” claimed the US president.

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

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

This article originally appeared on : Global Research

In a brazen and illegal attack on press freedom, the Obama Justice Department secretly subpoenaed the telephone records of Associated Press editors and journalists and tracked ingoing and outgoing calls on at least 20 telephone lines, including the national headquarters of the press agency and its news bureaus in New York, Hartford and Washington DC. Among the lines tracked was the telephone used by AP reporters working out of the House of Representatives press gallery in the Capitol.

The Associated Press was given no advance notice of the government dragnet, which reportedly began in April of 2012 and continued through May of that year. Such a massive operation over a two-month period would generate records of many thousands of telephone calls, providing the government with legally privileged information about AP journalists’ sources and methods. More than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were seized.

The lines that were tracked included the home and cell phones of at least one editor and an unknown number of reporters. While the Justice Department has not provided any reason for the spying operation, it is widely assumed, and so asserted by AP, that it was carried out in connection with a federal investigation into an alleged leak of “classified” information by the press agency in a May 7, 2012 article concerning a CIA covert operation in Yemen.

The article reported details of CIA efforts in Yemen to break up an alleged plot to blow up an airliner heading for the United States around the time of the one-year anniversary of the May 2, 2011 assassination of Osama bin Laden. The AP acknowledges that it had agreed to delay reporting the story at the urging of Obama administration officials.

Following the publication of the story, John Brennan, at that time President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser and currently director of the CIA, denounced it as an “irresponsible and damaging leak of classified information.” In June of 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder ordered federal leak investigations into the AP story as well as a New York Times report about the Stuxnet computer worm, which was developed jointly by the US and Israel to attack nuclear centrifuges at Iran’s main uranium enrichment facility.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that it had asked the Justice Department whether its telephone records had been seized in connection with the Stuxnet article probe, but had not received a reply.

The Associated Press became aware of the spying operation against it only last Friday, when it was informed in a letter from the Justice Department. The AP reported Monday that included among those whose phones were tracked were five reporters and an editor who were involved in the May 7, 2012 story. The two lead reporters on the story, Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman, were members of a team of journalists who won a Pulitzer Prize last year for reporting on the New York Police Department’s covert surveillance of Muslim Americans.

In a letter to Holder sent on Monday, Associated Press CEO Gary Pruitt said: “I am writing to object in the strongest possible terms to a massive and unprecedented intrusion by the Department of Justice into the newsgathering activities of The Associated Press.”

Demanding the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies, Pruitt continued: “There can be no possible justification for such an overboard collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.”

Arnie Robbins, executive director of the American Society of News Editors, said, “On the face of it, this is really a disturbing affront to a free press. It’s also troubling because it is consistent with perhaps the most aggressive administration ever against reporters doing their jobs–providing information that citizens need to know about our government.”

Floyd Abrams, a First Amendment lawyer who defended the New York Times against the Nixon administration in the “Pentagon Papers” case, said: “The norm… was for the government to ask the press organization for information and to pursue them in court when they didn’t receive it. The notion of avoiding any First Amendment resolution by the courts by going right to the telephone company with no notice to the press organization is outrageous.”

At a Tuesday afternoon press conference, Holder sought to distance himself personally from the seizure of AP phone records, announcing that he had recused himself from the investigation and any decision to subpoena the records would have been made by Deputy Attorney General James Cole. At the same time, he defended the actions of the Justice Department and the US attorney in Washington DC, who is heading up the investigation. He said the AP article involved a “very serious leak” that “put the American people at risk,” requiring “very aggressive action” by the government.

He dodged a question as to whether other news organizations had been similarly targeted, saying that question should be addressed to the deputy attorney general.

At a Tuesday press briefing, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney claimed that Obama had no knowledge of the seizure of AP telephone records. He repeatedly deflected reporters’ questions by saying the White House could not comment on an ongoing investigation. At the same time, he spoke of the need to prosecute “illegal activity” and “balance” press freedom against the interests of “national security.”

Also on Tuesday, Cole sent a reply to AP CEO Pruitt’s letter, brushing off Pruitt’s protests and defending the government’s actions. Cole said the subpoenas were “limited in both time and scope,” and concluded that the Justice Department had struck “the proper balance” between the public’s right to know and “national security.”

In fact, the revelation of massive spying against a leading press agency is consistent with the deeply anti-democratic practices of the Obama administration. Obama has relentlessly pursued alleged leakers and whistleblowers in an attempt to suppress exposures of government secrets and crimes. His administration has brought six cases against people accused of publicizing classified information, twice as many as all previous administrations combined.

Just last January, the Obama Justice Department obtained a 30-month prison sentence for former CIA agent John Kiriakou, whom it prosecuted for giving television interviews in 2007 in which he acknowledged that the CIA was engaged in the torture of alleged terrorists. Obama’s policy is to jail those who expose abuse and torture of prisoners while refusing to prosecute the authors of the torture policy or those who carry it out.

The administration has conducted a vendetta against WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange in retaliation for their exposures of US war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries and Washington’s reactionary intrigues around the world. It is prosecuting Private Bradley Manning, after holding him in solitary confinement for years, for handing over material to WikiLeaks exposing the murderous activities of the US military internationally.

The scandal over spying against the press, moreover, coincides with the revelation that the International Revenue Service (IRS) targeted groups politically at odds with the administration that sought to obtain tax-free status as “social welfare” organizations. While it appears that the bulk of the groups initially selected for more intrusive investigation–including demands for lists of donors and political contacts–were associated with the Tea Party and the Republican right, guidelines drawn up by the IRS in 2012 called for tagging all organizations that were critical of government policies.

The attack on press freedom in the case of the Associated Press is part of a far broader assault on democratic rights and the preparation of dictatorial forms of rule. (See: “ The criminalization of political dissent in America ”). In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, which saw the military-police occupation of a major American city, Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, told CNN that “all digital communications in the past” are recorded and stored by the government, including telephone calls, emails, online chats and other forms of communication.

This article originally appeared on : Global Research

Zakaria Kandahari, a member of a US Special Forces “A Team,” has been accused by Afghan officials of carrying out and directing the torture of 15 civilians detained in recent raids in Warduk province. Afghan officials say Kandahari is an American of Afghan descent and a leader of the Special Forces unit.

Of the 15 prisoners, seven are confirmed dead, with the other eight missing. The body of one of the prisoners, Mohammad Qassim, was found dumped in a trash pit outside a US installation shortly after the detentions.

US forces have long conducted bloody counter-insurgency operations in the province, just west of Kabul, prompting repeated accusations by local villagers that they torture and murder civilians. In February, responding to popular outrage, President Hamid Karzai demanded Special Forces cease operations in province.

The latest accusations are based on a video recording of Kandahari conducting a torture session on Afghan civilian Sayid Mohammad. Afghan officials have said a voice can be heard in the background of the recording speaking American English while Kandahari tortures Mohammad. Kandahari, who speaks fluent English with an American accent, was working closely with US special forces to carry out missions.

Testimony from one of the victims has also implicated Kandahari. Hikmatullah, a 16-year-old Afghan student, says he was tortured by Kandahari, who he identified by the large sword tattoo on his upper right arm.

According to Hikmatullah, Kandahari beat him savagely, dislocating his shoulder after the student denied any connections with the anti-occupation insurgency. Hikmattulah’s two brothers, Sadiqullah and Ismatullah, who were also captured by the A Team, are still missing.

US General John Allen promised to hand Kandahari over to Afghan authorities for questioning within 24 hours, yet the next day the US command announced he had escaped and was nowhere to be found.

Predictably, the occupation authorities have denied involvement in the incident. “After thorough investigation, there was no credible evidence to substantiate misconduct by U.S. or ISAF forces relating to the detainees or deaths in Nerkh,” the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), NATO’s military command in Afghanistan, asserted in a statement. ISAF representatives have asserted the roundups were carried out by Afghan forces, without collaboration by occupation forces.

Attempts to shift blame for the incident onto the Afghans are patently absurd given the long and continuing use of such methods by ISAF and especially US Special Forces.

US military forces in Afghanistan have established a network of black sites, where suspected insurgents can be taken at any time, including the notorious Bagram airbase. The US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) has authorization to hold suspected insurgents in these detention facilities for up to nine weeks without any pretense of legal charges, at which point a waiver from the Pentagon suffices to detain the prisoners indefinitely.

Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First’s described the conditions inside these JSOC black sites, stating that inmates are “forced to strip naked, then kept in solitary confinement in windowless, often cold cells with lights on 24 hours a day.”

These methods have been employed in an unsuccessful effort to crush the fierce resistance to the occupation and puppet regime in Kabul.

Three US soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Kandahar province on Tuesday. On Monday, three Georgian soldiers were also killed in Helmand. Also on Monday, a suicide bomber attacked a US Special Operations convoy. An earlier blast on May 1 killed three British soldiers.

Local villagers have registered numerous complaints of torture and abuse at the hands of US commandos in recent months, which have been ignored by the NATO leadership. Hundreds of families in Warduk province have fled their homes as a result of the frequent raids.

The use of such methods, far from being an aberration, flows from the logic of the US occupation itself. Facing intractable popular resistance, the US-led forces respond with the same murderous tactics used in countless “dirty wars,” in Algeria, in Vietnam, in Central America, and in Iraq. Death squads are deployed, torture becomes standard operating procedure, and civilians are rounded up indiscriminately.

With the much-heralded “drawdown” of imperialist forces from Afghanistan scheduled to occur during 2014, the US has relied even more heavily on these methods of unbridled terror to subjugate the population and maintain control.

Whatever drawdown is carried out will largely be a redeployment of military assets in preparation for new wars against Syria, Iran, and other countries.

At the same time, the US plans to maintain nine permanent bases in Afghanistan, with a residual force of 10,000-20,000. This will be complimented by stepped up terror by Special Forces death squads and the deployment of drones, which can remotely kill anti-occupation forces from thousands of miles away.

Lt. General Nick Carter of the British military told The Atlantic that occupation forces will need to play a significant role in Afghanistan at least through 2018, aiding the Afghan national forces in numerous capacities. Carter admitted, even after four more years of combat operations, the situation on the ground will continue to be characterized by high levels of disorder and violence.

According the National Journal’s article “NATO’s Plan for Afghanistan Post-2014: A ‘Stable Instability,’” Carter views such an outcome as “not necessarily a disaster for ISAF.” In fact, such a situation is welcomed by imperialist policy makers, who hope to take advantage of the social catastrophe to implement the strategy of divide and rule in Afghanistan, and prevent the consolidation of anti-US forces.

In Carter’s scenario for “stable instability”–something General David Petraeus previously dubbed “Afghan Good Enough”–the occupation will maintain a minimum of security around US military installations, while carrying out counter-insurgency operations in the hinterland when deemed necessary. Territory outside the major cities will remain under the control of local warlords.

This article originally appeared on : Global Research

By Jed Morey

The manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects offered the nation a window into the stunning military-style capabilities of our local law enforcement agencies. For the past 30 years, police departments throughout the United States have benefited from the government’s largesse in the form of military weaponry and training, incentives offered in the ongoing “War on Drugs.” For the average citizen watching events such as the intense pursuit of the Tsarnaev brothers on television, it would be difficult to discern between fully outfitted police SWAT teams and the military.

The lines blurred even further Monday as a new dynamic was introduced to the militarization of domestic law enforcement. By making a few subtle changes to a regulation in the U.S. Code titled “Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies” the military has quietly granted itself the ability to police the streets without obtaining prior local or state consent, upending a precedent that has been in place for more than two centuries.

The most objectionable aspect of the regulatory change is the inclusion of vague language that permits military intervention in the event of “civil disturbances.” According to the rule:

Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances.

Bruce Afran, a civil liberties attorney and constitutional law professor at Rutgers University, calls the rule, “a wanton power grab by the military,” and says, “It’s quite shocking actually because it violates the long-standing presumption that the military is under civilian control.”

A defense official who declined to be named takes a different view of the rule, claiming, “The authorization has been around over 100 years; it’s not a new authority. It’s been there but it hasn’t been exercised. This is a carryover of domestic policy.” Moreover, he insists the Pentagon doesn’t “want to get involved in civilian law enforcement. It’s one of those red lines that the military hasn’t signed up for.” Nevertheless, he says, “every person in the military swears an oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the United States to defend that Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.”

One of the more disturbing aspects of the new procedures that govern military command on the ground in the event of a civil disturbance relates to authority. Not only does it fail to define what circumstances would be so severe that the president’s authorization is “impossible,” it grants full presidential authority to “Federal military commanders.” According to the defense official, a commander is defined as follows: “Somebody who’s in the position of command, has the title commander. And most of the time they are centrally selected by a board, they’ve gone through additional schooling to exercise command authority.”

As it is written, this “commander” has the same power to authorize military force as the president in the event the president is somehow unable to access a telephone. (The rule doesn’t address the statutory chain of authority that already exists in the event a sitting president is unavailable.) In doing so, this commander must exercise judgment in determining what constitutes, “wanton destruction of property,” “adequate protection for Federal property,” “domestic violence,” or “conspiracy that hinders the execution of State or Federal law,” as these are the circumstances that might be considered an “emergency.”

“These phrases don’t have any legal meaning,” says Afran. “It’s no different than the emergency powers clause in the Weimar constitution [of the German Reich]. It’s a grant of emergency power to the military to rule over parts of the country at their own discretion.”

Afran also expresses apprehension over the government’s authority “to engage temporarily in activities necessary to quell large-scale disturbances.”

“Governments never like to give up power when they get it,” says Afran. “They still think after twelve years they can get intelligence out of people in Guantanamo. Temporary is in the eye of the beholder. That’s why in statutes we have definitions. All of these statutes have one thing in common and that is that they have no definitions. How long is temporary? There’s none here. The definitions are absurdly broad.”

The U.S. military is prohibited from intervening in domestic affairs except where provided under Article IV of the Constitution in cases of domestic violence that threaten the government of a state or the application of federal law. This provision was further clarified both by the Insurrection Act of 1807 and a post-Reconstruction law known as the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 (PCA). The Insurrection Act specifies the circumstances under which the president may convene the armed forces to suppress an insurrection against any state or the federal government. Furthermore, where an individual state is concerned, consent of the governor must be obtained prior to the deployment of troops. The PCA–passed in response to federal troops that enforced local laws and oversaw elections during Reconstruction–made unauthorized employment of federal troops a punishable offense, thereby giving teeth to the Insurrection Act.

Together, these laws limit executive authority over domestic military action. Yet Monday’s official regulatory changes issued unilaterally by the Department of Defense is a game-changer.

The stated purpose of the updated rule is “support in Accordance With the Posse Comitatus Act,” but in reality it undermines the Insurrection Act and PCA in significant and alarming ways. The most substantial change is the notion of “civil disturbance” as one of the few “domestic emergencies” that would allow for the deployment of military assets on American soil.

To wit, the relatively few instances that federal troops have been deployed for domestic support have produced a wide range of results. Situations have included responding to natural disasters and protecting demonstrators during the Civil Rights era to, disastrously, the Kent State student massacre and the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee.

Michael German, senior policy counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), noted in a 2009 Daily Kos article that, “there is no doubt that the military is very good at many things. But recent history shows that restraint in their new-found domestic role is not one of them.”

At the time German was referring to the military’s expanded surveillance techniques and hostile interventions related to border control and the War on Drugs. And in fact, many have argued that these actions have already upended the PCA in a significant way. Even before this most recent rule change, the ACLU was vocal in its opposition to the Department of Defense (DoD) request to expand domestic military authority “in the event of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high yield explosive (CBRNE) incidents.” The ACLU’s position is that civilian agencies are more than equipped to handle such emergencies since 9/11. (ACLU spokespersons in Washington D.C. declined, however, to be interviewed for this story.)

But while outcomes of military interventions have varied, the protocol by which the president works cooperatively with state governments has remained the same. The president is only allowed to deploy troops to a state upon request of its governor. Even then, the military–specifically the National Guard–is there to provide support for local law enforcement and is prohibited from engaging in any activities that are outside of this scope, such as the power to arrest.

Eric Freedman, a constitutional law professor from Hofstra University, also calls the ruling “an unauthorized power grab.” According to Freedman, “The Department of Defense does not have the authority to grant itself by regulation any more authority than Congress has granted it by statute.” Yet that’s precisely what it did. This wasn’t, however, the Pentagon’s first attempt to expand its authority domestically in the last decade.

Déjà vu

During the Bush Administration, Congress passed the 2007 Defense Authorization Bill that included language similar in scope to the current regulatory change. It specifically amended the Insurrection Act to expand the president’s ability to deploy troops domestically under certain conditions including health epidemics, natural disasters and terrorist activities, though it stopped short of including civil disturbances. But the following year this language was repealed under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2008 via a bill authored by Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) who cited the “useful friction” between the Insurrection and Posse Comitatus Acts in limiting executive authority.

According to the DoD, the repeal of this language had more to do with procedure and that it was never supposed to amend the Insurrection Act. “When it was actually passed,” says the defense official, “Congress elected to amend the Insurrection Act and put things in the Insurrection Act that were not insurrection, like the support for disasters and emergencies and endemic influenza. Our intent,” he says, “was to give the president and the secretary access to the reserve components. It includes the National Guard and, rightfully so, the governors were pretty upset because they were not consulted.”

Senator Leahy’s office did not have a statement as of press time, but a spokesperson said the senator had made an inquiry with the DoD in response to our questions. The defense official confirmed that he was indeed being called in to discuss the senator’s concerns in a meeting scheduled for today. But he downplayed any concern, saying, “Congress at any time can say ‘we don’t like your interpretation of that law and how you’ve interpreted it in making policy’–and so they can call us to the Hill and ask us to justify why we’re doing something.”

Last year, Bruce Afran and another civil liberties attorney Carl Mayer filed a lawsuit against the Obama Administration on behalf of a group of journalists and activists lead by former New York Times journalist Chris Hedges. They filed suit over the inclusion of a bill in the NDAA 2012 that, according to the plaintiffs, expanded executive authority over domestic affairs by unilaterally granting the executive branch to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens without due process. The case has garnered international attention and invited vigorous defense from the Obama Administration. Even Afran goes so far as to say this current rule change is, “another NDAA. It’s even worse, to be honest.”

For Hedges and the other plaintiffs, including Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, the government’s ever-expanding authority over civilian affairs has a “chilling effect” on First Amendment activities such as free speech and the right to assemble. First District Court Judge Katherine Forrest agreed with the plaintiffs and handed Hedges et al a resounding victory prompting the Department of Justice to immediately file an injunction and an appeal. The appellate court is expected to rule on the matter within the next few months.

Another of the plaintiffs in the Hedges suit is Alexa O’Brien, a journalist and organizer who joined the lawsuit after she discovered a Wikileaks cable showing government officials attempting to link her efforts to terrorist activities. For activists such as O’Brien, the new DoD regulatory change is frightening because it creates, “an environment of fear when people cannot associate with one another.” Like Afran and Freedman, she too calls the move, “another grab for power under the rubric of the war on terror, to the detriment of citizens.”

“This is a complete erosion of the rule of law,” says O’Brien. Knowing these sweeping powers were granted under a rule change and not by Congress is even more harrowing to activists. “That anything can be made legal,” says O’Brien, “is fundamentally antithetical to good governance.”

As far as what might qualify as a civil disturbance, Afran notes, “In the Sixties all of the Vietnam protests would meet this description. We saw Kent State. This would legalize Kent State.”

But the focus on the DoD regulatory change obscures the creeping militarization that has already occurred in police departments across the nation. Even prior to the NDAA lawsuit, journalist Chris Hedges was critical of domestic law enforcement agencies saying, “The widening use of militarized police units effectively nullifies the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.”

This de facto nullification isn’t lost on the DoD.

The DoD official even referred to the Boston bombing suspects manhunt saying, “Like most major police departments, if you didn’t know they were a police department you would think they were the military.” According to this official there has purposely been a “large transfer of technology so that the military doesn’t have to get involved.” Moreover, he says the military has learned from past events, such as the siege at Waco, where ATF officials mishandled military equipment. “We have transferred the technology so we don’t have to loan it,” he states.

But if the transfer of military training and technology has been so thorough, it boggles the imagination as to what kind of disturbance would be so overwhelming that it would require the suspension of centuries-old law and precedent to grant military complete authority on the ground. The DoD official admits not being able to “envision that happening,” adding, “but I’m not a Hollywood screenwriter.”

Afran, for one, isn’t buying the logic. For him, the distinction is simple.

“Remember, the police operate under civilian control,” he says. “They are used to thinking in a civilian way so the comparison that they may have some assault weapons doesn’t change this in any way. And they can be removed from power. You can’t remove the military from power.”

Despite protestations from figures such as Afran and O’Brien and past admonitions from groups like the ACLU, for the first time in our history the military has granted itself authority to quell a civil disturbance. Changing this rule now requires congressional or judicial intervention.

“This is where journalism comes in,” says Freedman. “Calling attention to an unauthorized power grab in the hope that it embarrasses the administration.”

Afran is considering amending his NDAA complaint currently in front of the court to include this regulatory change.

As we witnessed during the Boston bombing manhunt, it’s already difficult to discern between military and police. In the future it might be impossible, because there may be no difference.

This article originally appeared on : Global Research

Chairman of the Expediency Council and presidential hopeful, Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, has expounded his plans and policies in case he wins the June 14 election.

Hashemi Rafsanjani said on Wednesday that he will place special emphasis on the countryâ„¢s Development Plan in order to overcome the ongoing economic vows, while pledging to boost national unity and cooperation in Iran.

Hashemi Rafsanjani served as Iranâ„¢s president from 1989 to 1997. In 2005, he ran for a third term in office, but he lost the race to his rival Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The registration for the 11th presidential election of Iran ended on May 11, with 686 individuals having signed up for the race. They will be vetted for qualifications by the Guardian Council, which is a 12-member body consisting of six jurists and six theologians who in addition to vetting hopefuls are also tasked with confirming the election results.

Under Iranâ„¢s election law, the Guardian Council is required to announce the list of approved candidates within five days after the end of registration. This period can be extended for another five days.

MP/SS

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]At least one person has been killed and several others injured in an attack on a police station in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

UK men are in the grip of a ‘crisis of masculinity’ fueled by boozing and consumerism amid the financial crisis, warns one MP. Pornography and ‘hyper-masculinity’ are propagating a ‘Viagra and Jack Daniels’ culture and the normalization of misogyny.

Labor Party MP Diane Abbott will speak out against the
degradation of male values in modern Britain in a speech to a UK
think tank on Thursday. Warning of a ‘celebration of heartlessness’
among British adolescent men, Abbot will signal that unemployment
and economic woes is driving a wave of misogyny and disrespect
towards women.

“At its worst, it’s a celebration of heartlessness; a lack of
respect for women’s autonomy; and the normalization of homophobia.
I fear it’s often crude individualism dressed up as modern
manhood,” she will say.

Likening the phenomenon to the American film ‘Fight Club,’ she will
say “the first rule of being a man in modern Britain is that
you’re not allowed to talk about it.”

Faced with minimal employment prospects, many young British men are
forced to return home after finishing their university degrees.
This in turn leads to a stagnation of their development, locking
them into a family life that they resent. Abbott also mentions the
grown men who are working longer hours, dying of curable cancers
and taking their own lives.

As well as the current economic climate in the UK, Abbott signals
that pornography and a culture of ‘hyper-masculinity’ create an
ideal of manhood that is impossible to aspire to and fundamentally
detrimental.

“Normal sex seems boring,” the MP will argue, blaming an
overly- ‘pornified’ culture.

“Growing numbers of men of all ages [are] turning to the drug by
themselves due to performance anxiety, triggered by a host of
psychological issues.”

In response to this new generation of heartless men, the MP is
expected to suggest number of measures to encourage young males to
open up and talk about their emotions. Labor policy will call on
schools to present their pupils with a broader interpretation of
masculinity and urge parents to speak to their sons on the subjects
of manhood and fatherhood.

The outlook for Britain’s flagging economy is looking dour as
the government reported an increase in unemployment for the first
quarter of the year on Wednesday. The increase of 15,000 more
unemployed has pushed the jobless rate in the UK from 7.7 per cent
to 7.8 per cent.

The figures were called ‘disappointing’ by Employment Minister Mark
Hoban. They contrast recent statistics that show the gradual
recovery of the UK economy from the financial crisis.

This article originally appeared on : RT

America’s allies are terrorists, warlords, and corrupt officials, plied with bounty payments and quid-pro-quo assassinations.

From Yemen to Afghanistan to Somalia, America has prosecuted its perpetual war the usual way U.S. foreign policy is conducted: partnerships with unsavory leaders who are corrupt and commit abuses. Here are five striking examples of how the U.S. global war has been characterized by unsavory activity since 2001.

1. Bounty Payments For Alleged Terrorists

Cash payments in Afghanistan aren’t limited to the CIA paying off corrupt Afghan government officials. The lure of money played a major role at the start of the war on Afghanistan when the U.S. was looking for suspected terrorists to arrest and eventually throw in Guantanamo detention camp. The U.S. offered thousands of dollars to people to turn in alleged terrorists; 86% of all Guantanamo prisoners were people who were captured by bounty hunters, according to a report published by Seton Hall University in 2005. Many of them ended up being innocent of any crime—another clear example of how money is a corrupting tool in America’s never-ending global war.

The U.S. paid off Afghan warlords to capture people they suspected of having a role in terrorism. The payments ranged from $3,000 to 25,000, according to the Associated Press. The U.S. also gave money to Pakistani security forces to do the same. The AP article on bounties for people who ended up at Guantanamo reported that “a detainee who said he was a Saudi businessman claimed, ‘The Pakistani police sold me for money to the Americans.’ ‘This was part of a roundup of all foreigners and Arabs in that area,’ of Pakistan near the Afghan border.”

Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf admitted the bounty payments to security forces in his memoir, published in 2006. “We have captured 689 and handed over 369 to the United States. We have earned bounties totalling millions of dollars. Those who habitually accuse U.S. of not doing enough in the war on terror should simply ask the CIA how much prize money it has paid to the Government of Pakistan,” he wrote.

2. Secret Blood-Soaked Deal With Pakistan

Despite the on-again, off-again nature of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, the country has been a major partner in the U.S. “war on terror.” The country’s tribal areas have been pounded by American drones. While the Pakistani government has never outright admitted that it accepts all drone strikes, their former president said it signed off on at least some. And Pakistan has never shot down a U.S. drone, is told about strikes in advance and even clears its airspace so drones can fly unimpeded.

The American program of drone strikes in Pakistan—which has killed between 2,541-3,533 people, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism—started out with a secret, blood-soaked deal which wasn’t revealed until this year in a book by New York Times reporter Mark Mazzetti. Here’s how the deal went down: in 2004, the Pakistani government wanted a tribal leader allied with the Pakistani Taliban dead. Nek Muhammad had been leading a fight against Pakistani troops in the largely ungoverned tribal areas of Pakistan. And for a few years, the government had balked at allowing the CIA to wage a campaign of drone strikes.

But all that changed with a secret deal: the CIA would kill Muhammad in exchange for the use of airspace for its drones. Despite the fact that Muhammad was thought to be more a Pakistani internal problem than a threat to U.S. security, a drone ripped through his compound, killing him and two young boys. That paved the way for a ferocious campaign of U.S. drone strikes in the country that continues today.

Mazzetti detailed the terms of the deal in an excerpt of his book in the New York Times: “Pakistani intelligence officials insisted that they be allowed to approve each drone strike, giving them tight control over the list of targets. And they insisted that drones fly only in narrow parts of the tribal areas…The ISI and the C.I.A. agreed that all drone flights in Pakistan would operate under the C.I.A.’s covert action authority – meaning that the United States would never acknowledge the missile strikes and that Pakistan would either take credit for the individual killings or remain silent.”

Indeed, the Pakistani government lied through its teeth about the killing of Muhammad. It told its people he was killed by troops who fired a rocket at him.

3. Keeping U.S. Strikes in Yemen Secret

The first American strike on Yemen occurred in 2002, but it wasn’t until the Obama administration took office that a ramped-up military campaign commenced that has so far killed between an estimated 232-333 people. But the Yemeni government wanted to keep that campaign secret because the assassination by drone program is deeply unpopular among the civilian population. The Obama administration, which has been far from transparent about its drone program and other activities in Yemen, happily obliged.

The evidence for this comes via WikiLeaks. In January 2010, General David Petraeus, then the head of US Central Command, met with Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president of Yemen at the time. Their discussion centered around U.S. assistance for Yemen’s fight against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. By that time, the U.S. had conducted a few cruise missile and drone strikes on Yemeni territory to beat back the militant group which has been accused of plotting attacks on the U.S.

“We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours,” Saleh told Petraeus. That telling line was prompted by a discussion about a controversial cruise missile strike that occurred in December 2009 that killed 41 civilians, including women and children. The Yemeni government insisted it carried out the attack in al-Ma’jalah, Abyan.

Yemen’s Deputy Prime Minister Alimi joked that “he had just ‘lied’ by telling Parliament that the bombs in Arhab, Abyan, and Shebwa were American-made but deployed by the ROYG.” The reference to Arhab and Shebwa was a nod to other American attacks on Yemen in those areas.

It was Amnesty International that exposed the fact of U.S. involvement in the strike. The human rights group published photos of U.S. cluster munitions and Tomahawk cruise missiles that were used in the deadly strike in al-Ma’jalah.

Despite the fact that the drone program is deeply unpopular in Yemen and has helped fuel Al Qaeda recruitment, the campaign continues, though it has become untenable to pretend that the Yemeni military was carrying out the attacks. In September 2012, the new Yemeni president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, praised U.S. drone strikes in his country. “They pinpoint the target and have zero margin of error, if you know what target you’re aiming at,” he said. The U.S., though, continues to maintain a policy of silence on specific drone strikes in the country.

4. Working With Somali Warlords

Somalia is yet another front in the U.S. war on terror. Since 2011, the U.S. has carried out drone strikes on the country targeting al-Shabaab, an Islamist militant group in the country that is also an affiliate of Al Qaeda. The U.S. has also snatched and rendered alleged terrorists in the country and has operated a secret prison there run by the CIA.

To do all this, U.S. intelligence and military officials have worked with unsavory Somali warlords and intelligence agents. Nation investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill exposed details of the CIA’s backing of Mohamed Afrah Qanyare, a notorious Somali warlord. Since Qanyare owned a secretive airport the CIA wanted to use, they began paying him $100,000 to $150,000 a month. Although the U.S. did not begin carrying out direct strikes in the country until 2007, Qanyare thought he had U.S. backing to carry out his own attacks. So he and other warlords began hunting down people they thought Washington would want taken care of, according to Scahill’s reporting. But these activities ended up producing blowback and empowered Al Qaeda-affiliated forces, much as other U.S. policies, like supporting Ethiopia’s war in the country, ended up spreading militant influence.

“These people were already heinous warlords; they were widely reviled in Mogadishu. And then they start assassinating imams and local prayer leaders who had nothing to do with terror,” one expert on Somalia, Abdirahman “Aynte” Ali, told theNation. “They were either capturing them and then renditioning them to Djibouti, where there is a major American base, or in many cases they were chopping their head off and taking the head to the Americans or whoever. And telling them, ‘We killed this guy.’”

Another example of misguided policy is the secret sites the U.S. operates in Somalia, which Scahill also exposed. One of the sites is a prison used by the CIA and run by Somali intelligence agents, who get paid $200 a month. The prisoners held at the site in Mogadishu are alleged members of al-Shabaab. But some of them have been held for over a year, and haven’t been charged with a crime.

And in 2003, a Somali militia sold an alleged Al Qaeda member named Suleiman Abdallah to the CIA after capturing him from a hospital. Abdallah was then spirited off to Kenya, and eventually to Afghanistan. He was reportedly beaten and tortured by CIA agents. No charges were ever brought against him, and he was released in 2008.

5. Cash for the Karzais

The New York Times revealed April 29that “wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president – courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency.” The literal bags of cash to Karzai’s office were made in an effort to influence the Afghan president and maintain access to his inner circle, thus ensuring that the CIA continued to play a role in prosecuting the Afghanistan war.

What the cash ended up doing, though, was fueling corruption—an inevitable outcome considering the fact that Karzai and his family are known to be corrupt, as WikiLeaks cables revealed.

The money went to paying off warlords and politicians, “many of whom have ties to the drug trade and, in some cases, the Taliban,” the New York Times reported. The CIA pays these unsavory figures to ensure that they continue serving as proxies in the fight against the Taliban. In turn, the money ended up bolstering the corrupt patronage networks the U.S. insists it wants dismantled. Some of the money also went directly into the pockets of aides to the Afghan president.

This isn’t the first time the CIA was caught paying off corrupt Afghan officials. In October 2009, the New York Times exposed cash payments to Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s brother and a powerful figure in southern Afghanistan. The intelligence agency made the payments because Karzai helps operate an Afghan paramilitary force that is a partner in the CIA’s effort against militants battling the U.S. occupation of the country. There was a big problem with these payments: Ahmed Karzai is suspected of being a major player in the drug trade in Afghanistan, the same drug trade the U.S. has been fighting against.

“If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves,” one U.S. military intelligence official told the New York Times.

So despite high-minded rhetoric from U.S. leaders about how American wars are conducted, cash payments, backroom deals and the fostering of corruption are the norm. The CIA’s payments to corrupt Afghan leaders are the latest in a long line of counter-productive U.S. actions taken in the name of the war on terror. And if history is any guide, more of these activities will be revealed in the future.

This article originally appeared on : Global Research

4th amendment, probable cause now non-existent in America

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
May 15, 2013

In perhaps one of the most shocking police brutality videos of recent years, police in Cotati, California respond to a call about “domestic violence” by kicking down the door of a man’s home before tazing him and his wife as they scream in agony.

The video begins with the cops standing on the man’s front lawn looking in through the window having responded to a report of a noise disturbance called in by neighbors. Despite the fact that the couple are obviously not at loggerheads and no harm is coming to anybody, the police announce that they are going to break into the house without a warrant.

“Why are you guys not coming out?,” asks one of the officers, bemused at the fact that someone wouldn’t follow orders.

“Because we don’t live in a police state, sir. Martial law has not been established in this country,” responds the homeowner.

The officer then orders the couple to get down on the ground and put their hands behind their backs, adding, “We’re gonna kick in the door.”

The cops kick down the door and enter the home with guns drawn as the homeowner exclaims, “You have no right to be in here!”

Despite the fact that the woman clearly has her hands in the air, a cop tazes her as she screams out in pain. The man is then also tazed.

The video clip has caused shockwaves across the Internet and has already gone viral along with an outpouring of support for the family.

However, others have expressed support for the police, claiming that the cops couldn’t see the children at the home and therefore didn’t know that they weren’t in danger. Under this scenario, the 4th amendment and probable cause are non-existent and the police can just break into your house and attack you in the name of “protecting the children” at any time.

“The police are allowed to kick in your door when they request you come outside to talk and you refuse and they were called to the residence because of domestic abuse,” wrote one respondent.

In reality, under Florida v. J.L. (March 28, 2000), “the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that anonymous tips are not sufficient grounds to constitute probable cause for a search. Judge Ginsburg, writing for the Supreme Court, stated, “Such an exception would enable any person seeking to harass another to set in motion an intrusive, embarrassing police search of the targeted person simply by placing an anonymous call.…”

“Who is the victim in this case? It’s not the children, who were peacefully playing in the front yard and in the home. And neither homeowner had raised a hand to the other,” writes Mac Slavo.

“In fact, the victims were the residents of the home, whose private property had been violated. The individual recording the video was reportedly tazed, detained and then arrested by police. For what?”

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

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

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This article was posted: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 at 6:09 am

Tags: police state

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This article originally appeared on : Infowars

Just a week after France announced an ‘end to austerity’, it has fallen into recession for the first time in four years as spending and exports contract.

Official figures show France has returned to its second
recession in four years, as the economy shrank by 0.2% in Q1 of
2013, after shrinking the same amount in the final of quarter of
last year, which has brought the Guardian newspaper to declare a
‘triple-dip recession’ in the eurozone’s second largest
economy.

The preliminary data from the INSEE statistics agency shows that
overall investment contracted 0.9 percent in the first quarter.

Business investment was down 0.8 percent, and exports contracted
for a second consecutive quarter, shrinking 0.5 percent. Household
consumption fell by 0.1 percent, the first time since Q2 of last
year, despite high spending on energy over the winter
season.

The data is more bad news for President Hollande and the
Socialist government, who were elected on the promise to end
austerity, and one year later, have failed.

30,000 leftists demonstrated against Hollande and the Socialist
government, who have not delivered on their promise of 0.1 percent
growth. The protesters’ message was clear- austerity isn’t working
for France.

“We are here to tell him, Mr. President, time is up and you
need to start changing things,” one protester, teacher Thibault
Sans, told RT.

First on the agenda of change is unemployment, which in France
is expected to hit at least 12.2% this year, up almost 1% from
11.4% in 2012.

French employment is also well below the Eurozone average, but
much lower than crisis headliners Spain and Greece, where
unemployment is expected to peak at 27%.

Waning citizen support

A survey of 1,027 French people between April 26 and April 28
showed that only 11% think Mr. Hollande will succeed in his
objective of getting unemployment to start falling by the end of
the year, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Earlier this month, the European Commission warned that France
would enter recession this year and said the eurozone’s economy
would shrink by 0.4%. The commission also forecast a rise in the
deficit of 3.9% of GDP, much higher than the acceptable EU deficit
target of 3%

The most explicit of warning signs may have come two weeks ago
when the European Central Bank cut its key interest rate from 0.75%
to 0.5%, a clear indication of a deepening crisis, with no
improvement on the horizon.

According to a Reuters poll of economists, there will be no
strong recovery until at least 2015.

A near miss for Germany, but not the Netherlands

The eurozone’s strongest economy, Germany, also showed some
sluggish signs of growth. GDP grew by just 0.1% in the first
quarter, far less than 0.3% expected by economists, showing
sluggish signs of growth.

The German office of statistics had previously reported a 0.6
percent contraction, but later revised that figure to the standing
0.7 percent.

“The German economy is only slowly picking up
steam,” the Statistics Office said in a statement. “The
extreme winter weather played a role in this weak
growth.”

Commerzbank today lowered its German 2013 growth forecast
to 0.2 percent from 0.5 percent, Bloomberg reported.

Growth may have been delayed in German due to a long winter,
some experts think. The particularly cold winter delayed
construction and business confidence.

Merkel’s initiative to bring the Eurozone afloat seems to only
be producing results in Germany, as the rest of Europe is drowning
in stagnated economies and bad credit.

“The euro area is a drag on the economy and certainly a handicap
for German companies,” Andreas Scheuele, an economist at Dekabank
in Frankfurt, told Bloomberg.

The Netherlands, which entered recession three months ago, also
showed contraction, with GDP falling by 0.1% in the first quarter
of this year. Once one of the strongest-looking members of the
eurozone, the Netherlands suffers from rising unemployment and the
housing market bubble having burst.

Paris-Berlin rapport

The new French recession could further complicate the strained
relationship between France and Germany, pro-growth and
pro-austerity, respectively.

On May 6th, Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said French
austerity measures are at an end, instead opting for growth.

“We’ve been pleading for a growth policy for a year.
Austerity on its own impedes growth.”

President Hollande and France have been tiptoeing around
Germany’s call for austerity, stirring a ‘friendly tension’ instead
of direct opposition to Chancellor Merkel’s agenda. Hollande has
not continued the legacy of ‘Merkozy’, a warm and public alliance
between the German Chancellor and his predecessor, Nicolas
Sarkozy.

France is in a difficult position: either continue its power
alliance with Germany and unpopular support for austerity, or break
with Germany and instead align itself with Europe’s troubled
‘south’ — Italy and Spain.

Wednesday’s sobering results technically align France in camp
‘B’, but it will remains to be seen if the French Finance Ministry
continues to tag-along with Merkel and friends.

This article originally appeared on : RT

A previous article discussed institutionalized spying on Americans. Anyone can be monitored for any reason or none at all.

Manufactured national security threats, silencing dissent, targeting whistleblowers, and challenging press freedom subvert constitutional rights.

Doing so is worse than ever now. Obama bears full responsibility. He governs by diktat authority. He’s waging war on humanity. He’s spurning fundamental rights. He’s targeting press freedom.

James Madison understood the threat, saying:

“A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or tragedy, or perhaps both.”

Harry Truman once said:

“When even one American — who has done nothing wrong — is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril.”

Earlier, Helen Thomas accused Obama of trying to control the press. “It’s shocking,” she said. “It’s really shocking. What the hell do they think we are, puppets?”

“They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.”

Free speech, a free press, free thought and intellectual inquiry are fundamental. Without them all other freedoms are endangered.

In Palko v. Connecticut (1937), the Supreme Court called “(f)reedom of thought….the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.”

On May 13, AP headlined “Gov’t Obtains Wide AP Phone Records in Probe,” saying:

“The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a ‘massive and unprecedented intrusion’ into how news organizations gather the news.”

According to AP attorneys, records obtained “listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery.”

During April and May 2012, more than 20 phone lines were monitored. Over 100 journalists work in targeted offices. They report “on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.”

AP president/CEO Gary Pruitt protested. He called DOJ’s action a “massive and unprecedented intrusion.” He wrote Attorney General Eric Holder. He demanded all phone records be returned. He wants all copies destroyed, saying:

“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters.”

“These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.”

DOJ officials left unexplained why phone records were sought. AP said a criminal investigation is being conducted into “who may have provided information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot.”

At the time, AP headlined “US: CIA thwarts new al-Qaida underwear bomb plot,” saying:

Agents foiled “an ambitious plot by al-Qaida’s affiliate in Yemen to destroy a US-bound airliner using a bomb with a sophisticated new design around the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, The Associated Press has learned.”

AP described an upgraded underwear bomb plot. It was “designed to be used in a passenger’s underwear, but this time” US officials called it “more refined.”

A same dayFBIissued statement said:

“As a result of close cooperation with our security and intelligence partners overseas, an improvised explosive device (IED) designed to carry out a terrorist attack has been seized abroad.”

“The FBI currently has possession of the IED and is conducting technical and forensics analysis on it. Initial exploitation indicates that the device is very similar to IEDs that have been used previously by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in attempted terrorist attacks, including against aircraft and for targeted assassinations.”

“The device never presented a threat to public safety, and the US government is working closely with international partners to address associated concerns with the device.”

The incident was fake. It was a false flag. It was like the December 2009 so-called underwear bomber. US officials claimed Nigerian citizen Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab traveled to Yemen, got Al Qaeda training, and explosive PETN chemicals.

He was wrongfully accused of trying to blow up a Christmas day Amsterdam-Detroit-bound airliner. The incident was staged. Abdulmutallab was set up. He was a patsy for a joint CIA/Mossad/India Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) false flag.

The same alliance staged coordinated 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Dozens were killed and hundreds wounded. They also were behind former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s 2007 assassination.

In February, CIA director John Brennan called releasing information about the 2012 incident to the media an “unauthorized and dangerous disclosure of classified information.”

He left unexplained what’s discussed above. White House spokesman Jay Carney denied knowledge of DOJ’s investigation.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa (R. CA) said the agency “had an obligation to look for every other way to (investigate) before (it) intruded on the freedom of the press.”

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D. VT) added:

“The burden is always on the government when they go after private information, especially information regarding the press or its confidential sources.”

“On the face of it, I am concerned that the government may not have met that burden. I am very troubled by these allegations and want to hear the government’s explanation.”

ACLU Washington legislative office director Laura Murphy said:

“The attorney general must explain the Justice Department’s actions to the public so that we can make sure this kind of press intimidation does not happen again.”

This type intrusion has a chilling effect on journalists, whistleblowers and others involved in investigating government wrongdoing, she added.

William Miller, spokesman for US attorney Ronald Machen, stonewalled AP’s request. Information on why its journalists were targeted was sought. Dismissively he said: “We do not comment on ongoing criminal investigations.”

DOJ “strict rules” require “all reasonable attempts” be made to obtain relevant information from other sources.

A media subpoena must be “as narrowly drawn as possible. (It) should be directed at relevant information regarding a limited subject matter and should cover a reasonably limited period of time.”

It’s to avoid “impair(ing) the news gathering function.” Authorities are required to recognize that “freedom of the press can be no broader than the freedom of reporters to investigate and report the news.”

If phone records are wanted, news organizations are supposed to be notified well in advance. A reasonable explanation should be given. Both sides must agree on information to be provided.

DOJ cited an exemption. It claimed advance notification might “pose a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation.” One intrusion means across the board is OK, whatever reason is given.

AP said it’s unknown whether a judicial or grand jury authorization was sought.

American Society of News Editors executive director Arnie Robbins expressed grave concern, saying:

“On the face of it, this is really a disturbing affront to a free press. It’s also troubling because it is consistent with perhaps the most aggressive administration ever against reporters doing their jobs — providing information that citizens need to know about our government.”

According to Federation of American Scientists’ government secrecy expert, Steven Aftergood:

“This investigation is broader and less focused on an individual source or reporter than any of the others we’ve seen.”

“They have swept up an entire collection of press communications. It’s an astonishing assault on core values of our society.”

A Newspaper Association of America statement said:

“Today we learned of the Justice Department’s unprecedented wholesale seizure of confidential telephone records from the Associated Press.”

“These actions shock the American conscience and violate the critical freedom of the press protected by the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called DOJ’s action “a terrible blow against the freedom of the press and the ability of reporters to investigate and report the news.”

Privacy laws need updating, it added. Data-mining is out-of-control. Constitutional, statute, and/or judicial constraints must be imposed.

DOJ violated its own rules. Privacy and press freedom are threatened. The so-called third party doctrine is outdated.

It relates to information or spoken words by one person to another, a government agency, a business, or organization. Doing so excludes Fourth Amendment protection.

In Miller v. United States (1976), the Supreme Court ruled:

“The Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the obtaining of information revealed to a third-party and conveyed by him to Government authorities, even if it is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the confidence placed in the third-party will not be betrayed.”

The Court added that information revealed to another source “takes the risk (that it) will be conveyed” to someone else.

In Smith v. Maryland (1979), the High Court extended the third party doctrine to telephone communications.

The court said in “expos(ing) that information” to phone company equipment, individuals “assumed the risk that the company would reveal to police the numbers…dialed.”

Last year in US v. Jones, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor acknowledged the need to update Fourth Amendment protections, saying:

“People disclose the phone numbers that they dial or text to their cellular providers, the URLS that they visit and the e-mail addresses with which they correspond to their Internet service providers, and the books, groceries and medications they purchase to online retailers.”

“I would not assume that all information voluntarily disclosed to some member of the public for a limited purpose is, for that reason alone, disentitled to Fourth Amendment protection.”

In United States v. US District Court (1972), a unanimous Supreme Court ruling upheld Fourth Amendment protections in cases involving domestic surveillance targeting a domestic threat.

Spying in America today is institutionalized. Privacy rights no longer matter. Phone calls, emails, and other communications are being monitored secretly without court authorization.

Unconstrained data-mining and monitoring occur without probable cause. America’s a total surveillance society. A previous article said Big Brother no longer is fiction. It hasn’t been for some time. It’s official US policy.

Unprecedented, unwarranted prosecutions follow. No one’s safe anymore. Everyone’s vulnerable. Constitutional rights don’t matter. That’s how police states operate. Given the capability of modern technology, America’s by far the worst.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

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

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

http://www.dailycensored.com/spies-r-us/

This article originally appeared on : Global Research

Back in August 2012, things were a lot different in Washington DC and in the White House.

The Obama administration was brandishing a confident swagger back then, heading into the elections against a hobbling GOP opponent, and Benghazi had yet to unfold in all of its ugliness.

As Hillary Clinton was jetting around on the US State Department budget promoting her ‘Friends of Syria’ Middle East and European tours, and as the CIA were busy like bees working in the gray shadows of Benghazi, Washington and London were laying the groundwork for their new WMD case is Syria.

As last summer drew to a close, President Barack Obama confidently announced he was drawing a ‘Red Line’ in Syria regarding the use of chemical weapons, meaning that any evidence of their use on either side of that conflict would lead to consequences, the obvious inference being automatic US military intervention.

Fast forward to the present, and Washington appears to have been caught in the vortex of its own spin machine, with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney recently forced to ‘clarify’ the President’s infamous ‘Red Line’ decree with what can only be described as desperate political cover. Here Carney attempted to explain away the previous ultimatum and re-explain the President’s position:

“What the president made clear is that it was a red line, and that it was unacceptable, and that it would change his calculus… What he never did — and it is simplistic to do so is to say that ‘if X happens, Y will happen’. He has never said what reaction he would take.”

It’s hard to run a global empire and still pander to sensitive liberal concerns at home. The White House seems to be at pains coming to terms with what the Neoconservative Bush government already knew a decade ago — that there really is no good, safe way to do a military intervention. In the end, the façade of political spin cannot provide ethical cover for invading and toppling another sovereign state. You can’t finesse your way into it, you have to just go for it in full view — lie if you have to, fabricate evidence if need be, and be damned with the political fallout.

This approach sort of worked in the past for the US and Britain with Iraq. Granted, the WMD case was knocked down eventually, but the lie was good enough to achieve lift off for an attack, invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, and to a lesser degree the same system netted a result — with the help of a NATO smokescreen in Libya in 2011. The Obama Administration believed it would merely follow the already existing template for ‘humanitarian intervention’.

The case

Thus far we can point to three concerted attempts in 2013 by the US and its NATO allies to fabricate a case for chemical weapons in Syria. The first was a plan allegedly hatched by the British with the help of Qatar, through the use of a safe proxy to provide‘deniability’ — in this case, a UK defense contractor named Britam. The plan was simple and would have gone unnoticed if not for the inconvenience of it being prematurely exposed in the “Britam Leaks” from an anonymous hack back in January. The plan was to take old Gadaffi era chemical weapons stocks from Libya, transfer them out via Benghazi, and then plant them in Syria in order to blame the Assad government and thus open to door for western military intervention. The leaked emails also indicated clearly that Qatar would be paying a substantive sum for the operation to be coordinated through Britam. The UK’s Daily Mail had initially run the Britam Leaks story, but then suddenly pulled in down from their website within 24 hours of the story running.

The second attempt to make a chemical weapons charge stick in Syria came in March, following reports of a deadly chlorine attack in the northern region of Aleppo, with both sides claiming the other was responsible. With Washington openly touting its agenda of regime change and the Obama ‘Red Line’ promising intervention in Syria if either side was found to use chemical weapons, the obvious motive would fall on in the rebel opposition camp. The Aleppo case that was quickly knocked down by a number of alternative media outlets including 21st Century Wire, who outlined a detailed and compelling case to illustrate how manufactured chlorine munitions were not used in Aleppo by the Syria government forces, but rather, makeshift chlorine ‘dirty bombs’ were assembled and likely detonated by a Saudi-linked Islamic rebel confab originating out of Iraq, who coincidentally, had a track record of exploding the same devices before in Iraq.

The third attempt was led by British scientists who claimed they had found evidence of chemical weapons that were used in Syria in relation to two incidents in the Damascus area around March 19th. Critics rightly pointed out the inherent problems with their case, including the obvious chain of custody issue that meant the ‘evidence’ brought from Syria to a British lab could easily have been contaminated, or even fabricated in order to come to a conclusion which the British government wanted in order to get a green light for military intervention.

The UN’s own investigation into chemical weapons claims, led by Carla Del Ponte, has concluded that that witness and victim testimonies clearly show that Western and Gulf-backed Syrian rebels used chemical weapons such as the nerve gas sarin. This is at odds with US Secretary of State John Kerry who claims to having seen himself “strong evidence” that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons. Turkey has also entered the fray this week, themselves claiming to have seen evidence of Assad’s use of chemical weapons.

Seeking truth

So who is telling the truth? From a common sense point of view, there is no motive, not does it make any real sense for the Syrian army to deploy chemical weapons in there fight, especially since the ‘Red Line’ has been laid down already. The rebels on the other hand have a motive, as does Washington, London and its NATO allies like Turkey — who have all been actively facilitating and aiding the rebel factions in Syria since the conflict began two years ago. They have a vested interest in any outcome which involves Western military intervention.

Meanwhile, in Washington the confusion has already begun to set in with the true believers and war hawks insisting that the UN investigation has reached the wrong conclusions.

In an attempt to control the political damage, Jay Carney swiftly moved to derail any UN findings that Syria’s rebels — and not President Bashar Assad’s forces, used chemical weapons. The White House Press Secretary attempts to re-spin the argument, trying in vain to hold Obama’s ‘Red Line’:

“We find it incredible, not credible, that the opposition has used chemical weapons,” he said. “We think that any use of chemical weapons in Syria is almost certain to have been done by the Assad regime.”

Already painted in a corner, President Obama is left to watch his ‘Red Line’ on chemical weapons — turn pink. It was a fatal mistake by President Obama to take such an illogical line so early on, but his statement was merely a reflection of Washington’s own schizophrenic and irrational foreign policy which has chosen to openly side with known al Qaeda Islamist guerrilla fighters in both Libya and in Syria.

The ‘Red Line’ was a historical first, in the sense that this ultimatum was woven to insure a case for intervention either way and would mean that the US would be free to attack the Assad government militarily even if the foreign terrorist confab were the guilty party. It was an attempt to essentially widen the definition of a case for intervention, essentially rewriting the language of international law and replacing it with language more suitable for a global police force who could act out under the guise of ‘keeping the peace’. An extraordinary first in global diplomacy for sure, and a very difficult line to enforce in view of an international community cannot see the sense in such an insane equation put forth by a US President.

Another reason for Obama’s fading ‘Pink Line’ in Syria is the Benghazi Hearings. Events of this week have finally begun to expose the inadequacy in US intelligence circles, as well as the institutional corruption that allows political gain to trump American lives in Washington. Rival factions within the US power structure, including those of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been implicated in both using and covering-up what happened in Benghazi.

Much more damaging than this however, is that Benghazi links the White House directly to the Syrian proxy war. The hearings have already begun to open the lid on how the US covert ‘national-wrecking’ road show were facilitating both the transfer of both weapons and foreign al Qaeda fighters from Libya in order to help destabilize the sovereign nation of Syria. Ambassador Chris Stevens and the others who died when Washington was forced to pull the plug on their operation there, are now known to be mere expendable cannon fodder — a revelation that has disgusted many American voters who would have previously turned a blind eye to any similar covert and underhanded US operations overseas.

On Wednesday Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul(R) weighed in on the Benghazi debacle, in a direct challenge to the President and Hillary Clinton, inferring that the Sept. 11, 2012 attack unfolded as a result of a secret arms trade, and rubbishing the previous government line put forward by Susan Rice and the US Intelligence community that the attack was a result of a YouTube film, “The Innocence of Muslims”. During a recent CNN interview Paul explains:

“I’ve actually always suspected that, although I have no evidence, that maybe we were facilitating arms leaving Libya going through Turkey into Syria,” he said.

“Were they trying to obscure that there was an arms operation going on at the CIA annex?” 

Additional heat has been put on Washington with regards to Syria last week, as Israel’s unprovoked bombing raids inside Syria have appeared to have thrown a spanner into the works of Washington’s carefully woven public relations plan, with many critics believing that Israel’s raid on Damascus was sanctioned by Washington — in effect, using Israel to help soften-up the Assad forces for a sharper blow later on.

Obama’s fading ‘pink line’ also means that both neo-conservatives and those in Washington who are guided by Israeli influence have been forced to declare their wider intentions in arguing that attacking Syria is important right now — because Iran would not take future US threats seriously unless Obama follows through with his ‘red line’. Such a political force majeure means that those once covert plans to take down both Syria and Iran have now been forced into the open.

Russian-led diplomacy efforts have proposed an international conference on Syria, but the major powers may not be ready until the end of June, which will put more stress on the Western agenda and their foreign guerrilla fighter factions who are currently engaged in a dead lock in Syria. In light of the UN’s guilty chemical weapons findings against the rebel opposition, US desires to ship arms directly to those same rebel proxies — no matter how insistent Senator hawks like John McCain and Lindsey Graham might be – will no longer play so well in the public arena.

On top of all this, Washington and London have been accused of steering Syria’s ‘government in exile’ who, along with western-supported opposition groups inside Syria have refused to engage in any dialogue with the government of Syria, an outsider engineered move which has completely smashed any diplomatic or political solution from the onset.

The chemical weapons crowd in Washington and London are now on very shaky ground indeed.

This article originally appeared on : Global Research

UK unemployment rises to 2.52 million, the ONS reveals.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

The US military has conducted a test flight of an assassination drone as large as a fighter jet off the deck of an American aircraft carrier, pointing to plans to fly the unmanned aircraft from anywhere in the world.

Tuesdayâ„¢s test flight of the X-47B drone, designed to take off and land on an aircraft carrier, will mean the American military would no longer have to seek the permission of foreign governments to use their air bases to launch unmanned planes, AP reports on Wednesday.

“As our access to overseas ports, forward operating locations and airspace is diminished around the world, the value of the aircraft carrier and the air wing becomes more and more important,” said Rear Adm. Ted Branch, commander of Naval Air Forces Atlantic, following the test flight off the coast of Virginia in Eastern United States.

“So today is history,” said Adm. Branch.

The persisting US militaryâ„¢s bid to expand its capabilities to launch its assassination and spying drones comes amid the rising criticism of the American use of Predator and Reaper aircrafts to conduct intelligence missions and launch terror missile strikes against targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen as part of its so-called targeted killing plans.

This is while a growing number of critics in the US and abroad have charged that assassination drone attacks cause massive civilian deaths and are carried out with inadequate oversight.

“This is the next generation of military technology – the unmanned vehicles, the unmanned submersibles, the unmanned aircraft,” said James Lewis, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Å“This will be the future of warfare, and it will be a warfare that is a little less risky for humans but maybe a little more effective when it comes to delivering weapons and effect.”

According to the report, while the X-47B isn’t intended for operational use, it will assist Navy authorities to develop future carrier-based drones.

The drones could begin operating by 2020, according to Rear Adm. Mat Winter, the Navy’s program executive officer for unmanned aviation and strike weapons.

Developed by Northrop Grumman under a 2007 contract at a cost of $1.4 billion, the X-47B is capable of carrying weapons and providing around-the-clock intelligence, surveillance and targeting, according to the report, citing Navy officials.

The X-47B can reach an altitude of more than 40,000 feet (12,192 meters) and has a range of more than 2,100 nautical miles (3,890 kilometers), versus 675 for the Predator.

Moreover, the US Navy plans to demonstrate that the assassination drone can be refueled in flight, which would give it even greater range.

MFB/MFB

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

This article originally appeared on : Global Research

Six countries have broken the ice and won Arctic Council observer status at the latest conference. Melting Arctic ice is exciting countries remote from the region, seeking access to promising hydrocarbon deposits and new logistics routes.

Below the ice and cold waters
of the Arctic Ocean are hidden vast natural reserves: approximately
20 per cent of oil reserves worldwide, about 30 per cent of the
planet’s natural gas, there are also believe to be deposits of
platinum, gold and tin — just for starters.

Arctic climate change is progressing twice as fast as in the
rest of the world. As the Arctic ice cap decreases year by year,
the vast Arctic natural resources and sea routes are becoming more
accessible.

This biennial Arctic Council ministerial session has been hosted
in Sweden’s northernmost town of Kiruna. The session has been
attended by top diplomats and officials. Russia’s Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov and the US Secretary of State John Kerry were both
present.

The main intrigue of this year’s session has been the 14 bidding
countries, foremost China, which have been trying to acquire an
observer state status in the council to keep a finger on the
decision-making pulse of the organization, attend the AC meetings
and propose new projects.

The session agreed to grant permanent Arctic Council observer
status to only six states out of 14 bidders: China, India, Italy,
Japan, Singapore and South Korea.

AC observer status can only be granted if all permanent members
of the council agree to it. That did not happen this time to the
EU, for example, the bid of which has been postponed.

Also at the session, Canada took over the chairmanship from
Sweden, which presided in the AC for the last two years.

Tropical icemen: Asian economies ram Arctic access

The biggest Asian economies – Japan, China and India – have all
expressed readiness to join the Arctic race and were introduced to
stage one of the Arctic Council.

But among them there is a country that invested heavily to give
legs to its bid – China.

“Joining the council is more a political statement from
countries like China,” Malte Humpert, an executive director at
the Washington-based nonpartisan think tank Arctic Institute, told
The Wall Street Journal. “The idea of having a seat at the table
in a region that is likely to become another realm of
geopolitics.”

Beijing has been heavily investing into the northern states in
recent years, particularly Iceland, which this April signed a
free-trade deal with Beijing — the first in Europe – and Denmark,
visited by now former Chinese President Hu Jintao in June 2012.
Chinese businessmen are particularly interested in investing in
Denmark’s self-governing Greenland.

Chinese Arctic activities seem to bear fruit as the Nordic
countries finally supported China’s membership of the AC.

“Our opinion is that the countries which have a legitimate
interest in discussing Arctic issues must be accepted as observers
in the Arctic Council,” Danish Foreign Minister Villy Sovndal
said recently in an interview.

China’s main economic rival in Asia, India, also has got on the
Arctic train and is actively attaining commitment of the AC member
states, first and foremost Russia’s — having been Moscow’s most
devoted arms buyer for years now.

It must be mentioned that so far Canada, which will preside in
the council till 2015, has been rather cautious about granting AC
observer status to newcomer nations. Ottawa anticipates that
further expansion of the observer nations might shift the agenda of
the body away from the needs of Arctic indigenous peoples or even
replace the AC gatherings to other places from the actual Arctic
region.

Leona Aglukkaq, the minister of Canada’s Northern Economic
Development Agency, said that admission of new observers is a
“serious issue.”

Aglukkaq, raised in the Arctic himself, shared concern that the
voices of the indigenous participants “are not
diminished.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry has specified its stance, pointing
out that a new observer must “respect the Arctic countries’
sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction in the
Arctic.”

When the Arctic Council was formed in 1996, it was for years
regarded as a coordination body for environmental issues and
scientific research.

But the more the Arctic ice melts, the more persistent prominent
financial capitals are to become regional players in the extreme
north. They realize that the Arctic region’s emergence as a new
geopolitical center is on the horizon.

As of now the Arctic is dominated by the eight member countries
of the Arctic Council, which have de jure divided the region into
zones of national interest and are eager to keep the status
quo.

This article originally appeared on : RT

Anthony Gucciardi
Infowars.com
May 15, 2013

What does the mainstream media do when they don’t want to discuss a real issue that diverts away the topic from political theater? Simply deem it a wild ‘conspiracy theory’ and pretend it doesn’t exist.

It’s a tried and true method. It has worked for a long line of question-dodging politicians, with both Bush and Obama each speaking out against ‘conspiracy theories’ and those who warn against corruption and tyranny in government. As I detailed last week, in fact, Obama recently spoke to the graduating class of Ohio State University and repeated such warnings. He told the class to ignore and reject those warning of government tyranny, and went on to praise the new United States government system he called ‘brave’ and ‘unique’.

And anyone who decides to attack this ‘brave and unique’ government, or anyone who even questions reports by the government? They must be conspiracy nuts. I joined John B. Wells of Coast to Coast AM a couple weeks ago to discuss how this media tactic works and how I decided to turn to reality over media theater:

GOVERNMENT CRITICISM NOW EQUALS ‘CONSPIRACY THEORIES’

The easiest way to deal with real issues certainly isn’t to refute the questions or discuss the information. No, it’s to brand those asking questions as conspiracy theorists. That, or just censor them altogether. Even Google employees have issued warnings on the official company blog regarding the continued requests initiated by governments around the globe to ‘pull’ content from Google’s massive search and blog service. From Google Plus (their Facebook equivalent) posts to legitimate search rankings, Google says that governments are demanding all forms of government criticism be taken down immediately.

Right now, over 24,000 pieces of content may disappear if Google caves. That’s 24,000 pieces of content that likely includes my articles and other alternative news pieces that criticize our ‘brave’ new government. And expect thousands to be added to that list very quickly.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

But of course we must ask: What do they have to fear? I mean after all, if the questions I ask regarding the mega banks admittedly funding the Mexican drug cartels and terror cells are fake (even though NBC reports it’s confirmed along with other news sources), then why be worried? If it’s all just ‘conspiracy’ bunk, then it sure would be easy to go ahead and dispel the rumors once and for all. Obama himself could go on air and break down how ‘conspiracy theories’, like the well-respected eyewitness coach asking questions about the Boston bombing drill that occurred the morning of the race (and not even slightly insinuating anything) are not real.

But, of course, it is because the media cannot refute legitimate questions regarding mega banks and government corruption. Instead, they lump them in with things that no one in the alternative news actually believes like conspiracy theories about Elvis and other silly things. It all ties in to the well-scripted media theater that must run without interruption – no questions allowed!

This post originally appeared at Story Leak.

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This article was posted: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 at 5:39 am

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This article originally appeared on : Infowars

Infowars.com
May 15, 2013

A blogger known as “Sam” takes a stroll on the grounds of The Grove, the site of Bilderberg 2013 in June, and gets harassed and followed by police on the ground and in a helicopter.

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This article was posted: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 at 5:40 am

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This article originally appeared on : Infowars

Mike Adams
Natural News
May 15, 2013

Associated Press reporters are outraged over recent revelations that the Obama administration engaged in a “sweeping seizure” of the private phone records of AP reporters as part of a Justice Department investigation. No probable cause was given to anyone, and hundreds of AP reporters were simply deemed guilty by the government as their phone call records were confiscated without explanation.

Politico is now reporting:

The behind-the-scenes anger – and heads-down determination of the AP staff members to keep doing their jobs amid the extraordinary public flap – comes as top executives from the wire service have mounted an aggressive public pushback against DOJ, calling its snooping a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” in a letter fired off to Attorney General Eric Holder. And yet something of a bunkerlike atmosphere has taken hold at the AP in Washington with no bureau-wide meetings or announcements about the DOJ’s action, AP sources told POLITICO.

But what’s not being reported is that the Associated Press helped create the very police state it now condemns for violating its freedoms and privacy.

How AP helped build a tyrannical government

Over the last several years, AP has come down on the side of big government on practically every story, routinely attacking the Bill of Rights, demonizing protectors of the Constitution and endorsing government monopolies over everything from health care to the money supply.

The AP, in fact, falsely refers to itself as a “news organization” when the truth is that it has functioned far more like a big government propaganda mouthpiece that anything resembling independent news reporting.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

In addition, the AP all but declared war on alternative medicine back in 2009, and their reporters openly and willfully lie about water fluoridation, yet another big government program to poison the people.

The AP apparently thought that if it went along with the tyranny, it would be given a pass by the oppressive, criminal government now in power in the United States of America. But they were wrong: Going along with the police state does not make you immune to it, and now the AP is coming to learn that the hard way.

Suddenly the AP is crying wolf

If you read the AP’s articles now, they are suddenly crying wolf about how terribly the government is treating them. Here’s an example from today, when the AP reported on itself, saying:

The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than a hundred journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters…” said AP president Gary Pruitt.

Ah, but the government needs no justification under a lawless administration, you see. In an administration stacked floor to ceiling with unindicted criminals – including the Attorney General himself – there can no longer be any reasonable expectation of due process.

This is not real America, Mr. Pruitt. Thanks to people like you, we are now living under enemy occupation, enslaved under an administration which absolutely hates both the First and Second Amendments. This is why you are being targeted.

The AP conveniently forgets all this when promoting tyranny that impacts everybody else. When the AP calls for taking away guns from all Americans, it forgets that the Second Amendment protects the First Amendment. Without someone to limit the criminal activity of government, sooner or later the government comes knocking on your door, too.

Yes, even if you work for the Associated Press.

No one is safe when the government erases all limits to its power

In truth, no one is safe when the government abandons due process and abuses its power to surveil, intimidate or oppress citizens. The irony in all this is that the AP helped promote the propaganda of the very system that now targets its own reporters for illegal, unethical surveillance.

But this is only the beginning of where all this is headed. If the Associated Press and other news organizations continue to push the lies and deceptions of Big Government – including pushing all the false flag narratives used to expand the police state – we will soon end up in a nation where reporters who question the government’s actions are simply dragged out of their offices, lined up against the walls of their own buildings and shot in the head by government operatives. Who needs due process when the government can do no wrong and the President tells college graduates that governments can never become evil?

What the AP is learning now is that no one is safe when government abandons the rule of law and does whatever it wants, without any limit or restraint. This incident is becoming a live history lesson for AP reporters, who are suddenly discovering that all the so-called “conspiracy theories” about governments going bad are completely true!

Is the AP now an anti-government group for criticizing the Justice Department?

In fact, according to the AP’s own previous reporting, the Associated Press itself can now be characterized as an “anti-government group” because it is suddenly questioning government. If the AP of 2012 were covering this story involving the AP of 2013, it would be writing that some crazy anti-government group is unjustly criticizing the Department of Justice which is only protecting America from terrorism. Only when the AP itself becomes targeted by tyranny does the organization realize what’s going on.

That’s the funny thing about tyranny, you see: The more you push it, the more it sooner or later comes back to bite you in the ass. Perhaps with this incident now waking up AP reporters to the police state reality they helped build, we may see a change in rhetoric from the Associated Press. Suddenly government conspiracy theories are no longer fictions but are first-person facts experienced directly by AP reporters themselves.

Suddenly the rantings of people like Alex Jones – who has been warning for over a decade that the government is spying on you – don’t seem so crazy anymore. Suddenly the government’s narrative on everything in recent history – Benghazi, Obamacare, gun control and even the Boston Marathon bombing – must be called into question.

What the government really did in all this is admit to the AP that yes, the federal government is a lawless, criminal gang that respects no limits on its power. If the AP doesn’t now redirect its staff to initiate a deep investigation into the Obama administration’s abuse of power, then there’s no hope whatsoever for the future of the entire organization. Unless we stop the tyranny, the AP will be reduced to nothing more than a joke of a propaganda mouthpiece that does nothing more than reprint White House press releases and lick the boots of government officials who tell them what to print.

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This article was posted: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 at 5:41 am

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This article originally appeared on : Infowars

Infowars.com
May 15, 2013

SkyderALERT is a global movement fighting to end the world’s most dangerous environmental program ever — GeoEngineering and SRM: Using airplanes to spray the sky with toxic metals and particles, intending to block the sun and force climate change while creating unknown consequences.

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This article was posted: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 at 5:38 am

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This article originally appeared on : Infowars

Mike Adams
Natural News
May 15, 2013

Angelina Jolie announced yesterday that she had both of her breasts surgically removed even though she had no breast cancer. She carries the BRCA1 gene, and she has been tricked into believing that genetic code is some sort of absolute blueprint to disease expression – which it most certainly is not. Countless millions of women carry the BRCA1 gene and never express breast cancer because they lead healthy, anti-cancer lifestyles based on smart nutrition, exercise, sensible sunlight exposure and avoidance of cancer-causing chemicals.

Jolie, like many other women who have been deluded by cancer quackery, decided the best way to prevent the risk of breast cancer was not to lead a healthy, anti-cancer lifestyle, but rather to surgically remove her breasts in what she describes as “three months of medical procedures.”

…just in case, you know. Because you can never be too careful these days, with the cancer industry scaring women half to death at every opportunity. “My breasts might murder me!” seems to be the slogan of many women these days, all of whom are victims of outrageous cancer industry propaganda and fear mongering.

Let me set the record straight: Your breasts are not your enemy! The cancer industry is far more likely to kill you than your breasts. (But more on that later…)

Women’s liberation crusade: Off with your breasts!

Worse than merely maiming herself in an act of outright medical quackery, Angelina Jolie has positioned her decision as some sort of women’s liberation crusade, acting and talking as if her “choice” to remove her breasts somehow blazes a new path of female power for all women. (How sick is this, really?)

Oh, what a mess Jolie has made of herself. She has maimed her own body with no medical justification whatsoever, then celebrated this horrible disfiguration through some sort of twisted perception of what womanhood really is. Being an empowered woman doesn’t mean cutting off your breasts and aborting live babies – even though both of these things are often celebrated by delusional women’s groups. Being an empowered woman means protecting your health, your body and your womanhood by honoring and respecting your body, not maiming it.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

A vivacious, confident, healthy woman who protects her fertility and nourishes her unborn child is far more heroic and empowering than someone who maims her own body as some sort of sick sacrifice to the cancer industry. Angelina Jolie, as much as she is often viewed as a symbol of female power, seems to have completely lost touch with the core truths of honoring the “temple” of your own female body.

Cancer is never limited to just the breast

Cancer, by the way, is a systemic problem when it emerges, not a local problem limited to just the breasts or other organs. It may be diagnosed in breast tissues, but that’s not the only place it’s growing. The idea that someone can prevent cancer by just removing their breasts is absurd. If the conditions of cancer are present in the body – due to nutritional deficiencies, exposure to chemicals, radiation, etc. – cancer will develop in many different places, not just breast tissues. Removing an organ that might possibly someday be one of the many locations in which cancer is diagnosed is completely irrational and medically abhorrent. Logically, it’s a lot like arguing that you can avoid flat tires on your car by removing all the tires!

If you really want to learn the truth about cancer – and SAVE your breasts! – get our “New Cancer Solutions” CD set. The third CD is absolutely amazing, offering astounding information that can literally help save your life. You can also hear the entire collection for free during our New Cancer Solutions Healing Summit launching next Monday, May 20th.

If Angelina Jolie had heard the information on these CDs, she would have said, “NO!” to the cancer fear mongers and learned that there are far more effective and empowering ways to protect yourself from cancer. Women everywhere need to hear truly empowering, honoring, holistic information about cancer and stop listening to the insanity of the cancer industry and its delusional, victimized spokespeople like Angelina Jolie.

Celebrating the medical abuse of women

The mainstream media is heralding Jolie’s decision to cut off both her perfectly healthy breasts, announcing Jolie is “admired for bravery.” In a NYT op-ed, Jolie wrote, “I hope that other women can benefit from my experience.” (No, I’m not making this up. She literally wants other healthy women to cut off their breasts, too…)

The medical industry, never known to back down from an opportunity to physically abuse women for profit, is jumping on the double mastectomy bandwagon. In a Businessweek article, a genetic counselor named Rebecca Nagy declares, “Having this conversation empowers us all. It’s wonderful what she’s done.”

Wonderful? To cut off parts of your body that have NO disease? With this logic, abortions are cancer prevention, too, because those babies might one day grow up and develop tumors. Better to kill them early and “prevent cancer,” right?

The irrationality of Jolie’s decision is truly sickening. Even worse is that idea that she may inspire other women to have their healthy bodies maimed, too. If Jolie cut off both legs and called it a “choice” to prevent leg cancer, I have little doubt many women would follow her lead and cut off their legs, too. Jolie herself says she may have her ovaries cut out in the future because they, too, might someday get cancer.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see where this medical insanity ultimately leads. Got a risk of kidney cancer? Remove your kidneys. Risk of colon cancer? Take out your colon. Lung cancer, perhaps? Remove your lungs, just in case! That’s the logic of Angelina Jolie who has been completely deceived by the cancer industry into maiming her own body based on nothing for medical fear mongering and cancer quackery.

Never doubt the fact that fear can be an effective marketing tool when it comes to breast cancer, by the way. The cancer industry rakes in billions of dollars a year based on irrational fears spread by misinformed women.

Medical maiming going viral across the population of sheeple

There’s nothing quite as exciting and heroic as having your body parts chopped off by surgeons and then declaring yourself to be a “pre-vivor” of cancer. Yep, that’s the new term. You’re not really a “survivor” of cancer, since you never had it. You’re a “pre-vivor” because you preempted the cancer.

Or, just as likely, you got suckered into the most delusional decision of your life and had a bunch of quacks slice off pieces of your body that were perfectly healthy to begin with. This is medical insanity at its worst… especially given that a woman’s risk of breast cancer can be reduced by 78% using nothing but vitamin D. Yeah, take some vitamin D and keep your breasts!What a deal, eh?

Why aren’t male cancer doctors cutting off their own testicles?

You’ll note, by the way, that men never have their testicles removed to lower the risk of testicular cancer. Not even the male cancer doctors, oncologists and surgeons who are slicing off women’s breasts all day long. Sure, they think cutting off breasts is a great idea, but ask one of them to part with their own testicles to “prevent” cancer, and they’ll look at you like you’ve gone, well, nuts.

Because cutting off your testicles to prevent testicular cancer that you don’t even have would be stupid, of course. Pure quackery. Suggest it to a man you know and you’ll either be laughed at or punched in the mouth. No ethical doctor would ever remove a perfectly healthy set of testicles from a man who has no symptoms of testicular cancer. The very idea is absurd and possibly even risking a medical malpractice lawsuit.

So why is it somehow acceptable to cut off the breasts of “empowered women” who think they are making some sort of social statement by maiming their own perfectly healthy bodies?

(SNIP story here if you are publishing this on another site. You do not need to include the cancer CD mentioned below…)

Get answers for cancer… and save your breasts!

Inform yourself and you can protect your body from the insane, knife-wielding cancer surgeons. Get the New Cancer Solutions CD set and empower yourself with real answers rather than cancer industry disinformation and deadly propaganda.

The CD includes the following discussions:

The Consciousness of Cancer — The Health Ranger, Mike Adams
Mike Adams, the founder and editor of NaturalNews.com presents, “The Consciousness of Cancer” – a new way of looking at cancer.

The Compassionate Oncologist — James Forsythe, M.D., H.M.D
James W. Forsythe, M.D., H.M.D., has long been considered one of the most respected physicians in the United States. Dr. Forsythe graduated with honors from UC Berkeley and earned his medical degree at UCSF. This presentation reveals a NEW way of caring for cancer patients with an amazing success rate. You’ll learn about the most important cancer test available today; Dr. Forsythe’s 3-week cancer treatment program plus much more!

Stop Making Cancer — Thomas Lodi, M.D.
Thomas Lodi, M.D. completed his medical degree in 1985 from the University of Hawaii. This program will help you understand cancer — like you’ve never heard before. Discover the best ways to stop making cancer; eliminate cancer cells without harming the body and effectively strengthen the immune system — our ultimate defense against cancer. As Dr. Lodi says, the “bioterrain is everything”. This show will teach you how to prevent disease from the inside out.

Life Over Cancer — Keith I. Block, M.D.
Keith Block, M.D. is an internationally recognized expert in integrative oncology. Referred to by many as the “father of integrative oncology”, Dr. Block has published more than 75 scientific papers and his model of individualized integrative oncology continues to set the standard for the practice of comprehensive cancer care in the United States. This presentation goes way beyond “early detection” and teaches you about the best diet, supplement and exercise routines to promote optimal health.

Six Pillars of Health — Richard Linchitz, M.D.
Dr. Richard Linchitz graduated with honors from Cornell University Medical College, and completed his residency at the famed University of California, San Francisco, Moffit Hospital. In 1998, after being diagnosed with lung cancer, Dr. Linchitz changed everything about his life, career and overall perspective about medicine. Killing cancer cells is not enough — learn about detoxification, stress reduction techniques, hormone balancing plus much more! Dr. Linchitz believes his 6-step program is the best way to stay healthy — always!

The Regeneration Effect — John Apsley, MD(E), ND, DC
Dr. John Apsley is a physician and researcher who for the past 30 years has specialized in the rehabilitation and reversal of chronic degenerative illnesses through accelerated tissue repair and cellular regeneration. Dr. Apsley teaches cancer patients about “The Regeneration Effect — Curing versus Controlling Advanced Cancer”. There’s a NEW chemistry of cancer remedies — find out about the latest advances in cancer testing; non-toxic cancer treatments plus scientifically proven ways to prevent cancer. The power is in your hands to get healthy today.

Get the full CD set by clicking here.

Or listen to the entire seminar for free on May 20th, as we launch our New Cancer Solutions Healing Summit.

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This article was posted: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 at 5:36 am

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This article originally appeared on : Infowars

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Economic Collapse | Does Barack Obama have any idea what is going on in the government that he is supposedly running?

This article originally appeared on : Infowars

The recent Ontario provincial budget did not do very much to uphold Kathleen Wynne‘s claim to the title of ‘Social Justice Premier.’ Most of those on social assistance received an increase in their benefits that was below the rate of inflation while no increase whatsoever was provided to those subsisting on the minimum wage. Modest improvements in the amount of part time earnings and assets that can be kept without having them clawed back will not come close to preventing those on Ontario Works (OW) and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) from falling even deeper into poverty this year. The utter absurdity of the Liberal assertion that they have shown any commitment to ‘poverty reduction’ can be seen in the fact that single people on OW are living on benefits that have lost 56 per cent of their spending power since 1993. Even those on ODSP, who were not subject to the Mike Harris 21.6 per cent benefit cut in 1995, are at an income level that is 22 per cent below where it was twenty years ago.

Liberal Finance Minister, Charles Sousa, asserted that, during the decade his Party has held power in this Province, social assistance rates have increased by 15 per cent. Given the rise in the cost of living during those years, Sousa’s comment is a de facto admission that people are significantly poorer now than they were when the Tories left office.

Still, it is apparent that the Wynne Liberals are only in the opening stages of a process of regressive welfare redesign and that their biggest attacks lie ahead. The blueprint they will use in developing this strategy is last year’s, Brighter Prospects, the Report of the Commission for the Review of Social Assistance in Ontario. This study of the system was undertaken by Frances Lankin and Munir Sheikh and it charts a course for a thoroughly regressive remodelling of social assistance in line with the needs of the prevailing international agenda of austerity. The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty’s (OCAP) analysis of this document was entitled “Brighter Prospects for Cheap Labour” which speaks to its essential thrust. It charts a course for dismantling ODSP, by downloading the Program to the municipal level of government, reassessing those who have already qualified for disabled benefits and reorganizing the means of obtaining these benefits in such a way that disabled people will be forced to compete for the lowest paying jobs on offer. I’ll return to the situation in Ontario shortly but, first, I want place it in the context of the long standing attack on income support programs and the emerging international strategy to attack disability benefits in particular.

Welfare and Wages

The attack on income support has been central to the process of imposing austerity on working-class populations because of the connection between the adequacy of such programs and the bargaining power of employed workers and unions. From Marx’s concept of an ‘industrial reserve army’ to the notion that economists like Milton Friedman have put forward of a ‘natural rate’ of unemployment, it has long been understood that the level of joblessness is of great importance in determining the balance of forces between employers and workers. However, it is not just a question of how many are out of work. The degree of desperation among the unemployed and the level of intimidation affecting those still employed are greatly influenced by the adequacy or otherwise of income support systems. In fact, subject only to limits that may be set by social dislocation or organized resistance, the interests of employers are best served when unemployment is totally ‘natural’ and synonymous with outright destitution.

The process of undermining income support, in this Province and throughout Canada, has spanned decades and taken a massive toll. Unemployment insurance has been reduced to the point where only a minority of the jobless even qualify for it. 74 per cent of Canada’s unemployed qualified in 1990 but, by 2004, this level had fallen to 35 per cent.[1] Uniform national standards for provincial social assistance programs were destroyed in 1993 with the elimination of the Canada Assistance Plan. The spending power of social assistance payments in all provinces has been driven down massively. Supplementary programs have been gutted and rules tightened considerably to make it harder to obtain assistance and to retain benefits once qualifying for them. When the Ontario Tories came to power, in 1995, the system of providing a separate and relatively secure benefit to single parents, established in the 1920s as ‘mother’s allowance,’ was eliminated and never restored. All of this has forced people into a low wage sector that has expanded considerably.

Today in Ontario, very much as part of an international trend, the next great step in the process of smashing income support systems has been recognized by political leaders and policy makers as a drive to fundamentally undermine benefit systems for the disabled. In this regard, the David Cameron Government in the UK is on the cutting edge of the attack.

Cuts in UK and U.S.

A vast array of austerity measures has been introduced by the British Government and many of these impact poor and disabled people. These have included the merging of jobless and disabled benefits and a huge, privatized effort to reassess disability claims so as to rob people of their benefits en masse. A September 26, 2012 article in the British Daily Record reported that the Department of Work and Pensions had admitted that, of those who had by then been cut off disabled benefits, 55 per cent were without work or income, 30 per cent were existing on the jobseekers allowance and a mere 15 per cent were employed. As this unfolds, one British Tory MP has openly called for the introduction of a sub minimum wage for the disabled.

The sheer viciousness of the way the British Government has hounded disabled people can be found in another British media report dealing with people in Scotland living with Motor Neurone Disease (MND). This neurological condition causes loss of ability to walk, speak or even breathe without assistive devices and it leads to death, usually within fourteen months. However, the British Department of Work and Pensions has determined that ‘terminal illness’ will only be defined as conditions that will claim your life within a six month period. If you are expected to live longer than that, you will be required to take ‘fitness to work’ tests and be subject to the infamous ‘bedroom tax’ imposed on April 1 of this year. This has meant MND sufferers have been cut off benefits and lost their housing.

Similar attacks are now being developed in the United States and a glance at media coverage there shows that a veritable campaign is underway to ensure disabled people are targeted. As early as February 12 of last year, we find an online article with Business Insider entitled “The unemployed are now going on disability and it’s costing the Government billions.” The idea being put forward is that a stagnant U.S. economy is creating a lot of long term jobless and many of them are avoiding precarious welfare programs by registering claims for disability with an overly lax system. They are not, it is asserted, really disabled but a population of hidden unemployed who need to be flushed out from their dishonest place of refuge and comfort.

Liberal’s Plans in Ontario

This is the context in which the Liberals are planning major changes to social assistance in this Province. They have now held power for a decade and, during this time, have allowed poverty to intensify. In the last period, they have fully embraced the austerity agenda and have begun to fashion their own version of it here in Ontario as their recent Budget demonstrates.

Given this Government’s track record and the directions being taken in the UK that I have described, it is an appalling miscalculation to see something positive in the above mentioned Lankin/Sheikh Report. This document does not press for income adequacy for people on ODSP and for barriers to accessing the program to be removed. Rather, it is all about creating a system of disability benefits that judges everything by standards of ‘employability’ with a maximum drive to low waged work as its dominant consideration. They go so far as to advocate the setting up of ‘employer’s councils’ to assist in the process.

The next period will be one in which there will be a serious need for communities to take action against the impending attack on ODSP and the disabled as part of a broader assault on income support. However, a barrier to such urgently needed action exists in the form of a political perspective that has come to be known as ‘constructive engagement.’ A network of social agencies and other organizations has, over a long period, developed a co-operative and consultative relationship with the Liberal Government. In the face of all evidence to the contrary, they insist that the Liberals can be convinced, through education and discussion, to embark on a course of progressive social assistance reform and ‘poverty reduction.’

In the specific context of Wynne’s recent austerity budget, this perspective of positively reinforcing rather than challenging the Liberals has become an even more serious political problem as we can see from a number of reactions to this budget. The Daily Bread Food Bank issued a statement that begins, “Measures announced today in the 2013 budget are important steps to help move Ontario forward in transforming social assistance.” The 25 in 5 Poverty Reduction Network put out a press release that claims, “this budget puts money in the pockets of low-income Ontarians and starts the process of social assistance reform that will create greater security and opportunity for low-income Ontarians.”

The Toronto Star has played the leading media role in promoting the views of the constructive engagement initiative. Obviously, respectable lobbying, as opposed to community mobilization, is exactly what the liberal Star wants to focus on and promote. So, we see a column from Martin Reg Cohn, in the wake of the budget, driving home the message that progressive welfare reform is on track. Entitled “Good news on the poverty front in Kathleen Wynne’s first budget,” the column speaks of “several surprisingly robust improvements to Ontario’s current welfare mess.” These are, however, only ‘the low hanging fruit’ and, for the bigger things to come, Cohn points to the ‘landmark’ Lankin/Sheikh Report. The Star, characterizes a budget that makes people poorer as a bold step forward and presents the regressive blueprint that the government is working from as a pathway to major improvements for those in poverty.

As part of the Budget, the Liberals announced that they would be establishing a special committee of Cabinet to take forward implementation of the Lankin/Sheikh Report. Doubtless, there will be yet more ‘stakeholder’ meetings and consultations, many of them handled personally by Wynne’s new ‘progressive’ Minister of Community and Social Services, Ted McMeekin. They will be a trap designed to provide legitimacy and, as much as possible, divert potential challenges to the government into safe channels. This demobilization strategy must be overcome. Last year, when the Liberals announced plans to eliminate the vital Community Start Up and Maintenance Benefit (CSUMB) for people on social assistance, OCAP was able to link up with unions, First Nations communities and local anti poverty organizations, through the Raise the Rates Campaign, and organize resistance to the cut across Ontario. Even though community action was not able to prevent the downloading of the program onto local governments, the restoration of $42-million of the $60-million cut was achieved. It was a fragile and partial victory but an important one, nonetheless.

Communities Fight Back

The Raise the Rates Campaign, which we have been able to build up with the serious support of the Canadian Union of Public Emplyees (CUPE-Ontario), creates a model of poor communities fighting back as part of a broader working-class common front. It is just such a movement that will have to be developed on a bigger scale if we are to turn back the attack on disability benefits in this province. This year, in Toronto, we found ourselves fighting desperately but with some success to force the City to expand shelter facilities for the homeless in the face of a lethal crisis of overcrowding. As this struggle unfolded, it struck us that the austerity agenda had reached the point where it was prepared to abandon people to death on the streets.

Now, again, when we look at the threat to ODSP, we see another indication of the nature of austerity. The Elizabethan Poor Laws (1601) were careful to make a distinction between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor. It was grudgingly recognized that a disabled person should at least be entitled to a slightly blunted and more stabilized form of poverty. Today’s austerity agenda, however, has no time for any limits set by the Tudors. Disabled benefits are in the way of their developing plans. If the adequacy and relative security of those benefits can be eliminated, then the result will be an influx of people competing for the worst and most precarious jobs available.

Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) is, in fact, already creating this model for injured workers. They are being assessed by private companies and the Board has adopted the widespread practice of ‘deeming’ injured workers capable of performing particular jobs regardless of the practical prospects of such employment being obtained. From the example of the measures taken in the UK, we can see that the approach is to act quite recklessly and err on the side of denying benefits to those without real prospects of finding low waged work. Certainly, straight cost savings on social expenditures are part of what drives this agenda so the Cameron Government sees no reason for caution. If ODSP were successfully downloaded onto the municipalities, we can be sure that UK style cut offs of the disabled would occur on a widespread basis in Ontario.

The Tory Social Services Critic, Toby Barrett, has already tabled a Private Members Bill in the Legislature for the merging of OW and ODSP and, obviously, there is no doubt that a Hudak Government would intensify the attack on this and many other fronts. It is, however, a profound mistake to believe that Ted McMeekin’s readiness to show up for consultation meetings looking interested offers any kind of protection. The attack on disabled benefit systems has become an important feature of the strategy to impose austerity on working-class populations. The Ontario Liberals will not fail to comply with the needs of that agenda unless they face an opposition that forces them to do otherwise. The challenge for us is to mobilize that opposition, led by disabled and poor people, so as to defend ODSP as part of a broader fight for the right to decent income and living wages for all. –

John Clarke is an organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP).

This article originally appeared on : Global Research

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Principlist Iranian presidential hopefuls Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel and Alireza Zakani have criticized rival hopeful and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani for signing up in Iran’s June 14 presidential election.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Secretary of Iranâ„¢s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Saeed Jalili (R) and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton in Almaty, April 5, 2013

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

The US government has come under growing criticism by rights groups for violating the nationâ„¢s press freedoms by seizing journalistsâ„¢ phone records as Washington defends the move under the pretext of protecting Ëœnational security,â„¢ Press TV reports.

The US-based Associated Press (AP) News Agency is protesting what it has described as a massive and unprecedented intrusion into its news gathering operations after it reported Monday that it had been informed by the Department of Justice that some of its phone records had been subpoenaed.

It is not yet clear what the Justice Department is trying to find in its ongoing probe, but citing confidential sources, AP had published news stories on US attempts, in collusion with the Israeli regime, to launch cyber attacks against Iran to sabotage its nuclear energy program using the Stuxnet virus.

Moreover, AP also believes the investigation may be related to one of its stories back in May 2012, describing CIAâ„¢s bid to halt a terrorist plot to plant a bomb on an airplane with a sophisticated new device, according to local press reports.

Meanwhile, US officials defended their actions against AP on Tuesday, claiming that news links by government sources constitute a threat to the countryâ„¢s national security.

Phone records from AP news bureaus in New York, Washington and Hartford were subpoenaed along with some of the home and mobile phone records of the new agencyâ„¢s journalists involved in reporting exclusive stories for the months of April and May of last year.

In an angry letter to Holder on Monday, APâ„¢s President Gary Pruitt described the Justice Department subpoenas as “a serious interference with AP’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news.”

Civil rights attorney Ron Kuby described the recent raid on AP new bureaus by justice officials as another chapter in the ongoing tension between the press’ right to find out things and the US government’s penchant for hiding secrets.

Å“The government has a right to classify information and people who come into contact with that information are not supposed to reveal it. It’s a crime to do so. And nobody has a big objection to that. But it’s the job of the press in a free society to try to find out the things that the government wants to keep secret and it’s the government’s job to keep them secret and that’s sort of the way the game is played,”. Kuby said.

The American Civil Liberties Union reacted to the development with statements, slamming the seizure of phone records to crack down on leakers as “an unacceptable abuse of power,” and emphasizing that the Obama administration has developed a pattern for prosecuting whistleblowers.

This is while the Obama White House has reportedly prosecuted more whistleblowers than all those prosecuted under previous administrations combined.

The most notable case is that of young Army Private Bradley Manning, who provided hundreds of thousands of incriminating US military and government documents to WikiLeaks.

Å“You contrast his truth-telling with the falsehoods of the Bush Administration that drove us to war in Iraq and killed God knows how many Iraqis and thousands and thousands of Americans,” said Kuby. Å“And nobody was ever prosecuted for those lies. Bradley Manning is being prosecuted for telling people the complete truth. So as a moral matter my sensibilities are very much with the whistleblowers and Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks and the people who want to see more information out there.”

Kuby, however, acknowledges that the US government does not appear to have entirely acted outside the law in the case against AP. He noted that it is common for governments to keep secrets both for national security and also to cover up embarrassing mistakes and failures.

MFB/MFB

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

London will host a key rally against the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by the Zionist Israeli regime on Saturday to mark the 65th anniversary of the Nakba Day.

The demonstration is backed by a coalition of British campaign groups including Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Stop the War Coalition, Jews for Justice for Palestinians and Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine as well as trade unions including Britainâ„¢s two largest unions, Unite and UNISON.

The rally, planned outside the houses of parliament, will call on the Zionist regime to Å“End the ongoing Nakba – Palestineâ„¢s catastrophe – 65 years on”.

The Nakba Day is marked annually worldwide to direct attentions to Palestiniansâ„¢ plight on 15 MAY when Zionists made their so-called declaration of independence in 1948.

The declaration, which created the current regime, came after Israeli forces forcibly evicted some 700,000 Palestinians from their homeland and razed nearly 500 Palestinian villages and towns.

The Saturday rally has been organized by Palestine Solidarity Campaign alongside another rally on May 15 outside the Downing Street.

AMR/HE

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Palestinian demonstrators wave Palestinian flags during a rally in the West Bank city of Ramallah on May 15, 2012, marking Nakba day

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Bangladesh has ordered the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people, as forecasters predicted that a cyclonic storm would hit low-lying coastal areas of the country.

Chittagong, the country’s second-largest city, is reported to be the area which is mostly in the path of Cyclone Mahasen.

Chittagong government administrator Mohammad Abdullah said they have ordered people in low-lying river shoal areas to evacuate to cyclone shelters.

“We will also use local schools and other community centers as cyclone centers to provide shelters to the coastal people,” he said, adding, “We’ve already evacuated people from some fishing villages” to the mainland.

According to Shamsuddin Ahmed, the deputy chief of Bangladesh Meteorological Department, Cyclone Mahasen is still classified as the lowest-level category one on a one-to-five scale and packing winds of up to 88 kilometers (55 miles) per hour at its centre.

He added that as a category one storm, it “could unleash a storm surge of up to seven feet (two meters) high in the low-lying coastal areas” and damage other areas.

On Monday, the OCHA announced that Tropical Cyclone Mahasen is moving toward India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar.

Å“The possibility of the cyclone hitting has added a real urgency to our plans,” said Vivian Tan, a spokeswoman for the United Nations refugee agency.

Å“We’re building temporary shelters made out of bamboo, which will hopefully stand the heavy rains, but with a cyclone, you just don’t know what will hold up,” he added.

IA/PR

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Moscow has summoned US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, following the arrest of an alleged CIA spy in the Russian capital.

On Wednesday, McFaul met with Russian officials at the Foreign Ministry after being summoned to explain the presence of CIA agent Ryan C Fogle, allegedly working undercover at the US embassy.

The ambassador reportedly left the Foreign Ministry building after a brief meeting.

He was expected to meet with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.

Russiaâ„¢s Federal Security Service arrested Fogle on Monday after he allegedly tried to recruit a Russian national to spy for the CIA. Fogle was ordered to immediately leave the country.

On Tuesday, Russiaâ„¢s Foreign Ministry said that such “provocative acts in the spirit of the Cold War in no way help strengthen mutual trust” between Moscow and Washington.

The alleged CIA agent was held overnight and then handed over to US officials at the embassy, where Fogle was working as “third secretary of the political section.”

The United States has not commented on the incident, yet.

The development came days after President Vladimir Putin and US Secretary of State John Kerry said in Moscow that the relationship between the two sides was improving.

SZH/PR/HJL

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei addresses thousands of people from the Iranian provinces of Mazandaran, Gilan, Golestan and Kohkilouyeh Boyer-Ahmad, Wednesday, May 15, 2013.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Scientists across the world are working together to improve earthquake forecasting systems in order to reduce the time needed to warn people of the upcoming disaster, press TV reports.

Experts from across the world are working together and sharing data to pave the way for further discoveries in the field of seismology. They believe although the available technologies are expensive, the lives and properties they can save is priceless.

Å“We can share our latest technologies with anybody who is interested in and finds that our forecasting system can work for them. Around the world there is enough data to predict over 600 earthquakes but none of them are hundred per cent guaranteed,” said Alexey Zavyalov president of European seismological commission.

China is one of the leading countries, pushing itself towards developing a forecasting system. In April, China experienced one of the deadliest earthquakes in which nearly 200 people were killed.

In Russia, where seismic records have only existed for 60 years, scientists have been working on the technologies to improve their methods to cope with earthquakes.

Alexander Bubis, the director of Earthquake Engineering Research Center, told Press TV that Å“We work on buildings that can withstand the force of an earthquake. We use the latest technology, seismic isolation and construction solutions using special built-in elements. Russian winter Olympic site in Sochi has this protection against seismic activity installed.”

According to the statistics, more than fifty earthquakes of magnitude of 6 and above have killed a large number of people and destroyed many homes across the globe since the beginning of this year.

IA/PR

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Scientists across the world are working together to improve earthquake forecasting systems in order to reduce the time needed to warn people of the upcoming disaster, press TV reports.

Experts from across the world are working together and sharing data to pave the way for further discoveries in the field of seismology. They believe although the available technologies are expensive, the lives and properties they can save is priceless.

Å“We can share our latest technologies with anybody who is interested in and finds that our forecasting system can work for them. Around the world there is enough data to predict over 600 earthquakes but none of them are hundred per cent guaranteed,” said Alexey Zavyalov president of European seismological commission.

China is one of the leading countries, pushing itself towards developing a forecasting system. In April, China experienced one of the deadliest earthquakes in which nearly 200 people were killed.

In Russia, where seismic records have only existed for 60 years, scientists have been working on the technologies to improve their methods to cope with earthquakes.

Alexander Bubis, the director of Earthquake Engineering Research Center, told Press TV that Å“We work on buildings that can withstand the force of an earthquake. We use the latest technology, seismic isolation and construction solutions using special built-in elements. Russian winter Olympic site in Sochi has this protection against seismic activity installed.”

According to the statistics, more than fifty earthquakes of magnitude of 6 and above have killed a large number of people and destroyed many homes across the globe since the beginning of this year.

IA/PR

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

File photo shows a German unmanned Euro Hawk drone landing.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

While Europeans keep saying the introduction of the Euro was a good decision, it remains a mystery how the eurozone countries didn’t notice the single currency deprived them of any say in key economic decisions,a National Australia Bank expert told RT.

“Many countries which gave up their own national currency in
order to join the euro are finding that it left them powerless,
they’ve got little or no influence over the monetary policy.
They’ve got little or no influence over economic policy,” Nick
Parsons, head of research for UK and Europe at National Australia
Bank (NAB), said in an interview with Business RT.

The comment comes after a survey by the Pew Research Centre of 8
nations in the European Union said that the euro — the common
currency for 17 out of the 27 European Union members — is welcomed
by the majority of Europeans. More than 60% of people asked across
Greece. Spain, Germany, Italy and France want to keep the euro as
their currency.

“… many countries did not simply realize what they were
getting into, when they gave up freedom to control their own
currencies,” Parsons explained.

Despite the single currency remaining in public favor, the whole
idea of the Brussels-based European Union is now being increasingly
questioned. Five European nations out of the eight surveyed have
become disappointed with the 27 nation union, with the favorability
of the EU having fallen to 45% in 2013 from about 60% in 2012.

“The prolonged economic crisis has created centrifugal forces
that are pulling European public opinion apart, separating the
French from the Germans and the Germans from everyone else,”
the report by Pew Research said.

Germany was the only country, where at least 50% of the public
thought Brussels should be given more power to deal with the
ongoing economic crisis. For the country that’s the biggest
creditor nation in the eurozone “that’s not particularly
surprising,” Parsons said.

“When we look at Germans saying that they’d prefer or at
least agree with Brussels being given more powers, this is more
about centralization of power with ultimately Germany in control of
this. They are not talking about giving powers back to national
Parliaments….They are talking about centralization of power with
creditors in charge,” the NAB analyst concluded.

This article originally appeared on : RT

A US-led assassination drone attack leaves three people dead in Herat Province. (File photo)

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

The EU has pledged half a billion euro to rebuild Mali as fighting against Islamist militants continues in the north. France intervened in Mali in January and has 1,000 troops stationed there, raising fears of a drawn-out battle against insurgency.

EU leaders plan to channel 520 million euro (US$73 million) into
the impoverished country between 2013 and 2014 at an international
aid donors’ conference in Brussels on Wednesday. The Union has said
that the total amount of aid could increase in coming months.

The funds will be invested into the “total relaunch” of the
country, a 4.3-billion-euro initiative that includes organizing the
elections for July. However, doubts have been raised over the
viability of holding elections so soon given the tens of thousands
of Malians displaced by the conflict and taking refuge in
neighboring countries.

The EU money will also go towards installing basic infrastructure
in Mali’s north, the lack of which has undermined public support
for the interim government.

In spite of the ongoing presence of 1,000 French soldiers in the
embattled nation, European Commission Leader Jose Manuel Barroso
told press the donation “is essential to establish a Mali that
is stable, democratic and prosperous.”

The French government has made repeated statements during the
conflict that they are close to eradicating insurgency.

“We are winning this war, now we have to win back the
country,” said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on
Tuesday. When France originally intervened back in January, Fabius
insisted the French military presence would stay for

“a matter
of weeks” until regional forces could take over.

The French military presence has thus far served to push back
Islamist militant forces advancing on the country’s capital Bamako
four months after they intervened. However, pockets of resistance
still remain deeply entrenched in Mali’s northern mountainous zone
which they use as a base from which to launch attacks.

Concerns have been voiced that a prolonged campaign against
insurgency could lead to a spill-over into other African nations.
Independent journalist Robert Harneis told RT that Libya would be
an

“ideal place” for the Malian immigrants to take refuge as
it is in a

“state of chaos” following NATO intervention.

“They disperse, they conceal their weapons, their assets, they
merge with the population and they wait because they know that
sooner or later the intervention forces will go home,” said
Harneis.

Of the 4,500-odd French troops that were initially deployed the
majority have been withdrawn, but the 1,000 that remain are
expected to stay until the end of the year until regional forces
are ready to take on full security responsibilities.

The Malian government called on its former colonial ruler, France,
to intervene in January when northern militants took control of key
cities in the center of the country. Islamist extremists took
control of the North African nation last year following a coup. The
Islamists forced extreme Sharia law on the inhabitants of the
northern territories.

This article originally appeared on : RT

British Labour party in the London borough of Tower Hamlets has condemned a planned march by the far-right English Defense League (EDL) mobsters this summer saying the police should ban the group.

The EDL have announced they would march in the east London borough on August 24 and Labour MPs want the police to prevent their rally following bans in 2011 and 2012.

“In 2011 we successfully campaigned with local people in the borough and across London in coalition with Hope not Hate, to secure a ban on the EDL to march through Tower Hamlets,” Rushanara Ali, Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, said.

Another Labour MP, Jim Fitzpatrick also said he will do Å“all [he] can” to prevent the march, which is part of the EDLâ„¢s summer campaign that also includes rallies in Birmingham, Oxford, Newcastle, Dudley, Exeter and Slough.

Their call has been echoed by Labour candidate for Mayor of Tower Hamlets and current London Assembly Member John Biggs who said the racist group only want Å“to cause disorder and to try to provoke division … They have no place here”.

EDL marches feature racist anti-Islam chanting and banners with violence an almost indispensable part of their rallies.

This comes as the Kingâ„¢s College London found in a study back in March that the EDL are exploiting concerns around recent sex-grooming gangs in the north of England to promote its Islamophobic attitudes and pretend that the religion is linked with crime.

So far, the Home Office has refused to impose a blanket ban on all EDL hate preaching, despite their violent record.

AMR/HE

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

A view of the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the Austrian capital of Vienna (file photo)

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

French justice minister has called on the government to redistribute land to the descendants of slaves in its Caribbean overseas territories.

Christiane Taubiraâ„¢s comment came just days after President Francois Hollande insistently ruled out reparations for Franceâ„¢s role in slave trade during the 19th and 20th century.

Å“In the overseas territories there was a land grab, the general result was that the descendants of slaves were left without access to land. Therefore we should think about – without sparking a civil war – regrouping properties that were divided and about land reform,” said Taubira.

She continued by saying Å“There are steps that should be taken, without expropriations, and clearly explaining the reason behind the stateâ„¢s push to purchase land.”

Taubira has authored a federal law that identifies slavery as a crime against humanity in 2001, while representing her native French Guiana as a member in parliament.

Hollande caused an outrage among civil rights groups on May 8 when he clearly stated that France would not pay compensations for slavery.

In response to his statement, a leading French racism watchdog group, the Representative Council of Black Associations (CRAN), said it would sue the state-owned bank CDC, accusing it of collecting money from slave trade between 1825 to 1946, which would be worth USD 20.7 billion in todayâ„¢s money.

In addition, CRAN President Luis-Georges Tin explained that Taubiraâ„¢s land reform proposal would not lead to expropriations since the state owned vast unused land in the overseas territories.

Å“Our colleagues overseas have heard the announcement loud and clear… we all expect to be contacted quickly by Mrs. Taubira and the government to figure out how to put this policy in place,” said Tin, adding that the new announcement would in no way dissuade his group from suing the CDC.

CAH/PR

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Official figures show France has returned to its second recession in four years, as the economy shrank by 0.2% in Q1 of 2013.

Its economy contracted by the same percentage in the last
quarter of 2012, which means two consecutive quarters of negative
growth, the definition of a recession.

Currently France is experiencing record unemployment, reaching
11% in March, 2013, which is forecast to rise further. The latest
figures also showed low business and consumer confidence.

The Netherlands, which entered recession three months ago, also
showed contraction, with GDP falling by 0.1% in the first quarter
of this year. Once one of the strongest-looking members of the
eurozone, the Netherlands suffers from rising unemployment and the
housing market bubble having burst.

The eurozone’s strongest economy, Germany, grew by just 0.1% in
the first quarter, far less than 0.3% expected by
economists.

This article originally appeared on : RT

Afghanistan has rejected statements released by the US Embassy in Kabul, denying that Washington had requested to keep nine military bases in the war-torn country, Press TV reports.

Afghan President Hamid Karzaiâ„¢s spokesman Aimal Faizi rejected the denial by US officials by saying that Washington had made the request out in the open.

Faizi said that Karzai made a statement regarding the US wanting nine military bases, based on requests made by the US during recent negotiations.

The presidential spokesperson added that Washington had even produced a list of cities where it wanted to set up or keep its military bases.

During a speech at Kabul University last Thursday, the Afghan president said that Washington had recently demanded to keep nine of its military bases in Afghanistan, and that it preferred its bases to be located in the main cities of Afghanistan, such as the capital Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat.

Afghanistan and the US are in negotiations to reach an agreement to sign security pact.

After announcing Washingtonâ„¢s request, Karzai added that Kabul also had its demands and interests.

Å“Our conditions are that the US intensifies efforts in the peace process, strengthen Afghanistanâ„¢s security forces, provide concrete support to the economy – power, roads and dams – and provide assistance in governance,” Karzai said.

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001 as part of Washingtonâ„¢s so-called war on terror.

The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but insecurity remains across the country despite the presence of thousands of foreign troops.

FKO/SZH/PR

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

A newly-released video shows foreign-backed militants humiliating an elderly local celebrity in the Syrian northwestern city of Aleppo.

The footage showed that a militant put his foot on the head of the man, known as Yellow Man of Aleppo, asking him to bark and say that he loves the so-called Free Syrian Army.

Other militants also humiliated the 70-year-old man by pulling his mustache.

The man, whose real name is Abu Zakhour, dresses in yellow and is one of the famous characters of the touristic city of Aleppo. He earns his living from a salary offered by the municipality and taking photos with tourists.

The video is another example of inhuman acts carried out by foreign-backed militants in Syria.

Another footage posted on the internet on Sunday showed that a militant, named Khalid al Hamad, cut out the body of a dead Syrian soldier and bite into his organ. Al Hamad said in an interview with Time magazine on Tuesday that the video is real and that he did indeed take a bite of the soldierâ„¢s lung.

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

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

SAB/PR

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

US forces are seen building a base in Parwan Province, Afghanistan, in 2010.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Demonstrators against gay marriage bill wave their signs outside the Minnesota House chamber before lawmakers arrive to take up the legislation at the State Capitol, Thursday, May 9, 2013.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

May 6, 2013
 |

We’ve arrived at a dangerous milestone. For the first time in human history, as Amy Goodman reported this week, “the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has topped 400 parts per million.” Climate scientiststs have warned that we should seek to stabilize emissions no higher that 350 ppm if we hope to fend off catastrophic planetary changes.

The climate crisis demands that we take action, and that those actions have the greatest impact possible. That’s what motivates the organizing strategies of Rainforest Action Network. Since 1985, RAN has been a leader in the fight to protect rainforests across the globe and the people who live in and near them. But as the climate crisis heats up, all of our lives have become dependent on protecting these vital ecosystems.

One of the signature strategies of the organization has been to follow the money – it’s waged campaigns against corporate giants like Burger King and Disney, and won. Its success in recent years was driven by visionary leader Rebecca Tarbotton. But last December, Tarbotton, 39, was killed in a swimming accident while vacationing in Mexico. Her death sent the environmental community reeling. (Read AlterNet’s 2010 interview with Tarbotton here.)

Since then RAN has named Lindsey Allen, the organization’s forest program director, as acting executive director. RAN’s board chair called Allen, “a world-class campaigner with more than a decade of experience and an unmatched track record pressuring and inspiring some of the world’s largest corporations to protect rainforests. Rainforest Action Network’s board, leadership team and staff stand behind Lindsey 100 percent as she takes on this crucial role. She is the natural choice, and the perfect choice.”

Allen and RAN’s communications director Nell Greenberg recently sat down with AlterNet to talk about RAN’s current campaigns and their vision for taking on the country’s biggest polluters.

Tara Lohan: What campaign are you most excited about now?

Lindsey Allen: Right now the campaign that we are most excited about is the launch of our palm oil campaign. What folks probably don’t realize is that palm oil is in roughly half of processed foods that you find at a grocery story. We’re going to be targeting snack companies and taking the top 20 of them to task for using palm oil because it’s clearing orangutan habitat. It’s causing human rights violations. There’s forced labor on palm oil plantations.

We’re looking at this as the last stand of the Sumatran orangutan. We won’t be able to say that we didn’t see extinction as a very real threat and that we didn’t see this coming, because it’s very clear. There are very few animals left, especially in northern Sumatra.

TL: How are you going to get people excited about a campaign that’s happening very far away?

LA: Well, it’s not as far away as you might think. If you walked around your house you can find palm oil in every room of your house, so there’s a very direct connection between the decisions that people are making with their pocketbooks and what is happening in a place that might seem very far away. There are people that are at the other end of the supply chain so our decisions are all directly affecting those communities.

This is a local action you can take that is globally relevant when we’re talking about Indonesia where there’s the biodiversity threat. There’s the land tenure issues, where communities’ lands are being stolen to plant these palm oil plantations. And everyone now needs to think about climate as a backyard issue. This does relate to that because Indonesia is the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases and it’s primarily related to deforestation.

This article originally appeared on : AlterNet

May 9, 2013
 |

Every year for the last six or eight, family farmers and small-town residents in Missouri have had to fight off legislations designed to take away our local control and put all the lawmaking privileges in the hands of state lawmakers. Taken to the extreme, this would mean that county, city and township ordinances and laws would be void. No more city zoning, no health ordinances guaranteeing special treatment such as special regulations against noise, air pollution, water pollution and so forth, for county residents that demanded it.

The beneficiaries of these laws would be corporate do-badders who want to export costs like cleanups or health care for employees. Without regulations, they could get taxpayers to pay for pollution and social justice atrocities. It would be business as usual for them, only better!

This year, we have been dealing with bills introduced simultaneously in the Missouri House of Representatives and Senate to ensure “modern farming practices” forever. The resolutions on the House side said, “No state law shall be enacted which abridges the right of farmers and ranchers to employ agricultural technology and modern livestock production and ranching practices, unless enacted by the General Assembly.”

Never mind that “agricultural technology,” “modern livestock production,” “ranching practices” are not defined. And never mind that they would seem to suggest methods of production like Confined Animal Feeding Operations and genetically altered crops. If these resolutions passed, citizens would be asked to vote this dangerous language into our state constitution. Where it would reside forever.

As I write this, just a few days after tax day, it looks like we’ve beaten back this particular monster. It is possible, of course, that all we’ve done is cut off one head to reveal two or three more, but the citizens have been calling lawmakers, pointing out the errors of the bills, and gaining support as the session moves forward.

But here’s the larger question: Where the heck did this idea of changing the constitution come from? We know who it benefits – the industrial agriculture system – and we know who it hurts – ordinary citizens. But who wrote this bill, now called “right to farm,” and who financed the possibility that it would get traction?

Thanks to the magic of Google, I quickly found three states with efforts for constitutional amendments similar to Missouri’s proposals. Another few keystrokes and I found the source of the language. It came from ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. And on the ALEC website, a few more clicks took me to the list of legislative members from Missouri.

In November 2012, North Dakota, a state besieged with fracking (and, yes, ALEC has policies and sample legislation favoring that subject also) passed a “right to farm” amendment into the constitution. Its language is eerily like the proposal in Missouri: The right of farmers and ranchers to engage in modern farming and ranching practices shall be forever guaranteed in this state. No law shall be enacted which abridges the right of farmers and ranchers to employ agricultural technology, modern livestock production and ranching practices.

While you might think this guarantees farmers against the frackers, please note the seriously vague and troubling words “modern,” “technology,” and the confusing phrase “no law shall be enacted …” So, in North Dakota, no county, township, parish, city or any governmental body will be able to pass a law or ordinance to protect themselves from chemicals, GMOs, CAFOs or any other kind of industrial farming scheme.

Not only will farmers be affected. This amendment can have serious repercussions for consumers: North Dakota, one of our chief wheat-raising states, will not be able to refuse to plant untested (and untrusted) GMO wheat under this Constitutional clause.

This article originally appeared on : AlterNet

May 14, 2013
 |

Asked of Hispanic-Americans: “Are you in this country legally?” Asked of gays and lesbians and bisexuals: “How do you have sex?” Asked of transgender people: “Have you had the surgery?” Asked of African Americans: “Can I touch your hair?”

Every marginalized group has some question, or questions, that are routinely asked of them — and that drive them up a tree; questions that have insult or bigotry or dehumanization woven into the very asking. Sometimes the questions are asked sincerely, with sincere ignorance of the offensive assumptions behind them. And sometimes they are asked in a hostile, passive-aggressive, “I’m just asking questions” manner. But it’s still not okay to ask them. They’re not questions that open up genuine inquiry and discourse, they’re questions that close minds, much more than they open them. Even if that’s not the intention. And most people who care about bigotry and marginalization and social justice — or who just care about good manners — don’t ask them.

Here are nine questions you shouldn’t ask atheists. I’m going to answer them, just this once, and then I’ll explain why you shouldn’t be asking them, and why so many atheists will get ticked off if you do.

1: “How can you be moral without believing in God?”

The answer: Atheists are moral for the same reasons believers are moral: because we have compassion, and a sense of justice. Humans are social animals, and like other social animals, we evolved with some core moral values wired into our brains: caring about fairness, caring about loyalty, caring when others are harmed.

If you’re a religious believer, and you don’t believe these are the same reasons that believers are moral, ask yourself this: If I could persuade you today, with 100% certainty, that there were no gods and no afterlife… would you suddenly start stealing and murdering and setting fire to buildings? And if not — why not? If you wouldn’t… whatever it is that would keep you from doing those things, that’s the same thing keeping atheists from doing them. (And if you would — remind me not to move in next door to you.)

And ask yourself this as well: If you accept some parts of your holy book and reject others — on what basis are you doing that? Whatever part of you says that stoning adulterers is wrong but helping poor people is good; that planting different crops in the same field is a non-issue but bearing false witness actually is pretty messed-up; that slavery is terrible but it’s a great idea to love your neighbor as yourself… that’s the same thing telling atheists what’s right and wrong. People are good — even if we don’t articulate it this way — because we have an innate grasp of the fundamental underpinnings of morality: the understanding that other people matter to themselves as much as we matter to ourselves, and that there is no objective reason to act as if any of us matters more than any other. And that’s true of atheists and believers alike.

Why you shouldn’t ask it: This is an unbelievably insulting question. Being moral, caring about others and having compassion for them, is a fundamental part of being human. To question whether atheists can be moral, to express bafflement at how we could possibly manage to care about others without believing in a supernatural creator, is to question whether we’re even fully human.

And you know what? This question is also hugely insulting to religious believers. It’s basically saying that the only reason believers are moral is fear of punishment and desire for reward. It’s saying that believers don’t act out of compassion, or a sense of justice. It’s saying that believers’ morality is childish at best, self-serving at worst. I wouldn’t say that about religious believers… and you shouldn’t, either.

This article originally appeared on : AlterNet

May 14, 2013
 |

Say goodnight, Earthlings.

That message – plus the slimmest of shots at an eleventh-hour reprieve – was announced to the people of the world last week.

When this happens in science fiction – 1951’s “The Day the Earth Stood Still” is the classic – the planet pays attention. The flying saucer lands; an alien, in this case played by Michael Rennie, emerges; a final warning is issued:  Stop it. If you don’t, you’re doomed.

Back then, the “it” was violence – the Cold War, and the threat of nuclear midnight. Last week, it was climate change – greenhouse gases, and the promise of ecological extinction.

“Heat-Trapping Gas Passes Milestone, Raising Fears,” ran the headline on the front page lead story in Saturday’s New York Times, with this sub-head: “CO2 at Level Not Seen in Millions of Years, Portending Major Climate Changes.”

A headline like that – millions of years? really? – normally turns up in comic books and superhero movies, not in the paper of record. In fiction, what usually comes next is a montage. At breakfast tables and on street corners, in souks and igloos, in the Oval Office and at the U.N., the shocking news galvanizes humanity into action.

In the real world, it was pretty much a one-day story.

What does it take to grab us by the eyeballs?  Chris Christie’s waistline is guaranteed wall-to-wall coverage. The next Jodi Arias is waiting in CNN’s wings. The Benghazi circus will be in town at least through 2016.  Sure, disaster porn is always good for ratings, but though a Superstorm Sandy may momentarily raise the specter of climate change, daily bulletins on the parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere apparently aren’t Nielsen enough.

It’s not that people who know our planet’s hair is on fire aren’t trying to get our attention. The animated graph from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration‘s Earth Science Research Lab showing how atmospheric carbon dioxide has changed over the last 800,000 years should be as horrifying as any computer-generated imagery Hollywood has to offer. Along with the news that we had hit the 400 ppm mark on the CO2 curve for the first time since the Pliocene epoch came scary quotes from scientist after scientist calling this our last chance before the point of no return. Unless we act, children born today will see temperatures rise irreversibly and sea levels rise catastrophically. Weather patterns will be disrupted, deserts and drought will spread and–in the words of Lord Stern, head of the U.K.’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment–“hundreds of millions of people will be forced to leave their homelands because their crops and animals will have died …  [W]hen they try to migrate into new lands … [they will be brought] into armed conflict with people already living there.  Nor will it be an occasional occurrence.  It could become a permanent feature of life on Earth.”

If graphs and quotes aren’t sexy enough to warrant a permanent place in the news, there are other ways to hang on to the spotlight. The Climate Reality Project’s website features 18 disturbing but entertaining videos about the price of carbon and our addiction to fossil fuels. “ Do the Math,” the film that journalist Bill McKibben is using to spark his 350.org movement, has a dramatic narrative that’s compelling but not preachy. “ The Years of Living Dangerously,” Showtime’s climate change documentary series now being shot, has producers who know a little something about how to capture audiences: James Cameron, Jerry Weintraub and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This article originally appeared on : AlterNet

May 14, 2013
 |

An elderly man “succumbed to the pressure” of losing his home to Wells Fargo and died at a court hearing fighting the bank’s wrongful foreclosure, his estate claims in court.

The administrator of the estate of Larry Delassus sued Wells Fargo, Wachovia Bank, First American Corp. and others in Superior Court, for wrongful death, elder abuse, breach of contract and other charges.

Delassus died at 62 of heart disease after Wells Fargo mistakenly held him liable for his neighbor’s property taxes, doubled his mortgage payments, declared his loan in default and sold his Hermosa Beach condominium, according to the complaint.

“Larry Delassus tried everything to save his home,” the complaint states. “He told the Bank that they were mistaken; they said no. He contacted the bank seeking information, and was told one thing and then another, and oftentimes, no information at all. He enlisted his friend and neighbor to help him, but the bank refused to recognize him as Larry’s representative, despite his numerous applications and appeals. Whatever Larry needed, Wells Fargo created some excuse not to help him.

“At the very end, with his home being sold by the Bank and resold by the purchaser within months for nearly twice what he paid, Larry Delassus, now living in a boarding home, was still fighting for what he and many Americans believe is right by going to court. Wells Fargo, with its virtually unlimited resources, filed a series of procedural motions in its defense, needlessly forcing an ailing Larry to appear in court. Delassus valiantly continued to fight the best he could until his body gave up. On December 19, 2012, as he was sitting in the back of the courtroom, at about the same time the Bank was saying that its actions ‘didn’t matter,’ Larry collapsed, and within minutes, died. Wells Fargo and its agents should be held accountable for their negligent wrongful and malicious actions.”

A retired Navy veteran on disability, Delassus suffered from a blood disorder called Budd-Chiari syndrome, and would not have been in court were it not for Wells Fargo’s insistence that he appear, the complaint states.

He died within minutes of collapsing in the courtroom.

 “This is a case about greed and one man’s fight for justice in the face of overwhelming odds,” the complaint states.

Blaming Delassus’s death on the bank’s “haste for an endless stream of profits,” the estate claims that he “succumbed to the pressure of fighting Wells Fargo and the heartbreak of losing his home and died after falling gravely ill.”

 Delassus’s estate administrator, Deborah Popovich, says in the complaint that almost one-third of the millions of people who have faced foreclosure since the housing market crashed did so because of “bank errors and banned practices.

“While the instant case represents just one example of many reflecting the results of these bank ‘errors’ and practices, the consequences in this case are especially tragic,” Popovich says.

She says Delassus “lived a quiet and happy life,” and always paid his mortgage and property taxes on time. But in early 2009, Wells Fargo falsely claimed he owed $13,361.90 in back taxes when it was actually the owner of a nearby condo that owed the money, Popovich says.

But Wells Fargo, falsely claiming Delassus owed the money, nearly doubled his mortgage payment — a mistake it could have rectified by verifying his property’s tax identification number with the county, the estate says.

Delassus told Wells Fargo he could not afford the higher payments and the bank foreclosed — even after the county treasurer had confirmed that his property taxes were current and paid, the complaint states.

This article originally appeared on : AlterNet

May 14, 2013
 |

So far, much of the heated discussion about Angelina Jolie’s brave Op-Ed in the New York Times today has focused on her decision to undergo a double mastectomy after learning she carried the BRCA1 gene. As Salon noted here, that’s not the only option. But for those who do want to consider following Jolie’s path, there are structural barriers to even gaining the information to make those choices, something she mentions but doesn’t explain. It’s because one company, Myriad Genetics, owns the patent to the two genes that indicate an increased risk of breast or ovarian cancer. You read that right: The genes themselves, not the procedure to test for them. And the Supreme Court will decide in a matter of weeks whether that should continue.

Jolie wrote, “It has got to be a priority to ensure that more women can access gene testing and lifesaving preventive treatment, whatever their means and background, wherever they live. The cost of testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2, at more than $3,000 in the United States, remains an obstacle for many women.” According to the ACLU, which brought the lawsuit heard recently by the Supreme Court, Myriad actually recently raised the price to over $4,000, despite the fact that “genetic testing technologies have advanced to the point where all 23,000 human genes can be sequenced for $1000.” The test is often covered by insurance, but policies vary, and of course, not everyone is insured.

Myriad’s monopoly over BRCA1 and BRCA2 not only means showing that it can charge whatever it wants for the test; it also means that further research on the genes is restricted, and that women who take the test and get an ambiguous result can’t get a second opinion, only take the test again. An ambiguous result can mean the difference between removing breasts or ovaries or leaving them intact.

The economic and racial implications of all this are major, both for how the research has been done and who gets access to it. In a video on the case, the ACLU points out, “Initial gene studies focused on white women. And now the patents make it more difficult to learn what some mutations mean in women of color, because Myriad has total control over researchers’ access to those mutations.” And information that allows some women to choose prophylactic surgery likely contributes to the massive disparities in who dies of breast cancer. Black women are the likeliest to die of breast cancer, even as they are less likely than white women to be diagnosed with it. A 2005 study in the Journal of American Medicine found that “African American women with a family history of breast or ovarian cancer were significantly less likely to undergo genetic counseling for BRCA1/2 testing than were white women with a family history of breast or ovarian cancer.” That was true even when controlling for socioeconomic factors, suggesting cost was not the only barrier.)

Myriad has argued that its patent was valid because it had innovated in the process of extracting the gene, and that patent protection was needed to incentivize more such research. It lost at the district court level, which threw out its patents, but prevailed at the circuit court. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case a month ago. According to Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSBlog, the ACLU’s “Hansen wanted a flat declaration that human genes are not patentable — period. The Justices who pressed him closely left the impression that the suggestion was both too simple, and possibly too inhibiting for inventors and their financial backers.” Meanwhile, the Obama administration took a middle route, with Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli saying that only synthetic DNA molecules should be patented.

This article originally appeared on : AlterNet

May 14, 2013
 |

I enjoy watching “Real Time with Bill Maher” whenever I can, and I especially appreciate the wit and humour of his New Rules. Alas, whenever the subject of Islam and the Middle East pops up, the show turns ugly. To avoid the cynicism that mars the Maher show, a few new rules are in order.

New Rule: Stratification of religions is a futile exercise. No single religion has a monopoly over violence. Violence has no religion.

NR: Intelligent talk shows are hard to come by nowadays, so “Real Time” shouldn’t be polluted by anti-Islamism — the modern successor of despicable anti-Semitism. Like all phobias, it’s based on irrational thinking, not rational reasoning.

NR: When you don’t miss a chance to dump on Islam and Islamists as somehow more homicidal, you shouldn’t be surprised of being labelled an Islamophobe. When you walk like a duck…

NR: And if the anchor is, himself, responsible for an eerie projection of Islamophobia masquerading as “truth loving,” Bill should know when Bill needs to keep quiet. Like speech, silence is also an art form and has rules.

NR: The three Abrahamic religions refer to one God. Allah translates into God, and for all three, there is no god but Allah/God. Anything else is mere politics, power and phobia.

NR: The day after the Boston bombings, it might’ve seemed, from LA, that violence is limited to Muslims. But there is an expansive and complex world of violence beyond Hollywood.

NR: The Islamic world is going through some very tough times, further complicated by war and conflict: Western-led, civil and sectarian. But even at its worst, violence by Muslims doesn’t compare with the horrific atrocities committed by the West’s own religious, continental and global wars.

NR: Considering that the wars waged by the Christian West over the last two decades killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims, it takes a lot of chutzpa to turn around and accuse Islam of homicidal tendencies.

NR: You say this all happened in the distant past — like it hasn’t happened since the Crusades — and that the problem is with here and now? Well, violence in the former Yugoslavia, Palestine, Myanmar, India, not to mention Ireland, is hardly in the distant past. A man of a Jewish and Irish background should know better about religiously motivated violence.

NR: Thinking you’re right doesn’t mean you actually are correct. Passion and honesty don’t necessarily add up to any less bullsh*t. (Check out Harry Frankfurt’s Theory of Bullshit).

NR: True, religions have been misused and abused by some of their adherents to commit terrible violence. But fundamentalist atheists from Stalin to Mao to Hitler have carried out worse atrocities than religious fanatics.

NR: Islam was the first religion to organise and regulate war at a time when others were murdering, torturing, massacring and even cannibalising their enemies. Unrestrained, extreme violence might be carried in the name of Islam, but for the zillionth time, that doesn’t make it Islamic.

NR: Much of the presumably religiously motivated violence is inspired by extremist narratives and interpretations, not religious texts. The brothers who allegedly carried out the Boston Bombings are as familiar with the Quran as those who demonstrated against Salman Rushdie know about his Satanic Verses: not much. Detestable mob-type protestation exists in every culture.

NR: When your anti-Islamic rhetoric is discredited, there’s no point in repeating it for cheap applause. Not only is it wrong, it’s just not funny.

NR: And by the way, when you have an Arab name, like Maher which means “skilled,” don’t pull a Colbert on us, Bill. Just pronounce your name as you should: MaHer.

This article originally appeared on : AlterNet

Passangers walk by piles of bags left due to striking baggage handlers at Brussels Airport, Belgium on May 14, 2013.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]A US-led airstrike has killed at least three people in the town of Shindand in western Afghanistan’s Herat Province, Press TV reports.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called the eating of a dead Syrian soldierâ„¢s organ by a foreign-backed militant as a Å“truly atrocious act,” saying it should be investigated as a Å“war crime.”

Å“The video that has just emerged from Syria, apparently showing a rebel leader cutting out and biting the heart of a dead soldier, depicts a truly atrocious act,” Navi Pillay said on Tuesday in comments from Geneva.

On Sunday, the footage posted on the internet showed that Khalid al Hamad, known by his nom de guerre Abu Sakkar, cutting out some of the soldier’s organs and biting into one. At the time of the filming, al Hamad believed that he was eating the manâ„¢s liver, but a surgeon who saw the video said the organ in question was actually a lung.

Å“Mutilating or desecrating corpses during a conflict is a war crime,” the High Commissioner said, adding, Å“I urge the armed opposition groups in Syria to do everything in their power to halt such gross crimes.”

Pillay also called for a probe into other serious violations by the foreign-backed militants in Syria, such as acts of torture, summary executions and extra-judicial killings.

On Tuesday, al Hamad said in an interview with Time magazine conducted via Skype that the video is real and that he did indeed take a bite of the soldierâ„¢s lung.

Other Syrian militants condemned the “horrific and inhumane” action, saying he should be arrested or killed for committing the atrocity.

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

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

SAB/PR

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

An Iranian UN envoy has called on the international community to take effective measures against different types of smuggling, particularly human trafficking.

Addressing a UN General Assembly meeting on human trafficking in New York on Tuesday, Iranâ„¢s Deputy Ambassador to the world body Gholam-Hossein Dehqani underlined the necessity to support the victims of human trafficking, especially women and children.

He expressed Iranâ„¢s misgivings over the increasing number of people who fall prey to the international gangs involved in the smuggling of body organs.

Poverty, unemployment, discrimination, a lack of social and economic opportunities, and global financial crises are among the factors making individuals vulnerable to human trafficking, Dehqani said, urging the international community to address the issue.

He further stressed the responsibility of wealthy countries in that regard.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the top diplomat pointed to the measures adopted by Iran in fighting human trafficking, saying Iranian police have dismantled dozens of international human smuggling rings in recent months alone.

Iran is determined to fight drug trafficking, he underlined.

Iran has a 900-kilometer border with Afghanistan and has frequently been used as the main conduit for the smuggling of Afghan drugs to narcotics kingpins in Europe.

The Islamic Republic has spent more than USD 700 million to seal the borders and prevent the transit of narcotics destined for European, Arab and Central Asian countries.

The war on drug trade originating from Afghanistan has claimed the lives of nearly 4,000 Iranian police officers over the past 33 years.

YH/NN/HJL

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Bangladeshi mourners hold prayers for the victims of building collapse ( file photo)

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Russian markets declined for the fourth day in New York as oil slid and the Finance Ministry announced the Kremlin is considering a plan to hike up taxes on crude output.

Equities fell for a third day as VTB, the nation’s
second-biggest bank, performed poorly.

The MICEX dropped 0.1 percent and closed at 1405.76, dropping
10.74 points. The RTS closed at 417.76, closing high and gaining
1.91 percent.

The US is to release data on producer price inflation,
industrial production, the capacity utilization rate and a report
on manufacturing activity in New York State.

European market indices finished positive on mixed data. The
Euro Stoxx fell 0.22 percent and is sliding on London floors,
France’s CAC advanced 0.25 percent, and Germany’s DAX gained 0.72
percent. French GDP data fell more than expected, but a separate
Eurostat report showed overall EU industrial production rose by 1
percent, seasonally adjusted. Spanish banks added to big eurozone
losses.

The FTSE 100, the commodity heavy London index peaked at the end
of the day for a strong finish at 686.06, up 0.82 percent.

On Wednesday, Germany, France, and Italy are set to release
preliminary data on first-quarter GDP growth.

Index gains were significant in New York. The S&P 500 soared
1.01 percent by market close, a 10th all-time high in 12 sessions.
The Dow Jones closed high, and is already up 0.82 percent on London
floors. Bank of America and American Express spearheaded gains, up
2.77 percent and 2.46 percent respectively. The NASDAQ Composite
index rose 0.69 percent.

The US is to release data on producer price inflation,
industrial production, and the capacity utilization rate on
Wednesday.

In Asian trading Tuesday, Japan’s Nikkei 225 climbed over 15,000
for the first time since January 2008, as the yen hit a 4.5-year
low against the dollar.

Sony Corp soared 12 percent on the news that billionaire Daniel Loeb will heavily
invest in the company’s entertainment limb.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 advanced 0.36 percent and the
Australian dollar dropped to an 11-month low after the Australian
Treasurer announced an unbalanced budget deficit through 2016.

Hong Kong Hang Seng rose 0.13 percent, and the New Zealand NZSE
slightly gained 0.01 percent.

Both WTI and Brent are up. WTI added 0. 06 percent to 94.27, but
down from Tuesday. Brent has slightly eased 0.20 percent to 102.28
per barrel.

This article originally appeared on : RT

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has warned about a worsening poor-rich gap in Britain due to Londonâ„¢s insistence on its austerity drive.

The thinktank said in a report on the developed countriesâ„¢ response to the global economic slowdown that the financial crisis is increasing inequality and poverty.

OECD added inequality Å“remained pretty steady” in Britain between 1995 and 2007, but soared between 2007 and 2010, when the world was grappling with the financial meltdown.

New studies show that back in 2010, the top 10 percent of British families earned an annual £53,600 on the average that was 10 times higher than the lowest 10 percent households.

This is while, the richest earned nine times higher than the poorest in 2005.

“The concern is inequality will rise much more once the full impact of public spending cuts is felt,” said Michael F?rster, senior analyst at the OECD social policy division.

He further warned that the austerity, especially the welfare cuts, will Å“fall on the back of the poor population groups” in Britain, triggering a wider poor-rich gap in the short term.

“The theory is that in the medium term more people will go into the labour market and this low-wage employment will help equalize household incomes,” he added.

However, he said it remains a theory as it has so far only worked for Germany stressing poverty rose among British 18 to 25-year-olds by a percentage point annually in the three years to 2010.

AMR/HE

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

French national statistics agency shows that the country has hit recession.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Scots indep. faces UK with nuke impasse: MP

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Miners at the Grasberg mine in Indonesia. (File photo)

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Iranian presidential hopeful Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf has questioned the performance of former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani during his terms in office.

Hashemi Rafsanjani, currently a presidential hopeful, was in power for 16 years, eight years as the president and another eight years as the Majlis speaker, said Qalibaf, who is also the Tehran Mayor, on Tuesday.

Qalibaf brought into question the social and cultural achievements of the Rafsanjani administration ‘despite enjoying the full support of Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei during his presidency.’

Rafsanjaniâ„¢s return to power, Qalibaf said, would mean the whole country would suffer four years of tensions and polarization; and it would mean that impoverished people would get poorer.

Taking back the country to 20 years ago would be the biggest cruelty to people, the Tehran Mayor stated.

A total of 686 individuals signed up for the race during the registration period, which began on Tuesday March 7 at Iranâ„¢s Interior Ministry and ended on Saturday March 11.

The president of Iran is elected for a four-year term in a national election; and the Guardian Council vets the hopefuls, approving or not approving them for official candidacy.

The Iranian Constitution stipulates that presidential candidates must be religious or political figures, be Iranian by origin, have Iranian citizenship, possess managerial skills, have no criminal record, be trustworthy and pious, and have firm belief in the fundamental principles of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the countryâ„¢s official religion.

MYA/NN/HJL

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Eurostat data is set to report that the eurozone continues to struggle with recession during the first quarter of 2013.

Analysts expect the office to reveal that the economy of the 17-member currency bloc has slumped by 0.1 percent between January and March of this year, making it the fourth quarter of consecutive contraction.

The European Unionâ„¢s statistics office is to publish its first estimate for euro area gross domestic product (GDP) on Wednesday.

The regionâ„¢s economy contracted by 0.6 percent in the final quarter of 2012, according to Eurostatâ„¢s previous data published in March.

This comes as the European Commission issued its forecast on May 3, saying the eurozone economy will continue to contract by 0.4 percent for 2013.

At the same time, the commission said the eurozone economies, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands, would suffer from recession throughout the year, stressing that France is going to fall into a recession of 0.1 percent.

It also predicted that Cyprus would fall into a sharp recession with its gross domestic product (GDP) to contract by 12.6 percent over the next two years.

The crisis-hit region continues to struggle with recession as the eurozone members are in a fierce debate over how to solve the crisis, with the hard-hit countries in the south demanding an end to austerity policies championed by Germany and other northern states.

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

CAH/PR

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

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This article originally appeared on : World Socialist Web Site

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has finally announced that most of the 800,000 civilian employees of the American military will have to take mandatory unpaid leave to cut costs and meet a budget shortfall of USD30 billion.

According to the cost-cutting plans, US militaryâ„¢s civilian workforce will be forced to take 11 off days from work starting July 8 through next September, which is half of the 22 so-called furlough days originally planned by the Pentagon.

Å“We did everything we could not to get to this day,” Hagel reportedly said to hundreds of grim-looking military employees at Pentagonâ„¢s Mark Center in City of Alexandria in Virginia.

Å“I canâ„¢t run this institution into the ditch,” said Hagel. Å“Weâ„¢ve taken this as close to the line as we can and still [be] capable of protecting this country and this countryâ„¢s interests around the world. We still have a war going on.”

Nearly 70,000 military workers are, however, exempt from the furloughs, including about 30,000 shipyard workers after the US Navy successfully argued that the mandatory off days would cause major and costly delays in maintenance work conducted on American aircraft carriers and submarines.

Further exceptions are reportedly being made for Pentagon employees deployed to war zones, employees funded by national intelligence programs and some medical staff at Washington area military hospitals such as Walter Reed and Fort Belvoir.

Moreover, another 50,000 foreign workers at US military bases overseas are also exempt from the mandatory off days due to Å“agreements with the host nations.”

Meanwhile, some US lawmakers have reportedly expressed frustration over the looming furloughs for Defense Departmentâ„¢s employees.

Hawkish Republican John McCain expressed hope that Hagelâ„¢s announcement would trigger efforts by fellow lawmakers to avert cuts to the military budget but noted that he is struggling to find support for the move.

Å“Nobody seems to care,” McCain told reporters. Å“Itâ„¢s amazing. Itâ„¢s one of the most amazing things Iâ„¢ve seen in the years Iâ„¢ve been in the Senate.”

Under federal budget cuts enacted by the US Congress, the Pentagon has to slash its spending by USD37 billion through the end of the 2013 fiscal year, which end on September 30.

MFB/MFB

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]A group of unknown gunmen have attacked a line of stores in eastern Baghdad in the Zayouna neighborhood, killing at least 12 people and injuring 3 others.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Recession has hit France following the fall of its gross domestic product (GDP) by 0.2 percent during the first quarter of 2013, officials say.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

This file photo shows a view of the infamous US Guantanamo prison in Cuba.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Secretary of Iran’s Elections Headquarters and Deputy Interior Minister Seyyed Solat Mortazavi

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has criticized the management of the dispute-ridden finance ministry, saying it lacked a Å“boss,” amid the countryâ„¢s struggle to avoid recession.

The former premier and finance minister said on Tuesday that the ministry lacks strong management as it has currently seven senior and junior ministers.

“Right now you have several bosses and, whatever the quality of the men and women and their level of agreement, I think that stronger coordination would be useful,” said Fabius.

The finance ministry has been hit by a series of scandals and public clashes between ministers, with many focused on its head Pierre Moscovici.

The center-left finance minister and his left-wing Industry Ministry Arnaud Montebourg have disputed over several issues including public finances to the stateâ„¢s role in deciding private sector investments.

In addition, the country’s former Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac was charged on April 2 for tax fraud over a secret Swiss bank account.

The ministry has also been criticized for its over-optimistic predictions of the countryâ„¢s economic recovery as it was forced to push back the target by one year.

Meanwhile, President Francois Hollandeâ„¢s approval rating has plunged to a new 25 percent, according to a poll conducted by the Ifop Institute released on April 21, making him the most unpopular leader in modern French history.

Analysts said the low rating comes as Hollande has not tackled unemployment, which stands on a 16-year high, with almost 3.2 million people jobless.

The president has hinted that a government restructure might take place, saying that he would get rid of underperforming ministers Å“at some point.”

Hollande is planned to hold a speech on Thursday in a bid to reassert his leadership on policy and there are suggestions that he might give more hints on timing and shape of any reshuffle.

CAH/PR

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Muslim Rohingya children brave the rain at a camp for displaced people in Sittwe, Myanmar, May 14, 2013.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

An audit of the Colorado Department of Corrections has revealed that hundreds of inmates have been given incorrect prison sentences, meaning some freshly released parolees will be forced back behind bars while others have been incarcerated for too long.

Though only a fraction of the audit has been completed, the
examination has already found “serious questions” in the
sentences of some 349 convicts, according to the Denver Post.
Judges have amended 56 of those errors and are in the process of
clearing the rest. 

Some of the sentences are erroneous because a judicial clerk
gave an incorrect statement to the corrections department, while in
other instances prison officials misread the documents. State
officials will try to correct their mistakes by returning the
wrongfully released to prison and springing others
immediately. 

The audit is not expected to be complete until July, although
state officials have identified 8,415 prisoners whose sentences
need to be examined. Of that total, 2,500 are expected to warrant a
close inspection. 

If the current rate continues, more than 1,000 individuals will
be victims of “serious” sentencing errors. 

“I think it would be logical to be concerned,” Roger
Werholtz, the interim executive director of the Colorado Department
of Corrections, told the Post. “Here’s the reality: Sentencing
laws are so complex, it is not unusual to find errors in how
sentences are communicated from courts to the state.” 

Werhotlz is currently serving as interim executive director
because his predecessor Tom Clements was murdered at his own front
door. 

Evan Ebel, the man suspected of the crime, was an alleged white
supremacist who was killed in a shootout with Texas police. He was
known to have assaulted a prison guard in 2006. Ebel did not serve
any time for the assault because a clerical error changed the time
served order from “consecutive” to
“concurrent.” 

He was released from Fremont Correctional facility four years
earlier than his actual intended release date. 
Colorado governor John Hickenlooper, who was coincidentally friends
with Ebel’s father, ordered the audit in response to Clements’
murder.

This article originally appeared on : RT

The West has never had much use for stability in Africa and the Middle East, and having rogue states run by fundamentalists has always been a better deal than meaningful, long-lasting peace, says Lawrence Freeman of Executive Intelligence Review.

Libya is in turmoil, as was evident in the latest deadly blast in the city of Benghazi on May 13. As all
hell breaks loose and armed militias run amok, Western diplomats
are pulling out of a chaos they had helped create. Freeman
discusses their pullout and further Mid-East strategy with RT.

RT: British and American embassies are withdrawing
some of their staff from Libya right now, so why the powers who
actually helped to topple Colonel Gaddafi are feeling vulnerable in
Tripoli?

Lawrence Freeman: They created a monster that they can no longer
control, and it’s turning against them in a way that was absolutely
foreseeable. The fact hath the Tony Blair policy which Obama,
Cameron and Sarkozy followed implementing — the overthrow of
Gaddafi in August 2011 — created this condition which was
understandable, anyone could’ve known what was going to happen. We
worked directly with Al Qaeda militias all throughout Benghazi and
other parts of Libya, so now it’s become ungovernable. So even the
people who initiated the mess have to leave to protect themselves
because nobody will protect them and the situation is completely
out of control.

RT: And who is behind the violence — one particular
group, or are there various elements?

LF: Well, there are various militias. The largest
umbrella group is the Islamic Fighting Group, which — if not a part
of — is completely one with Al Qaeda. This grouping was at war with
Gaddafi and he was trying to defeat them. And we carried out the
most idiotic policy, which was to work with these groups to
overthrow Colonel Muammar Gadaffi. And this goes all the way back
to the policy that Tony Blair had in 1999 for the Iraq war: “if we
want to get rid of leaders, we’re going to have a regime change”.
And this fellow, Blair, is probably the biggest criminal on the
planet right now. And Obama — because he’s carried out these
policies — is in deep, deep trouble in his own second term in the
US.

RT: What about the political situation in Libya? Is
the current government incompetent or just simply unable to control
the violence, and why isn’t it getting help from Western
powers?

LF: The government, really, has been removed. They passed
this law that said that anybody in the last 30-40 years that had
any role in the former Libyan government had to be removed. So,
basically, we’ve created the closest thing yet to an Al Qaeda
controlled state. And these fools in the West are now planning and
thinking of doing the same thing in Syria. Except for
military-political leadership from the United States, from people
like former Defense Secretary Gates, current Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, we would be in war already in
Syria, and it would look like Libya, except several orders of
magnitude worse.

RT: Of course some would say that those who kicked off
the situation in Libya should go back and sort it out and get the
country back on track. After all they were responsible. So is
another intervention simply not realistic?

LF: No. I don’t think there’s going to be another
intervention. I think there are some people in the British circles
who want to see uncontrollable states, who want to see people die,
who want to see genocide. And this thing has already spread: the
fall of Gaddafi was directly related to the toppling of northern
Mali and the coup in Bamako. And there are articles and reports
which I’ve known for months, that the Boko Haram have received
weapons via Mali and others, from Gaddafi’s weapon caches. So we’re
seeing the destabilization of the whole Sahel and North and West
Africa, as well as Gaddafi. Whether you say it was done by
ignorance or by intention. I say — both.

RT: But why is it that you’re creating rogue states
run by Islamic fundamentalists who are anti-Western, creating a
hotbed of militia threatening the region and the rest of the world?
Why the intention to create such chaos?

LF: You have an alliance of British royal family, the
Saudi royal family…and they would rather see chaos and
destabilization as a way to maintain control than allow sovereign
nation states to exercise their rights. They’ll have more power if
there’s un-governability than if there are actually stable nations.
And this is increasingly the sign of the times as this financial
crisis is careening out of control, especially throughout the
European sector. The transatlantic regions are in a state of such
dire collapse that war and chaos are looking more and more like
their alternative survival.

RT: The oil company BP has decided to pull some of its
staff out. Does this mean that international ambitions to exploit
resources there are failing? Because, after all, many are claiming
that oil was the reason for the Western intervention.

LF: I never thought it was oil. I think oil plays a role,
I think resources play a role. But from my standpoint, my own
historical view of things, it’s much more the age-old imperialist,
colonialist policy of having weak nation-states that are easy to
manipulate and govern.

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

This article originally appeared on : RT

The US military officer overseeing sexual assault prevention at the Fort Hood base in Texas is now under investigation for sexual assault, including allegations of maltreatment of subordinates and running a prostitution ring.

Two senior officials at the Pentagon and a Capitol Hill staffer
briefed on the case confirmed to USA Today that a sergeant serving
at the Texas military installation, whose name has not been
released, is under investigation for abusive sexual contact,
forcing a subordinate into prostitution and sexually assaulting at
least two others.

The officer has now been relieved of his duties, though charges
had yet to be filed. The sergeant oversaw a sexual assault
prevention program at the battalion level, and was responsible for
a unit of some 800 soldiers.

Both Pentagon officials who confirmed the investigation,
including inquiries into the alleged prostitution ring, spoke on
condition of anonymity as the case is still ongoing.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel reacted with “frustration, anger and disappointment over
these troubling allegations and the breakdown in discipline and
standards they imply,” Pentagon press secretary George
Little said on Tuesday, following official acknowledgment of the
investigation at Fort Hood.

The announcement also comes on the heels of another blow to the
armed forces, adding to an ongoing narrative showing a widespread
culture of sexual abuse in the American military. Earlier in May,
Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, the officer in charge of the Air
Force’s sexual abuse prevention program based at the Pentagon, was
arrested for drunkenly groping a woman. Krusinski is set to appear
in court in July for sexual battery.

To compound the unwanted attention, Krusinski’s arrest came the
same week that the Pentagon released an annual report revealing a
35% increase in unreported sexual assault incidents over two years,
totaling 26,000 up from 19,300 in 2010.

Reported sexual assaults of both men and women in the military
rose to 3,374 last year, up from 3,192 a year earlier, according to
that same Pentagon report. About a quarter of those who were
assaulted and received medical attention declined to press charges,
which officials cited as an indicator of victims’ fears of
retribution.

“Tragically, the depth of the
sexual assault problem in our military was already overwhelmingly
clear before this latest highly disturbing report,” said
Sen. Carl Levin, (D-MI), who currently chairs the personnel panel
of the US Armed Services Committee, in response to Tuesday’s
revelation.

Air Force officials have already been criticized for their
handling of sexual assault issues. Air Force Chief of Staff Mark
Welsh was blasted by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) for blaming
“hook-up culture” for
contributing to continuing sexual abuse problems.

“To say this report is
disturbing would be a gross understatement. For the second time in
a week we are seeing someone who is supposed to be preventing
sexual assault being investigated for committing that very
act,” said Gillibrand.

“We have to do better by the
men and women serving and assure them that they will not be
attacked by their colleagues,” she added.

 In response to this latest incident, US Defense Secretary
Chuck Hagel on Tuesday ordered the armed services to immediately
“re-train, re-credential and re-screen” tens of thousands of
recruiters and military sexual assault prevention officers.

This article originally appeared on : RT

A new report from the US Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration blamed weak management at the Internal Revenue Service for allowing employees to stifle conservative political organizations seeking tax-exempt status.

The results of the probe, which were made public Tuesday, do not
blame IRS leadership in Washington for initiating the screening
process – but do fault them for failing to adequately supervise
employees in the Cincinnati office where the targeting program was
born. Lori Lerner, the head of the tax-exempt organizations
department, blamed “low level employees” for using terms
like “Tea Party” and “patriot” to filter and prevent
right-wing groups from being granted tax-exempt status due to
suspicions they were engaged solely in political
activities. 

US Attorney General Eric Holder, who announced the Department of
Justice had launched an investigation into the 18 months the IRS
admitted scrutinizing political groups, said he was unsure which,
if any, laws had been broken. The Justice Department’s inquiry
joins three Congressional committees that are scheduled to begin
examining what happened in hearings this week. 

At a news conference on Tuesday, Holder called the practice
“outrageous and unacceptable” and pledged to fully
investigate.

IRS agents, who also screened groups championing the
Constitution and Bill of Rights, stymied the organizations because
they were trying to determine if the political activities of the
groups disqualified them from tax exemption, according to the
Associated Press. 

The snared groups claimed social welfare on their applications.
Such charitable groups are permitted to engage in political
activity, but politics cannot be their single reason for existence.
Current tax law leaves it to the IRS to make that
decision. 

Other non-Tea Party political groups were not
screened. 

“The criteria developed by the Determinations Unit gives the
appearance that the IRS is not impartial in conducting its
mission,” the inspector general’s report said. 

The flawed sorting process did not result in any group having
its application denied, but many still have yet to hear back on
applications filed years ago. As of December 2012 the average delay
lasted 574 days, which could have hurt the likelihood donors would
contribute. 

“Unfortunately, the report raises more questions than it
answers,” House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa
(R-California) told the AP. “What we do know for sure is that
the IRS personnel responsible for granting tax exemptions
systematically targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny, and
that officials in Washington, DC were aware of this practice, even
while publicly claiming that it never happened.”

This article originally appeared on : RT

Following news that US agencies listened en mass to the phones of AP staff, journalist Tony Gosling told RT that the US Attorney General was a ‘kind of devils advocate’ in the saga, investigating AP journalists for ‘exposing CIA war crimes in Yemen.’

RT: It’s thought that American investigators were
looking for a potentially dangerous government leak – so wasn’t
this justified in terms of national security?

Tony Gosling: Due to the timing of these two months of
telephone information that they’ve taken [from] over twenty phone
lines, [it looks as if it was connected with] what is effectively
war crimes by the CIA over in Yemen. The CIA’s view and the
American military’s view is that there are all sorts of crimes
going on by the Yemenis and the Associated Press had been exposing
them. Actually, what’s been going on here in reality is that the
Associated Press were exposing war crimes by people in their own
country.

What we’ve got here squaring up is the American military
industrial complex, led in this case by the US attorney general
Eric Holder. He is some kind of devil’s advocate; if you remember
the film, he is that kind of a lawyer. He’s the first ever in
American history to be held in contempt of Congress, so he has
certainly not got his hands clean. On the other side is the
tradition of a free press, and the effect of this massive trawl,
effectively a fishing operation of months of AP telephone lines, is
it has a horrific chilling effect on journalism. It also means that
individuals, whistleblowers and people with stories can no longer
trust the journalists. If they go with confidential information to
those journalists and have confidential phone conversations, they
are no longer guaranteed that those journalists can keep those
conversations secret because the Justice Department is coming in
with a massive trawl over a two-month period. One can understand if
it’s a small investigation over a couple of days or a particular
phone line possibly, but this is a fishing operation and an
appalling attack on the freedom of the press in America by a
government that is out of control.

RT: Can journalists really be trusted – doesn’t the
phone hacking scandal in the UK suggest otherwise?

TG: I don’t think that the situation in Britain is quiet as
difficult as it is over in the US at the moment. They are going to
the line it seems with operations like this. What is effectively
going on is that Eric Holder, who is a puppy-dog; he’s not really
sticking up for the American people, he’s not doing his job. What
he is doing is the job of the American military industrial complex,
which is very frightened about actually being exposed by people
like the Associated Press for the things that they are doing. We do
have problems here in Britain, but it’s not quite as bad as in the
US. Journalists and lawyers have to really watch out for
governments that snoop on their information and have to stop it,
stone dead.

RT: AP has managed to put the Obama administration in a
very embarrassing situation by exposing this surveillance web – so
is this case ultimately a victory for the press?

TG: Of course this does have to be exposed, but like I say,
there is nothing that is going to stop this chilling effect, which
is making it very difficult for journalists to keep their sources
private. In this kind of situation, where the Justice Departments
gets its hands on all those phone calls, that’s almost impossible.
And of course, this is all is driven by the military industrial
complex who have their eyes on the Middle East oil and the Yemini
oil. This has nothing to do with trying to stop terrorism or
anything like that. These are just those that are trying to stop
the US from taking over oil deposits in the Middle East and
effectively covering up for what is actually illegal activity.

RT: If governments are worried about information being
leaked by journalists, shouldn’t they be focusing on finding the
source of that leak within their own ranks – rather than targeting
the messenger?

TG: You should never be targeting the messenger. The
messengers are coming up with bad news and those in authority in
the US don’t like it. It’s a similar situation in the UK. We have
secret courts being brought in here in Britain. And ultimately this
is the rise of a kind of police state where government thinks it
can do what it wants. What we’re seeing is the erosion of some of
the basic civil liberties that we’ve said for the last 30-40 years:
‘this is what we hold dear.’ We’re saying that ‘oh, these terrible
Al-Qaeda and etc. are trying to take those civil liberties away’.
But Al-Qaeda aren’t taking them away, our own governments are
taking them away.

Christopher Chambers, journalism professor from Georgetown
University in the US, believes the reason behind the Justice
Department investigation of AP is the government’s desire to have
control over the flow of information covering it up by public
safety concerns.

“Especially when they perceive, rightly or wrongly that they
are protecting the public from terrorism or some external threat or
perhaps some internal threat. The problem is that that threat has
not been articulated, has not been put out there as something that
overrides this unprecedented intrusion,” he told RT.

“The attorney general will have to explain a lot in the
coming weeks. Otherwise it is further erosion of the trust that
people have in their government, not only to protect them from
outside threats but to protect them from the government
itself.”

The active intrusion into the press is unprecedented, Chamber
maintains. “It’s an extension of some of the intrusions into the
civil liberties that we saw after 9/11 attacks. The hypocrisy is
that Barack Obama came into office decrying and attacking the
abuses of the Bush administration, but is continuing them. That
will be rather a political then a legal problem for him…
Individuals and groups that supported him in the past are
abandoning him right now.”

This article originally appeared on : RT

All states spy on each other, but the latest bust of an alleged CIA agent in Moscow is indicative not of typical espionage, but rather a shadow war intended to foment opposition to Putin’s government, argues the ANSWER Coalition’s Brian Becker.

RT: What impact could this case have on Russia-U.S.
relations, which looked pretty good after John Kerry’s visit to
Moscow last week?

Brian Becker: Or they appeared to be pretty good. This
reminds one of the old expression that ‘diplomacy is nothing more
than a form of perjury’. You have John Kerry meeting with the
Russian foreign minister [Sergei Lavrov] talking about an
international conference on Syria. We’ve had many proclamations
from the Obama administration recently that there would be greater
coordination with Russian security [services] about terrorism. But
the fact is, the United States government is carrying out espionage
and spying in Russia. All countries do it to each other, but in the
case of the United States effort towards Russia, it’s got a larger
political motive. Not simply to steal industrial secrets or learn
industrial secrets, but to promote a weakening of the Russian
government because in fact the US government identifies the Putin
government — the Russian government — and its position on
international issues as still an obstacle to US foreign
policy designs. We see that right now in the Middle East for
instance.

RT: He was caught with quite low-tech gear – a
map, a compass and a couple of wigs – doesn’t this look a little
unprofessional?

BB: Well, we don’t really know all of the details, we’ll
probably learn more — or maybe not — in the coming days. I think
the fact that the Russian government has publicized this, made
something of it, means the Russian government is calling attention
to the fact that the US is doing something of a full court press on
Russia; a shadow war so to speak. Using the NGOs and the
penetration of Russian society by US soft power through the NGOs at
one level, [they are] trying to carry out many, many intelligence
operations to get Russians to defect. I think also, if you watch
the US media: very favorable coverage of the Russian opposition.
Any protest that takes place in Russia, even if it’s small, gets
enormous front page coverage. While here, protest movements in the
United States get almost no coverage. You see a general scenario
being played out of hostility to the Russian government even if
there are diplomatic overtures at another level.

RT: You have said that spying is going on, so
presumably there are Russian spies operating in America.

BB: Well of course. This is part of modern statecraft; we
know that. We know that in the modern world, industrial and
military secrets are something that are gained by spying operations
by all countries in fact. The point that I’m trying to make is that
there is something unusual about how the Obama administration — and
before that you had the Bush administration — is approaching the
Russian government. Even though the cold war is technically over,
they are still identifying the Russian government as an opponent,
as a competitor, because they perceive the Russian government to
have interests that block the United States or obstruct the United
States; interests in geo-strategically important parts of the world
like the Middle East.

RT: What do you think of the way the Russian
authorities have reacted to this? They simply released him back to
the embassy but now they say that he’s got to be deported. Instead
of an overreaction the response to the incident has been
calm.

BB: I think so. I mean they’re publicizing it, [but] it’s
a very measured reaction. He could be arrested, he could be held,
he could then be exchanged later for those who had been arrested on
the American side. Instead he’s being quickly released. I think
that the Russian government’s handling of the situation is to make
a point, that they recognize and they want the world to recognize
Obama sends Kerry to Moscow for talks about Syria while Obama says
there is cooperation on the anti-terrorism front, but in fact, the
United States is conducting something of a shadow war against
Russia.

RT: And that’s embarrassing for the US now to be
exposed if this is indeed proven to be genuine.

BB: Yes, of course they’ll try to put a narrative: ‘this is
just the Cold War being played out over and over and over again.’
The Russian government is not trying to overdo the incident but
they are trying to prove a point. We’ll see how it plays out in the
US media in the coming days.

RT: There have been plenty of spy stories like this in
recent years – do you think we can expect these practices to
continue?

BB: Indeed. But I think it’s more than just a spy story.
I think the US government is trying to fundamentally weaken the
Russian government. They would like to have a Russian government
that’s more pliable, that’s more of an accommodationist government.
I think right now the Putin government and its foreign policy in
particular is a concern for the United States so they’re using
espionage and intelligence gathering and other methods to create
and foment opposition inside of Russia to Putin, including the
penetration of important parts of Russia society by US spies. So I
think it’s got a serious political motive behind it.

This article originally appeared on : RT

Wynton Hall
breitbart.com
May 14, 20134

The progressive-leaning investigative journalism group ProPublica says the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) office that targeted and harassed conservative tax-exempt groups during the 2012 election cycle gave the progressive group nine confidential applications of conservative groups whose tax-exempt status was pending.

The commendable admission lends further evidence to the lengths the IRS went during an election cycle to silence tea party and limited government voices.

ProPublica says the documents the IRS gave them were “not supposed to be made public”:

The same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year… In response to a request for the applications for 67 different nonprofits last November, the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent ProPublica applications or documentation for 31 groups. Nine of those applications had not yet been approved–meaning they were not supposed to be made public. (We made six of those public, after redacting their financial information, deeming that they were newsworthy.)

Read more

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This article was posted: Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at 9:14 pm

Tags: domestic news

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This article originally appeared on : Infowars

An Israeli speedboat escorts the Mavi Marmara near the port of Ashdod on May 31, 2010.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

In a letter sent to British foreign secretary William Hague, a prominent human rights lawyer is alleging that Guantanamo Bay’s hunger striking detainees are being threatened with humiliating body searches before they are allowed to contact legal counsel.

See our timeline of the Guantanamo Bay hunger
strike.

Clive Stafford Smith, who currently represents several inmates
at the US prison camp through the legal charity Reprieve, claims
that guards at the facility are requiring invasive searches before
detainees can conduct in-person interviews or even phone calls to
lawyers.

A copy of the letter was obtained by The Guardian, and states
that as a direct result of the new policy two of Smith’s clients
were recently barred from speaking with their legal representatives
after refusing the searches.

“The US military has started
directly abusing prisoners who want to contact their lawyers to
tell them what is happening. So anyone who wants to see a lawyer,
or have a legal phone call, must have his fingers put up his anus
and his genitals touched,” Smith writes.

There are currently 100 inmates confirmed by US authorities as
participating in the hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay since it began
in earnest back in February, 29 of whom are being force-fed via
tubes.

Five of those prisoners are being observed in the detainee
hospital, according to a statement by US Army spokesperson Lt. Col.
Samuel House on Monday. The official numbers differ from those of
human rights activists, who have put the number of strikers at up
to 130.

The claims by Smith coincide with failure by one of his clients,
Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, to speak with him via telephone last
Friday, allegedly due to the new policy. Moqbel, who is
participating in the hunger strike, was the recent author of a New
York Times op-ed which detailed the pain and emotional impact of
being force-fed by nasal tubes.  

Agence France-Presse (AFP) has independently reported that
another lawyer, David Remes, had two detainees he currently
represents decline calls due to the new search procedures.

“Under the new search policy,
a detainee who leaves his camp is subject to a search including his
private parts and holding his private parts,” Remes
said.

He added that the “shocking” searches were “designed to deter many detainees from
meeting with their [lawyers] … to make their life more miserable
and put the detainees in front of an impossible choice.”

In response to the allegations, Lt. Col. Samuel House has told
The Guardian that the new search procedures do not represent
anything beyond a pat down:

“Full frisk searches are
conducted in a professional manner to quickly locate and identify
contraband hidden on the body. The searches are conducted with
clothes on, similar to a pat-down search conducted by an airport
security screener,” says House.

According to House, the new procedures were enacted “in light of contraband discovered during
recent cell searches.”

For his part, Smith believes the allegedly invasive searches
cannot be justified.

“Any pretext given for these
new rules is just that: a pretext. The prisoners do not need to be
sexually assaulted in order to be taken to a telephone to talk to
their lawyer,” he said.

This article originally appeared on : RT

A court in Iran has lifted a ban on the activities of Reuters after the news agency reportedly paid a fine and issued a statement of apology.

According to Iranian media outlets, the news agency was allowed to resume its operations in the Islamic Republic after it received the courtâ„¢s verdict last week.

Reuters offices in the Iranian capital were shut down last year after Iranian female martial artists filed a lawsuit against the agency.

The Iranian athletes sued Reuters for defamation after it branded them as Å“assassins” in a report published in February 2012.

Reuters also faced a lawsuit from the Iranian government over the same report.

The news agency said in a statement that the report was an error by its producer in Tehran and promised not to make such errors again.

“We acknowledge this error occurred and regard it as a very serious matter… and [we] have taken appropriate steps to prevent a recurrence,” said Reuter editor-in-chief Stephen J. Adler in March 2012.

MHB/AS

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

newsmax.com
May 14, 2013

The Justice Department is opening a criminal investigation into the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of tea party groups for extra scrutiny over whether they qualified for tax exempt status, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Tuesday.

Holder said the FBI is coordinating with the Department of Justice to see if any laws were broken.

At a news conference Tuesday, Holder called the practice, “outrageous and unacceptable.”

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This article was posted: Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at 9:03 pm

Tags: domestic news

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This article originally appeared on : Infowars

A foreign-backed militant who was seen eating an organ of a dead Syrian soldier in a recent video has confirmed the authenticity of the 27-second clip.

In an interview with Time magazine conducted via Skype on Tuesday, Khalid al Hamad, known by his nom de guerre Abu Sakkar, confirmed that the video is real and that he did indeed take a bite of the soldierâ„¢s lung.

The video shows him cutting out some of the soldier’s organs and biting into one. At the time of the filming, al Hamad believed that he was eating the manâ„¢s liver, but A surgeon who saw the video said the organ in question was actually a lung.

Other Syrian militants condemned the “horrific and inhumane” action and said he should be arrested or killed for committing the atrocity.

Human Rights Watch said it was a war crime.

In April, two Time reporters saw the video and a few weeks later obtained a copy of it. Witnesses to the filming told Time that the video was legitimate, but the magazineâ„¢s journalists initially did not release the video, believing it could have been faked for propaganda purposes, then attempted to authenticate it, and only publicized it after al Hamad confirmed that the video was real.

On Sunday, a copy of the video appeared online and sparked a flood of Facebook Å“shares” and YouTube views.

Human Rights Watch, which validated the video, issued a report on Monday in which it called on the United Nations Security Council to refer the Syria situation to the International Criminal Court to ensure accountability for all war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Å“It is not enough for Syriaâ„¢s opposition to condemn such behavior or blame it on violence by the government,” said Nadim Houry, HRWâ„¢s Deputy Middle East Director. Å“The opposition forces need to act firmly to stop such abuses.”

Å“I have another video clip that I will send to them. In the clip I am sawing another Shabiha [pro-government militiaman] with a saw. The saw we use to cut trees. I sawed him in small pieces and large ones,” al Hamad told Time.

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

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

GJH/HGL

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/can_the_eu_be_saved_20130514/

Posted on May 14, 2013

This article originally appeared on : TruthDig

A photo of Ryan C. Fogle inside an FSB office published by Russia Today on May 14, 2013

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

The prosecutor of the ICC will open a preliminary investigation into Israel’s 2010 raid on a humanitarian aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip, which resulted in the death of nine Turkish activists and strained relations between Ankara and Tel Aviv.

The referral has come from the Indian Ocean island of Comoros,
where one of the flotilla’s vessels was registered. Comoros is a
member of the ICC and according to the court’s rules it is
obligated to address an issue when a member state complains.

“My office will be conducting a preliminary examination in order
to establish whether the criteria for opening an investigation are
met,” prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in a statement after
meeting with lawyers from a Turkish law firm Elmadag that is
representing Comoros.

The Mavi Marmara ship registered in Comoros was stormed by Israeli
forces on May 31, 2010 when it was attempting to break an
Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip. Soldiers killed nine
activists, eight of them Turkish nationals, sparking international
outcry and condemnation from the UN for use of “excessive
force.”

The UN has called for the six-year blockade on Gaza to be lifted
on numerous occasions on the grounds that it represents “a
denial of basic human rights in contravention of international
law.”

Lawyers from the Istanbul-based law firm claimed, during the
filing, that the events on the ship should be considered as having
occurred on the territory of Comoros.

So far the court has declined to investigate events in the
Palestinian territories, due to lack of jurisdiction. The ICC has
jurisdiction over its members, over cases that are referred to it
by the UN Security Council and over events that take place on the
territory of member states.

“After careful analysis of all available information, I shall
make a determination that will be made public in due course,”
Bensouda said.

Relations between Israel and Turkey were strained by the incident.
However in April Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a
phone conversation apologized to Turkey for “any error that may
have led to loss of life.” Israel offered compensation to the
families of the victims of the flotilla raid.

Earlier this month, a second round of reconciliation talks between
Israel and Turkey took place in Jerusalem. Following the talks
Israel announced that an agreement had been drafted “but a number
of clarifications are needed on a few issues.”

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that full
diplomatic ties can only be resumed after compensation is paid and
Israel must end all commercial restrictions on the
Palestinians.

This article originally appeared on : RT

Iranian presidential hopeful Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel says the registration of certain political figures for the election necessitates unity among principlists more than ever before, Press TV reports.

Å“With the recent registrations of certain hopefuls such as Mr. Hashemi Rafasnjani and Mr. Rahim-Mashaei for the election, we feel the necessity to reach a consensus more than before,” Haddad-Adel told university students in Tehran on Tuesday.

He went on to say that Å“principlists need to be united more than ever before, and they are more likely to be united now.”

The principlist hopeful also said that due to the diversity of hopefuls among the principlist camp, the Collation of Three Å“has agreed to reach a consensus on who should run for president.”

The other members of the principlist coalition are former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati, who is currently a senior advisor to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, and Tehran Mayor Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf.

Å“Mr. Qalibaf, Mr. Velayati and I have agreed to pick one of the coalitionâ„¢s members if our qualification is approved by the Guardian Council,” Haddad-Adel added.

He also predicted that by the time the Guardian Council announces the final list of candidates, some hopefuls may drop out in favor of other rivals.

Å“Other hopefuls may drop out of the race before the final list is announced as some of them have already done so since Saturday and the same may happen during the next two or three days,” Haddad-Adel stated.

Expediency Council Chairman Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and head of the Secretariat of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaei registered for the election at the Iranian Interior Ministry before the registration deadline ended on Saturday.

A total of 686 individuals signed up for Iranâ„¢s 11th presidential election, which will be held 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 based on their qualifications.

MHB/AS

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Iranian presidential hopeful Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has warned against political mudslinging in the run-up to the upcoming presidential election.

In a second election statement issued on Tuesday, Rafsanjani said that he has always refrained from Å“defaming rivals” during the course of his political carrier, adding that Å“slander and libel” are inhumane and against Islamic values.

The former Iranian president also called on people working in his campaign team to avoid extravagance and warned against holding inappropriate and noisy election carnivals.

Rafsanjani served as Iranâ„¢s president from 1989 to 1997. In 2005, he ran for a third term in office, but he ultimately lost the race to his rival Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The registration of hopefuls at the Iranian Interior Ministry began on May 7 and ended on May 11.

A total of 686 individuals signed up for Iranâ„¢s 11th presidential election, which will be held 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 based on their qualifications.

MHB/AS

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi speaks to reporters in Dubai on May 14, 2013.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

LinkedIn, the social website that caters to professional networking, announced Monday that sex workers will no longer be able to use the online resume service to advertise their own personal brand.

The social network has never allowed “unlawful” profiles,
which it categorizes as those advertising illegal services, but, as
prostitution is not forbidden by law everywhere in the world or
even everywhere in the United States, escorts have long taken
advantage of the opportunity to bring attention to themselves.
 

Under the section titled “Don’t undertake the following,”
LinkedIn’s new privacy policy and user agreement stipulates,
“Even if it is legal where you are located,” users must not
“create profiles or provide content that promotes escort
services or prostitution.” 

Legal sex workers displaced by the update have criticized
LinkedIn for assuming the role of moral arbiter of the
Internet. 

“What’s the problem? We have a license to do this stuff,”
Dennis Hof, owner of multiple legal brothels including Nevada’s
Moonlite Bunny Ranch, told NBC on Monday. “Our business is legal
as theirs. We’re the good guys. We have no reason to be knocked
off.” 

Hof said he hopes LinkedIn doesn’t try to remove his or his
employees’ profiles as they, like so many other legal businesses in
the information age, rely on social media to attract
customers. 

“LinkedIn needs to realize they don’t need to filter out legal
businesses in America,” he continued. “These are businesswomen, and
some of them are making mid-six-figure incomes. If it’s okay to do
that, is it okay to drop Dairy Queen too because it serves too much
fat and calories?”

A casual inspection of LinkedIn’s listings reveals that many
young men and women, while not listing prostitution as one of their
career skills, do advertise thinly-veiled massage services,
independent escort professionalism, and companionship, among other
professions. 

“I’m not saying we’re going to do a purge, though we very
well may,” said Hani Durzy, LinkedIn’s director of corporate
communications, during an interview with NBC. “In a nutshell, as
we become aware of profiles that violate our policies we will take
the appropriate actions. Does that mean shutting them down on day
one? Or giving our members the benefit of the doubt, and telling
them that’s a violation and you’ve got to change it? There is no
hard and fast rule.”

This article originally appeared on : RT

British household wealth is lower than it was almost a decade ago, the ONS reveals.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Britainâ„¢s Conservative party publishes a draft bill to legislate for an EU referendum.

This article originally appeared on : Press TV

Mounting pressure from national media and the local community still has not convinced California police to offer any explanation for why they confiscated cell phone video taken by witnesses who say eight or nine officers beat a helpless man to death.

The Kern County Sherriff’s Office has responded to allegations
of police brutality only by stonewalling reporters and the family
of David Silva, 33, who died last week after witnesses say police
took turns hitting the supposedly inebriated man in the head with
their batons. Observers who phoned 911 to report the police abuse
were later visited by detectives demanding they turn over any
footage captured in the early morning hours of Wednesday, May
8. 

The seven Kern County deputies officials say were involved in
the incident (the number of California Highway Patrol officers
present is still unknown) have not been placed on administrative
leave, according to the Bakersfield Californian, and department
officials have refused to explain why. 

“We’re following the same protocol, as far as the
administrative process is concerned, that we’d follow in
similar-type incidents,” said sheriff’s spokesman Ray Pruitt.
Other law enforcement higher-ups echoed a similar sentiment by
implying their silence was warranted by an “ongoing
investigation” that could last for months. 

The cause of death will be announced pending a toxicology report
from the coroner as well as microscopic studies. But the delay in
explanations fail to account for why witnesses told local and
national media outlets that Silva appeared to die in front of them,
after a police beating and while a canine unit looked on,
apparently ready to intervene if Silva would have been allowed to
stand. 

Melissa Quair told the Bakersfield Californian that aggressive
deputies showed up at her door and blocked the exit as they seized
her boyfriend’s phone, which contained video of the beating. She
also asserted that her mother was forced to forfeit her phone, even
after the police were told it did not contain any supposed
evidence. 

“They used more force than was needed,” Quair said. “I
told them that they didn’t have permission to say who could go in
or out of my house. My mom is disabled and has a lot of doctor and
medical numbers stored in her phone. But the detective didn’t care
and they told my mom to write all her contacts down on a piece of
paper and while she did they watched her like hawks.”