Labour are “open” to cheaper alternatives for the Trident nuclear deterrent but have stopped short of committing to ditch their long-standing commitment for a like-for-like replacement.

Earlier on Monday morning, the Financial Times reported senior Labour advisers and MPs had indicated the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, was backing the shift in position.

Labour sources later clarified their position. Speaking to DefenceManagement, a spokesperson said: “The idea that Labour is moving away from Trident is false.

Trident has been the UK’s nuclear deterrent since 1994

“[Labour] will not compromise on having a credible nuclear deterrent.”

Tonly Blair committed the Labour Party to a like-for-like replacement back in 2006, a stance which has remained since.

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Labour’s position on the issue is especially pertinent as a final decision on the future of the deterrent is not due until 2016, a year after the next general election.

A Labour election victory would give them power of veto over any decisions made before then.

Labour is far from united on the issue.

Des Browne, former Labour defence secretary said the deterrent places should be reconsidered “given the range of challenges before us and the limited resources at our disposal”.

Conversely, Labour Lord West said Trident is “too important to get wrong“.

Trident currently operates with four Vanguard-class submarines. A like-for-like replacement will cost around £25bilion and is the stated preference of the Conservatives.

Other options could involve scaling back the size of Trident to three or even just two submarines.

Critics of Trident argue it is not relavent to the geo-political realties currently faced by the UK.

Recent public opinion polls found that 63% would scrap Trident in order to help pay off the deficit and only 22% support a like-for-like replacement.

Despite a long history of reported human rights abuses at Guantanamo prison, which both the UN and US President Barack Obama denounced as torture, the prison’s Director of Public Affairs Captain Robert Durand has denied any wrongdoing.

“We will continue to carry out our mission to provide a safe and humane environment,” he said.

Earlier this month, Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) denied the existence of an ongoing hunger strike at the facility. Durand called detainee allegations of mistreatment, “outright falsehoods and gross exaggerations,” implying that the protest was insignificant compared to one that took place in 2006. He also claimed that detainees had fabricated incidents of misconduct.

“If the definition of a hunger striker is entirely in their control and is a matter of their discretion, then I think that explains how they are able to say that there are no more than a handful of men on hunger strike,” Pardiss Kebriaei of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) told RT.  

“While JTF-GTMO continues to deny the existence of a mass hunger strike at Guantánamo, attorneys report that the prisoners’ health is declining rapidly as the hunger strike enters its second month,” CCR said in a statement on Thursday.

Gitmo prisoners have reportedly been on a hunger strike over alleged mistreatment at the hands of prison guards. Some 130 people housed in Camp 6 of Guantanamo Bay are believed to be participating, and a reported two-dozen men have lost consciousness due to their low blood glucose levels from the hunger strike.

The prisoners are protesting against the sacrilegious disrespect displayed towards their religion by the confiscation of Korans, according to detainees and their lawyers. Although Durand has categorically denied “any claims of abuse, desecration or mishandling,” it is unclear how he defined those terms.

Mishandling does not necessarily mean covering the book’s pages in graffiti, burning it or otherwise mutilating it, but rather through a simple act such as touching it without being physically or spiritually clean. Many Muslim scholars assert that non-believers handling the text can also constitute an act of desecration.

“There have been no incidents of mishandling the Quran by guards or translators… JTF-GTMO guards are to avoid touching any detainee’s Quran at any time.”  However, he did not confirm or deny whether detainees religious’ texts were touched by the translators, who have been accused of mishandling them.

Approximately five men have been subjected to force-feeding — a procedure that can be considered a form of ‘cruel or unusual punishment,’ contrary to the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution and tantamount to torture, according to a UN Human Rights Commission report in 2006. The same report demanded the immediate closure of the offshore prison, and to cease all such “practices amounting to torture.”

Force-feeding involves restraining a detainee by strapping them into a chair, inserting a tube down their throat and into the stomach, often through the nose; Durand confirmed that the five undergoing force-feeding have been subjected to the nostril-tube method.

Durand maintains that the “mission of Joint Task Force Guantanamo is the safe, legal, humane and transparent care and custody of detainees,” adding that JTF-GTMO “takes its duty to treat detainees very humanely and very seriously.”

Amnesty International has said that practices at the camp constitute “gross human rights abuses,” and illegal detention.

 A promise made, a promise broken

In January 2009, shortly after President Obama was inaugurated, he ordered the facility to be closed within a year, and banned certain interrogation methods after the US government admitted to torturing some of the detainees.  

However, in May of that year, the US Senate refused to allow the prison to be closed until the president provided more detail as to what would be done with the prisoners.

In mid-October 2009, Congress voted to allow some Guantanamo detainees to be moved to the United States for prosecution. But at the end of 2010, Congress approved a defense spending bill that forbade Guantanamo detainees from being tried in the US. And in January 2011, President Obama signed a Defense Authorization Bill that ruled out shutting down Guantanamo, and prevented the transfer of prisoners from the camp.

In March 2011, Obama signed an executive order resuming military trials for Guantanamo detainees — a move seen by many as a complete reversal of his previous policy. And in December 2011, the president refused to veto the national defense bill, paving the way for prisoners to be held indefinitely and without charge, and extending the ban on moving them from the prison.

Finally, in July of last year, the Pentagon announced its plans to lay a $40-million fiber-optic cable from Guantanamo Bay to the US mainland, signaling their apparent intent to keep the facility open for the foreseeable future.

In 2004, the US drafted a document attempting to justify the continued imprisonment of the Guantanamo detainees, saying that since the US was engaged in a “real” war against Al-Qaeda, the “law of war therefore applies and allows us to hold enemy combatants without trial or charges until the end of the conflict.”

The UN issued a statement this week that the US is violating international human rights law by holding detainees indefinitely without charges.

RT’s letter from Durand

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: FOUO

Veronica,

Sorry for the delay in response. The statement below is attributable to me, Captain Robert Durand, Director of Public Affairs, Joint Task Force Guantanamo.

The mission of Joint Task Force Guantanamo is the safe, legal, humane and transparent care and custody of detainees. We carry out this mission daily, and we take any allegation of misconduct very seriously.

The recent allegations by detainees that conditions at GTMO have deteriorated are patently false. The JTF takes its duty to treat detainees humanely very seriously and seeks to ensure we conduct ourselves in accordance with the highest standards, and we remain under continual scrutiny, oversight, and inspection.  

Recent detainee allegations about incidents in the camps include outright falsehoods and gross exaggerations. The claims of a mass hunger strike and an incident in which the Quran was mishandled are simply untrue. First, we take extraordinary care to respect the Quran and categorically deny any claims of abuse, desecration or mishandling. The number of detainees refusing all food has increased from six when the first allegation was made to 14 today; this is in comparison to 2006 when we had as many as more than 100 hunger strikers. It certainly is not a widespread phenomenon as alleged. Detainees have colluded among themselves to fabricate incidents and claim misconduct where there has been none. Detainees have acted out individually, recently splashing guards with various bodily fluids and excrement, but there have not been any large-scale incidents. These are coordinated acts specifically designed to attract media attention.

The medical staff continuously monitors and provides outstanding medical care to detainees in our custody. The health and well-being of detainees is their primary mission and they take this duty as seriously as they would a duty to treat our own service members or any patient in their care. The reports of hunger-strike related deteriorating health and detainees losing massive amounts of weight are simply untrue.

Regardless of these most recent allegations, we will continue to carry out our mission to provide a safe and humane environment for the detainees, and ensure the safety of our guard force.

Specifically, regarding the Quran, I can tell you that there have been no incidents of mishandling the Quran by guards or translators.

Per SOP (standard operating procedures), JTF-Guantanamo guards are to avoid touching any detainee’s Quran at any time. The Quran is treated with the utmost respect..

Each detainee has available a personal Quran. Detainees are also provided religious articles, such as prayer mats and beads that are used during the practice of their faith. Prayer times are posted in the camp, and silence is maintained by the guards and staff during prayer times. Understanding the detainees’ religious practices and cultural norms is an essential part of training for all who work with detainees.

Regarding searches, there has been no change to our cell or block search SOPs. We routinely conduct searches for contraband that could be used to harm guards, medical personnel, translators, instructors, attorneys or detainees. Contraband items found can include improvised weapons, communication devices, unauthorized food and medicine, and other items which detainees could utilize to harm themselves or others.

Our search procedures reflect our mission to treat detainees humanely. We respect both their religious and cultural norms with regard to the Quran, personal privacy and physical contact.

Detainees who follow camp rules have access to satellite television, personal DVD players, video games and more than 25,000 books, CDs, movies and TV shows. They also have many comfort items, including materials for crafts and extra food that detainees can store for snacks or treats in between meals.. Allowing these items provides incentives for the detainees to comply with well-established camp rules, but also provides them the opportunity to create and hide contraband.

Detainees who violate camp rules may have privileges suspended as a consequence. This may include moving from a communal block to a single cell, and loss of comfort items. Detainees know the rules, understand the consequences, and can regain their privileges by complying with camp rules. Detainees in single cell confinement have basic issue items for clothing, hygiene and religious observances.

Detainees are never held in solitary confinement. At no time is a detainee deprived of the basic elements of humane treatment: food, water, religious articles, hygiene items, medical treatment, or physical recreation opportunities.

The United Nations is hosting talks in New York today as more than 150 countries discuss a global arms treaty designed to lessen the illicit gun trade, especially as it intersects with international conflict zones.

The NRA’s Wayne LaPierre lashes out at gun control efforts during his CPAC speech last week. (Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP) The National Rifle Association, however, is using the opportunity to once again prove that their primary mission is not the altruistic promotion of individual gun rights, but rather to serve the interests of the powerful US gun industry.

In a statement put out ahead of the conference, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said, “It is our collective responsibility to put an end to the inadequate regulation of the global trade in conventional weapons – from small arms to tanks to combat aircraft.”

Reiterating his support for the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), Ban said agreement on the pact would “alleviate the plight of the millions of people affected by conflicts and armed violence and enable the United Nations to better carry out its mandate to promote peace, development and human rights around the world.”

Describing the treaty and the nature of the negotiations, Reuters reports:

Diplomats say that if the treaty conference fails to reach the required consensus because the United States, Russia or another major arms producer opposes it, nations can still put the draft treaty to a vote in the U.N. General Assembly.

The other alternative is to amend the draft to make it acceptable to the U.S. and other delegations. But supporters of the treaty fear that could lead to a weak and meaningless pact.

“The U.S. traditionally has an allergy to treaties,” a European diplomat told Reuters. “It might be better to have a good treaty without the U.S. and hope they come around later.”

But as The Guardian’s Karen McVeigh points out:

For years, the NRA has painted the UN as a bogeyman figure, claiming in its literature and fundraising drives that there is an international conspiracy to “grab your guns”. Last July, when negotiations on the Arms Trade Treaty broke down — in part because of US resistance to global regulations on gun sales — the gun lobby group claimed victory for “killing the UN ATT”.

Supporters of the treaty accuse the NRA of deceiving the US public about the pact, which they say will have no impact on US domestic gun ownership as it applies only to exports.

Michelle Ringuette, chief of campaigns and programs at Amnesty International USA, said they had witnessed a resurgence in the NRA’s attempts to influence lawmakers and to use its opposition to the UN treaty as an opportunity for fundraising.

“We monitor what they send out to membership and put online” Ringuette told the Guardian. “It’s nothing like the efforts they put in back in June and July but we have seen them step up. They have done exactly what we expected them to do, to stir up anti-UN panic.”

______________________________

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The people of Cyprus were in continued uproar Monday following news over the weekend that the country’s ruling government and finance ministers signaled willingness to impose a tax on individual saving accounts in order to secure a $10 billion bailout package from Europe’s financial “Troika” – the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Account-holders withdraw money from a cash machine in the Cyprus capital, Nicosia. (Photograph: Barbara Laborde/AFP/Getty Images) As the Cyprus Mail explains, “Under the terms of a deal brokered with euro zone finance ministers on Friday, Cypriot authorities were to impose a 6.7 per cent tax on bank deposits under 100,000 euros and 9.9. per cent on deposits exceeding 100,000 euros.”

The news caused panic over the weekend, with many scrambling to ATMs (the banks are closed until Tuesday) trying to withdraw as much of their savings as possible.

The deal, however, still needs approval of parliament and an emergency meeting of ministers was being held on Monday.

Resistance to the plan among leftist parties in the country was critical and fierce.

“Essentially parliament is called to legalise a decision to rob depositors blind, against every written and unwritten law,” said Yiannakis Omirou, speaker of parliament and head of socialist EDEK party. “We refuse to subscribe to this.”

As Al-Jazeera reports:

Faced with a growing public backlash, Cypriot finance ministry officials began discussions with lenders on Sunday to lessen the blow for smaller savers.

A source close to the consultations told the Reuters news agency that authorities were hoping to cut the tax band for smaller savers with less than 100,000 euros to three percent from 6.7 percent.

The rate for deposits above that would then be increased to 12.5 percent from 9.9 percent.

Described as a “take it or leave it” ultimatum given by the Troika to the Cypriot government, Guardian economy columnist Michael Burke said Europeans were looking “on in horror” at the potential raid on taxpayers’ bank account.

“It’s now become clear,” wrote Burke, “the threat to European savers and banks isn’t anti-austerity parties but the Troika.”

The Cyprus Mail reports the reaction from other parties on the left who oppose the plan:

AKEL leader Andros Kyprianou described Cyprus’ treatment by the troika as “vindictive and neo-colonial,” adding that his party would discuss proposing the island’s exit from the eurozone.

“They are attempting to impose their political options on Cyprus, leading out country and people to conditions that are similar to those in other countries of the European south,” Kyprianou said. […]

Demetris Syllouris, the chairman of EVROKO, said the government would not have his support on the matter.

“If they have killed us once it does not matter if they kill us a second time. This is my reaction,” he said.

The Green party suggested that the measures included in the decision did not ensure the salvation of the economy.

“On the contrary, the consequences on common people and workers are expected to be tough, adding to the trials this people is already going through,” the Greens said.

“Neither the unprecedented and catastrophic measures would be tolerated nor the humiliation of the Republic of Cyprus and its people,” the EDEK said in a statement.

And Reuters notes:

Approval in Cyprus’ fractious 56-member parliament is far from a given: no party has an absolute majority and three parties say outright they will not back the tax. A vote initially planned for Sunday was rescheduled to give more time to build a consensus.

Responding to the news on his blog, Paul Krugman writes:

OK, I didn’t see that one coming. With all the problems in Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal I wasn’t watching Cyprus. But that’s where the big euro news is this weekend; in return for a bailout, Cyprus is supposed to impose a large haircut – that is, loss – on all depositors in its banks.

You can sort of see why they’re doing this: Cyprus is a money haven, especially for the assets of Russian beeznessmen; this means that it has a hugely oversized banking sector (think Iceland) and that a haircut-free bailout would be seen as a bailout, not just of Cyprus, but of Russians of, let’s say, uncertain probity and moral character. (I think it’s interesting that Mohamed El-Erian manages to write about this thing, fairly reasonably, without so much as mentioning the Russian thing.)

The big problem, however, is that it’s not just large foreign deposits that are taking a haircut; the haircut on small domestic deposits is a bit smaller, but still substantial. It’s as if the Europeans are holding up a neon sign, written in Greek and Italian, saying “time to stage a run on your banks!”

Tomorrow and the days immediately following should be very interesting.

__________________________________

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A new press watchdog is reportedly set to be established in the UK, despite fears voiced by Conservative Party leader Prime Minister David Cameron that it could jeopardize freedom of the press in the country.

MPs have reportedly reached a last-minute compromise over new press regulations following a parliamentary vote. It has allegedly been agreed that the press watchdog will have the authority to levy six-figure fines of up to $1.5 million, as well as require newspapers to print apologies when necessary.

Negotiators initially disagreed on the terms of the proposed watchdog, which would protect individuals from malicious newspaper reporters. While all agreed that the press cannot be trusted to govern itself, many insisted — the Prime Minister among them — that if regulation of the press is necessary, it should be without political involvement.

Cameron argued that enshrining media restrictions could erode the concept of the free press: “The idea of a law, a great, big, all-singing, all-dancing media law … would have been bad for press freedom, bad for individual freedom,” the Conservative Party leader was quoted as saying.

He proposed to protect victims of unruly newspapers through a royal charter, an executive document that does not require a vote in Parliament.

Opposition Labour Party leader Ed Miliband urged lawmakers to “stand up for the victims” of press abuse by formalizing the new press regulations into law.

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, whose privacy has been repeatedly violated by the media, said she and other victims “have been hung out to dry” by the government.

Talks reportedly continued through the night on March 18, with Cameron allegedly failing to rally support for his regulatory scheme. It was reported he was forced to compromise and accept the opposition parties’ terms, some of which he had earlier described as “bad for press freedom,” in order to avoid an inevitable defeat in the House of Commons.

“After five-and-a-half hours of talks in Ed Miliband’s office which ended at 2:30am, we are confident we have the basis of an agreement around our royal charter entrenched in statute,” a senior Labour source told the Daily Mail.

The heated debate over media regulation in the UK was triggered by Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry into press ethics, following revelations of the illegal practice of phone-hacking by tabloid journalists.

The scandal resulted in the closure of Rupert Murdoch’s ‘News of the World’ tabloid in 2011 and a wave of resignations after it emerged that journalists had regularly eavesdropped on voicemails and hacked into computers in search of dirt on celebrities.

The UK already has one government-approved regulatory authority, Ofcom, established in 2003 to protect against “scams and sharp practices.” The Office of Communications operates under the so-called ‘Communications Act 2003,’ a parliamentary act that defines the authority of this ‘super-regulator’ in protecting the public from what might be considered harmful or offensive material.

Every military resource the US has, including nuclear arms, will be available to its ally South Korea in the confrontation with its northern neighbor, US Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter pledged in Seoul.

“We remain steadfast to our commitment to extended deterrence offered by the US nuclear umbrella,” Carter said after talks with South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-Jin.

“We’ll ensure all of our resources will be available to our alliance,” he was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency. Carter is visiting South Korea as part of a four-nation tour of American allies in Asia, which also includes Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia.

The veiled threat comes amid heightened tensions in the Korean Peninsula, which started with Pyongyang’s third nuclear test in February. North Korea detonated a nuclear device in defiance of the UN Security Council resolution banning it from developing nuclear weapons.

North Korea insisted that it needs nuclear deterrence to guard its sovereignty against the United States, South Korea and Japan. Pyongyang claimed that Washington plans to invade North Korea, possibly using its nuclear arsenal.

After the Asian country warned that it would deliver a preemptive nuclear strike before allowing such aggression, the US said it will boost its national anti-ballistic missile system by deploying additional interceptors in Alaska. Further plans include stationing new radar facilities in Japan to monitor North Korean launches.

Previous week, Pyongyang also said it is no longer bound by the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War in 1953, a diplomatic demarche the North has used for the sixth time since 1994. Seoul is notably absent from the document’s signatories, which also include the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army and the US-led United Nations Command.

With tensions remaining high, some politicians in South Korea said their country needs a nuclear arsenal as well. Washington opposes further nuclear proliferation in the region, saying it can protect its ally in the event of a new war.

Seoul has also recently struck a deal with the US allowing it to deploy longer-range missiles capable of reaching any part of North Korean territory. Previously, the South had been forbidden from using such weapons as part of its military partnership with the US.

March 17, 2013  |  

In a small island nation far, far away, the financial shit is hitting the fan. A new bailout package in the euro zone comes with terms that are causing a tsunami of anxiety across Europe and beyond. Here’s what’s happening and why it matters.

1. What the heck is going on?

Since 2008 , the Greek economy has gone from bad to worse. As Greece’s economy collapsed, the European and Greek banks that held the nation’s debts should have been told to eat their losses, write off the debts, and replace their managements. Instead, the European Union stepped in to engineer one bailout after another. The prices for the bailouts were high: austerity policies that didn’t work. The result everywhere is that national income has fallen steeply, while the countries fall further into debt.

Cypriot banks got into trouble from their exposure to neighboring Greece. Finance ministers from euro countries and representatives from the IMF and the European Central Bank came up with a radical plan for a bailout to Cyprus’ banks: In exchange for €10 billion ($13 billion) in rescue money, creditors would impose a one-time tax of 6.75 percent on all bank deposits under €100,000 ($131,000) and 9.9 percent over that amount, while Cyprus cut government spending and raised revenues. The decision to make depositors pay was a stunning departure from past EU-led bailouts.

On Saturday, freaked-out bank customers rushed to ATMs to withdraw as much of their cash as possible. The Cyprus government announced a bank holiday on Monday (a national holiday) and temporarily halted all electronic bank transfers. The bank holiday has now been extended until Tuesday.

The Cypriot Parliament was originally supposed to meet on Sunday to vote on the deal, but the vote has been postponed until Monday. Cypriot officials fear a full-on bank run once lenders reopen their doors.

2. Where would the money go?

Money obtained through the one-time tax would go to recapitalize Cyprus banks and service the country’s debt.

3. Who would get hit by this deal?

Bank owners, unsurprisingly, are not being asked to pay into the package. Bank depositors are. This number includes ordinary Cypriots, British pensioners, and others who have their money in the banks, including a large number of wealthy Russian and Middle Eastern depositors. The depositors have been promised bank shares in exchange for the money that gets grabbed. But, um, who wants shares in banks that are in the financial toilet? Exactly no one. There has also been chatter that depositors will be given some kind of interest in bonds from gas fields presumably controlled by Cyprus.

4. Who wants the bailout?

The European Central Bank, the IMF, and the EU are the ones pushing this deal. Cyprus Prime Minister Nicos Anastasiades says he doesn’t like the deal and claims to be trying to soften it so that depositors with small accounts don’t get hit so hard.  

5. Who opposes it?

Depositors hate the deal, obviously. Most of the population of Cyprus correctly believes they are being asked to pay for the sins of the banks. Well, “forced” is a better term, because no one’s really asking. According to the Wall Street Journal, one incensed resident of the town of Limassol parked a backhoe in front of a local bank to express the widespread sentiment about the deal.

6. What’s at stake?

Unfortunately, this is going to be ugly any way you slice it. On Monday, if Cyprus’ Parliament says no to the deal, there will be chaos because everybody will think the banks are belly up and there will be a bank run. That could be something like Lehman Brothers, meaning chain bankruptcies and panic throughout Europe.

Given FX markets are double-dipping now, it is little surprise that S&P 500 futures open down 16 points from the 1553.5 close on Friday – a one-week low. Treasury Futures just opened implying a 1.94% 10Y (-5bps) and 3.16% 30Y (-5bps). And despite the USD strength, spot gold just opened also up from $1591.95 to $1607. The arb against JPY carry is holding stocks for now… only another 8 hours until Europe opens… Over 38,000 contracts have traded in S&P 500 futures in the first 5 minutes ($2.9bn notional) – 30 times the average for a Sunday night… The initial dump was caught by a VWAP reverter but that is fading now…

Initial massive volume dump for a Sunday night, VWAP algos revert and now fading again…

Stocks open down to EURJPY, bounce a little on the catch up from carry…

Gold holding above $1605…

Treasuries…

Charts: Bloomberg

Following Angela Merkel’s address to her people this evening, explaining, “anyone having their money in Cypriot banks must contribute in the Cypriot bailout. That way those responsible will contribute in it, not only the taxpayers of other countries, and that’s what is right,” we thought it ironic that the people of Greece envisioned her in a slightly different light today during a parade in Patras. ‘Union’? No tension here at all…

(h/t @tottensniper)

or this from Cyprus

(h/t @frankmanktank)

If initially Europe came out as utterly deranged in its Cyprus deposit-confiscation scheme, at least it was consistent. Now, it appears that Europe is desperate to appear not only completely incompetent but also unable to even make a simple decision and stick with it, following news from both the WSJ and the FT that the original confiscation thresholds of 6.75% and 9.9% for deposits below and over €100,000 is about to be revised.

From the FT: “a revised deal being discussed in Nicosia, with the blessing of the European Commission, would shift more of the burden on to deposits larger than €100,000, according to officials involved in the talks. Under a controversial deal struck with international bailout lenders in the early hours on Saturday, a 6.75 per cent levy would be imposed on all deposits under €100,000 while accounts over that threshold would be hit with a 9.9 per cent levy. The depositor levy was demanded by a German-led group of creditor countries to bring down the bailout’s price tag from €17bn…. Officials involved in last night’s talks said the changes in the levy’s rates were in flux, but they could see the higher rate increase to as much as 12.5 per cent while the smaller deposits could be about 3.5 per cent.”

Elsewhere, according to the WSJ, the deposit “tax” would be under 5% for deposits under €100K, under 10% for deposits between €100 and €500K, and over 13% for deposits greater than half a million.

While this idiotic last minute revision will only infuriate Russian oligarchs even more, it will achieve absolutely nothing to streamline the passage of the bill through Cyprus parliament where it appears to have hung without enough support: the damage has already been done, and it is a virtual guarantee that Cyprus banks will suffer a full blown bank run the second banks reopen, which may be Tuesday, Wednesday, or never, at the current pace. That line around the block at your local neighborhood Nicosia ATM: that is not, and will not, be for people seeking to make a deposit, that much we can guarantee, no matter what the final confiscation percentage is.

What is worse, however, is the painful demonstration of the absolutely and completely arbitrary decision-making process out of Europe. Sure: the ECB and the European Commission may decide to fully unwind the deposit confiscation scheme before all is said and done, but the genie is now out of the bottle, and it is very clear that in the European Disunion, a few unelected oligarchs will now determine until such time as the Eurozone finally implodes, just whose wealth and deposits are ripe for the taking. That not even Germany can make a decision and stick with it is just icing on the cake of the European Titanic.

In the meantime, what happens in Cyprus tonight, or tomorrow, and what the final confiscation schedule looks like, is merely bitter sweet victory for all those who have claimed that the European monetary experiment is finally coming to a long overdue end.

Finally, we can only hope that the next European (in whatever Monetary Union or Disunion format it is then) winter, is mild. Because Gazpromia may just decide to hike gas costs by 5%… or 6.75%…. or 9.9%…. or 99.9%…. Who knows? After all, Gazpromia Russia – which just happens to be Europe primary external source of crude and gas, has a green light to make up its own rules on the fly.

Submitted by John Aziz of Azizonomics blog,

A lot of analysts, including myself, have given the European situation a rest since last year. There were certainly some signs that the ECB and IMF had slowed (if not stopped) the deterioration by providing liquidity backstops to the addled banking system. But perhaps that was just the calm before the storm.

In truth, things were still probably just as perilous as ever up until yesterday when the ECB and IMF decided to start a banking panic by enforcing a haircut of up to 10% on bank depositors. That was literally the stupidest thing that anyone has done since the Euro crisis began, and while it may not lead to utter disaster, there is a significant chance that it will. Not only is it excruciatingly unjust (it’s theft!), it is also incredibly suicidal. Many, many Spaniards, Italians, Greeks and Portuguese will have looked at the Cyprus haircut in horror, and wondered “Am I next?” Some of those will withdraw their money from the bank and stuff it in a mattress or into tangible assets, furthering stressing the already-fragile and highly-leveraged European banking system.

The background to this is soaring European unemployment:

The people running the European financial system and engineering the bailouts and austerity (ECB, EU, IMF, Germany) have ploughed on through with more and deeper austerity even as European countries (other, of course, than Germany) have run up to higher and higher unemployment levels. Spain and Greece are above 25%. Italy is above 10%, and Portugal above 15%. Hiking taxes and cutting spending is leading to more and more people in unemployment oblivion. That isn’t healthy. Let’s not forget what happened to Germany the last time when over 25% of its people found themselves unemployed:

If bank runs materialise across Europe next week, the unemployment situation is most likely to worsen even further. If that happens, expect more and more unemployed, underemployed and angry Europeans to start voting for increasingly radical political parties. This is suicidal. Europe needs to not only reverse the awful, stupid Cypriot haircut, but also to put fiscal consolidation on hold (it has, lest we forget, so far been counterproductive) and start worrying about unemployment levels.

While some argue that Cyprus was “one of the biggest money-washing machines for Russian criminals,” and others that Cyprus ex-Pat community and energy resources brough deposits (not to say their high deposit interest rates), it seems the European Union (IMF et al.) have decided that the route to crisis stabilization, just as we outlined here over a year ago and updated here, is through a wealth tax.

However, as Handelsblatt reports, the gross distortions of wealth distribution among both core and peripheral nations (evident in the chasm between ‘mean’ and ‘median’ net assets – or wealth) makes some nations more ‘capable’ of ‘giving’ and as Commerzbank’s chief economist notes, median wealth in Italy is EUR164,000 (as opposed to Austria’s median of around EUR76,000 and mean of around EUR265,000) meaning that in theory Italy has no debt crisis (with net assets at 173% of GDP) – significantly more than the Germans at 124% – “so it would make sense, in Italy a one-time property tax levy,” he suggested.

“A tax rate of 15% on financial assets would probably be enough to push the Italian government debt to below the critical level of 100% of gross domestic product.” So there you have it, the ‘new deal’ in Europe, as we warned, is ‘wealth taxes’ and testing the “capacity of Cypriots” appears to be the strawman on what the public will take before social unrest becomes intolerable.

With President Anastasiades concluding his remarks, Cypriot public opinion, as it has changed over the first critical 24 hours after yesterday’s Eurogroup decision, are recorded in a survey conducted by the Insight Market Research (IMR) agency at the University of Nicosia. The survey shows that the first reaction of Cypriots can be characterized as anything but positive with 71% believing the the House should reject the deposit haircut imposition and a full 73% believe that President Anastasiadis and the Cypriot delegation “failed to secure a good deal.” 72% believe that depositors below EUR100,000 should not be affected at all but 62% believe Cyprus should stay in the Euro. Begging the question, when’s the next Cypriot election?

Chart: SigmaLive

Two wildfires that erupted in northern Colorado on Friday continue to blaze in the region, signaling an early start to the wildfire season in the drought-stricken western United States.

Colorado wildfire near Fort Collins. (Photo: Ed Andrieski/AP) Burning about 75 miles northwest of Denver, the fires have been stoked by strong, erratic winds and “unseasonably high temperatures and low humidity,” said Poudre Fire Authority Captain Patrick Love.

The larger of the two blazes, the Soldier Canyon Fire, scorched over 1,000 arces and prompted the evacuation of hundreds of residents. They were permitted back in their homes Saturday evening. 

A second, smaller fire reportedly broke out six miles north of Fort Collins, the Larimer County Office of Emergency Management said.

Reuters called the early-season fires a “bad omen” for the region, which has been plagued by “moderate to exceptional drought conditions,” according to the US Drought Monitor.

“Are you kidding me?” tweeted noted environmentalist Bill McKibben. “March!”

Last year proved to be one of Colorado’s worst ever wildfire seasons. According to the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control, forest and brush fires scorched 384,803 acres in 2012, destroying 650 homes and killing six people.

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A judge announced Sunday that two Steubenville, Ohio high school football players have been found guilty of sexual assault in a highly-publicized trial that drew questions of a community’s complicity in this criminal act.

Protesters, many wearing Guy Fawkes masks, rallied outside the Jefferson County Courthouse demanding a more thorough investigation into the alleged rape of a teenage girl by two members of the Steubenville High School football team. (Photo: Lake Fong/Post-Gazette) 17-year-old Trent Mays and 16-year-old Ma’lik Richmond were pronounced guilty of sexually assaulting a female while she was severely intoxicated and unconscious. Both defendants received delinquent verdicts, the guilty equivalent for juveniles, on all three charges against them.

The teens will serve their sentence at a juvenile detention facility until they turn 21.

The Associated Press reports that “evidence introduced at the trial included graphic text messages sent by numerous students after the night of the party, including by the accuser, containing provocative descriptions of sex acts and obscene language.”

Ahead of the case, they write, the community was “roiled” amid allegations that more students should have been charged for their complicity in the attack for allowing it to take place, particularly three other boys–two of them members of Steubenville High’s celebrated Big Red team–who “saw something happening that night and didn’t try to stop it but instead recorded it.”

In January, the New York Times reported that many members of the community, including the football coach, had been defensive of the charges and wary of assigning blame for the alleged rape because, Nation blogger Alison Killkenny writes, “the community assigns something like a God-like status to football players.”

The case gained national attention after video and photo footage from the night of the incident went viral including a video of another Steubenville teen who witnessed the attack joking and bragging about the incident, which was leaked by a ‘hacktivist’ group Anonymous who wanted to draw attention to the scandal and alleged ‘cover-up’ by local officials.

Ohio’s attorney general plans to announce later Sunday whether additional charges will be brought in the case, including against the three other boys, the Associated Press reports.

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The port of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant where the highly radioactive fish was caught. (Photo: Asahi Shimbun)A fish with record levels of radioactive cesium was caught in the waters outside the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, officials announced Friday.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said they detected 740,000 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium in a greenling fish caught the port adjacent to the nuclear site, Kyodo News reports. The amount is 7,400 times the state-set limit deemed safe for human consumption.

According to TEPCO, is the highest yet recorded in its sampling surveys of marine life since the March 2011 disaster.

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As other countries race to build up drone warfare programs ending the ‘monopoly’ that the Obama administration has held over the highly controversial method of targeted killing, the US government is reportedly dictating how the international community will run their own covert and illegal drone operations.

(Photo: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP) According to a new Reuters analysis, despite the veil of secrecy behind which President Obama has presided over drone strikes and his targeted ‘kill list,’ the Administration is now openly seeking to influence global guidelines on the matter. 

“We are constantly working to refine, clarify, and strengthen the process for considering terrorist targets for lethal action,” said Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council. Adding, “we are establishing standards other nations may follow.”

At this point, a number of countries have admitted to having unarmed reconnaissance drones. China reportedly has an armed drone, and even considered conducting its first lethal drone strike in 2011, “but authorities decided they wanted the man alive so they could put him on trial,” reported state-run newspaper Global Times.

According to James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, one of the administration’s primary goals is to “regularize” the drone program, “making it more a part of accepted U.S. practice in the future.” Adding, “This is going to be part of warfare.” 

This report comes on the heels of a unanimous ruling Friday by a federal appeals court panel that determined that the CIA gave an inadequate response to a Freedom of Information request by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking records about drone strikes.

According to the court, the CIA’s ‘claims’ of concern over national security were rebuked by the Administration’s public acknowledgement of the program.

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The parents of a British-born man killed by a US drone strike after being stripped of his UK citizenship have spoken out for the first time — to say they will never forgive the British Government for his death.

Gamal Sakr blames government for son’s death. (Photo: Susannah Ireland/ Independent) Mohamed Sakr was born and brought up in London before he was targeted and killed in February 2012 in Somalia.

Now his Egyptian-born parents Gamal and Eman Sakr, who have lived in Britain for 35 years, have accused ministers of betraying this country’s democratic values.

Speaking to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism from their London home, the couple said they believe their son was left vulnerable to the attack after the government stripped him of his British citizenship months before he was killed.

“This is the hardest time we have ever come across in our family life,’ Mr  Sakr said in tears. “I’ll never stop blaming the British government for what they did to my son. They broke my family’s back.”

The comments follow the revelations by the Bureau and published in the Independent that the Home Secretary Theresa May has ramped up the use of powers allowing her to strip UK citizenship from dual nationals without first proving wrongdoing in the courts.

The investigation revealed the Coalition government has stripped 16 people, including five born in Britain, of their UK passports. Two, including Sakr, were later killed by drone strikes and one was secretly rendered to the United States.

The law states that the government cannot make someone stateless when it removes their citizenship. But Egyptian-born Mr and Mrs Sakr say their son Mohamed never had anything other than a British passport, despite in principle having dual nationality.

In September 2010 the family received notification that the government intended to remove their son’s British citizenship, on the grounds that he was ‘involved in terrorism-related activity’.

It was the first known instance in modern times of a British-born person being stripped of his nationality. His family insist that the action meant Mohamed, who was in Somalia, was left effectively stateless and stranded.

His mother still can’t quite believe it happened. ‘I was shocked. It never crossed my mind that something here in Britain would happen like this, especially as Mohamed had no other passport, no other nationality. He was brought up here, all his life is here.’

Mohamed’s parents were so worried that their other sons might also lose their British citizenship that they renounced the entire family’s dual Egyptian nationalities, shortly after they were told that Mohamed had been deprived of his citizenship.

‘I did this for the protection of the family, because they grew up here, they were all born here. And I felt that for them it was my responsibility to protect them. It was the only way I could protect them against that stupid law,’ says Mr Sakr.

‘No member of my family ever had an Egyptian passport,’ says Mr Sakr. ‘For the kids it never crossed my mind that they would have anything other than their British passports. I know they are British, born British, they are British, and carried their British passports.’

Mr and Mrs Sakr have thrived in Britain, running a successful business. They moved here from Egypt 35 years ago thinking it was a good place to raise a family.

‘It was democratic, and compared to where I was before in Egypt that was a big gap,’ Mr Sakr explains. ’There was no dictator here, no bad laws like there were back home, so we decided to start a new life.’

Mohamed was born in London in 1985 and grew up as a normal, sporty child. ‘He was very popular amongst his friends, yet very quiet at the same time, very polite, he was just a normal child,’ recalls Eman.

As he got older his parents had worried about him getting into trouble.  ‘He loved going out, he loved to dress up, to wear the best clothes, he liked everything to be top range,’ recalls Mr Sakr.

‘I used to tell him, after midnight there’s no good news. So I’d say, “Make sure you are home before 12”. He said “OK, OK I’ll try, you know,”’ said his mother.

In his early twenties he calmed down and in 2007 set up an executive car valeting business. His parents thought their son would follow in his father’s entrepreneurial footsteps.

But in the summer of the same year Mohamed travelled to Saudi Arabia on what his parents say was a pilgrimage ‘with a couple of friends and their wives’, before heading to Egypt to join his family on holiday. From there, the Sakrs say, Mohamed and his younger brother also visited the family of a girlfriend in Dubai.

His actions were innocent, the family insists. But Mohamed was questioned for ‘at least three hours’ by immigration officials on his return to the UK. The questions focused on the countries he had visited and his reasons for going there.

‘He told them, “I didn’t plan to visit all these countries ­- it’s just how my summer has happened,”’ his mother recalls.

It’s thought that UK counter-terrorism officials were becoming concerned that a group of radicalised young men was emerging in the capital, influenced by British Islamists who had returned home after fighting in Somalia.

The Sakrs both say that their eldest son became the subject of repeated police ‘harassment’ in which he was stopped on numerous occasions by plain-clothes officers.

After one incident Mohamed told his mother ‘They’re watching me momma, everywhere I go they watch me.’ The family became convinced that their phones were being tapped.

Mohamed was spending a lot of time with a friend he had met when he was 12 — Bilal al­-Berjawi. The two had lived in adjacent flats.

The childhood friends would both lose their British citizenship weeks apart in 2010 — and would die weeks apart too, in covert US airstrikes.

Berjawi’s Lebanese parents had brought him to London as a baby, and like Sakr, Berjawi had drawn the attention of Britain’s counter-terrorism agencies.

The Sakr family insists they were not aware of any wrongdoing on Mohamed’s part, despite frequent trouble with the police.

In February 2009 Berjawi and Sakr visited Kenya for what they told their families was a ‘safari’.

Both were detained in Nairobi, where they were said to have been interrogated by British intelligence officials. The authorities suspected them of terrorism-related activities.

They were released and only deported back to the UK because both, at that time, still had their British citizenship.

While the two were still being detained in Kenya, police arrived at the London family home with a search warrant.

Cards left behind by officers identify them as members of SO15,­ the Met’s counter-terrorism squad. Mr Sakr says he was shocked to be told that the family might have to vacate their home for up to two weeks while officers searched. The indignant family found themselves put up in the nearby Hilton hotel.

Two days later the family was allowed home. And shortly afterwards Mohamed and Bilal were deported back to Britain.

Mr Sakr challenged his son: ‘I was asking questions, why has this happened and Mohamed said “Daddy, it’s finished, it will never happen again. It’s all done and dusted.” So I just put a cap on it and continued with a normal life.’

Mohamed’s mother insisted on accompanying him to a mosque so she could hear the sermons he was listening to.

‘I wanted to hear what they’re saying, I was always on top of this, always. I wanted to know why the police were after him, why?’ says Mrs Sakr. ‘So he used to take me to different mosques, and the sermons were normal, nothing unusual.’

In October 2009, with ever-growing trouble with the British authorities, Mohamed and Berjawi decided to slip out of the country. Neither told their families that they were leaving, or where they were going.

‘The police came asking “Where is Mohamed?” And I said “I don’t know.” That was the honest answer, I didn’t know where my son was,’ says Mr Sakr.

Months later Mohamed phoned his parents from Somalia. Both he and Berjawi were now living in a country gripped by civil war between radical Islamists and a rump UN-backed government.

While it’s been reported that both men were drawn to terrorist-linked groups, the Sakrs say the pair had innocent connections with the troubled east African nation. Berjawi had married a Somali woman in London, and Sakr at one time had also been engaged to marry a Somali girl.

Although both were killed by the US, most of the allegations against Sakr and Berjawi remain secret.

Some information has emerged, however. In November 2009, the pair were named along with a third British man in a Ugandan manhunt, accused of ‘sneaking into the country’ to plot terrorist activities. Later the men were linked to deadly bombings in that country’s capital.

The letter seen by the Bureau informing Mohamed’s family that he was losing his citizenship states he was ‘involved in terrorism-related activity’ and for having links with ‘Islamist extremists’, including his friend Bilal al-Berjawi.

The Sakrs remain defensive about these claims. ‘Have they done anything? Have they been caught in anything? Have they been caught in any action? Do they have any evidence against them that they have been involved in this or that? I haven’t seen. And they haven’t come up with it,’ says Mr Sakr.

‘It says they took his freedom away because he knew Bilal! Does it mean that because I know a bad person it means I’m bad, or know good people that I’m good? He’d known Bilal since he was 12 years old!,’ says Mohamed’s mother.

At first Mohamed wanted to fight the deprivation order, and his family hired lawyers in the UK. But they were told that in order to mount an effective appeal Mohamed would need to return to Britain.

Letter from the Home Office.

His parents say he was too scared to come back.

‘He said, “Daddy, it is impossible for me,”’ says Mr Sakr. “He said, “If I go from here, they’ve already taken my passport from me, maybe they will catch me somewhere, and you will never hear from me again.” He knew something could happen to him.’

In February 2012, news agencies reported that a high-ranking Egyptian al Qaeda official had been killed in a US drone strike in Somalia.

It would be days before the family realised those reports actually referred to their son.

Mr Sakr says: ‘Their hands were washed. And that’s what they claimed when the news first came. They announced that Mohamed was Egyptian [cries]. That’s why they tried to show to the rest of the world, “He’s an Egyptian. He’s not British.”

‘Intelligence killed millions of Iraqis on the basis of wrong information. If we go and kill everyone based on intelligence information, then we are not living in the world of democracy and justice. We are living in the world of “Who has the power and who has the weapons to kill,”’ Mr Sakr rails.

‘If you’re not happy about a dictator or about rules or freedom of speech, and then you come to a country like Britain which we know for hundreds and hundreds of years has talked of democracy and freedom, and laws and justice. And suddenly you find there’s no justice, no freedom of speech, no democracy.’

© 2013 The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

March 16, 2013  |  

Zipping across the land with a nice internet connection, so a good time to reflect a bit (looking down on clouds from above broadens the perspective a bit, I find).

So, I’m doing a radio interview last night, and moderately impressed with myself for being able to speak coherently about four different budgets: Ryan’s, Senate’s, POTUS (not out yet, but we can guess at the mix), and the CPC. Then I got asked a question which threw me a bit: why are Paul Ryan and his budget taken so seriously?

It wasn’t a snarky question. It’s just that I’d been discussing the absolute non-reality of his proposal–how the numbers don’t begin to add up, the unrealistic budget cuts, the plethora of magic asterisks in the absence of actual proposals (the most egregious of which is: I’ll cuts taxes by $6-7 trillion over the next decade and offset the revenue losses with…um…sorry, gotta run). And the interviewer was like, “OK…but if you’re right, why is his budget front page news such that he’s driving the debate?”

Here’s what I think is going on. First, institutional reasons. His party holds the majority and he’s the chair of the House Budget Committee. That in itself makes his budget newsworthy. Also, as a former VP candidate, he’s a national figure.

But that’s not the main reason.

I asked a wise, intently non-partisan friend who thought, and he admitted he was being generous, that one reason might be that Ryan’s introduced an important theme into the discussion: if you want really low taxes, you’ve got to give up Medicare as we know it.

But while that may be in there somewhere, it’s awfully muddled. It certainly wasn’t Ryan’s position in the election, where he and Mitt attacked the President for Medicare cuts. And his voucher program doesn’t start for ten years.

In other words, I think my friend is being too generous. I’ve argued that we actually need our politicians to articulate this point: if we want X, we’re going to have to pay for X. To my ears, Paul Ryan actually fits squarely in the problematic camp on this point, telling folks they can painlessly have it all. But in his version, it takes the form of trickle down: if we cut taxes on job creators, get rid of the safety net, and inject health care delivery with competition, then we can have it all for a fraction of what we’re paying now.

Several hundred demonstrators march to the Afghan parliament building to protest against the continued presence of U.S. commandos in Afghanistan’s troubled Wardak province. Saturday, March 16, 2013. (Photo: Anja Niedringhaus/AP)Hundreds of residents of Afghanistan’s eastern province of Wardak are marching on Kabul Saturday demanding US special operations forces pull out of their territory.

According to police reports, between 200 and 500 demonstrators have gathered outside of parliament, chanting “U.S. special operations forces out!” and calling for the release of nine local citizens “whom they believe are under the custody of US forces,” the chief of Kabul police’s Criminal Investigations Department said.

“We have gathered here to protest against the [U.S.] Special Forces in Maidan, Wardak, because they enter people’s houses and torture innocent people, they have also detained 10 people and it is not clear what will happen to them,” said one protester.

The nine villagers had reportedly “disappeared in an operation by this suspicious force” last October, as cited by a February statement issued by the presidential palace. Their whereabouts remain unknown.

The demonstration follows a week after Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai’s ordered the withdraw of the Special Forces from that province citing mounting allegations of torture and extrajudicial killing, by the US forces and the ‘irregular’ Afghan Groups working alongside them, Al Jazeera reports. 

They continue:  

“In a separate incident,” the statement read, “a student was taken away at night from his home, whose tortured body with throat cut was found two days later under a bridge.”

To improve accountability, Karzai has given all irregular Afghan forces established by the NATO coalition three months to fall under government control. The deadline was declared only days after US special forces were told to leave Maidan Wardak. 

Also Saturday, the Karzai-appointed Ulema Council, whose members represent the country’s Islamic clerics, issued a statement seconding the call for withdrawal and demanding the transfer of the American-controlled prison at Bagram to Afghan control, the New York Times reports.

“If the Americans once again do not honor their commitments and keep on disobeying, then this will be considered as an occupation, and they may expect to see a reaction to their action,” they said.

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President Obama signed the Violence Against Women Act [last] week. Finally, something bipartisan passed! American women are better protected from coast to coast – but all the way up north? Left out in the cold.

First, you should know a few facts. Native American and Alaska Native women are 2.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than other American women.

The vastness of Alaska works against victims here. We have about 140 villages with no state law enforcement. Gov. Sean Parnell believes he can get some help to them in the next 10 years. In the meantime, they are, depending on weather, days from having a state trooper available to protect them and enforce the law.

Fifty villages have tribal or village police. The remaining 90?

Zero. No law enforcement.

It’s nearly impossible to get a restraining order where there isn’t a judge and you have to take a long ride on a snowmachine, boat or airplane to get to court. Escaping a scene of violence can cost you hundreds of dollars, with nowhere to go for support.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, at least 86 percent of the victimizers of American Indian and Alaska Native women are non-Native men.

These facts make the particulars of the passage of the Violence Against Women Re-authorization Act (VAWA) even more disturbing. The VAWA gave “domestic violence jurisdiction and civil protection order” powers to tribal courts. This seemed like progress for communities without conventional courts readily available to issue restraining orders, etc.

Our senior senator, Republican Lisa Murkowski, added a “Special Rule for the State of Alaska” to the VAWA. That rule effectively bars 40 percent of American tribes from being able to protect their women. Our senator excluded 229 Alaska communities from that part of the act.

The Association of Village Council Presidents and the Aleut community of St. Paul Island spoke out against the Alaska exclusion. The Alaska Inter-Tribal Council said it “objects to anti-Alaska Tribal Provisions in the Violence Against Women Act.”

The Tanana Chiefs Conference opposed it. The Native American Rights Fund led the charge against it.

The AFN wrote to the senator: “Although Alaska Natives comprise only 15.2 percent of the population of the State of Alaska, they comprise 47 percent of the victims of domestic violence and 61 percent of the victims of sexual assault.”

Murkowski ignored their requests.

Let’s review a little recent Alaska history. Murkowski barely won her last election. Her write-in campaign only succeeded with a lot of help from Alaska Native corporations and the Alaska Federation of Natives. Why would she give powers to Lower 48 tribes but deny them to Alaska Natives? Why would she block the ability of Alaska Natives to protect some of their most vulnerable?

Alaska’s attorney general, Michael Geraghty, has become the principal agent of our governor’s anti-Native rights point of view. He argued to eliminate the federal Voting Rights Act, which protects Alaska Native voters. He lobbied to exclude Alaska from the VAWA.

The state of Alaska seems not to miss an opportunity to stop tribes from asserting jurisdiction over issues like Native adoption, alcohol control, subsistence hunting and fishing, etc. At every turn the state acts to circumscribe, as tightly as possible, the sovereignty of First Alaskans.

The difference between Alaska Natives and Native Americans is all about land. The Lower 48 has reservations. In Alaska, tribes don’t have reservations, so they can’t base claims of jurisdiction on reservation boundaries.

The worry for Alaskans like Parnell is: If we give Natives power over themselves, where will they stop? What if they don’t like a certain resource development — they might be able to get in the way. How could we let tribes enforce laws against non-Native predators? Oh, it could be a slippery slope, so let’s prevent Native communities from enforcing state law, and then we’ll pretend Alaska doesn’t have the money to pay for troopers to do it instead.

What’s a few rapes — as long as they happen way out there?

Last year the Obama administration took exception to the exclusion of Alaska tribes from the VAWA. At the time, a Murkowski spokesman claimed it was a “draft error.” Weird that she made the same error again this year, ensuring that our Alaska Native sisters wouldn’t get the same protection as Lower 48 Native Americans.

The state of Alaska has no higher responsibility than to protect its citizens from harm. While the governor walks around with a “Choose Respect” bumper sticker on his forehead, and legislators throw baskets of cash at every goofy development project that comes along, they all agree we can’t afford police protection for rural Native women, and then they work to keep the tools of self-protection out of the hands of communities.

The federal government wanted to give Alaska tribes the same jurisdiction as those in the Lower 48. Unfortunately for them, Lisa Murkowski, Michael Geraghty and Sean Parnell were standing in the way.

Freshman Tea Party Senator Ted Cruz had the stupidity, and audacity, to lecture Senior California Senator Diane Feinstein about the Constitution and the Second Amendment.

Senator Feinstein, known for her efforts to curb gun violence in America, was on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the equivalent of a City Council, when San Francisco Mayor George Mascone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated.

Feinstein found Moscone’s body lying in a pool of blood, and had to feel through his bullet-hole riddled body to check for a pulse.

Senator Feinstein was also the first to arrive in Milk’s office after his assassination, and again made efforts to revive him, even though he was already dead.

These tragic events informed Feinstein about America’s gun problem, and led her to propose an assault weapons ban in 1996.

That ban was adopted by the House, the Senate and signed into law by Bill Clinton.

Unfortunately, the original assault weapons ban expired after ten years, and George W. Bush and the Republicans chose not to renew it.

So, in the wake of the Newtown tragedy, Senator Feinstein introduced a new assault weapons ban, and yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee took the measure up for a panel vote.

That’s when rookie Senator Cruz decided to go off on a condescending, rambling, and poorly informed rant about the Constitution.

Senator Cruz asked Feinstein if she’d want to limit the First and Fourth Amendments in the same way that she was proposing to limit what he interpreted to be the meaning of the Second Amendment.

Feinstein responded by saying, in part, “I’m not a sixth grader. Senator, I’ve been on this committee for 20 years. I was a mayor for nine years. I walked in, I saw people shot. I’ve looked at bodies that have been shot with these weapons. I’ve seen the bullets that implode…Its fine you want to lecture me on the Constitution. I appreciate it. Just know I’ve been here for a long time. I’ve passed on a number of bills. I’ve studied the Constitution myself. I am reasonably well educated, and I thank you for the lecture…”

Senator Cruz may have failed to understand what Senator Feinstein meant by “I’m not a sixth grader,” so here’s the essence of it.

We all learned in sixth grade civics – which Ted Cruz apparently missed (or wasn’t paying attention to) – that our “rights” come with certain “responsibilities” or “limits.”

Our First Amendment right to free speech is limited, for example, by an injunction that we not yell “Fire” in a crowded theater.

Similarly, as a talk show host, there are certain words that I’m forbidden from saying on the air.

Cruz asked what books Feinstein would want banned.

Has he never heard of child pornography?

Similarly, our Fourth Amendment rights to privacy are circumscribed in a thousand ways.

If a police officer walks up to your car, or your front door, and smells pot smoke, do you still have a right to privacy?

Or, what if the same officer sees you covered in blood and holding a gun? Do you still have a right to privacy then?

Senator Cruz, himself, wants to limit the privacy rights of women, by infringing on their right to abortions, so he’s clearly in favor of limits on the Fourth Amendment.

The simple fact, which gun industry shill Ted Cruz wants to ignore, is that none of the rights protected to We the People in the Bill of Rights are absolute.

With regard to the Second Amendment, I highly doubt that Cruz himself would argue that people should be able to own rocket-propelled grenades or shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, although those are “arms” that can be used by individual people, and could be used by a well-regulated militia.

While we need legislation banning weapons of war from our city streets, it’s increasingly apparent we need another bit of legislation, and right away.

And that’s one that would mandate that every new member of Congress sit down with a sixth grade civics teacher and learn how the Constitution works, so future Senators won’t run the risk of making the embarrassing and stupid mistake that Ted Cruz did.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq defined a generation; the world’s largest anti-war protest was followed by the 3rd longest war in US history. 10 years later, American troops have officially left Iraq, but the occupation and its effects continue. On this edition, we look back at the 2003 invasion of Iraq. For Iraqis, for the US military, and for the anti-war movement; how have things changed? And what, if anything, has the world learned?

Featuring:

Donald Rumsfeld, former US secretary of defense; Tom Cahill, human shield in Iraq; Yanar Mohammed, Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq president; Jeff Paterson, Courage to Resist co-founder; Catherine Lutz, Watson Institute’s Costs of War study co-director; Barack Obama, president of the United States; Bishop Desmond Tutu, Jean-Luc, Caroline Bridgeman Reese, Amanda Tattersol; Iraq war protestors; Lisa Hammid, Free Speech Radio News host; Miles Ashdown, FSRN reporter.

Intel engineers test new microprocessors at Intel’s research unit in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city on July 23, 2008. (Photo: Janet Jarman / The New York Times)Only a few years ago, analysts were warning that Mexico was at risk of becoming a “failed state.” These days, the Mexican government appears to be doing a much better PR job. 

Despite the devastating and ongoing drug war, the story now goes that Mexico is poised to become a “middle-class” society. As establishment apostle Thomas Friedman put it in the New York Times, Mexico is now one of “the more dominant economic powers in the 21^st century.”

But this spin is based on superficial assumptions. The small signs of economic recovery in Mexico are grounded largely on the return of maquiladora factories from China, where wages have been increasing as Mexican wages have stagnated. Under-cutting China on labor costs is hardly something to celebrate. This trend is nothing but the return of the same “free-trade” model that has failed the Mexican people for 20 years. 

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was ratified in 1993 and went into effect in 1994, was touted as the cure for Mexico’s economic “backwardness.” Promoters argued that the trilateral trade agreement would dig Mexico out of its economic rut and modernize it along the lines of its mighty neighbor, the United States.

The story went like this:

NAFTA was going to bring new U.S. technology and capital to complement Mexico’s surplus labor. This in turn would lead Mexico to industrialize and increase productivity, thereby making the country more competitive abroad. The spike in productivity and competiveness would automatically cause wages in Mexico to increase. The higher wages would expand economic opportunities in Mexico, slowing migration to the United States.

In the words of the former President Bill Clinton, NAFTA was going to “promote more growth, more equality and better preservation of the environment and a greater possibility of world peace.” Mexico’s president at the time, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, echoed Clinton’s sentiments during a commencement address at MIT: “NAFTA is a job-creating agreement,” he said. “It is an environment improvement agreement.” More importantly, Salinas boasted, “it is a wage-increasing agreement.” 

As the 20^th anniversary of NAFTA approaches, however, the verdict is indisputable: NAFTA failed to spur meaningful and inclusive economic growth in Mexico, pull Mexicans out of unemployment and underemployment, or reduce poverty. By all accounts, it has done just the opposite.

The Verdict Is In 

Official statistics show that from 2006 to 2010, more than 12 million people joined the ranks of the impoverished in Mexico, causing the poverty level to jump to 51.3 percent of the population. According to the United Nations, in the past decade Mexico saw the slowest reduction in poverty in all of Latin America. 

Rampant poverty in Mexico is a product of IMF and World Bank-led neoliberal policies–such as anti-inflationary policies that have kept wages stagnant–of which “free-trade” pacts like NAFTA are part and parcel. Another factor is the systematic failure to create good jobs in the formal sectors of the economy. During Felipe Calderon’s presidency, the share of the Mexican labor force relying on informal work–such as selling chewing gum and other low-cost products on the street–grew to nearly 50 percent.

Even the wages in the manufacturing sector, which NAFTA cheerleaders argued would benefit the most from trade liberalization, have remained extremely low. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Mexican manufacturing workers made an average hourly wage of only $4.53 in 2011, compared to $26.87 for their U.S. counterparts. Between 1997 and 2011, the U.S.-Mexico manufacturing wage gap narrowed only slightly, with Mexican wages rising from 13 to 17 percent of the level earned by American workers. In Brazil, by contrast, manufacturing wages are almost double Mexico’s, and in Argentina almost triple. 

Mexico’s stagnant wages are celebrated by free traders as an opportunity for U.S. businesses interested in outsourcing. According to one report by the McKinsey management consulting firm, “for a company motivated primarily by cost, Mexico holds the most attractive position among the Latin American countries we studied. … Mexico’s advantages start with low labor costs.” 

But even as the damning evidence against NAFTA continues to roll in, entrenched advocates of the trade agreement have been busy crafting new arguments. In his recent book, Mexico: A Middle Class Society, NAFTA negotiator Luis De la Calle and his co-author argue that the trade agreement has given rise to a growing Mexican middle class by providing consumers with higher quality, U.S- made goods. The authors proclaim that “NAFTA has dramatically reduced the costs of goods for Mexican families at the same time that the quality and variety of goods and services in the country grew.” 

Most of the economic indicators included in the book conveniently fail to account for the 2008-2009 financial crisis, which hit Mexico worse than almost any other Latin American country. The result has been skyrocketing inequality. As the Guardian reported last December, “ever more Mexican families have acquired the trappings of middle-class life such as cars, fridges, and washing machines, but about half of the population still lives in poverty.”

The indicators of consumption that suggest the rise of Mexico’s middle class also exclude the dramatic increase in food prices in recent years, which has condemned millions of Mexicans to hunger. Twenty-eight million Mexicans are facing “food poverty,” meaning they lack access to sufficient nutritious food. According to official statistics, more than 50,000 people died of malnutrition between 2006 and 2011. That’s almost as many as have died in Mexico’s drug war, which dramatically escalated under Calderon and has continued under President Enrique Peña Nieto. 

The food crisis has coincided with the “Walmartization” of the country. In 1994 there were only 14 Walmart retail stores in all of Mexico. Now there are more than 1,724 retail and wholesale stores. This is almost half the number of U.S. Walmarts, and far more than any other country outside the United States. The proliferation of Walmart and other U.S. big-box stores in Mexico since NAFTA came into effect has ushered in a new era of consumerism–in part through an aggressive expansion built on political bribes and the destruction of ancient Aztec ruins.  

The arguments developed prior to the signing of NAFTA focused primarily on the claim that the trade agreement would make Mexico a nation of producers and exporters. These initial promises failed to deliver. Throughout the NAFTA years, the bulk of Mexico’s manufacturing “exports” have come from transnational car and technology companies. Not surprisingly, Mexico’s intra-industry trade with the United Sates is the highest of any Latin American country. Yet the percentage of Mexican companies that are actually exporters is vanishingly small, and imports of food into Mexico have surged.

Same Snake Oil, Different Pitch 

Because their initial promises utterly failed to deliver, the NAFTA pushers are now hyping “consumer benefits” to justify new trade agreements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership. One of the most extreme examples of this spin is an article in The Washington Post that celebrates a “growing middle class” in Mexico that is “buying more U.S. goods than ever, while turning Mexico into a more democratic, dynamic and prosperous American ally.” Devoid of all logic, it goes on to say that “Mexico’s growth as a manufacturing hub is boosted by low wages.” How can low wages make people more prosperous? 

The Post also boasts that in “Mexico’s Costco stores, staples such as tortilla chips and chipotle salsa are trucked in from factories in California and Texas that produce for both sides of the border.” Is this something to celebrate? The influx of traditional Mexican food staples, starting with maize, and goods from the United States has displaced and dislocated millions of Mexican small-scale farmers, producers, and small businesses. And not only that, Mexicans’ increasing consumption of processed foods and beverages from the United States has made the country the second-most obese in the world. 

In essence, NAFTA advocates have been reduced to saying: “so maybe NAFTA didn’t help Mexico reduce poverty or increase wages. But hey! At least it gave it Walmart, Costcos, and sweat shops.”

The bankruptcy of NAFTA’s promises is only compounded by the poverty of this consolation.

Merchandise at a Tea Party Express rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, August, 2011. (Photo: IowaPolitics.com)In August 2008, as the right wing of the Republican Party grew increasingly disenchanted with the party’s direction, the men from Russo, Marsh and Associates sensed opportunity: They created a political action committee, Our Country Deserves Better, and in time launched the Tea Party Express.

Russo, Marsh–an established California outfit of Republican consultants–was just getting started. The firm formed a second political committee, this one with a pro-military agenda. And eventually, seizing on the President’s unpopularity in certain circles, they opened a third, the Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama.

Throughout the 2012 election cycle, the committees were relentless. In email after email, they pleaded for small donations to run ads supporting candidates who would defeat President Obama’s “socialist” agenda. And it worked: They collected more than $14 million in donations — from all over the country, and from donors who gave as little as $10 to elect Ted Cruz as a Republican senator from Texas or to put Mitt Romney in the White House.

Yet an examination of the PACs’ expenditures shows they spent a small percentage of the money they raised on work directly aimed at getting candidates elected — paid ads, say, or contributions to other political committees. Mainly, they paid consultants. And the biggest chunk of that consultant money went to Russo, Marsh and Associates, and people connected to the firm.

Of the $9.3 million spent by Our Country Deserves Better, more than $3.8 million went to Russo, Marsh and Associates, employees or others connected to the firm. Of the $3.9 million spent by the Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama, $2.4 million went to the firm and its associates. The pro-military Move America Forward Freedom PAC spent almost $143,000. Of that, $92,000 went to the firm and people connected to it.

Some of that money went for travel, or for ads funneled through the consultants. But most was for consulting, fundraising fees and administrative help.

It’s rare for the people who form PACs to pay and treat themselves quite so generously. In addition to paying Russo, Marsh an assortment of fees, the PACs spent money so its principals could travel well: from almost $1,300 for meals at a fondue restaurant in Ohio on Oct. 18, to more than $50,000 for consultants and staff to occasionally stay at a golf resort on Lake Michigan last fall.

Meanwhile, the people who gave money had no idea that such amounts would go to consultants, not to the nuts and bolts efforts to get preferred candidates elected and their opponents defeated.

“How does Joe Average know this?” asked Linda Knox, 73, who with her husband gave $585 to the Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama, mainly in $10 and $15 increments, after learning of the PAC’s spending habits. “Of course I want the money to go to elect people who share my values, not to consultants.”

No one from Russo, Marsh and Associates returned calls asking for comment. The two largest PACs didn’t respond to emails and calls. Danny Gonzalez, a spokesman at the pro-military PAC, said: “I was not aware of what the particular numbers are.” He said he would prepare a more detailed response.

Shawn Callahan, who’s worked for Russo, Marsh and now does consulting for the PACs, said Our Country Deserves Better did much more than just contribute to campaigns “in a traditional sense.” He said the PAC focused on coordinating unpaid grassroots activists, and spent much of its money on political organizing. He said the Tea Party Express held more than 400 rallies over the past three years, adding that the group had been credited with making the difference in dozens of House races.

“What looks like overhead is not overhead, but the costs of performing the mission of rallying citizens to get involved in conservative politics,” he wrote in an email. At a later point, he added: “As a political activist and donor myself, I hope that donors are proud of all that we have accomplished together. I know I am.” 

While many watchdog organizations track how political committees raise money, few look at how the money is ultimately disbursed. PACs can spend their money as they want — on legal fees, on big meals, on trips to Dubai. But while PACs often devote some money to fundraising, most spend the bulk of contributions on efforts clearly aimed at electing specific candidates.

This last election, more than 3,000 PACs like the Russo, Marsh ones – independent committees supporting more than one candidate and not officially run by a lobbying group – spent almost half a billion dollars. Two-thirds of those committees spent most of their money directly supporting candidates.

PACs like these are allowed to donate money to a candidate or candidate committee – up to $5,000 per election. They can also donate up to $15,000 to a national political party committee and $5,000 to local parties or other political committees every year. But PACs also often spend money on what are known as independent expenditures, such as TV ads and phone calls supporting or opposing candidates. This spending can be unlimited, but it must be done independent of the candidates, meaning that the candidates often aren’t even aware it’s happening — especially with PACs that don’t spend much on ads.

Longtime conservative activist Sal Russo, who helped found the consulting firm that became Russo, Marsh and Associates in Sacramento, Calif., in 1976, has a long history with mainstream Republicans. He got his big break as an aide to Ronald Reagan, when he was California’s governor. Russo developed longtime ties with several conservative politicians, including Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch. He worked on the campaigns of former presidential candidate Jack Kemp and former New York Gov. George Pataki.

Questions about the role of Russo, Marsh and Associates with political committees are not entirely new. The New York Times and Talking Points Memo detailed how one of the committees, Our Country Deserves Better, had paid out a substantial amount of money to the Russo, Marsh firm in 2009 and 2010. Sal Russo told The New York Times his firm did nothing wrong.

One Republican consultant, who would not be identified, said that PACs that raise and spend money like Russo, Marsh in the end hurt the efforts and reputation of conservatives, while often failing to have any truly reliable influence on election night.

After the 2012 elections — and despite critical news stories in several publications — the PACs got back to work. The Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama changed its name to the Conservative Campaign Committee just after the election, and emails this week from the group have asked people to send money for ads supporting Larry Grooms, who is running in a Republican primary for a U.S. House seat in South Carolina.

“Any entity that raises money under the banner of a certain cause and then doesn’t spend money on that cause raises serious questions,” said Hogan Gidley, a consultant with Grooms’ campaign, adding that the campaign wasn’t affiliated with the Conservative Campaign Committee and that he wasn’t familiar with the inner workings of the group.

Of the donors who give to such committees, Gidley said, “They should hold the groups’ collective feet to the fire and make sure the money is going to its stated purpose.”

The Our Country Deserves Better PAC, which created the Tea Party Express, “the most aggressive and influential national Tea Party group in the political arena,” according to its website, spent some of the $9.3 million it ran through in this election cycle on bus tours and rallies.

But it spent only 10 percent of its money directly on elections — $259,500 in contributions to political committees and candidates, and $681,000 on independent expenditures, most of which were funneled through Russo, Marsh and Associates.

The PAC spent almost half its money on fundraising, often using the Russo, Marsh firm or affiliated consultants. That fundraising ratio – spending almost $1 to earn $2 – is very high in the world of political action committees.

And the PAC also let its consultants live rather large: $3,500 for “PAC Election Night Headquarters” at a casino-resort in Las Vegas, $3,200 for meals and a meeting at a Mediterranean restaurant in Boston in February 2011, more than $1,000 for parking at LaGuardia Airport in New York in May 2011.

Barely one-third of the $3.9 million spent by The Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama went to truly focused efforts at electing candidates, but its consultants traveled comfortably: More than $4,500 to stay at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in June, more than $8,200 to stay at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel in July.

Individual consultants, including current or former Russo, Marsh employees, did very well.

Joe Wierzbicki, who works at Russo, Marsh and Associates, pulled in almost $528,000 from two of the PACs. Most of that came from the Our Country Deserves Better PAC, which describes Wierzbicki on its website as “PAC coordinator” but neglects to mention he is a senior account executive at the Russo, Marsh firm.

Ryan Gill, who has also worked for the pro-military PAC and a related charity, was paid almost $592,000 from the two PACs, mostly from the Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama, for strategic consulting, fundraising commissions, travel reimbursement and on-line ads supporting several candidates.

In July alone, the Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama paid Gill about $5,300 on July 2, $2,300 on July 3, $4,100 on July 6, and $12,000 on July 9, calling the payments “fundraising salary.” Then he was paid $5,000 for “PAC strategy consulting” on July 20. He was also paid $7,400 for online advertising to promote certain candidates. And he was reimbursed almost $12,300 for travel.

Until last year, Callahan, the former Russo, Marsh employee, was the executive director of the pro-military charity. Callahan then helped form a business called Frontline Strategies & Media.

Two of the PACs paid Frontline Strategies about $386,000, for fundraising commissions, consulting and website maintenance.

Callahan is also the founding chief executive officer of a company called DonationSafe, which the three PACs paid $450,000 for credit-card processing fees.

In responses to emailed questions, Callahan said he had to pay multiple employees for Frontline who “are dedicated full time to those accounts.” He said the PAC payments help cover his employees’ salaries, “along with all the other costs that come from running a business.”

The PACs linked with Russo, Marsh and Associates frequently attach themselves to popular causes or candidates or topics in the news. In past weeks, for example, they’ve sent emails praising Republican Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, while asking for donations.

This month, the Conservative Campaign Committee – formerly the Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama – has sent out emails, asking supporters to pony up $35,000 for a radio ad campaign backing Grooms in South Carolina. One email urged supporters to volunteer for Grooms and to give money to support him – not to Grooms’ actual campaign, but to the PAC. That email also linked to the proposed radio ad and to two TV ads that were actually put out by Grooms’ campaign–a nuance that would likely be lost on many supporters, who would probably think that the PAC was somehow involved in the TV ads.

“So many of you have told us how much you want to see real action taken to stop Barack Obama’s radical agenda,” said another email, sent March 6, with the subject line of “Time Sensitive: Your attention required.” “That’s why it’s so important for Larry Grooms to win this election–we need his voice and his vote in Congress to defeat Obama’s aggressive push for socialism.”

It won’t be clear until July how much the PAC raised. But it’s already reporting some of what it spent. The cost of sending out the two emails was $1,670, and it was paid to Russo, Marsh and Associates.

A Swiss tourist’s Indian vacation took a horrific turn Friday night after she was brutally gang-raped by a group of eight people in the state of Madhya Pradesh. Around 15 people have been detained by police, the Times of India reported.

The gruesome incident occurred around 9:00pm local time on Friday, in a desolate jungle area of the Datia district. The victim’s husband told police that four people raped the woman in front of him, while the rest of the men restrained the couple.  

According to police official S.M. Afzal Datia, the suspects allegedly attacked the 39-year-old woman with canes and other weapons. They assaulted the victim’s husband and stole the couple’s cash, laptop, camera, flashlights, and mobile phones.

The woman was rushed to Gwalior district hospital, where doctors confirmed the rape and assault. She has since been discharged.

Police Director-General Nandan Kumar Dubey said the suspects have been identified. The matter has also been reported to the minister of external affairs and the embassy, he said.

But National Commission for Women (NCW) chair Mamata Sharma said the local government should be doing far more in the wake of the crime. “The government has remained stoic and are not taking appropriate steps in the right direction,” she said in a statement.  

The Swiss woman and her husband were touring the area by bicycle and camping overnight in the forest. They had been vacationing in India for the past three months.

This was the second recent case of a foreign tourist being raped in Madhya Pradesh. In February, a 23-year-old South Korean student reported that she was drugged and raped by the son of a local hotel owner.

The attack comes just three months after a 23-year-old student was gang-raped and beaten in a moving bus and thrown onto the street. She later died in a Singapore hospital. The case sparked outrage throughout the country, and cast a spotlight on the safety of women in India. 

Earlier this month, 500 people gathered to protest the January rape of a 7-year-old girl in the Indian state of Goa. Several policemen and locals were injured, as officers used batons against stone-throwing demonstrators.

The crimes have prompted lawmakers to push through measures aimed at providing protection for women throughout the country.

On Saturday, India’s United Progressive Alliance government announced that such a law would be passed soon: “To stop crime against women, a law will soon be passed,” UPA chair Sonia Gandhi said in a statement.

Gandhi’s statement came two days after the Union Cabinet cleared a bill mandating stringent punishment for rape and other crimes. The bill sets a minimum jail term of 20 years for rape.

Government statistics indicate that a woman is raped every 20 minutes in India, although the country’s conviction rate for rape crimes is one of the lowest in the world.

(Photo: Tetsumo)Modern Monetary Theory is a way of doing economics that incorporates a clear understanding of the way our present-day monetary system actually works — it emphasizes the frequently misunderstood dynamics of our so-called “fiat-money” economy. Most people are unnerved by the thought that money isn’t “backed” by anything anymore — backed by gold, for example. They’re afraid that this makes money a less reliable store of value. And, of course, it is perfectly true that a poorly managed monetary system, or one which is experiencing something like an oil-price shock, can also experience inflation. But people today simply don’t realize how much bigger a problem the opposite condition can be. Under the gold standard, and largely because of the gold standard, the capitalist world endured eight different deflationary slumps severe enough to be called “depressions.” Since the gold standard was abolished, there have been none — and, as we shall see, this is anything but coincidental.

The great virtue of modern, fiat money is that it can be managed flexibly enough to prevent *both* deflation and also any truly damaging level of inflation — that is, a situation where prices are rising faster than wages, or where both are rising so fast they distort a country’s internal or external markets. Without going into the details prematurely, there are technical reasons why a little bit of inflation is useful and normal. It discourages people from hoarding money and encourages healthy levels of consumption and investment. It promotes growth — provided that a country’s fiscal and monetary authorities manage it properly.

The trick is for the government to spend enough to ensure full employment, but not so much, or in such a way, as to cause shortages or bottlenecks in the real economy. These shortages and bottlenecks are the actual cause of most episodes of excessive inflation. If the mere existence of fiat monetary systems caused runaway inflation, the low, stable rates of consumer-price inflation we have seen over the past thirty-plus years would be pretty difficult to explain.

The essential insight of Modern Monetary Theory (or “MMT”) is that sovereign, currency-issuing countries are only constrained by real limits. They are not constrained, and cannot be constrained, by purely financial limits because, as issuers of their respective fiat-currencies, they can never “run out of money.” This doesn’t mean that governments can spend without limit, or overspend without causing inflation, or that government should spend any sum unwisely. What it emphatically does mean is that no such sovereign government can be forced to tolerate mass unemployment because of the state of its finances — no matter what that state happens to be.

Virtually all economic commentary and punditry today, whether in America, Europe or most other places, is based on ideas about the monetary system which are not merely confused — they are starkly and comprehensively counter-factual. This has led to a public discourse about things like budget deficits and Treasury debt which has become, without exaggeration, utterly detached from reality. Time and time again, these pundits declaim that hyperinflation is imminent, that interest rates are on the verge of an uncontrollable upward spike, and that the jig will be up for sure just as soon as the next T-bond auction fails. But even though, time after time, it is the pundits’ prognostications which fail, no one seems to take any notice. This must change. A reality-based economics is needed to make these things make sense again, and Modern Monetary Theory is here to put everyone on notice that a quite different jig is the one that’s really up.

The gold standard was finally and completely abolished over the course of a two-year period which started in 1971, when Richard Nixon ended the convertibility of the dollar for gold and devalued U.S. currency for the first time since the end of World War II. In 1973, the U.S. stopped trying to peg the dollar to any currency or commodity, instead allowing its value to be set on a freely-floating international currency market. The monetary system we inaugurated then is the one we still have now.

It is not the same as the one which has been adopted by most of Europe — and this very prominent source of confusion about the role of money in the world today will receive close scrutiny at the proper point. But first, we need to carefully unpack the implications of taking both gold and any sort of “peg” out of the monetary equation in the first place. In 1971, gold-linked money became fiat-money — not for the first time, of course, but for the first time in a long time. And it wasn’t just any currency. It was, by far, the world’s most important currency, economically. It was also the world’s reserve currency — the good-as-gold and backed-by-gold currency which the entire non-communist world used to settle transactions between various countries’ central banks. And yet, what everyone, and especially every American was told at the time was that it really wouldn’t make much difference. 

The political emphasis, at the time, was entirely on the importance of making sure that no one panicked. The officials of the Nixon administration acted like cops who had just roped off a fresh crime scene: “Just move right along, folks,” they kept intoning. “Nuthin’ to see here. Nuthin’, to see.” All of the experts and pundits said essentially the same thing — this was just a necessary technical adjustment that was only about complicated international banking rules. It wouldn’t affect domestic-economy transactions at all, or matter to anyone’s individual economic life. And so it didn’t — at least, not right away or in any way that got linked back to the event in later years. The world moved on, and Nixon’s action was mainly just remembered as a typical, high-handed Nixonian move — one which at least carried along with it the virtue of having pissed off Charles De Gaulle.

But what had really happened was epoch-making and paradigm-shattering. It was also, for the rest of the 1970s, polymorphously destabilizing. Because no one had a plan for, or knew, what all of this was going to mean for the reserve currency status of the U.S. dollar. Certainly not Richard Nixon, who was by then embroiled in the early stages of the Watergate scandal. But no one else was in charge of this either. In the moment, other countries and their central banks followed Washington’s line. They wanted to forestall any kind of panic too. But, inevitably, as the real consequences of the new monetary regime kicked in, and as unforeseen and unintended knock-on effects began to be felt, this changed.

The world had a choice to make after the closing of the gold window, but even though it was a very important choice, with very high-stakes outcomes attached to it, there was no international mechanism for making it — it just had to emerge from the chaos. Either the U.S. dollar was going to  continue to be the world’s reserve currency or it wasn’t. If it wasn’t, the related but separate question of what to use instead would come to the fore. But, as things unfolded, no other choice could be imposed on the only economic powerhouse-nation, so all the other little nations eventually just had to work out ways to adjust to the new status quo.

Even after Euro-dollar chaos, oil market chaos, inflationary chaos, a ferocious multi-national property crash and a severe, double-dip American recession, the dollar continued to be the reserve currency. And it still wasn’t going to be either backed by gold or exchangeable at any fixed rate for anything else. But while the implications of this were enormous, almost no one understood them at the time, or ever, subsequently, figured them out. For the 1970s was the period during which Keynesianism was decertified as the reigning economic philosophy of the capitalist world — replaced by something which, at least initially, purported to have internalized and improved upon it. This too was a choice that wasn’t so much made as stumbled into. The chaotic, crisis-wracked world we now live in is the one which subsequent versions of this then-new economic perspective have helped to create.

Conventional, so-called “neo-classical” economics pays little or no attention to monetary dynamics, treating money as just a “veil” over the activity of utility-maximizing individual “agents”. And, as hard as this is for non-economists to believe, the models which these ‘mainstream’ economists make do not even try to account for money, banking or debt. This is one big reason why virtually all members of the economics profession failed to see the housing bubble and were then blind-sided by both the 2008 financial collapse and the grinding, on-going Eurozone crisis which has followed in its wake. And the current group-think among ‘mainstream’ economists is yet another case where failure is no obstacle to continued funding — or continued failure. The absence of any sort of professional, intellectual or academic accountability will be a theme here.

The public policy reversal that began with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan promised that the deregulation of capitalism would lead to greater shared prosperity for everyone. Today, even though the falsehood of this claim is brutally obvious, the same economic nostrums and stupidities that were used to justify it in the first place continue to be trotted out and paid homage to by a class of financial-media personalities who equate making a lot of money with understanding money. It does not seem to occur to them that financial criminals and practitioners of bank-fraud can get rich through sociopathy alone.

What needs to be said is this: Keynesian economics worked before, and the improved version — now generally called “post-Keynesian” — will work again, to deliver what the market-fundamentalism of the past three decades has patently and persistently failed to deliver *anywhere in the world*. Namely — a prosperity which is shared by everyone. The principal purpose of Modern Monetary Theory is to explain, in detail, why this this worked in the past and how it can be made to work again.

Here’s how: start with a 100% payroll tax cut for both workers and employers — one that will only expire (if it does at all) when we have achieved full employment. This will not de-fund Social Security. And yes, we’ll come back to this point and cover it in great detail in due course. But first, stop and think back on the effect which federal revenue-sharing had on the economy in 2009 and 2010. If you’re thinking there were fewer teachers, nurses, policemen and fire-fighters getting laid off, you are correct. If you’re thinking that more roads, dams, bridges and sewer systems were getting repaired, you’re right again. But if you think that adding 800 million dollars to the deficit over two years is a guaranteed way to generate hyper-inflation, double-digit interest rates and bond-auction failures, leading ultimately to a frenzied worldwide rush to dump dollar-denominated financial assets, well, now would be a good time to ask yourself why you believe this.

One more point — one more plank in this three-point program to restore fiscal and monetary sanity: let’s give everyone who wants to work and is able to work some *work to do*. A currency-issuing government can purchase anything that is for sale in its own currency, including the labor of every last unemployed person who is still looking for a job. So, a key policy recommendation of Modern Monetary Theory is the idea of a “Job Guarantee”. The federal government should take the initiative and organize a transitional-job program for people who just can’t find work in the private sector — as it currently exists in real-world America today. Because the smug one-liner that starts and ends with: “Government can’t create jobs — only the private sector can create jobs!” is about the un-funniest joke on the planet right now.

The government creates millions of jobs already. Isn’t soldiering a job? Isn’t flying the President around in Air Force One a job? What about all the doctors and nurses down at the V.A. hospital, and the day-care workers on military bases? They certainly all appear to be employed. When you go into a convenience store to buy some — uh — local-and-organic Brussels sprouts, say, how closely does the clerk examine the bills and coins you tender? Did any clerk or cashier ever squint or turn your five-dollar bill sideways and back and ask, “Hmm.. are you sure this money came from work that was performed in the private sector?” No. They didn’t. Because the money governments pay to public employees is exactly the same money everyone else gets paid in.

A guaranteed transition-job would need to be different from the familiar examples cited above in certain ways. It would be important to make sure that such a program always hired “from the bottom”, not from the top. That’s an important way of making sure that such programs don’t create real-resource bottlenecks by competing with the private sector for highly skilled or specialized labor. Hence, a transition-program job would more closely resemble an entry-level job at a defense plant. Such a job only exists because of Pentagon orders for fighter planes or helmets or dog food for the K-9 units. There is no sort of ambiguity about where the stuff is going or how it is being paid for. And when the people who mow the lawn or sweep the parking lot get paid, they know, without having to think about it, that their wages will spend exactly the same way down at the grocery store as everyone else’s.

Defence spending is actually quite a good analog to the idea of a transitional-job program — one that would provide work to any and every person who wanted it. The only time the American economy ever achieved an extended, years-long period with zero unemployment, low, well-controlled inflation rates and with no significant financial aftershock at the end was the World War II era — broadly defined to include the Lend-Lease buildup of 1940 and 1941. This solution to the problem of mass unemployment worked in the 1940s and it would work today. In the 1940s, of course,the jobs were almost all war-related. But, economically, this makes no difference.

The connection between war and economic prosperity has been noticed before. It led some 19th Century thinkers (and also Jimmy Carter) to wonder whether there could be a “moral equivalent of war”. Well, there can be — by way of the Job Guarantee. The biggest pre-condition has been met, because one result of most wars has been that they forced the combatant countries off the gold standard. Now, all countries have left it. What matters next is whether there are enough real resources available to produce goods and services that are equal in value to the government’s job-guarantee spending. If these resources are available — if they are not already being used to produce something else — then the increased demand that results from the payment of job-guarantee wages will not be inflationary, regardless of what they go to produce.  

Money is 100% fungible.  Whether the job-guarantee program makes fighter planes or wind turbines makes no economic difference — the workers employed by it will spend their wages on the same things other workers buy. What matters, economically, is whether there are sufficient real resources and labor available to produce these goods and services in line with the increased demand for them. If there are, no additional government intervention is necessary in order to mobilize them. The same private-profit motivation which induces a company to produce one widget can be relied upon to induce the production of another one.

Most popular misconceptions about job-guarantee work as inefficient “make-work” ignore these private-sector dynamics. It is simply assumed that if the publicly-funded workers don’t personally contribute to making shoes or soap, their wages will result in “more money chasing the same goods” — and that this will automatically cause inflation. This is an obvious fallacy which has been empirically falsified many, many times, but most people continue to treat it as an article of economic faith. So, one of MMT’s most pressing tasks today is to make the case that we can, indeed, end mass unemployment without undermining price stability.

There are many other economic problems and challenges in the world today. Modern Monetary Theory is not a panacea for them. Even if its insights and policy recommendations become widely known, and even if they are someday fully implemented, societies will still face challenges such as inequality, regulatory capture and predatory financial behavior, including the kind of predatory mortgage lending that led to the worldwide crash in 2008. In order to understand these additional economic problems and dangers, we need to look at economics in a larger context, and correctly situate Modern Monetary Theory within this wider frame.

Modern Monetary Theory is based on earlier work which also focused on the relationship between the state and its money — ideas which come under the generic designation of “Chartalism”. MMT also remains firmly within the Keynesian tradition of macroeconomnic theorizing, and recognizes an extensive interconnectedness with other economists whose work is categorized as “post-Keynesian”. Some of MMT’s other notable academic progenitors include Hyman Minsky, Abba Lerner and, more recently, the English economist Wynne Godley, whose emphasis on achieving consistency in the analysis of economic stocks and flows presaged the emphasis which MMT-orbit economists put on it today.

The label “Modern Monetary Theory” is not particularly apt. It became attached to its advocates through the informal agency of Internet comment-threading, not because anyone considered it either very useful or very descriptive. In other words, it “just stuck”. In fact, the identity of the first person to use the “MMT” label is lost to online history. So, to be clear, MMT is only modern in the broad sense in which virtually everything that got started in the Western world in the 19th Century is called “modern”. It is not exclusively monetary either — it has quite a bit to say about fiscal policy as well. And it was not, initially, theoretical — it started as a body of quite empirical observations about the dynamics of the monetary system and the many ways they are being misunderstood these days. For MMT has a dual pedigree which is itself quite remarkable.

On the one hand, it represents the patient, decades-long academic work of a cadre of perhaps eight or ten working economists (originally there were three or four, plus their students). But MMT was independently co-discovered by a single person. A person who had no specific training or academic background in economics at all — the American businessman and auto-racing enthusiast Warren Mosler. How he came to initially suspect and, ultimately, clearly understand that the spending of sovereign governments had become operationally independent of their taxing and borrowing is recounted in his 2010 book, “The Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy.”  The 1996 publication of an earlier book of his, “Soft-Currency Economics,” launched MMT as a social, intellectual and online movement. And while the academic side of MMT was completely unknown to him at first, it was not long before the two camps discovered each other, and this has led to a very extensive collaboration in the years since.

Today, MMT is being discovered by a rapidly-growing worldwide Internet audience. And the public’s growing interest in MMT is evident in other ways as well. One of the movement’s leading spokespersons, Dr. Stephanie Kelton of the University of Missouri at Kansas City, has been a repeat guest on an MSNBC weekend show. She, and other MMT economists, are frequent guests on a number of popular, mostly-progressive radio programs as well — both in the U.S. and in English-speaking countries around the world. And Warren Mosler’s seminal 2010 book was recently published in Italian.

(For obvious reasons, the stressed and austerity-damaged countries of the Eurozone’s southern tier are places where people are becoming more open to fresh economic ideas. At a 3-day conference in Rimini, Italy in 2012, a panel of four MMT/post-Keynesian speakers lectured to a crowd of over 2,000 people in a packed sports arena. Many in the audience crossed multiple international borders to attend.)

MMT has been mentioned, though not yet accurately described, in several of Paul Krugman’s columns for the New York Times. And certain aspects of it have been noticed even more widely in the media — for MMT is the theoretical basis of the “trillion-dollar coin” approach to fiscal cliffs. (The idea was first proposed and debated on Warren Mosler’s website.) In short, MMT is getting harder and harder to ignore. And since it really does have answers to some of the world’s most urgent and otherwise perplexing questions, it seems likely that MMT will soon become quite impossible to ignore. What follows is written to try to hasten that day.

This will be an intentionally simplified, non-technical exposition of the principal tenets of Modern Monetary Theory. The no-algebra version, in other words. It is intended as a guide for non-economists and other lay people who may have heard the phrase or seen a video clip about MMT and who wish to learn more. It is not a substitute for more complete and, necessarily, much more technical treatments that are available elsewhere, including the MMT Primer here at NEP.

Confining myself to examples and cases so widely known that no one will wonder where they came from accounts for the absence of footnotes in this. And since I make no claim to have learned knowledge of anything, I will just say, up front, that everything I know was thought of first by someone else. But rather than interrupt the narrative or complicate the process by trying to establish who said any particular thing first, I hope it is sufficient for me to just thank the MMT community at large for any material that I have borrowed or re-purposed along the way.

I also depart, here, from MMT’s mostly-neutral stance on contested political and ideological questions. For while MMT principles apply equally, irrespective of things like the size of government or the conceptions and misconceptions of people running governments, it has a policy bias no one can really miss.  I choose to emphasize rather than de-emphasize this bias — and I will sometimes even put it front-and-center. I hope no one will mistake this for any sort of rebuke toward those who choose not to do this. We have simply reached a point where practical applications need to be put on an equal footing with their theoretical underpinnings.

For somewhere — maybe somewhere in Italy — and on a day which may not be all that far off now, Modern Monetary Theory is going to start changing the world.

Veterans of the Latvian Waffen SS and their supporters marched in the Latvian capital Riga to honor their comrades killed fighting for Nazi Germany during World War II. Several arrests were made after the march walked into an anti-fascist demonstration.

The annual event has stirred controversy, not for the first time, sparking outrage both in Latvia and abroad as many consider it a glorification of Nazism.

Authorities in Riga had banned the parade in previous years due to security concerns. This year, the Riga City Council’s first Russian mayor, Nil Ushakov [Nils UÅ¡akovs], also banned public gatherings on March 16, what many consider Legionnaires’ Day, in order to prevent riots.

However, the council has allowed the demonstration this year, ruling that such gatherings pose no threat to public safety.

RT correspondent Aleksey Yaroshevsky, who is currently in Latvia, reported that Latvian SS veterans gathered at the freedom monument in Riga.

At the same time, a small group of mainly Russians protested behind barricades about 15 meters away. They blared war sirens and Soviet songs to disperse the crowd. Some chanted “Shame!” and “Nazism won’t pass!”

A large number of police units have been deployed to keep the two sides apart.

Three deputies of the Latvian Seim (parliament) — who are also members of a far-right Latvian political party — Raivis Dzintars, Imants Parādnieks and Jānis Dombrava, managed to break through the police cordon and damage one of the installations. They tore apart pictures of Nazi concentration camp victims.

At least four people were arrested at the Saturday procession.

From 1998 to 2000, March 16 has been an official remembrance day in the country to pay tribute to the Latvian Legion.

The Legion was created in 1943 on orders from Adolf Hitler. In March of the same year, the Legion was already battling the Soviet Red Army near the town of Pskov. In total, about 150,000 soldiers served in its ranks.

The CIA may be preparing for lethal drone strikes in Syria, as it is extending its intelligence-gathering on Islamic radicals in the country, US media has reported. At the same time, US officials are pressing for the supplying arms to rebels.

“The CIA has stepped up secret contingency planning to protect the United States and its allies as the turmoil expands in Syria, including collecting intelligence on Islamic extremists for the first time for possible lethal drone strikes,” according to current and former US officials, reported in the LA Times.

The agency’s counterterrorism center has recently transferred an unspecified number of targeting officers to the area. The center is notorious for its previous drone campaigns in Yemen and Pakistan.

Targeting officers are responsible for the compilation of large packages of information on specific zones. Those working on Syria are currently based at the organization’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, as not many US operatives have been deployed to the area.

The increased focus on identifying threats in Syria carries the implication that the agency is preparing plans for counter-action — both violent and nonviolent — against potential militants, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“If we do this, why don’t we start droning people in Hezbollah?” a former CIA officer with experience in Iraq told the Los Angeles Times. “It opens the door for a lot of other things.”

In a trend apparently countering the CIA’s alleged security efforts, a US lawmaker is set to propose a bill on Monday in support of providing arms and training to Syrian opposition forces, as well as economic backing. Should the arms be delivered, they could easily fall into the hands of the same militants they seek to suppress.

Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote a letter to his house colleagues seeking their support for a bill to provide arms and training to Syrian rebels, applying pressure to the Obama’s administration.

“US training and arming of carefully vetted Syrian opposition forces offer many potential benefits, but two stand out above all: Bringing the humanitarian disaster to an end as soon as possible and helping ensure that the US has a constructive relationship with a successor government in Damascus,” said the letter obtained by AP.

The idea is supported by officials from both parties — last month, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio suggested providing the Syrian opposition with ammunition, and Secretary of State John Kerry announced a package of ‘nonlethal assistance.’

European media reported that the US, UK and France are already training rebels in Jordan, while Paris and London are both attempting to bring forward an EU meeting to lift the arms embargo on Syria. Planned for May, the two countries are pressing for it to take place before the end of March.

If the union does not end the embargo, the two nations will still arm the Syrian rebels, France said.

However, this course of action could come with its own problems: “Weapons are in high demand by all rebel factions and there is little means to effectively prevent arms from gravitating toward hardcore Al-Qaeda fighters,” political analyst Nile Bowie told RT.

On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that any arming of the opposition in Syria would be a violation of international law.

On Friday, Syria witnessed the second anniversary of the uprising from which the conflict sprouted, with many saying they feared for the country’s future.

A Soyuz capsule has safely landed in northeast Kazakhstan, returning two Russian and one American astronauts back to Earth, after a missions on the International Space Station (ISS) that lasted nearly five months.

It took the capsule carrying expedition commander Kevin Ford and a pair of flight engineers, Oleg Novitsky and Evgeny Tarelkin, less than three-and-a-half hours to descend. It was the first trip to space for the Russian cosmonauts, and the second for their American colleague.

The trio came home after 142 days in space. Their return was initially scheduled for March 14, but was postponed due to bad weather conditions on the ground.

The crewmembers orbited the Earth 2,304 times during their stay aboard the station, traveling 98,169,984 kilometers, according to space.com.

Three other crewmembers remain aboard the space station: Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn. Hadfield is now the commander, meaning a Canadian astronaut is in charge of the ISS for the first time in its history. In less than two weeks, cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Aleksandr Misurkin and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy are expected to arrive at the station.

The challenge for the next space mission crew, the 35th, is to reach the ISS in record time — six hours — way outstripping the current time of two days, thanks to a launch trajectory currently undergoing tests.

The launch is scheduled for March 28 at 2043 GMT from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Meanwhile, another adventurer packing up for her long-awaited space trip is Phantom of the Opera star Sarah Brightman. In December, the Space Adventures agency finally confirmed that the British soprano signed an agreement with the Russian Space Agency securing her a space trip in 2015.

Brightman is set to become the next space tourist to the ISS, following Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte, who traveled into space in 2009.

March 15, 2013  |  

Since last October, Chris Christie has been embraced by President Obama, friended by Mark Zuckerberg, and praised by Bill Maher. In a political time of fracture he’s seemingly been the healer; in a time of discord, he’s been portrayed as leading the singers in Kumbaya — all five verses.

Nonsense. The only true bipartisanship the governor has managed has been the delicate balance between his glistening public persona and the ugly reality of his stewardship of an essential northeastern state. He is extraordinarily deft at it: he can annoy the rowdies who wouldn’t invite him to CPAC yet still get the Koch brothers to welcome him to their table and happily help him write his laws. Christie knows that conservatives come in two main types: the loud bullies who always back the wrong horse and always steer him straight to the glue factory, and the stealth guys in the suits who have all the money.

Embrace the president after Superstorm Sandy and you enrage the former. Bill O’Reilly tried to blame Mitt Romney’s loss on it. One of the interchangable umbrage merchants at the Washington Times called for Christie’s excommunication. The governor even caused Laura Ingraham to bray loudly about him becoming a Democrat. 

But the political genius of Chris Christie lies in his awareness that you can piss off some of the people some of the time, just so long as you don’t rock the billionaires’ boats. More over, sacrifice the correct group of the overheated — like the ones still clinging to a Romney victory only they and Romney believed still possible — and you suddenly look like you’re putting the public interest over political dogma, and you stand out like a beacon to milder liberals looking for somebody on the other side who just might possibly not be stark raving mad.

As Christie tries to hone this high-wire act on a national stage and shove the Marco Rubios and Jeb Bushes off the 2016 stage, it is instructive to realize that the act is not new — only the venue is. Stage dramatic budget cuts in front of the gullible local media and they’ll write encomiums about your courage that the hurried national media will devour amid their limited research. The national guys may find out about the $28 million Christie cut from healthcare for women and the elderly; they’ll never be told about the $260 million in his budget wasted on an Atlantic City casino that reported $35 million in losses in just its first three months of operation.

The national media sees the hug with Obama and the daring pushback against “Corzine Democrats.” It never sees the state teetering on the verge of 10% unemployment, nor the seemingly impossible reality of Christie advocating tax cuts that would drain more than a billion dollars from the money the state is taking in, while he still managed to increase his budget by a whopping 6.8% from 2011 to 2012.

And Christie bipartisanship — maintaining his own image despite vast piles of facts that contradict it at every turn — runs through not merely legislation but also ethics. This is New Jersey we’re talking about: the four governors elected before Christie were: 1) the guy who went back to private business and lost $1.6 billion in customer investments in about 18 months; 2) the guy who resigned with his wife at his side at a news conference during which he announced he was gay; 3) the woman who claimed black men competed with each other to see who could produce the most children out of wedlock, and then personally frisked one of them during a police ride-along; and 4) the anti-gun liberal who desperately tried to hold onto the governor’s mansion by promising to crack down on “welfare mothers.” 

March 15, 2013  |  

Whole Foods Market (WFM) is being praised in the media for announcing that it will become the first U.S. grocery chain to require that genetically engineered (GE) foods in its stores be labeled, by 2018. This is a victory for consumers and the GE labeling movement. And it’s a major setback for Monsanto, who for 20 years has worked hand-in-hand with the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to uphold the myth that GE foods and crops are “substantially equivalent” to non-GE foods, that they are perfectly safe, and shouldn’t require labels.

But let’s take a look at what led up to the announcement, and where the plan falls short.

It is consumer pressure that has finally forced WFM’s hand. Last year, consumers hammered WFM when the company dragged its heels on supporting California’s Proposition 37, a Nov. 7 citizens’ ballot initiative that would have required labels on all GE foods. The measure was narrowly defeated by a misleading $45-million ad campaign, paid for by the biotech and food giants. After calls and emails to WFM executives, and a fair amount of bad press, the company finally printed up some posters and leaflets, and offered a lukewarm endorsement. But it refused to contribute money to the Yes on 37 campaign.

Believing that the nation’s leading organic retailer should do more, consumers turned up the heat on WFM with the release of an undercover video showing store employees, either because they were misinformed or intentionally misleading, claiming that WFM stores sold no products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The employees’ statements contradicted previous admissions by WFM executives, including CEO John Mackey, that thousands of their so-called “natural” products actually contain GMOs. (By law, only organic foods are required to be GMO-free).

Consumers also hammered many of WFM’s organic and natural brands —“Traitor” brands, as they’re called — like Coca-Cola’s Honest Tea, General Mills’ Muir Glen and Kellogg’s Kashi cereals, because their parent companies had contributed millions to defeat Prop 37. In January, perhaps having realized that their alliance with Monsanto had cost them not only millions in campaign contributions but was also costing them customer loyalty, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, ConAgra, Walmart and a number of other food giants broke ranks with Monsanto. They headed to Washington D.C., to lobby FDA intermediaries for a federal GMO labeling law.

Could that have been the moment when WFM executives saw the writing on the wall? Or did the company just finally decide to live up to its 1998 promise to remove GE ingredients from its private label brands?

Either way, Mr. Mackey, go ahead, take a bow. Don’t get us wrong, we’re glad you’re going to require GMO labeling. But 2018? You can do better. In November 2013, voters in Washington State will get their say on mandatory GMO labeling, when I-522, another citizens’ initiative, appears on the ballot. Expected to pass in a state with widespread support from politicians, farmers and consumers, I-522 will require mandatory labeling of GMOs by July 2015. There’s no reason WFM, which already labels in its stores in the U.K., can’t implement labeling by 2015, too. Consumers shouldn’t have to wait five more years.

And while you’re at it, it’s time to stop bilking consumers by selling billions of dollars’ worth of products under the meaningless label of “natural.” Especially when you know full well that many of those so-called “natural” products contain GMOs, not to mention pesticides, synthetic chemicals and additives. How about being the first to implement a labeling policy with real teeth? A policy that says no product in our store that contains GMOs can be labeled “natural?”

A Palestinian man has died from complications related to exposure to tear gas fired by Israeli forces three weeks ago, local sources say.

The victim, identified as Muayad Ghazawneh, died in a hospital in the west Bank city of Ramallah on Friday after spending three weeks in an intensive care unit.

The 33-year-old Palestinian man was exposed to tear gas in al-Ram neighborhood of north al-Quds (Jerusalem) after Israeli troops fired tear gas to disperse a group of Palestinian protesters in the area.

According to Ma’an news agency, Ghazawneh was overcome by tear gas after Israeli soldiers fired a tear gas canister into his car. He was not involved in the protest.

Israeli troops frequently attack Palestinian protesters with tear gas and stun grenades. Scores of Palestinians, including children, have been killed due to tear gas inhalation.

In November 2012, a 20-month-old baby was killed after Israeli soldiers fired a tear gas into a house in Ramallah during clashes with Palestinian protesters.

HM/JR

Journalists have condemned the EU bans on Press TV officials saying the move damages the West’s credibility on the issue of freedom of speech, Press TV reports.

Many journalists say the West’s war against Iranian media has crossed a red line, after the European Union issued travel and banking sanctions against a Press TV journalist

Journalists also wonder how far the West is prepared to go in its campaign of censorship and intimidation.

“Journalists should be able to do their work and be able to travel around freely. An essential point in any building of the democratic institutions is to ensure that there is an open media space. We might not agree with the media all the time but they should be allowed to carry on with their works and to put restrictions on the journalists themselves is anti-democratic,” journalist James Overton told Press TV.

On Tuesday, the European Union blacklisted Press TV CEO Mohammad Sarafraz and Newsroom Director Hamid Reza Emadi for airing a 10-second report about Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, who worked for Newsweek magazine in Tehran in 2009 following post-election riots in Iran.

Emadi and Sarafraz are the latest victims in the ongoing international campaign to repress Iranian media. Both have been falsely accused without explanation or being given the chance to defend themselves.

“I think it is totally outrageous that we have the West, the European Union and various Western powers if you will, putting restrictions on media,” Overton added.

“It is not just about news, current affairs, government issues and defense matters, it is also about culture and history because people all over the world have a thirst or have a need to understand more about Iranian culture and history,” he pointed out.

While many Western media have stopped reporting the still near-daily demonstrations in countries like Spain and Greece and opposition to France’s obstruction of peace efforts in Syria, or ignored repression in countries such as Bahrain or Myanmar, Press TV has stayed true to its original mission of being the voice of the voiceless.

TNP/HGH/SS

Afghan security officials say they have defused a massive truck bomb in the capital city of Kabul, the biggest of its kind discovered in the war-torn country.

The National Directorate of Security (NDS) on Friday said it found nearly eight tons of explosives, wired and ready for detonation, hidden in cement bags in a truck.

“This truck bomb could have destroyed an area around 1.5 km (in radius). Now can you imagine that what kind of catastrophe this would be?” NDS spokesman Shafiqullah Tahiri told a news conference.

Five suspected bombers were killed and two others arrested during a pre-dawn raid by security forces on Wednesday.

The NDS said the attack was planned by the Haqqani network and the Taliban leadership.

Security forces also arrested four Taliban militants who had planned to attack Shindand military airport in the western Herat Province on Friday.

They also seized four missiles aimed at the airfield.

Violence in Afghanistan has been on the rise in recent years, despite the prolonged presence of foreign forces in the war-torn country since the US-led invasion of the country in 2001.

The rising number of civilian casualties has promoted President Hamid Karzai to order US special forces to leave the eastern province of Wardak.

Karzai’s last week remarks accusing the United States of colluding with the Taliban and the US denial of the comments marks the strain in Kabul-Washington relations.

MRS/JR

The Pentagon has spent nearly USD 1 billion last year in unemployment benefits for former troops who voluntarily quit despite the country’s budget cuts.

The US Labor Department has spent USD 928 million in 2012 for the Unemployment Compensation for Ex-servicemembers (UCX) program, an initiative that allocates what could potentially amount to more than 90 weeks of unemployment checks for each voluntarily emancipated military member who has served several years in service.

Experts criticize the UCX for paying honorably discharged military personnel because the law stipulated that “workers who are unemployed through no fault of their own”, such as during layoffs, are eligible to receive benefits.

“A lot say, ‘Hey, I joined the Army or Marines so I could get out of working at McDonald’s,’” said Samuel Wright, a former lawyer in the Navy, while describing the difficulty that military personnel face in finding jobs.

Program requirements require former military personnel to follow the same state requirements as civilians when applying for benefits, while requiring them to actively search for employment.

Military members who have experienced combat have a particularly difficult time finding jobs while “re-acclimating” to society, said the Center for a New American Security, adding that unemployment benefits “could be funding the acclimation period for veterans – some veterans may be declining employment opportunities or choosing not to seek employment”.

Nearly 120,000 people filed first-time claims for money in the military program in 2012, compared with 71,000 in 2008 – with more than 515,000 receiving compensation since 2008.

The unemployment rate for 9/11 war veterans remains at 9.4 percent, compared with 7.7 percent for all Americans.

GMA/JR

The Government insists its HS2 high-speed rail project has not hit the buffers after a High Court judge ruled the consultation process for compensating those affected was “unlawful”.

It was the only successful case among five in which Mr Justice Ouseley had been asked to send the multi-billion pound project back for reconsideration.

Despite the decision at London’s High Court, Transport Minister Simon Burns insisted the scheme would not be held up.

“This has been a convincing victory for the Government,” he said.

“It’s a green light to go ahead. It will not hold up us going ahead with the project, which is in the national interest.”

“This is a major landmark victory for HS2 and the future of Britain.

“HS2 is the most significant infrastructure investment the UK has seen in modern times and a project the country cannot afford to do without.

“The judgment ensures that nothing now stands in the way of taking our plans to Parliament.

“We will now move forward as planned with the crucial business of getting the scheme ready for construction in 2017 and delivering enormous benefits for the country.”

The decision on compensation was a victory for the High Speed 2 Action Alliance (HS2AA) , consisting of more than 70 affiliated action groups and residents’ associations.

Human rights lawyer Richard Stein, who helped represent HS2AA, said: “This was never a Nimby argument. Many thousands of people living along the route will not be able to sell their homes for some 15 years because their homes are blighted.

“They should not have to bear the burden for this national project.

“We hope now that proper arrangements are put in place by the Government for compensation for those who live by the proposed HS2 route to make it possible for them to move if and when they wish, in the same way that the rest of us can.”

The first phase of HS2 would see a high-speed railway line running through Tory heartlands from London to Birmingham.

Shadow transport secretary Maria Eagle said: “We’ve now had nearly three years of dither and delay over HS2 which must now come to an end.

“It is vital that the Government now gets on with introducing the necessary legislation to make this scheme a reality on the ground. When they do so, they will have cross-party support from Labour.”

Supporters point to the benefits of a reduction in journey times between the UK’s two biggest cities.

A 7-year-old US pupil has been suspended from his elementary school for nibbling his breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun while firearm sales and shootings continue across the country unabated.

Father of the second-grade student filed a formal appeal on Thursday with the superintendent of Anne Arundel County school district near the US capital on Thursday, asking that his child’s school records be wiped clean of the offense, The Washington Post reports Friday.

“The chewed pastry was not capable of harming anybody, even if thrown,” said the appeal, addressed to the superintendent, Kevin Maxwell and Park Elementary School Principal Sandy Blondell. “It could not fire any missile whatsoever.”

The case, which has attracted national attention, came just 11 weeks after the shooting carnage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the US state of Connecticut, were 20 children and six staff members were killed by a lone gunman armed with an assault rifle.

Sensitivities over the massacre have been variously heightened concerning guns and security, “even imaginary ones,” the report says.

In recent weeks, according to the daily, children have been suspended from school “for pointing their fingers like guns and, in one case, for talking about shooting a Hello Kitty gun that blows bubbles.”

In some cases, it adds, the offenses were described in harsh terms, one as a “terroristic threat,” as school authorities have reportedly agreed, after appeals, to clear students’ permanent records.

In the Anne Arundel school case, the child was suspended March 1 for two days after chewing his breakfast pastry bar and yelling, “Look I made a gun,” according to the appeal. He aimed the pastry at students in a hallway and those at nearby desks, the appeal said.

“It was harmless,” his father said in his appeal. “It was a danish.”

The harsh treatment of school children for their playful activities, which widely reflect what they witness daily on television and news, comes as US adults are widely reported to continue purchasing guns in public gun shows and elsewhere across the country.

Meanwhile, federal officials have so far failed to agree on any national gun-control laws following the Connecticut school massacre.

MFB/MFB

US President Barack Obama has reiterated his pledge to negotiate with Iran on concerns over its nuclear energy program, once again rejecting Israeli insistence on taking military action against the country.

“When I’m consulting with Bibi (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) as I have over the last several years on this issue, my message to him will be the same as before: If we can resolve it diplomatically that is a more lasting solution,” Obama said in a Thursday interview with the Israeli regime’s Channel 2 TV station just days before his first presidential visit to the occupied Palestinian land.

Obama, however, further invoked much publicized Israeli claims that a “nuclear Iran” would constitute a “red line” and that he will “keep all options on the table,” without elaborating, although the phrase has widely been interpreted as other measures, including military force.

Obama made no mention of the Israeli regime’s undeclared possession of an estimated 300 nuclear warheads and the threat it poses to the region and the world.

While the American president further claimed success of various unilateral US-led sanctions against the Islamic Republic in efforts to force the nation to give up its right to an IAEA-supervised nuclear energy program, he totally ignored Tel Aviv’s persistent refusal to allow any international inspection of its nuclear facilities and its denial to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The remarks come as Iranian authorities have repeatedly rejected any notion that it is pursuing a non-civilian nuclear effort, insisting, however, that as a long-time signatory of the NPT and member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it will never give up its right to a civilian nuclear program.

Top Iranian officials have also made clear that any military bid by US or the Israeli regime against the country will prompt an immediate and severe response that will extend beyond the region and will include the destruction of the entity that occupies Palestine.

In the interview Obama also reiterated that he had no plans to release convicted and jailed Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, whom the Tel Aviv regime has been rigorously pressuring to set free after 28 years in a US prison for spying for them.

Obama is set to arrive in the occupied Palestine on Wednesday for a three-day visit reportedly for the sole purpose of conveying American government’s unconditional commitment to the Israeli regime.

MFB/MFB

NATO troops in Afghanistan have unsuccessfully tried to impose a foreign ideology in a war unwinnable by military means, the UK military has said. The planned 2014 pullout is expected to leave Kabul unable to survive the Taliban onslaught.

The Afghan mission of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), now in its 12th year, closely resembles the failed Soviet occupation of the country, a damning British internal report argued. The document was prepared in November last year by a British Ministry of Defense think tank and obtained by the Independent newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act.

“The highest-level parallel is that both campaigns were conceived with the aim of imposing an ideology foreign to the Afghan people: The Soviets hoped to establish a Communist state while NATO wished to build a democracy,” the document said. “Equally striking is that both abandoned their central aim once they realized that the war was unwinnable in military terms and that support of the population was essential.”

Both occupying forces found it difficult to deal with insurgencies they overwhelmed militarily, the report said: “The military parallels are equally striking; the 40th Army was unable decisively to defeat the mujahedin while facing no existential threat itself, a situation that precisely echoes the predicament of ISAF. Neither campaign established control over the country’s borders and the insurgents’ safe havens; both were unable to protect the rural population.”

Most NATO troops will pull out of the country next year, leaving behind a fragile and unpopular national government and a strong armed opposition, much like the Soviet Union, the report noted.

“Both interventions have been portrayed as foreign invasions attempting to support a corrupt and unpopular central government against a local insurgent movement which has popular support, strong religious motivation and safe havens abroad,” it said. “In addition, the country will again be left with a severely damaged and very weak economic base, heavily dependent upon external aid.”

In a grim warning, the document points to the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan as one of the reasons for its weakening and eventual collapse: “The international setting for both campaigns has significant similarities with world opinion judging both as failed interventions. Both faced a loss of confidence in their strategic world leadership and increasing domestic and financial pressure to abandon the enterprise.”

The assessment, which a Ministry of Defense spokesperson said was meant “to stimulate internal debate, not outline government positions,” mirrors another assessment prepared by the UK-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). In its annual Military Balance report released this week, the think tank forecast that the Afghan insurgency would not be eliminated by the end of 2014.

“The hope is that it can be reduced to such a level that it no longer poses an existential threat to the state and can be contained by Afghan forces,” the IISS said, predicting that in 2015 the country would be “a patchwork of insurgent activity.”

The transition talks between Kabul and the US-led ISAF are continuing amid bitter accusations and recriminations. Last Sunday, after two suicide bombers killed 19 people, Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused foreign troops of colluding with the Taliban to justify their presence in the region. 

The allegations provoked a rebuke from several US officials, including ISAF chief Joseph Dunford. The US general said in an advisory obtained by the New York Times that “Karzai’s remarks could be a catalyst for some to lash out against our forces.”

The day after the Afghan President’s comments proved to be the deadliest for NATO troops in the country in 2013. Two US soldiers were killed and 10 were wounded in a suspected insider attack by a man dressed in an Afghan army uniform, and five Americans were killed in a helicopter crash that was blamed on bad weather.

“We’re at a rough point in the relationship,” Dunford said in his advisory. “[Militants] are also watching and will look for a way to exploit the situation — they have already ramped up for the spring.”

In a move to mitigate the damage, Karzai’s office said Thursday the US and Afghanistan remain strategic partners, and that his statements “had been to correct rather than damage this relationship.”

Technology giant Samsung has unveiled its new Galaxy S4 smartphone, a handset which allows users to control the screen using their eyes.

The range of new features were revealed at the global launch in New York, including a dual camera function that can take two pictures at once and “smart pause”, which lets users pause a video by looking away from the screen.

“We have taken technology and innovation forward to help us get closer to what matters in life, to help us live a richer, simpler and more full life,” said JK Shin, president and head of IT and mobile communications at Samsung.

The highly-anticipated smartphone is predicted to pose a major threat to Apple and its dominance of the US market.

But investors have largely shrugged off the launch. Shares in Samsung were 2.3% lower in Seoul on Friday.

The device will be on sale in the UK from April 26, and will be available through 327 mobile operators in 155 countries, including Orange, EE and Vodafone.

Samsung is said to be expecting sales of its new handsets to be as high as 10 million per month, largely driven by its new features, which were demonstrated in a theatrical launch event at the Radio City music hall and Times Square.

A heavily emphasised feature was the Galaxy S4’s remote technology which allows users to control functions without touching the 5in (12.7cm) screen.

As well as “smart pause”, “smart scroll” lets users browse through emails without touching the screen, the S4 detecting the movements of the eyes and wrist.

Users can also change music tracks or accept a call with a wave of a hand.

Performers on the Radio City stage acted out role-plays to demonstrate other features.

A ‘doting father’ took photos of his tap-dancing son to show off the dual camera function, which means you can take photos or video using a 13 megapixel rear camera and a two megapixel front camera at the same time and blend the images together, even recording voice tags with them

The phone also has an in-built translator, which can translate voice or text, can measure temperature and humidity, allows users to activate commands via voice control when driving and even monitors your health.

The S4 also automatically creates “story albums” of photos and videos, which can be synchronised with devices at home, while a “group play” function lets people enjoy music, photos and games with people around them.

Marketed as “slimmer and stronger”, the S4 weighs 130g and is 7.9mm thick, while its AMOLED technology means the screen has a resolution of 441 pixels per inch.

But technology critics have been divided in their opinions, with some saying the phone was just an update that did not feel “revolutionary”.

Web magazine Engadget said it felt the new product “fell flat next to the competition” and that it had an “unabashed focus on features over designs”.

But Ernest Doku, telecoms expert at uSwitch, said the handset “more than” lived up to its hype.

“With brains as well as beauty, Samsung’s latest effort looks set to be the biggest handset of the year – and that’s in spite of an inevitable iPhone sequel.

“However, several manufacturers are trying to fan the flames of a revival, and a string of strong recent launches from BlackBerry, Sony, and HTC will give Samsung some stiff competition.”

Technology website The Verge said: “There’s a baffling collection of new software here.”

Paul Thompson, managing director of mobile advertising company BlisMedia, said the S4 “set” the benchmark on how a mobile device can be integrated into daily life.

He praised the eye-controlled features as “ground-breaking innovation that could change the face of how we use technology”, saying “there is certainly enough to set the Galaxy S4 apart from the iPhone 5 by some distance”.

The MP Eric Joyce has been arrested after an alleged fight in a bar at the House of Commons, Sky sources say.

The independent Member of Parliament for Falkirk was held after the incident at the Sports and Social Club bar.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: “Police were called shortly before 10.30pm this evening to reports of a disturbance at a bar within the House of Commons.

“Officers attended and a man aged in his 50s was arrested in connection with this incident.

“He remains in custody and inquiries continue.”

Joyce resigned from the Labour Party after butting Tory rivals Stuart Andrew and Ben Maney in a previous incident in a Commons bar last February.

The 52-year-old also punched Tory councillor Luke Mackenzie and Labour whip Phillip Wilson while going berserk and insulting officers.

After leaving Mr Andrew with a bloodied nose, Joyce told police: “He deserved it.”

Joyce, who accepted he was “hammered” on red wine during the brawl, launched into a frenzied attack after shouting that the Strangers’ Bar “was full of ******* Tories”.

The former soldier walked away from Westminster Magistrates Court with a fine and pub banning order after admitting four counts of common assault.

He was fined £3,000 and ordered to pay £1,400 to victims after he entered early guilty pleas.

Joyce was also given a 12-month community order – banning him from entering pubs and licensed premises for three months – and imposed with a curfew order from Friday to Sunday.

After the hearing, Joyce admitted he was lucky to avoid jail and said he was “deeply apologetic”.

More than 250,000 extra school places will be needed by next year to meet a continuing surge in demand, the spending watchdog has warned.

The rise in the number of children born in England between 2001 and 2011 was the largest 10-year increase since the 1950s.

This has led to an increase in demand for primary school places.

The Department for Education has increased the funding it provides to local authorities with a net increase of almost 81,500 primary school places in the last two years. More than £5bn has been invested into new school places since 2010.

However, there are still indications of a real shortage, the National Audit Office has found.

In May last year just over 20% of schools were full or over capacity despite the more than 80,000 extra places created between 2010 and 2012.

In the next two years 240,000 of the new places needed are in primary schools – 37% in London.

Julian Wood, Study Director at the National Audit Office said: “I think it’s important to say that of the 256,000 (places) there has been a year’s further work that hasn’t been reflected in these numbers.

“The level of funding has increased to something like that which was originally expected to be needed and local authorities are working hard to deliver these places.

“Nonetheless, we think there’s an awful lot more that needs to be done to help that money work as efficiently as it can if those 256,000 places are to be delivered.”

The report authors say it’s important the right amount of money gets to the areas that need it most to prevent part of a younger generation missing out on the first few crucial years of education.

Lindsey Barrett, manager of the Busy Bees nursery in Ealing, London, told Sky News: “Parents are worried that perhaps they are not going to get a school in their local area, or their first choice.

“Being a parent myself I am completely in empathy with those parents because it is a very big decision that is being made – it’s their child’s future education.

“Parents worry that if it is a school perhaps out of their area, or perhaps if any of the numbers increase in classrooms – that is looking at the education and the quality that they will be receiving.

“Sometimes parents might try and move out of the area, obviously do a lot of research into the local school they hope they are going to get there, that they are going to get one of their first choices, but it doesn’t always happen.

“As a parent you always want the best education you can get for your child.”

Young British servicemen – past and present – are three times more likely to commit violent crime than their civilian counterparts.

Using official criminal records, researchers have found that violent offending is particularly common among men under 30-years-old from the lower ranks of the Army.

Of nearly 3,000 men under 30 who have served in the armed forces, nearly 20.6% have a conviction for violence, according to the study published in The Lancet today.

That compares to 6.7% of the same age group in the civilian world.

The report also shows that men who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan are 53% more likely to commit a violent offence than their colleagues in non-combat roles.

“We are suggesting there is a problem that needs to be looked at, but just as with post-traumatic stress disorder this is not a common outcome in military populations.

“Overall, you must remember that of those who serve in combat, 94% of those who come back will not offend,” said report co-author Sir Simon Wessely from King’s College, London.

According to the figures, those with multiple experiences of combat have a 70% to 80% greater risk of committing acts of violence.

The report acknowledges that those who choose to become a soldier are likely to have a more aggressive disposition than the average person.

Pre-military history of violence, younger age, and lower rank appear to be the strongest risk factors for violent offending.

But alcohol misuse and post-traumatic stress disorder on return from deployment were also found to be strong predictors of violence.

Former Royal Engineer Lewis Mackay returned from Afghanistan in 2010 – he saw his commander lose both legs on the battlefield after stepping on an Improvised Explosive Device (IED).

He said: “When I came back I got very angry and felt very angry towards my wife.

“In my head she didn’t exist whatsoever. If she did something that I didn’t think was right I’d feel the urge to lash out and it got to the point where I had to physically sit on my hands to stop myself doing that.”

Mr Mackay has now received the help he needed but former SAS serviceman Bob Craft says it’s never easy to ask for help.

“The older you are, the better you deal with it. I asked for help and I found help.

“But younger lads who come out refuse to ask for help because it’s seen as a weakness, therefore they bottle it up and then they make mistakes,” he said.

The study is the biggest of its kind and is released just days before the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War.

In a statement the Ministry of Defence said: “We are committed to supporting members of our Armed Forces and their families as they return to civilian life post deployment.

“That is why we funded this research and have comprehensive mental health support available before, during and after operations. We also ensure that all personnel go through a thorough period of decompression to help make this adjustment.

“Any violent offence is unacceptable and will not be tolerated by our Armed Forces. If a member of our Armed Forces or their family experiences violence there is a wide range of support and help available to them.”

Archaeologists say 12 skeletons found beneath a building site in London could provide evidence of a Black Death burial ground.

The remains were found by teams working on Crossrail – a £15bn project to improve transport links in the capital, including at Farringdon where the bones were found.

Historical records indicate a hastily-built cemetery opened in the area in 1348 as the plague spread across the country.

Up to 50,000 people are thought to have been buried there in less than three years.

Jay Carver, lead Crossrail archaeologist, said: “This is a highly significant discovery and at the moment we are left with many questions that we hope to answer.

“We will be undertaking scientific tests on the skeletons over the coming months to establish their cause of death, whether they were plague victims from the 14th century or later London residents, how old they were and perhaps evidence of who they were.

“However at this early stage, the depth of burials, the pottery found with the skeletons and the way they have been set out, all point towards this being part of the 14th century emergency burial ground.”

The skeletons were found during excavations below a road in Charterhouse Square.

They were buried in two rows and laid out in a similar formation to skeletons discovered at a Black Death burial site in Smithfield in the 1980s.

Experts at the Museum of London Archaeology will now use DNA testing and carbon dating to determine both a cause of death and a burial date.

Charterhouse Square had previously been identified as a possible site for the lost burial ground, as it is one of few locations in Farringdon to remain undeveloped for the past 700 years.

John Stow, the 16th century historian, said more than 150,000 victims of the Black Death were buried in London, including 50,000 at a site in Farringdon known as ‘No Man’s Land’.

About 75 million people and up to 60% of the European population are said to have died in the four-year global pandemic.

Archaeologists working on Crossrail have already uncovered more than 300 skeletons near Liverpool Street station.

It is thought they were buried near the site of the Bedlam Hospital in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.

Egypt’s ruling Muslim Brotherhood has condemned a UN draft declaration on women’s rights, claiming the document violates Islamic Law. The party outlined ten reasons why women in Muslim countries should not have the proposed rights.

The document, “End Violence Against Women,” is planned to be ratified on Friday by the UN Commission on the Status of Women and is now being negotiated as part of the 57th session.

The Muslim Brotherhood, in a statement on its official website, claims that the articles of the declaration “are destructive tools meant to undermine the family as an important institution.” The Islamists claim the document would “subvert the entire society and drag it to pre-Islamic ignorance.”

Among the clauses which the organization finds offensive are an article that would enable women to choose the gender of their partners; use of contraceptives by teenagers; and a clause that allocates equal rights for homosexuals and protection for sex workers.

Some other articles the Egyptian leadership finds challenging include granting “equal rights to adulterous wives and illegitimate sons resulting from adulterous relationships” and giving wives “full rights to file legal complaints against husbands accusing them of rape or sexual harassment.”

“The Muslim Brotherhood urges the leaders of Islamic countries and their UN representatives to reject and condemn this document,” the party said in the statement.

The issue of Muslim women marrying non-Muslim men has also been condemned in the outline.

Muslim Brotherhood spokesmen also found unacceptable a call for “cancelling the need for a husband’s consent in matters like travel, work, or use of contraception” and rejected the idea of abolishing “polygamy, dowry, men taking charge of family spending.”

The 57th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is comprised of 45 countries united by a goal of stopping violence against women worldwide. However, the “End Violence Against Women” report has seen objections coming from Russia, the Vatican, Iran and Egypt.

“There’s this sort of unholy alliance … coming together to oppose language on sexual health, reproductive rights and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) rights,” a senior UN diplomat told Reuters on Wednesday. “It’s tough going, but progress is being made.”

Cairo, for instance, is seeking to recognize that sovereign countries have the right to ignore elements of the declaration which would conflict with their religious values.

Moscow, the Vatican and Tehran meanwhile voiced concerns over emergency contraception, abortion and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. Gay rights and sexual and reproductive rights, they argue, should also be decided by each nation separately. 

The CSW is part of the UN Economic and Social Council. It was launched in 1946 with annual summits aimed at setting global gender equality policies.

David Cameron and French president Francois Hollande tonight stepped up the campaign for the right to arm Syrian rebels after private talks in Brussels.

The Prime Minister and Mr Hollande got together at the latest EU summit to discuss their growing concern that an existing EU arms embargo against Syria is effectively preventing assistance to forces opposing the Assad regime’s campaign of bombing and bloodshed.

EU sanctions against the Syrian regime, including an arms embargo, have only just been extended until the end of May – meaning only a unanimous vote of EU foreign ministers can change the situation before then.

And tomorrow – the second anniversary of the Daraa uprising against the Assad regime – the UK and French leaders will make a joint plea to fellow leaders to reconsider the arms embargo or face the prospect of at least two EU nations taking unilateral action to assist the rebels.

That would realistically only happen after the end of May, when the current sanctions are up once more for review. But the hope in London and Paris is that other member states will by then agree to end the sanctions early.

EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels next week will take up this issue after tomorrow’s summit discussions.

“There is a perversity about the EU arms embargo… it is backfiring” said one Downing Street official. “The embargo does not stop those aiding Assad, but it does stop those who want to help the opposition”.

But the official emphasised: “We are not considering going ahead (with arming the rebels) while the current arms embargo is in place. What we want is to start the discussion about changing the arms embargo.”

Mr Cameron has already hinted that “it’s not out of the question we might have to do things in our own way”.

And, arriving at the summit, Mr Hollande was forthright: “We are ready to support the rebels, so we are ready to go that far.”

“We cannot allow the massacre of a people by a regime which right now does not want a political transition.”

“France’s view is that arms are being delivered to Syria – but to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, in particular by the Russians.”

He said he was not looking for “total war”, but for ways of increasing pressure on the Assad regime.

Earlier French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said the UK and France were ready to arm rebels in Syria, even without full EU support.

And UK Government sources had insisted that “all options” remain on the table.

Earlier a Foreign Office spokesman said: “Our objective is clear – an end to the violence and a political transition to a more democratic Syria through a political solution.

“As it stands, the political track has little chance of gathering momentum unless the regime feels compelled to come to the negotiating table. They need to feel that the balance on the ground has shifted against them.

“The Foreign Secretary has been clear he hasn’t ruled out any options for the future.”

A Downing Street official insisted tonight: “This is not about intervention in Syria by Western forces getting involved. It is about looking at what more can be done to support the opposition.”

It is now almost certain the subatomic particle that brings together everything in the universe has been found, CERN scientists announced on Thursday. Latest analysis of data from the Large Hadron Collider proves that the Higgs boson actually exists.

The search for the missing particle dubbed as ‘the holy grail of physics,’ which has been going on for almost half a century and has brought the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC) into existence, has finally resulted in some strong experimental evidence.

For the first time since the triumphant announcement of the new particle discovery in July 2012, the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN has declared it is indeed the Higgs boson that they’ve found, as the analyzed LHC data “strongly indicates.”

“The preliminary results with the full 2012 data set are magnificent and to me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson, though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is,” said physicist Joe Incandela, the spokesperson for CERN’s Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) team.

The existence of the boson in question and its linked energy field was predicted by British physicist Peter Higgs as he was looking for answers of the open questions of particle physics. Without the Higgs boson, the Standard Model of particle physics fails to explain all the processes happening in the universe, its absence would also not be compatible with Einstein’s theory of general relativity — still a dominant way of explaining gravity.

The question which has eluded countless physicists for decades, and the missing link explaining how the universe works at the very basic level, is what gives mass to matter. In other words, what has brings all the flying particles together to form stars, planets and humans ever since the Big Bang.

Many scientists attribute this role to the elusive Higgs boson, although “exotic” theories exist, which go beyond the Standard Model.

Now, after petabytes of LHC data have been processed, CERN scientists are quite confident there is a Higgs boson — and that it most likely fits into the mainstream particle physics principles, as David Charlton of the LHC’s ATLAS team indicated during the Thursday CERN conference.

Although it might take years for the discovery to be fully confirmed and fleshed out, one cannot expect anything more sensational from the LHC team in the coming two years, as the 27-kilometer collider has been shut down for maintenance until the early 2015.

Brian Gerrish interviews Kevin Edwards who describes the Bonnie Lewis case, where Social Services kidnapped a 12 year old girl at gunpoint and using a false passport, while she was receiving medical treatment in the USA.

The US war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion with $490 billion more owed in benefits to combat veterans, a recent study revealed. The report found that total expenses in the unavailing conflict could balloon to $6 trillion over the next 40 years.

The study, conducted by the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, concluded that the accrued interest on the nearly $2.2 trillion in expenses would amount to some $4 trillion dollars during the coming decades, Reuters reports.

At the time of the 2003 invasion, the Bush administration estimated the war would cost between $50-60 billion.

Published in advance of the 10th anniversary of the March 19 US-led invasion of Iraq, the study also estimated the great human cost inflicted by the nearly decade long conflict.

At least 134,000 Iraqi civilians died as a result of the Iraq War, though the Watson Institute says the death toll could be up to four times higher. The report stated that with the inclusion of slain journalists, aid workers and insurgents, the base level death toll reached an estimated 176,000- 189,000.

A 2006 peer-reviewed Lancet study had found that 650,000 Iraqis — both combatants and civilians — had died up to that point. Other estimates had previously put total war deaths as high as 1 million.  

An estimated 36,000 American military personnel were also killed or injured during the war.

The Watson Institute study further found that US gains from the invasion were negligible, while Iraq was still reeling from the war.  

“Despite the US military withdrawal,” the report says,

“Iraq’s health, infrastructure, and education systems remain war-devastated.” The war further galvanized radical Islamist militants in the region and set back women’s rights, while

“the $212 billion reconstruction effort was largely a failure with most of that money spent on security or lost to waste and fraud.” The study was an update of a 2011 report which estimated the costs of the US military engagements in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq at $3.7 trillion. The latest report puts that cost at some $4 trillion dollars

In the run up to the war, the US and the UK claimed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction which posed a threat to regional security.

The U.S.‑led Iraq Survey Group would later conclude that Iraq had ended its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs in 1991 and had no active programs at the time of the invasion.

March 14, 2013  |  

“I wouldn’t say she was completely passed out but she wasn’t in any state to make a decision for herself.”  That’s what one of the witnesses in the Steubenville, Ohio, trial told police of the 16-year-old girl at the center of the case, according to ABC News. Perhaps that witness was one of the three football players who have not been charged but are expected to testify for the prosecution in the trial, which began Wednesday.

Since it still needs to be said, not being “in any state to make a decision for herself” meets the legal definition for rape across the U.S. So here’s a question for that guy: What did he do to try to stop it?

According to the prosecutor’s opening statement Wednesday, these witnesses saw one of the defendants, Trent Mays, try to force oral sex on the girl, but her mouth wouldn’t open. They saw the other defendant, Ma’Lik Richmond, digitally penetrate the girl while she was passed out on a couch. Though the girls’ friends apparently tried to prevent her from continuing on with the boys, so far there’s been no indication the witnesses intervened with the boys who no one has disputed were capable of decision-making. And preliminary research shows that the intervention of such bystanders could make the difference in preventing rape.

Last week, an inexcusable torrent of abuse was hurled at commentator Zerlina Maxwell after she appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show and sensibly pointed out that arming women is not effective rape prevention tactics, for multiple reasons. (“If firearms are the answer, then the military would be the safest place for women,” she said.) It was her message of “tell men not to rape” that seemed to most inflame the trolls. Hannity found it self-evidently ridiculous: “You think you can tell a rapist to stop doing what he’s doing? He’s going to listen to an ad campaign to stop?” He also said, “Knowing there are evil people, I want women protected, and they’ve got to protect themselves.”

It was a clash of ideas of who commits crimes in the world. For Hannity and his ilk, rape is committed by “evil people,” an immutable fact that can’t be educated away, that isn’t about social norms. For feminists who are weary of victim-blaming – including blaming women for not just shooting their rapists in the moment – and who have for decades been pushing against the idea that rape is only committed by strangers lurking in the bushes, this is tantamount to giving up the fight. Or, as Jessica Valenti recently put it, you’re “saying that rape is natural for men. That this is just something men do. Well I’m sorry, but I think more highly of men than that.”

But the problem with saying “tell men not to rape” is that the majority of rapists probably won’t listen. That’s because the majority of them are repeat offenders who don’t care about consent. Research consistently shows that while any kind of man can be a rapist, not every man is one.

David Lisak, a leading forensic researcher who has done research on sex offenders in Boston and specializes in “undetected rapists,” has written that such men, whose behavior falls into what’s still commonly called “date rape,” are “accurately and appropriately labeled as predators. This picture conflicts sharply with the widely-held view that rapes committed on university campuses are typically the result of a basically ‘decent’ young man who, were it not for too much alcohol and too little communication, would never do such a thing. While some campus rapes do fit this more benign view, the evidence points to a far less benign reality,” of serial offenders. He continued, “Prevention efforts geared toward persuading men not to rape are very unlikely to be effective. Lessons can be drawn from many decades of experience in sex offender treatment, which have demonstrated that it is extremely difficult to change the behavior of a serial predator even when you incarcerate him and subject him to an intensive, multi-year program.” He has argued that bystander programs tailored to specific contexts – say, a military base – hold more promise in stopping those predators in their track, by encouraging others to recognize the signs.

Police officers arrest a demonstrator during a march after a vigil held for Kimani “Kiki” Gray in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, Wednesday, March 13, 2013, in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)Demonstrators gathered for a third night in a row in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn Wednesday night over the shooting of 16-year-old Kimani Gray by the NYPD over the weekend. Residents from the area who marked the evening with another protest and candlelight vigil were met once again by riot police–who arrested up to 50 protesters in the area including Gray’s sister.

Sophie Lewis at In These Times reports that the “whole of East Flatbush is becoming a so-called Frozen Zone: an unofficial NYPD tactic of totally excluding the media from an area.”

Lewis reports on the scene Wednesday night:

Scores of police squads have descended upon the growing vigils on Church Avenue. Last night, hundreds of protesters faced off with police, contesting efforts to net and mass-arrest them throughout the evening. Council member Charles Barron told Democracy Now: ‘This is the least that the community could do is to respond and resist.’

Late in the night, police arrested Kimani Gray’s sister and an estimated 46 others–mainly local young people, and some outside supporters–who remain detained at several precincts.

Local reports have said that a heavy police presence has remained in the area throughout the day.

Carol Gray, the mother of Kimani Gray, spoke out for the first time on Thursday afternoon from the office of City Councilman Charles Barron. She said that her son was slaughtered and she wants to know why.

“I’m asking for justice,” she said, telling reporters her unarmed son was killed in front of his best friend’s house after a birthday party.

Reports have differed greatly between police and local residents over how and why police shot up to 11 rounds at the young man, who was adjusting his waistband in what the police said was a “suspicious manner.” While police say Gray was armed, eyewitnesses have said he was “running for his life” when he was shot dead.

Lewis continues:

Kimani’s killing was the latest in an unrelenting stream of similar incidents across New York City and the United States. There have been 79 killings by law enforcement officers in the U.S. in 2013 alone. Present at last night’s demonstrations were Bronx community activists Constance Malcolm and Franclot Graham, the parents of Ramarley Graham, whom the police slayed in his grandmother’s bathroom at close range slightly over a year ago. […]

Activists are up against not just the police, but also the very logic that normalizes police violence and permits the public to rationalize Black deaths.

Evan Brown, 53, lights candles during a vigil held for Kimani “Kiki” Gray in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, Wednesday, March 13, 2013, in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)______________________________

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March 14, 2013  |  

The United States is not just funding an abusive drug war at home; taxpayer funds are propping up violently oppressive “drug treatment” centers that act more like detainment camps abroad. At the U.S.-backed Somsanga Rehabilitation Center in Laos, detainees are subjected to shocking physical abuse, including beating to the point of unconsciousness for showing withdrawal symptoms or attempting to escape. Allegations of sexual assault are also rampant.

According to reports, younger residents are raped by older detainees whom the center gives power to enforce rules and regulations. One Somsanga detainee interviewed by Human Rights Watch said he saw “supervisors rape boys between the ages of 10 and 14.” Children are not exempt from indefinite detainment in these camps. UNICEF-sponsored investigations in Laos found 150 detainees under 18 in 2003, and more than 600 children in 2006.

Despite calls from human rights organizations, the United States has continued to pump money into the Somsanga Rehabilitation Center.

In March of last year, 12 United Nations agencies, including the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the World Health Organization, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and UNAIDS, issued a joint statement calling for the closure of drug-user detention centers where they identified grave human rights violations. Abused patients, perhaps better described as inmates, should be released “without delay,” the report urged. Nonetheless, a new report from UN’s special expert on torture, Juan Mendez, explains that many nations, including the US, continue to send hundreds of thousands of dollars to “rehabilitation” centers that act as hubs for indefinitely holding and systematically abusing marginalized people.  

This June, the U.S. agreed to donate an additional $400,000 to the Somsanga center. US officials heeded no warnings issued by at least three separate reports (2003 UNICEF report, 2004 WHO report, and 2011 Human Rights Watch report), each of which warned against the center’s deplorable conditions and inhumane treatment of detainees. The UN report says past US funds have been used to build dormitories “to expand the capacity of the government to detain drug users, street children, and ethnic minorities,” as well as fences surrounding the center.

Labour has accused David Cameron of “an historic mistake” after he called off talks on press reform.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg joined the criticism, saying he was “disappointed” and “surprised” at the Tory leader’s decision.

They were speaking after the Prime Minister called off cross party talks aimed at thrashing out a agreement over Lord Justice Leveson’s report, set up in the aftermath of the phone-hacking scandal.

Even a senior Conservative, former Cabinet Minister Lord Fowler, joined in, saying Cameron’s vision of a Royal Charter to oversee a regulator was “always a bad idea”.

Cameron called a press conference to explain his decision

The Labour and Lib Dem leaders are bracing themselves for a newspaper backlash after holding out for statutory underpinning of the new system.

Most newspapers – and most of the Conservative Party as well as some Labour MPs – are ardently opposed to any law to regulate the press.

• Four arrested in phone-hacking probe

Speaking after the talks broke down, Miliband accused Cameron of betraying a pledge he made to hacking victims that Leveson would be implemented unless it was “bonkers”.

He said: “David Cameron’s decision to walk away from the talks is an historic mistake.

“He has not just walked away from the talks, he has walked away from his own words.”

Clegg said he would work “flat-out” over the next few days to build consensus with MPs from other parties on a “proper solution” to the issue.

“I was disappointed, and indeed surprised, that David Cameron has decided to walk away from cross-party talks, especially
when they were making some real progress as late as yesterday evening.”

Cameron had been”wrong to abandon cross-party talks at this critical point”, he added.

Lord Fowler’s comments are a sign the Prime Minister could struggle to get his preferred method through the House of Lords even if they manage to clear the House of Commons.

They could well be defeated by MPs, with Labour and the Liberal Democrats both supporting the statutory underpinning of regulation proposed by Leveson.

The outcome is far from certain because many Tory MPs are in favour of the Leveson plan, while some Labour MPs are opposed to it.

Fowler, who is also a former Conservative Party chairman, said the charter was “always a bad idea because it puts power in the hands of the Government and it bypasses Parliament”.

He said: “Somehow we have got to come to some agreement on this. But agreement is a long way away at the moment.”

“I have yet to meet anyone who thinks the Royal Charter is the ideal way of dealing with this,” he added.

Campaigners were furious after Thursday’s talks broke down, with Hacked Off calling the failure to agree “a shameless betrayal of the victims of press abuse”.

Jacqui Hames, a former police officer who was put under surveillance by the News of the World, said: “I am incredibly disappointed to see that David Cameron wants to walk away and go back to where we were – back to the press and media moguls bullying and harassing the public.”

Actor and Hacked Off figurehead Hugh Grant claimed Cameron had been ordered by the editor of The Times to call off the talks – prompting critics to ask why the campaigner for press ethics was reporting a “rumour”.

Bob Satchwell, executive director of the Society of Editors, said: “It is important that the genuine need for reform is not allowed to continue to be overtaken by high politics.

“There are issues with principles and practicalities of legislation and editors have a right to be concerned about where politics and a ‘dab of statute’ might take us years down the line as attempts to hijack important legislation on other matters have shown.

Cameron said the proposals for an independent body, established by Royal Charter, to oversee the system of press self-regulation would provide “the toughest regulation of the press that this country has ever seen”.

Labour is expected to publish tomorrow its amendment for what was being described as a “Leveson-compliant” royal charter.

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Survivors of military sexual assault testifying before the Senate armed services committee on Wednesday told the panel that the military criminal justice system is “broken” and that the “epidemic” of sexual violence is a direct result of a misogynistic culture and a system that allows assault to be “swept under the rug.” 

Anu Bhahwati, Brigette McCoy, Rebekah Havrilla, and Brian Lewis (L-R) testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Military Personnel on Wednesday, March 13. (Photo: Win Mcnamee/Getty Images) The victims spoke specifically about the fear and intimidation implicit in the “chain of command” system of prosecution in which military commanders–rather than an independent justice system–are responsible for overseeing justice, including the ability to throw out convictions and sentences.

Despite the approximately 19,000 incidents of violent sexual crime which occur each year, this was the first Senate hearing into sexual abuse in the armed forces in a decade. According to the Pentagon’s numbers, women in combat zones are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by the enemy.

And sexual crimes against men are equally widespread. The Pentagon estimates that of the 19,300 sexual assaults in 2010, 8,600 of the victims were female and 10,700 male.

Rebekah Havrilla, a former army sergeant who was raped by another service member while in Afghanistan, told the Senate panel that after her attack what she experienced was a “broken” criminal justice system.

Reporting on her testimony, the Guardian writes that Havrilla described the military investigation into her case as being the “most humiliating thing that I have ever experienced,” noting that it was eventually closed after senior commanders decided not to pursue charges.

During her testimony, Havrilla spoke to the dominant military culture and the clear “lack of understanding” about rape and sexual abuse. “The hostility is not towards women,” she said. “The hostility is towards the feminine, towards the weak. It was not a gender issue. They are targeting what they see as less than.[…] In my mind it comes down to what was allowed by leaderships.”

Brian Lewis, the first male survivor of military sexual abuse to testify before Congress, added that the “conflict of interest” inherent in the current system of reporting and prosecution was prolonging this “epidemic” of sexual violence. “Service members must report rape to their commanders,” he explained. “However, if their commanders take action and prove that rape occurred, they also prove a failure of their own leadership.”

Of the nearly 4,000 reports of sexual assault last year, only 191 defendants were convicted at courts-martial. Many of those testifying referred to these numbers as a statement of suppression. The US Department of Defense estimate that 86.5% of violent sexual crimes go unreported.

“I witnessed reports of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment swept under the rug by a handful of field grade officers,” said retired Marine Corps Captain Anu Bhagwati, who founded the Service Women’s Action Network. “Perpetrators were promoted, were transferred to other units without punishment, while victims were accused of lying or exaggerating their claims.”

The hearing comes amidst controversy over the reinstatement of Air Force Lt. Col. James Wilkerson, who was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who chaired the panel, blasted the military’s “chain of command” handling of sexual assault. “If you think you are achieving ‘discipline and order’ with your current […] framework. I think you’re wrong.” 

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MPs have accused McDonalds of undermining the “Great British pub” by buying up boozers and converting them into fast-food outlets.

The burger giant offers £20,000 for anyone who suggests a suitable site for a new restaurant, and lists pubs among desirable locations on its website.

McDonald’s wants to open 30 new ‘drive-thru’ restaurants every year

Now an MP has tabled a motion condemning McDonalds for contributing to the drastic decline of pubs, with campaigners claiming 18 are closing every week.

Liberal Democrat Greg Mulholland, who chairs the All Party Parliamentary Save the Pub Group, is supported by MPs from the three main parties in his campaign.

Mulholland chairs Parliament’s Save The Pub group

McDonalds told The Huffington Post UK former pubs could be “possible development opportunities.”

Planning consultations always take place, it said, adding that each new burger joint brings jobs to an area.

More than 1,700 people have joined a Facebook campaign to save an historic Hampshire pub from turning into a McDonalds.

There were also protests when a pub in Bromley was converted into a drive-through.

It is now listed as a case study on the McDonald’s website.

The Campaign for Real Ale said it had discussed the issue at a meeting on Wednesday night.

A Camra spokesman said pubs being converted into McDonald’s restaurants was “a worrying site and a massive blow to local communities.”

On its website, McDonald’s says it wants to open 30 new drive-through restaurants every year.

It lists pubs, as well as traditional high streets and shopping centres as possible locations.

Mulholland’s motion says: “That this House condemns McDonald’s for actively encouraging the use of public houses as sites for development through the development section on its official website which lists pub conversions amongst other desired sites and offers a £20,000 introductory fee to anyone able to locate a suitable site.”

It calls on Parliament to acknowledge the practice “will contribute to the decline of the Great British pub, a cherished British institution which is already being threatened by the predatory purchasing of pubs for development by supermarkets” and claims “companies like McDonald’s and others are intentionally targeting and converting viable, wanted pubs for non-pub use without the community having a say.”

However, his claim of a “loophole” to allow pubs to be converted into fast-food outlets without planning consent was disputed by McDonald’s, which said it has to follow full planning procedure.

A spokesman for the company said: “Like many businesses, we look to identify possible development opportunities in a number of locations, some of which include sites of former pubs.

“In order to convert a pub we require a change of use and therefore must apply for planning consent and we always conduct consultation before and during the planning application procedure.

“When we open new restaurants we bring investment to the local area and create around 65 full and part-time jobs.”

Multiple U.S. agencies will soon have access to a massive database of private financial data on citizens and individuals who do business in the U.S., giving national intelligence agencies the ability “to analyze more raw financial data than they have ever had before.”

The lobby of the CIA Headquarters Building in McLean, Virginia, August 14, 2008. Credit: Reuters/Larry Downing These revelations were reported by Reuters after the news outlet gained access to a Treasury Department document.

The private data, previously available only to the FBI, will now be widely accessible for a number of agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, raising privacy concerns among critics.

The database in question–called the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN)– currently operates as a database for financial institutions who are required by law to file reports of “suspicious customer activity” to the FBI.

However, as Reuters reports, the database is flawed and commonly ‘over reports’ innocent citizens’ personal information:

The Treasury document outlines a proposal to link the FinCEN database with a computer network used by U.S. defense and law enforcement agencies to share classified information called the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System.

The plan calls for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence – set up after 9/11 to foster greater collaboration among intelligence agencies – to work with Treasury. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.

More than 25,000 financial firms – including banks, securities dealers, casinos, and money and wire transfer agencies – routinely file “suspicious activity reports” to FinCEN. The requirements for filing are so strict that banks often over-report, so they cannot be accused of failing to disclose activity that later proves questionable. This over-reporting raises the possibility that the financial details of ordinary citizens could wind up in the hands of spy agencies.

Michael German, senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, told Reuters there is alarming “wiggle room” within the new plan and significant concern about how the vast trove of information could be used (or misused).

Once spy agencies get such data, German said, “it’s in a black hole. Time and again, we have evidence, unfortunately well after the fact, that somebody’s civil rights have been violated, that the intelligence community simply ignores the rules.”

The Treasury planning document obtained by Reuters says that the planning for the database expansion is still in development, and it is not known when implementation might begin.

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If cities were stocks, you’d want to short Phoenix.

Of course, it’s an easy city to pick on. The nation’s 13th largest metropolitan area (nudging out Detroit) crams 4.3 million people into a low bowl in a hot desert, where horrific heat waves and windstorms visit it regularly. It snuggles next to the nation’s largest nuclear plant and, having exhausted local sources, it depends on an improbable infrastructure to suck water from the distant (and dwindling) Colorado River.

In Phoenix, you don’t ask: What could go wrong? You ask: What couldn’t?

And that’s the point, really. Phoenix’s multiple vulnerabilities, which are plenty daunting taken one by one, have the capacity to magnify one another, like compounding illnesses. In this regard, it’s a quintessentially modern city, a pyramid of complexities requiring large energy inputs to keep the whole apparatus humming. The urban disasters of our time — New Orleans hit by Katrina, New York City swamped by Sandy — may arise from single storms, but the damage they do is the result of a chain reaction of failures — grids going down, levees failing, back-up systems not backing up. As you might expect, academics have come up with a name for such breakdowns: infrastructure failure interdependencies. You wouldn’t want to use it in a poem, but it does catch an emerging theme of our time.

Phoenix’s pyramid of complexities looks shakier than most because it stands squarely in the crosshairs of climate change. The area, like much of the rest of the American Southwest, is already hot and dry; it’s getting ever hotter and drier, and is increasingly battered by powerful storms. Sandy and Katrina previewed how coastal cities can expect to fare as seas rise and storms strengthen. Phoenix pulls back the curtain on the future of inland empires. If you want a taste of the brutal new climate to come, the place to look is where that climate is already harsh, and growing more so — the aptly named Valley of the Sun.

In Phoenix, it’s the convergence of heat, drought, and violent winds, interacting and amplifying each other that you worry about. Generally speaking, in contemporary society, nothing that matters happens for just one reason, and in Phoenix there are all too many “reasons” primed to collaborate and produce big problems, with climate change foremost among them, juicing up the heat, the drought, and the wind to ever greater extremes, like so many sluggers on steroids. Notably, each of these nemeses, in its own way, has the potential to undermine the sine qua non of modern urban life, the electrical grid, which in Phoenix merits special attention.

If, in summer, the grid there fails on a large scale and for a significant period of time, the fallout will make the consequences of Superstorm Sandy look mild. Sure, people will hunt madly for power outlets to charge their cellphones and struggle to keep their milk fresh, but communications and food refrigeration will not top their list of priorities. Phoenix is an air-conditioned city. If the power goes out, people fry.

In the summer of 2003, a heat wave swept Europe and killed 70,000 people. The temperature in London touched 100 degrees Fahrenheit for the first time since records had been kept, and in portions of France the mercury climbed as high as 104°F. Those temperatures, however, are child’s play in Phoenix, where readings commonly exceed 100°F for more than 100 days a year. In 2011, the city set a new record for days over 110°F: there were 33 of them, more than a month of spectacularly superheated days ushering in a new era.

Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg has said that he still regards jailed former colleague Chris Huhne as a “friend”, but is not expecting to visit him in prison.

The deputy prime minister revealed that he last spoke to the former energy secretary, who stepped down as a Lib Dem MP after pleading guilty to perverting the course of justice, during the by-election campaign for his old seat of Eastleigh in Hampshire.

Huhne was sentenced to eight months in prison, alongside ex-wife Vicky Pryce, on Monday.

Speaking to LBC 97.3 radio, Clegg said today: “I do have mixed emotions and I feel very sad for his whole family. Whatever he’s done, he still remains someone I’ve known for many years and a friend.

“I’m not going to say that because he’s done something wrong and he’s serving his time that that’s not the case. That is the case.”

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He added: “I’m not going to airbrush out that Chris is someone I’ve known for many years, who is a friend, who is a close colleague, and I feel incredibly sad for his whole family, because his whole family has been engulfed by this.

“I don’t think Chris would expect me to visit him in prison but I will see Chris once he…,” Clegg said, trailing off at the end of the sentence.

“I haven’t written to him. We’ve been in touch. The last time we were in touch was around the time of the Eastleigh by-election, but of course I will keep in touch with Chris once he has served his sentence.

“You can be clear someone’s done something wrong and has to pay the consequences, but equally acknowledge that you can still keep in touch with them as a human being, as a friend.”

David Cameron is heading for almost certain defeat in the Commons on Monday after he blew up cross-party talks on implementing the Leveson proposals for press regulation.

Instead the prime minister has scheduled a showdown vote in which MPs will be asked to support his alternative plan for a Royal Charter.

However both the Lib Dem and Labour leadership support the statutory underpinning of regulation as proposed by Leveson and as such Cameron does not have an obvious parliamentary majority on the issue.

Hacked Off called the failure to agree “a shameless betrayal of the victims of press abuse”.

It is unclear whether Nick Clegg will tell his MPs to vote with Labour to defeat the Tory proposals, however it would be extremely awkward for the deputy prime minister to abandon his previous strong support for Leveson.

The outcome of the vote is made more uncertain as many Tory MPs are in favour of the Leveson plan, while some Labour MPs are opposed to it.

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In a hastily-arranged press conference in 10 Downing Street, Cameron announced that the cross-party talks had “concluded without agreement” after a conference call between himself, Clegg and Ed Miliband this morning.

He said that the proposals for an independent body, established by Royal Charter, to oversee the system of press self-regulation would provide “the toughest regulation of the press that this country has ever seen”.

Newspapers would refuse to sign up to a new system which is underpinned by statute, as recommended by Lord Justice Leveson and advocated by Labour, Lib Dems and the Hacked Off campaign group, he warned.

“The route I have set out is the fastest possible way to deliver the strong self-regulation body that Leveson proposed that can put in place million-pound fines, prominent apologises and get justice for victims in this country,” said the prime minister.

“The deal is there to be done, it is the fastest way to get proper justice for victims.”

And a senior Lib Dem source said that Cameron had made the decision to pull the plug on cross-party talks “unilaterally” and the Liberal Democrats were now considering their next step.

“We were very surprised and disappointed,” said the source. “We thought we were making real progress and inching towards a deal, but the Prime Minister has unilaterally decided to pull the plug on cross-party talks.

“We are still prepared to work with politicians of all parties, including the Conservatives, who want to work with others to implement Leveson.”

Asked whether Lib Dems would vote with Labour against the Royal Charter proposals on Monday, the source said: “We are going to have to talk about it and see what we do. Nothing has been agreed in government.”

A senior Labour source said: “The prime minister’s decision is very disappointing. We still hope for an agreement. We still believe there can be an agreement. We urge the Prime Minister to reflect on his actions.”

Index on Censorship chief executive Kirsty Hughes backed the PM’s move, and said he was right not to make a “shoddy compromise with Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband, which would have meant statutory underpinning of press regulation.

“A tough new independent regulator whether set up by Royal Charter, or preferably by a route with no political involvement at all, is a big step forward compared to the previous system of self-regulation.

“Cameron’s decision to go to a vote has clearly been forced by the threat of wrecking amendments being added into several bills, including one that is already threatening the passage of the Defamation Bill, which Leveson himself said should be kept separate from his work.”

Professor Brian Cathcart, Executive Director, Hacked Off said Cameron had “chosen to throw his lot in with powerful national newspaper groups, whose actions were condemned in the Leveson Report.

“He allowed the newspapers to rewrite Leveson so much that they would have been able to pick and choose which complaints their self regulator dealt with and would have given the self regulator little power to tell a paper to give an apology or a correction due prominence.

“Worse than that, the editors would have been able to write their own rules and handpick the people who ran the regulator.

“Cameron is trying to raise a smokescreen to hide his dirty dealings behind closed doors with powerful press barons who don’t want to have to be accountable when their newspapers —to use Lord Justice Leveson’s words — ‘wreak havoc in the lives of innocent people’”.

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France and Britain are ready to arm rebels in Syria, even without full support from the European Union, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said today.

UK Government sources said that no decision has been taken to seek the lifting of the EU arms embargo on Syria, but stressed that “all options” remain on the table.

David Cameron hinted earlier this week that Britain could decide to ignore the arms ban and supply weapons to rebels fighting Bashar Assad’s regime, telling MPs that he hoped the EU would act together if it became necessary, but “it’s not out of the question we might have to do things in our own way”.

Cameron is today travelling to Brussels for a summit with other EU leaders, but Downing Street said Syria was not expected to feature on the agenda. It is understood that Britain wants to see what impact is achieved by the recent move to supply “non-lethal” assistance – including armoured cars, body armour and secure communications equipment – before any further decisions are taken.

Fabius today suggested that London and Paris could ask for a planned meeting in May, to decide whether to lift or extend the arms embargo, to be brought forward, possibly to the end of March.

Speaking to France Info radio, Fabius said that Britain and France are asking “the Europeans now to lift the embargo so that the resistance fighters have the possibility of defending themselves”.

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If unanimous EU support for lifting the measure is lacking, the French and British governments will decide to deliver weapons, Fabius said, adding that France “is a sovereign nation”.

“We must move quickly,” he said. “We along with the British will ask for the meeting to be moved up.”

Responding to Fabius’s remarks, a Foreign Office spokesman said: “Our objective is clear – an end to the violence and a political transition to a more democratic Syria through a political solution.

“As it stands, the political track has little chance of gathering momentum unless the regime feels compelled to come to the negotiating table. They need to feel that the balance on the ground has shifted against them.

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“That is why we welcome the EU arms embargo amendment agreed in February on Syria as it sends a strong message to the Assad regime that the political calculations of the international community, including the EU, have shifted and that we are not prepared to rule out any options to bring an end to the suffering of millions of innocent Syrians.

“The Foreign Secretary has been clear he hasn’t ruled out any options for the future.”

While already giving intelligence services access to private data without a court order, some Russian experts say, Skype is still being pressured into registering as a telecom agency, allowing intelligence to operate around a series of legal loopholes.

Intelligence services have for years have been monitoring Skype communications, several participants in the Russian information security industry have told Russian newspaper Vedomosti. According to security experts, access to correspondence and Skype conversations within the Russian intelligence community does not always go through the court system — it is often obtained on a “simple request.”

After Microsoft acquired Skype in May 2011, it updated its software with a technology allowing “legitimate wiretapping,” Maksim Emm, CEO of Peak Systems, told the publication. Since then, any user account can be switched to a special mode in which the encryption keys that were previously generated on a user’s mobile device or computer would be generated on Skype’s server.

With access to the server, anyone can listen to the conversation or read the correspondence, including short messages sent to mobile phones. Microsoft provides the opportunity to use this technology to security services all around the world, including Russia, the expert explained.

Another expert elaborated that “for a couple of years” the intelligence agencies can not only listen, but also determine a user’s location. “That is why our employees, for example, are forbidden to talk on work-related manners on Skype,” Ilya Sachkov, CEO of Group-IB, told Vedomosti.

The Federal Security Service (FSB) asked Microsoft back in 2011 to provide Skype’s source code, claiming it was required to reduce the threat to Russia’s national security. Although the code would not allow authorities to obtain direct and easy access to private data, it could help to crack the encryption system.

The request was apparently turned down, leaving security services with the only fully legal ways of obtaining private information — through a direct court request to Microsoft.

Microsoft’s somewhat cooperative attitude towards releasing private data did not stop the FSB from filing numerous complaints to the company, pushing it to register under a different designation — as a telecommunications operator.

While Skype provides VoIP (Voice over IP) services, the company is not registered as an operator. Such a move would make accessing and collecting private data even easier for the authorities, because in accordance with Russian legislation, mobile operators and Internet service providers are required to collect personal data and store it for at least three years.

Meanwhile, the French telecom regulator ARCEP is also pushing Skype towards further collaboration with the special security services.

The body posted a notice on Tuesday saying that prosecutors had been notified that Skype should register with the authorities as telecom firm as it provides its users with the ability to make phone calls, and therefore is required to meet regulations including “implementing the means required to perform legally ordered interceptions.”

ARCEP added further that Skype’s failure to register as an “electronic communications operator,” after several requests by ARCEP, could be viewed as a criminal offense.

Skype’s position on the matter was outlined in a statement sent to Ars Technica, which said:

The days of asteroids blasting Russia are numbered. In less than a decade, the country is expected to have a functioning space threats defense that would be able track incoming menaces — and even prevent a large-scale disaster.

The megatons-strong explosion of a space bolide that hit the Russian Urals in mid-February also served as a bit of shake-up for the country’s authorities. Russia’s science, military and space industries are now uniting to create a first-of-its-kind national space threats defense program.

The project is expected to take shape by late 2013, but it will take at least five more years until practical results are achieved and an operable system is deployed.

According to Vladimir Popovkin, the head of Roskosmos, the national space agency, “an inter-agency task force consisting of experts from the Defense Ministry, Academy of Sciences and national space agency has been formed to create a unified system of space threats prevention.”

All three bodies have space threats management programs of their own, but now it’s been decided to combine their experience, efforts and budgets, Popovkin reported on Tuesday at a round-table conference on asteroid and comet threats in Russia’s Federation Council.

The near space optical surveillance program of the Academy of Sciences, the counter space threats plan being elaborated by Roskosmos and the technical capabilities of the Defense Ministry will soon become one for the common good.

“We need to unite them,” Popovkin explained, noting that “our country has enough financial means but they’re being spent on departmental special-purpose programs.”

A united control center to coordinate the activities and the management of resources for the program is to be created.

In addition, the Russian Academy of Science is devising a telescope network that will expand throughout the whole country.

Counter-asteroid space vehicles may soon become a reality, with Lavochkin Unmanned Space Vehicles Company and Makeev State Rocket Center having proposed projects. A group of such vehicles could be deployed in geostationary earth orbit.

However, Popovkin stressed that the first visible results of the program should be expected no earlier than 2018-2020.

Despite all the cutting-edge technologies currently in development, a nuclear warhead still seems to be the only real way to protect against threats from space, the conference revealed.

Once a dangerous space object is detected there will be a very limited time — about one year — to take measures to intercept it, said Oleg Shubin, the Deputy Director of the Department of Nuclear Munitions and Military Power Installations of Russia’s nuclear monopoly Rosatom.

“Interception of an asteroid with size bigger than one kilometer in diameter would imply engagement of a nuclear warhead considerably more powerful than the existing megaton class of nuclear devices. This is a scientific challenge that could be solved,” Shubin said.

“In the foreseeable future there is no other danger [except asteroids] that can potentially lead to, at least, the degradation of our civilization,” believes Shubin.

A 10-year federal program worth 58 billion rubles (over $1.9 billion) designed to track down and counteract space threats was presented by Lidia Rykhlova of the Institute of Astronomy (RAS) in February this year.

The head of Russia’s defense industry, Deputy Prime Minster Dmitry Rogozin, pointed out at the time that developing the program on a national level would be excessively expensive and would require international efforts.

Russian authorities became genuinely concerned about possible space threats after February 15, when a space bolide estimated to weigh around 7,000 tons and traveling at 40,000 km per hour blew up over Chelyabinsk, a provincial capital in the Urals Mountains. The shockwave of the 500-kiloton explosion scattered debris for dozens of kilometers and injured an estimated 1,500 people, including 299 children.

After refusing to take off his mask, the Japanese wrestler known in the ring as Skull Reaper A-ji has been ejected from a city council meeting. Oita residents elected him as councilor last month despite, or thanks to, his awesome outfit.

Campaigning on educational reform and improved social welfare facilities, the 44-year-old won only 2,828 votes, but that was enough for him to get a seat on the city council. He says people elected him as Skull Reaper and he wanted to do his part for the city as this persona.

But before his first council meeting, other councilors said it was inappropriate for a member of the assembly to conceal his identity by wearing a mask. They referred to a rule of the council stating that “hats, capes and the like” are not allowed in the chamber.

Skull Reaper A-ji refused the request, and instead pointed to the fact that he has done a lot of charitable work for the community in the last decade, including visiting institutions for people with physical disabilities.

“People find it easy to come up and talk to me because I have a mask on,” he told the Nishinippon Shimbun, a Japanese daily.

“My mask is my uniform, I even wear it to weddings, so I will not remove it,” he added.

“If I take my mask off, I’m an entirely different person. I will not take it off,” he told the newspaper Nikkan Sports after he was told of the decision.

But all parties in the council agreed that Skull Reaper A-ji could use his ring name, as it was the name he used to be voted into office.

Other politicians in Japan who wear masks have been elected at local level, including a councilor with the nickname Super Delfin in Osaka and a former professional wrestler who was elected to represent the Iwate Prefecture in the north of Japan in 2003.

The lower chamber Russia’s of parliament passed a bill in the first reading toughening penalties for drink-driving, establishing a four-times-higher fine for repeated offenses and raising the criminal sentence for fatal accidents.

The bill was introduced by the chairman State Duma Committee for Security and Anti-Corruption measures Irina Yarovaya from the United Russia party. The bill toughens responsibility for repeatedly committing offenses such as driving drunk with or without a driver’s license. According to the new bill, the fine will be raised to 200 thousand rubles (about $6,500) for repeated offenses. As an alternative to the fine, the deputies suggest compulsory community work up to 480 hours, forced work up to two years or detention up to six months.

According to the bill, a fine of 30 thousand roubles (about $920) will be set for driving in a state of alcohol intoxication. A fine of 10 thousand roubles (about $300) will be set for handing over the wheel to a person under the influence of alcohol.

In each of the cases, the driver will be deprived of his license for one and a half or two years. If these offenses are repeated, the fine will be raised to 50 thousand roubles (about $1,630).

If the drunk driver was caught without a license or he was deprived of his license before, he will be fined 30 thousand roubles or charged with 15 days of administrative arrest if he is unable to pay.

In addition, the criminal penalties will be toughened for killing a person while driving drunk, according to the bill. If the victim of the drunk driver dies, then the offender faces imprisonment for a period of two to seven years.

For the deaths of two or more people the charges are raised and the offender faces from four to nine years in jail. 

Compared to the current set of laws in the Criminal Code, the innovation of the bill is the establishment of the minimum time of imprisonment. The bill also excludes the possibility of penalizing the offender by means of community service in cases of fatal accidents. In addition to that in all fatal cases the driver’s license will be revoked for a period of 3 years.

According to Yarovaya, more than 80 percent of Russians think that drunken drivers pose the greatest threat to their life and health, says Interfax. She considers it wrong that currently some of the drivers who were the cause of lethal accidents received only two years’ probation, Interfax reports.

But there is much criticism of the bill since the current legislation says only people with 0 per mil of alcohol in their blood are considered ‘sober’. This means people with naturally occurring alcohol in their blood or those taking certain medicines would be considered intoxicated.

The alcohol level at which a person is considered to be legally impaired varies by country. For comparison Britain has the permitted level of 0.8 per mil permitted and USA the same number.

Criminal penalties for drunken driving can be toughened only if there is a criterion for determining the level of the driver’s intoxication, said First Deputy Chairman of the Duma Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Vyacheslav Lysakov, RIA Novosti news agency reports.

Lysakov proposed an amendment according to which a man would be recognized as drunk if the level of alcohol is greater than 0.2 per mil in his blood, RIA Novosti reports. The amendment was submitted after the bill passed its first reading.

The State Duma has intensified its work on proposals to increase penalties for drunk driving after seven people were killed, including several disabled teens, when a driver ran his speeding car into a bus stop in the Russian capital in September last year. The 30-year-old driver was detained at the scene and later confessed he was in a state of “alcoholic intoxication” at the time of the crash. Several hours after his arrest, the driver was barely able to stand on his feet but still tried to break free.

There have been calls to toughen the legislation before. Ad banners were spotted on one of Moscow’s highways with a slogan reading “We are tired of warning you. Don’t f**g drink & drive”.

‘I couldn’t bear it any longer’, recalls Anhar Kochneva. The Ukrainian journalist who escaped Syrian rebels five months after she was kidnapped told RT about what she had to go through while in captivity and how she managed to run away.

Kochneva, a journalist and blogger who reported as a freelancer for Russian and Ukrainian news outlets, was captured at the beginning of October 2012 near the Syrian city of Homs.

The kidnappers – members of the Free Syrian Army — repeatedly threatened to kill her if the US $50 million ransom was not paid. The sum was later reduced to reportedly US$ 300,000. The rebels said they had planned to put Kochneva to death on December 16, but decided to “give her a second chance.”

Several world powers — including Russia, the US and France – as well as international human right organizations, urged the Syrian opposition to release the woman. 

She escaped on Monday after spending more than 150 days in captivity, which damaged her health. The journalists walked for 15 kilometers in the mountainous area before she was lucky to meet people who helped her to get to the region controlled by the Syrian army.

Kocheva says it was only “thanks to God” that she is free again. In an interview with RT Arabic the journalist shared details of her escape.

RT: How did you manage to escape from captivity? Who helped you do that?

Anhar Kochneva: No one, but Allah. Though, I know that many tried to help. The problem was that no one knew where I was — even the militants from the same group who were visiting that house did not know that I was kept there.

After I was kidnapped, my health seriously declined and there was a danger that I wouldn’t get cured and simply die. Or [the militants] would kill me, or the [Syrian] army would shoot me down accidentally when returning fire on the militants. It was really dangerous. I spent five months there.

RT: Could you tell in more detail about the escape? Was there security at the door?

AK: I only had to open the door and get outside. I started thinking about the best time to do that so that no one would see me because they could kill me. At night they would open fire every time they noticed any kind of movement and didn’t know what that was — a human or anything else. I had a million things to consider as it was a very dangerous action. If they had caught me, they would definitely beat me and toughen the conditions they kept me in. Angered, they could even kill me.

I opened the door which was locked from inside the house because the guards were there. I got to the street and went down the road. I kept walking and walking.

RT: So, the guards were sleeping at that time?

AK: Yes, yes. They were sleeping.

RT: They simply fell asleep and left the key in the door lock?

AK: Yes. They thought I wouldn’t do anything. Actually, there wasn’t even a key there — just a usual bolt.

So, they were sleeping and I walked out. I wanted to find someone on the road to tell them who I was and ask for help. Of course, there was a danger that they would give me away.

Thank God, I met people who helped me to get out of that district. I knew nothing about that area, I had no idea where were militants, where were [government troops], where were mines. I went across fields where mines could be.

RT: How were you captured? Did you recognize people who did that? How did they treat you all the time you were kept hostage?

AK: Sincerely, for first 50 days I had a very good opinion of them. And they didn’t think that I could go anywhere. For instance, a guy who kept watch over me used to support me most of the time. He would even give me his food and stay hungry himself.

But then they got tired of me staying there because they couldn’t leave and do something else. Sometimes they had to spend their own money on me as they were not given a budget to provide me with food, water or clothes. I was dressed in summer clothes, but when winter came I wanted warm clothes.

My presence there turned into burden for them and they felt angry with me, started abusing me, hitting without a reason and so on. They got harsher with me. They began to close the door. For instance, I needed to use the loo, but the door was closed and no one would open it for me. What did I have to do? I couldn’t bear that any longer.

To be honest, I know that they were saying “If you were a man, we would kill you.” And, naturally, they demanded a ransom for me. That’s why they treated me better than those who they simply wanted to slaughter.

Detailed visions of star and planet formation, hidden from the eyes of modern optics, will be soon shown by the ground breaking ALMA radio telescope unveiled on Wednesday. Scientists say it will be a game changer in studying the origins of our universe.

ALMA stands for Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, and it is the largest ground-based astronomy project. It’s the most expensive one too, with construction costs going up to $1.3 billion. ALMA’s been devised and built by the joint efforts of scientists from European, East Asian and North American countries for more than a decade.

It consists of 66 huge antennas and a supercomputer installed in a 10-mile (16 km) diameter area on a high-altitude plateau in Chile. A lower-ground operating support facility is connected to the complex by some 15 km of cables.

Upon completion, the cutting edge telescope will become the most powerful in the world, with resolution ten times higher than the Very Large Array (VLA) and five times finer than the Hubble Space Telescope.

Scientists compared the array’s working principle to how we perceive sound by two ears. Each of ALMA’s antennas, ranging from 7 to 12 meters in diameter, gathers radio waves from space, and their combined result is processed through the supercomputer.

Height is one of the key factors of ALMA’s incredible power, as water vapor absorbs radio waves nearer to sea level and obscures observations. This is the reason the $1.3 billion complex had to be mounted at an altitude of 5,000 meters amidst the arid Chilean desert, with construction workers having to use supplemental oxygen, and the science team having to operate in the 2,900 meters high support facility.

But for astronomers these are negligible costs when compared to the perspectives, which the ALMA project is said to be opening.

“The scientific community wants to use ALMA in its research on star formation, the birth of planets and not just what is happening in our solar system, but also on how the system was created after the Big Bang,” ALMA director Thijs de Graaw said.

According to Big Bang theory, the origin of our universe occurred about 13.77 billion years ago.

“It is a revolution in the history of the universe in the realm of millimetric and sub-millimetric waves, which can look through clouds of dust and focus on the formation of stars themselves. Telescopes cannot see what is happening inside these clouds. With ALMA, we can. And that is like opening a new window,” he added.

“It will have a view of the universe that we can’t even imagine even now,” Wolfgang Wild, ESO’s European ALMA project manager also told SPACE.com.

Not only will ALMA bring about a new picture of the universe’s formation, it could also make a breakthrough in the study of alien worlds.

Astronomers would be able to detect the effects of young planets the size of Earth, SPACE.com quoted James Ulvestad, director of the US National Science Foundation’s astronomical sciences division.

“ALMA already has seen dust rings around stars that are very narrow, and by modeling… you can infer the dust ring has planets inside and outside the ring. Even though you can’t see the planet, you can see the effects of the planet. That would be the predominant way that ALMA will study extra-solar planets,” Ulvestad explained.

US soft drink giant Coca-Cola has been accused by Chinese authorities of illegally mapping a remote south western province. The incident comes amidst an intensifying cyber-security row between Beijing and Washington.

Coca-Cola was accused of “illegally collecting classified information with handheld GPS equipment”, the Yunnan Geographical Information Bureau of Surveying and Mapping said.

Coca-Cola said its local bottling plants have used electronic mapping and related methods to run its operations in the country more efficiently.

“Over the last several years, some of our local bottling plants in China have adopted logistics solutions to improve our customer service levels and fuel efficiency,” a Coca-Cola spokesperson in China told AFP in a statement.

“These include e-map and location-based customer logistics systems that are commercially available in China through authorized local suppliers.”

The company said it had “cooperated fully” with Yunnan government inquiries and is “in full compliance” with current regulations.

No further details on the investigation were forthcoming, but a bureau official who gave his last name as Han told the Financial Times the investigation would wrap up soon.

“We will announce the results when it ends,” Han said. “It is a bit sensitive. I don’t know how it got published,” he added.

An expert with the China Academy of Space Technology told the Global Times on condition of anonymity that entering a restricted area with a handheld GPS device could be considered a threat to national security.

“Some regions could be sensitive because of their military importance,” the expert said. “If an unauthorized person or organization accurately mapped the area and used the result for political purposes, it could jeopardize our nation.”

Yunnan authorities said the Coca-Cola incident was one of 21 cases of illegal surveying currently being investigated in the area. Other instances included the illegal sale of classified military maps online, aerial photography by unmanned aircraft, and illegally surveying military installations.

Li Mingde, the deputy director of the province’s bureau conducting the probe into Coke, told China National Radio it was important to punish cases of illegal mapping.

“Some people are profiting from collecting information, including providing it to some foreign intelligence agencies,” FT cites him as saying.

Mingde noted that when the United States bombed its embassy in Belgrade in 1999, the US blamed it on an inaccurate map.

 “Mapping information can be used by enemies. So it must be restricted,” he said.

The allegations leveled at Coke come amidst a developing dispute between China and the United States over cyber-attacks.

On Monday, President Obama’s national security adviser Tom Donilon urged China to stop hackers within its borders from engaging in industrial espionage and breaking into US computer systems.

“Increasingly, US businesses are speaking out about their serious concerns about sophisticated, targeted theft of confidential business information… through cyber-intrusions emanating from China at a very large scale,” Donilon said.

“Beijing should take serious steps to investigate and put a stop to these activities,” he continued.

In February, US lawmakers called for stricter action against China for cyber-spying and industrial espionage allegedly being directed by the Chinese military.

On Saturday China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi characterized the hacking allegations as a politically motivated smear campaign.

“Anyone who tries to fabricate or piece together a sensational story to serve their political motive will not be able to blacken the name of others or whitewash themselves,” he said.

Jiechi said that as a primary target of hacking attacks, China supported international regulations under the auspices of the United Nations to help police the Internet.

Director of Press TV Newsroom says the European Union (EU) travel ban on him and the English-language channel’s CEO, Mohammad Sarafraz, shows the channel has been successful in spreading truth to the world.

“There has been no other television outlet, no other television in the world that has come under such huge state-funded attack by the European governments and it shows the extent to which Press TV has been successful,” Hamid Reza Emadi said in an interview with Press TV on Wednesday.

Emadi noted that Press TV has been successful in reporting the ongoing events in the West to its global viewers, and “it shows that the Western countries, which are talking about democracy and human rights, they are not actually doing what they are preaching.”

“Press TV has been able to show the violence on the ground by police force against protesters, the austerity protests in Greece, Spain, [and] even in Britain,” he added.

The Press TV official said that the accusations leveled by the EU for imposing sanctions against him lack legal basis and have been adopted unilaterally without providing evidence.

“They did not bring even one single piece of evidence. They just accuse you of something and then they rule and they pass a judgment and that is against international law,” Emadi said.

On Tuesday, the European bloc blacklisted Press TV CEO Mohammad Sarafraz and Emadi for airing a 10-second report about Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, who worked for Newsweek in Tehran in 2009 following post-election riots in Iran.

This is while the European Council (EC) officials were totally uninformed about the ban.

Preben Aamann, deputy spokesperson of the President of the EC, in a telephone conversation on Tuesday said that he was not in any position to talk about the issue.

The sanctions on Sarafraz and Emadi are the latest in EU’s campaign against Iran’s English-language news channel.

PG/SS

Bahrain’s public prosecutor says six people have been arrested for allegedly insulting the country’s ruler Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa on Twitter.

The prosecutor’s office issued a statement on Wednesday and said the six had been detained over the past couple of days, without identifying them.

According to the statement, the detainees will be charged with misusing Twitter and defaming Bahrain’s king.

The latest detentions come two days after a court acquitted rights activist Yousef al-Muhafedha of spreading false news on Twitter.

Many rights activists in Bahrain are serving time, some even life terms, for expressing their anti-regime views on social media or in street protests.

The kingdom has come under strong criticism from international rights organizations over its ongoing crackdown on rights activists and demonstrations in the country.

On February 14, Amnesty International called on the Manama regime to release more than two dozen of Bahraini human rights activists held in jails across the Persian Gulf kingdom.

“It’s time that people detained simply for exercising their right to freedom of expression be released and for the harassment of other activists to desist,” the rights organization said.

Since mid-February 2011, thousands of pro-democracy protesters have staged numerous demonstrations on the streets of Bahrain, calling for the Al Khalifa royal family to relinquish power.

MKA/HGH/SL

An Iranian lawmaker says blind obedience of the European Union (EU) to the US sanctions policy against Iran will be detrimental to the European bloc in the long run.

“The European Union continues to insist on following the White House’s dictated policies despite the damages it has sustained as a result of [imposing] sanctions against independent countries,” Mehdi Davatgari said on Wednesday.

He also noted that imposing embargos against independent countries will only tarnish the reputation of the European Union without hindering the progress of those states.

The lawmaker emphasized that by imposing new embargos on Iran, the European Union is trying to put a lid on the heavy losses it has incurred as the result of enforcing sanctions against independent states.

“The European public opinion opposes Europe’s obedience to the unilateral policies of the United States. Therefore, the European Union is trying to appear self-righteous in order to evade criticism,” Davatgari pointed out.

The United States, Israel and some of their allies have repeatedly accused Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program. Over the false allegation, Washington and the EU have imposed several rounds of illegal unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Iran refutes the allegation and argues that as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it is entitled to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

In addition, the IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities but has never found any evidence showing that Iran’s civilian nuclear program has been diverted toward military objectives.

TNP/SS

At least four people have died and two others wounded in two shootings in the US state of New York, with authorities searching for a single gunman, police say.

GMA/SS

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says arming foreign-backed militants fighting against the Syrian government is a breach of international law.

MKA/SS

The father and brother of the Afghan Parliament speaker in addition to a local police official have been killed in an attack in Afghanistan’s Kunduz Province.

The attack took place on Wednesday in the Imam Sahib district of Kunduz after a bomber detonated his explosive vest in a crowd watching the traditional Afghan sport known as buzkashi.

Reports say that several other people were injured in the attack. The provincial police chief Sayed Sarwar Hussaini also confirmed the attack.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but officials put the blame on Taliban militants who have carried out similar assaults in the past.

The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 under the pretext of combating terrorism. The invasion removed the Taliban from power, but Afghanistan remains insecure despite the presence of tens of thousands of US-led forces there.

The US-led war, which has inflicted record-high civilian and military casualties, has become the longest military conflict in the American history.

MAM/HGH/SL

Piers Morgan has told Hugh Grant to quit his newspaper crusade in the wake of the Leveson inquiry and “go back to your dreadful movies”.

The CNN host and former Mirror editor aimed the tweet at the Love Actually star, who had been bemoaning the lack of progress in implementing the recommendations of Lord Justice Leveson’s report.

Morgan also branded Grant and Alan Partridge star Steve Coogan, also at the forefront of the Hacked Off campaign, “guttersnipes”.

It came as David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband met to try to reach agreement over the best way forward for reforming the press.

Labour upped the pressure on the Tories by tabling amendments that would leave it the option of inserting tough statute-backed reform into the Crime and Courts Bill on Monday.

The move effectively sets a deadline for Mr Cameron to either make progress on the issue or face a Commons vote – which he could lose as Labour and the Lib Dems join forces with some Tory backbenchers.

Speaking on the BBC’s World At One, Grant said Cameron had “lamentably betrayed” a promise given to the relatives of Madeleine McCann and Milly Dowler, that he would implement Leveson unless it was “bonkers”.

Even the Tories’ preferred option of a Royal Charter instead of statute had been watered down, he claimed.

He said: “For the last three months, newspapers have applied so much pressure to the government that the Royal Charter has been watered down to something that’s pretty much meaningless.”

“This will keep happening and the Government’s legislative agenda will be completely screwed because no one will give up on this,” he said of the move to open the Crime and Courts Bill option.

He also told the Daily Politics show: “This is the will of the people and it is not right that a tiny rump of Conservatives who happen to be in the executive are doing the will of the press, who they desperately need to stay there because the rest of their policies have gone cock-eyed.”

The English Defence League (EDL) is exploiting concerns surrounding sex-grooming gangs to fuel its anti-Islam agenda, a university report has said, warning that perceived ‘Islamisation’ could lead to terrorist attacks similar to the one by Anders Brevik in Norway.

The far-right group is using cases such as the nine Asian men jailed last year for grooming girls in Rochdale to build support, turning the issue into one of Islam versus the West, King’s College London found.

An EDL protest in Bristol

The group is also building networks across Europe, with EDL leader Tommy Robinson considered a “rock star” by activists, according to the university’s International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation.

Tommy Robinson, who also goes by the name of Stephen Lennon, was jailed in January for 10 months after admitting using someone else’s passport to get in the the USA.

Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, one of the report’s authors, said: “There’s a danger that the UK will export this kind of vicious, far-right activism to the rest of the continent.”

The EDL and its partners have worsened community tensions and further promoted ideas that helped inspire Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik, the report said.

Tommy Robinson is currently in jail after illegally using someone else’s passport

It came as security minister James Brokenshire warned that far-right movements like the English Defence League have the potential to inspire individuals to break off and join more extreme groups.

Delivering a speech at a conference on far-right extremism, Mr Brokenshire hit out at groups such as the EDL for “inflaming tensions and spreading hate-filled prejudice within communities”.

He warned that the EDL and others have the potential to “stoke radicalisation” and could ultimately cross the line into an area that concerns counter-terrorism strategy.

“There are a growing number of examples which suggest extremist and terrorist groups can potentially destabilise each other – the presence of one causing a spiralling effect on the other – and offering an enemy against which to define themselves.

“There are also views that groups such as defence leagues can provide ‘gateway ideologies’ through which individuals may migrate to more extreme organisations.

He said while the far right threat is not as “widespread or systematic” as al Qaida-inspired terrorism, the movement appeals to people who share the same vulnerabilities.

“It feeds off the same sense of alienation and questions around identity. And it has the same ambition to reshape the world in an impossible way. The threat is real, and our response must be effective.”

Mr Brokenshire said in June 2011 the government broadened its counter-terrorism strategy – known as Contest – to cover all forms of terrorism, including the far right.

He said the government is currently funding 112 projects in areas where radicalisation is considered high risk.

Its intervention programme – known as Channel – aims to prevent vulnerable people from being drawn into terrorism. Around 10% of the individuals enrolled in the programme have been motivated by far-right extremism.

security minister James Brokenshire

The Kings College report documented a phenonomen pushed by the EDL called ‘rape jihad.’

“This ‘rape jihad’, as it has become known, is a significant concern for the EDL,” said the report.

“Interest has risen since revelations in the British media about the existence of sex-grooming gangs made up of Muslim men of south-Asian origin.”

The EDL demonstrated in Rochdale in June last year to try to pressure police to refer specifically to gang members as “Muslim” so any alleged link between the religion and the crime could be inferred, the report said.

The far-right group is sharing these tactics with partners in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and other countries, the university department found.

It has had an extensive online presence for some time but it is now making efforts to move to the physical world, according to the report.

“Although the leading members and organisations rarely, if ever, directly call for violence in response to Islamisation, they are unable to control how their fellow travellers will decide to act upon the information they provide.

“The attacks in Norway were the first example of an individual inspired to pursue terrorism in direct response to perceived Islamisation, and they are unlikely to be the last.”

The report, A Neo-Nationalist Network: The English Defence League and Europe’s counter-jihad movement, will be launched at an all-day conference on Wednesday.

Ed Miliband unleashed his best ever gag at the start of prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, mocking David Cameron for reports he has been forced to abandon his plans to introduce a minimum price for alcoholic drinks.

“In the light of his u-turn on alcohol pricing can the prime minister tell us if there is anything he could organise in a brewery?” the Labour leader said to roars of laughter from his MPs.

It has been reported that opposition to the policy from his cabinet, including from former health secretary Andrew Lansley, education secretary Michael Gove and home secretary Theresa May – who is said to be positioning herself to challenge for the Tory leadership – Cameron has had to drop the plan.

Miliband joked: “He obviously could not tell us about his policy on alcohol minimum unit pricing, I think the reality is he has just been overruled by the home secretary on this one.”

The barb did not go down well with May, who, stood next to the Speaker’s chair rather than sat on the government front bench, responded with her now trademark ‘death stare’.

Downing Street has refused to say whether plans for minimum pricing had been dropped, insisting the policy will be unveiled in “due course”.

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The prime minister’s official spokesperson said there was a “real problem with deep discounting and the impact of anti-social behaviour” that had to be tackled.

During PMQs Cameron was directly confronted in the Commons by Tory MP Sarah Wollaston – a former GP – who said abandoning minimum pricing would “critically undermine future efforts”.

He told her: “There is a problem with deeply discounted alcohol in supermarkets and other stores and I am absolutely determined that we will deal with this.

“We published proposals, we are looking at the consultation and the results to those proposals, but be in no doubt, we’ve got to deal with the problem of having 20p or 25p cans of lager available in supermarkets. It’s got to change.”

A confident Miliband, who enjoyed one of his best PMQs performances to date, said reported cabinet splits showed the government was “falling apart”.

“A week out from the Budget, they have got an economic policy that’s failing, a prime minister that makes it up as he goes along and all the time, it’s the country that is paying the price,” he said.

Earlier on HuffPost:

Were Bruce Buck, the Chelsea chairman, and Sir George Young, Chief Whip of the House of Commons, separated at birth?

This was noticed a while ago, but it remains one of the UK’s hidden lookalikes, since nobody seems to know who Sir George is, what with him quietly sitting close to David Cameron during PM’s Qs, not being sentenced for eight months in prison or accused of calling policemen “plebs”.

Dead ringers: Buck and Young

At Waterloo station, someone once spotted him and said, “That’s Sir George Young.” Nobody batted an eyelid (true story).

Yet Sir George and Buck bear an uncanny resemblance, as the above picture illustrates, and they’re both Blues too.

The duo follow Peter Crouch and his doppelgänger, Arsenal’s Nacho Monreal…

Give “Gareth Bale Kenny McEvoy” a Google too.

A Japanese wrestler-turned-politician has been banned from council meetings for refusing to remove his trademark mask when attending meetings.

Councilman Skull Reaper A-Ji was elected in the southwestern prefecture of Oita last month on a platform of educational reform, reports the Japan Daily Press.

The 44-year-old was told by the rest of the council he could not wear the mask, declaring it inappropriate to conceal his identity.

Skull Reaper A-Ji campaigned in his signature mask

After refusing to take off the Mexican “lucha libre” style mask, he was prevented from entering a meeting on Monday.

Speaking to local Japanese press Skull Reaper A-Ji described the ruling as “frustrating”.

He added: “If I take my mask off, I’m an entirely different person. I will not take it off.”

In an interview with, Nishinippon Shimbun, he claimed the mask made it easier for his constituents to approach him.

Remarkably, Skull Reaper A-Ji is not the first masked Japanese politician.

Masanori Murakawa, otherwise known as “The Great Sasuke”, was elected councillor back in 2003.

Wearing a similar mask to Skull Reaper A-Ji, Murakawa faced much the same criticism.

He said: “I have absolutely no intention of taking it off, no matter how much opposition there is.”

Disgraced former Cabinet minister Chris Huhne was ridiculed on his first day in jail when a warder called him to breakfast shouting “Order! Order!”, it was reported today.

The prison officer, using the Tannoy system in Wandsworth jail, mimicked the Commons Speaker by adding: “The right honourable member for Wandsworth North – down to the office,” The Sun newspaper reported.

Other prisoners at the south-west London jail were said to have roared with laughter as Huhne went from his cell to pick up the meal.

The newspaper also reported that 58-year-old Huhne has been moved to a wing for vulnerable prisoners because other convicts humiliated and bullied him.

He is said to have asked to be moved to the special area after prisoners discovered he was a millionaire and badgered him for cash.

An unnamed woman, speaking to the newspaper outside the prison yesterday after a visit to see her boyfriend, said the other prisoners targeted Huhne as a “soft touch” within hours of his arrival.

“Someone found out he was a millionaire and as soon as he was on the wing there were loads of people after him. They kept on going up to him saying, ‘We know you’ve got money’,” she said.

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“They had to move him into the segregation block because inmates were bullying him.”

Huhne and his ex-wife Vicky Pryce were handed eight-month jail sentences at Southwark Crown Court in London on Monday for perverting the course of justice when Pryce took speeding points for Huhne in 2003.

Jailing the pair, Mr Justice Sweeney said Huhne had fallen from a “great height”, and Pryce from a “considerable height”.

Economist Pryce, 60, was convicted after a retrial last week, while Huhne pleaded guilty on the first day of his trial last month after denying the offence for nearly two years.

The former energy secretary, who once had ambitions for the Lib Dem leadership, was the first former Cabinet minister since Jonathan Aitken to be jailed.

The Sun reported that Pryce spent a “nervous” first day in Holloway prison in north London.

Postman Robert Brown told the newspaper a friend he had visited in the jail told him he had spotted Pryce, who is a mother-of-five.

“My friend said she was very scruffy and looked really nervous,” he told the newspaper.

Related on HuffPost:

A schoolgirl from a Moscow suburb had to spend seven hours in freezing —10 C (14 F) weather, after she was reportedly turfed off a bus because she didn’t have the fare. The driver is now facing criminal charges for leaving a child in danger.

Nine year-old Zhenya Melnikova left her music lessons at a Moscow art school at 4 pm on Monday. When 5 hours later she was still not home her parents reported her missing to the police.

Officers joined by volunteers searched for the girl until midnight when she was eventually found at a railway station.

The girl told police she got on a shuttle bus after school. For some reason, which is not yet clear, the girl didn’t have with her the 40 roubles (US$1.30) her mother usually gave her to pay the fare, nor a mobile phone. Despite Zhenya’s young age and the freezing cold outside, the driver allegedly ordered the child to get off.

She had to walk for 7 hours to reach a railway station where she was spotted by a security guard, who called the police.

Russia’s Investigative Committee promptly opened a criminal case against the driver.

“We will by all means find the scoundrel and will hold him liable for leaving a child in danger according to article 125 of the Russian Criminal Code,” said the Committee’s Spokesman Vladimir Markin in his twitter @VladimirMarkin.

Life News reports the driver has been detained, and also cites an unknown source saying the driver put the child off the bus near a traffic police office, but the child might have been too shy to go there and ask for help.

The police is not yet commenting on the situation saying they are still checking the information.

It’s not the first case of its kind in Russia. In December 2012 in the Siberian city of Barnaul a disabled man spent twelve hours in -40 C (-40F). He lost his fingers and died three months later from a blood clot. A policeman who refused to help the man is now facing five years behind bars.

In October 2011 a schoolboy in Nizhny Novgorod was put off a bus because he didn’t have his bus pass with him. The boy died that same day on his way home after being hit by a train.

In January 2013, in Kirov another 9-year-old was taken off a bus. The boy did have money to pay the bus fare, but refused to pay for the heavy school bag he had with him. It was -25 C (-13 F) outside and the child fell seriously ill. The conductor who ordered the boy off the bus faced “beating” charges.

A week after that, an 11-year-old in Bratsk was forced off a bus after he was mistakenly accused of using a fake bus pass.

Cardiff University astrobiologists say “fossilized biological structures” in a Sri Lankan meteorite are extra-terrestrial in origin. Critics demand more credible tests, telling ET and panspermia fans it’s too early to celebrate.

The UK researchers say that tiny algae-like fossils found in meteorite fragments that landed in Sri Lanka last year can’t have originated on our planet, according to the study published in the Journal of Science. The fragments were found after sightings of a fireball in the Sri Lankan province of Polonnaruwa in December 2012, and were subsequently analyzed by local scientists.

The initial microscopic observations revealed so-called diatoms inside the meteorite fragments, which scientists found to be similar to an ancient and largely extinct type of marine algae.

Cardiff University was asked to proof-check and analyze the findings, which it did, concluding that the samples were “unequivocally meteorites” and that the analysis of the material structure showed algae-like fossils were native to it.

Ruling out “recent terrestrial contamination” was critical for the research. It has typically destroyed all the previous hopes of proving the panspermia theory, which says life on Earth could have arrived in a meteorite.

To support the first-ever evidence of the extraterrestrial life found in a celestial body, the researchers used sophisticated methods such as X-ray diffraction, triple oxygen isotope analysis and scanning electron microscopy.

The results immediately received wide coverage in blogs and the mass media, and have been interpreted as a long-awaited proof of that “we’re not alone.”

But critics have doubted the credibility of such conclusions, saying that not all the necessary tests have been carried out, and thus there’s still possibility that the diatoms got inside the rock on Earth.

Astronomer and author Phil Plait, known for his revelatory articles on Bad Astronomy blog, even went as far as to suggest the rock in question might not be a meteorite at all, and cited experts supporting his point.

“They don’t establish the samples they examined were actually meteorites. They don’t establish they were from the claimed meteor event over Sri Lanka in December 2012. And perhaps most telling, they don’t eliminate the possibility of contamination; that is, diatoms got into the samples because those rocks were sitting on the Earth where diatoms are everywhere,” Plait summed up in his blog post.

What made critics wonder is the fact the researchers did not consult any independent experts in meteorites or diatoms to confirm their suggestions and tests results.

The placement of the publication has raised further suspicions, as the Journal of Cosmology is not held in high esteem in scientific circles, and has been accused of publishing “pseudoscience” articles.

Others said, even though it looks like serious research, and there’s an abundance of technical details in the study, such “extraordinary claims” still need confirmation from research groups around the globe before they could be taken seriously.

Jail for vagrancy, a ban on electoral campaign ads in private media, and violations of student rights — all that may soon become a reality in the center of Europe as Hungary passes a set of controversial amendments.

On Monday, the Hungarian parliament overwhelmingly passed a 15-page amendment to its one-year-old Constitution — despite mass protests at home and fierce criticism from other EU members, the US and human rights groups.

The bill gives more powers to the government and limits the influence of the country’s constitutional court, banning it from reviewing changes to the Hungarian Fundamental Law other than for procedural mistakes.

Jail for homeless people

Under the document, constitutional judges will also be robbed of the right to refer to rulings made before January 1, 2012 — when the new constitution came into force. This means that many regulations that had previously been called unconstitutional will now be considered constitutional.

That, for instance, includes a law that gives a possibility for local authorities to fine or jail homeless people for living in public areas. Meanwhile, according to the UN, an estimated 30,000 to 35,000 people, including numerous women, children, older persons and persons with disabilities, are thought to be homeless in Hungary. In November, the constitutional court struck down the legislation saying it violated human dignity.

Among other amendments is the prohibition of political advertising on commercial channels during election campaigns, and, also the right by the head of the state judicial authority to transfer trials from one court to another. Besides that, students who get state grants will be obliged to work in Hungary for a number of years after their graduation. Those who want to work abroad will have to pay the money back.

The amendments — put forward by the ruling conservative Fidesz party — provide a definition of a family that is founded on marriage between a man and a woman or a relations ship between parents and dependent children. Earlier in December, the constitutional court slammed the legal provisions as ‘excessively restrictive.’ 

Hungary ‘defies EU democratic values’ 

“The new provisions continue to discriminate against unmarried and same-sex families,” Human Rights Watch stated on its website on Tuesday. The organization called on the EU to “take resolute action” in response to the latest constitutional changes adopted in the Hungarian parliament

The Hungarian opposition claims that the ruling party along with its leader Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is trying to limit the top court’s powers in revenge, after it rejected several initiatives proposed by Fidesz.

Meanwhile, the European Union — whose opinion had been ignored by Hungarian lawmakers — voiced deep concerns over the set of amendments that could “undermine democratic principles” and violate the rule of law.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized Budapest and underlined that “the concerns expressed by European partners and friends of Hungary, about restrictions on the powers of the constitutional court among other things, should be taken seriously,” a spokesman said, as cited by AFP.

European Commission spokesperson, Olivier Bailly said the amendments will be checked as soon as possible to make sure they “are in line with EU laws and EU values.”

“If necessary we will use our legal instruments to make sure that these laws are changed,” he added, reported Associated Press.

Victoria Nuland, US State Department spokesperson also slammed the document which, she said, “could threaten the principles of institutional independence and the checks and balances that are the hallmark of democratic governance.”

European experts note that if the package of amendments is signed by President Janos Ader, it will bring to naught over 20 years of the development of the Hungarian judicial system after the fall of the Communism.

The world famous Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra has admitted that many of its musicians were Nazi party members in the 1930s and 40s and drove out Jewish members who were sent to death camps.

The Vienna Philharmonic is best known for its New Year’s Concert, a Strauss Waltz extravaganza, which is broadcast to 50 million people in 80 countries. Its image is closely associated with the 18th century Vienna of Hayden, Beethoven and Mozart and is one of the Austrian capitals biggest tourist attractions.

What has only just been revealed is its shadier  Nazi-associated past.

Thus, the famous New Year concert originated in 1939 to be used by the Nazis as a propaganda instrument, while of the orchestra’s 123 members in 1942, 60 belonged to the Nazi party and two were members of the SS. 

The orchestra has also published online a report on who received its rings of honor and medals, which traditionally had been given to artists but during Nazi rule were given to high ranking officials and military leaders.

The list included Baldur von Schirach, the Nazi governor of Vienna, who was awarded the ring in 1942. Schirach ordered the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews to concentration camps and was sentenced to 20 years in jail during the Nuremburg trials after the war.

In one of the articles posted on the orchestra’s website on Sunday it was revealed by the historian Oliver Rathkolb that a replacement ring was given to Schirach after he was released from prison in 1967.

Clemens Hellsberg, the Philharmonic’s current chairman, told Reuters that the orchestra has not yet made a decision on whether to revoke awards handed out during the Nazi period.

Details of 13 musicians who were driven out of the orchestra for their Jewish origin or relations, five of whom died in concentration camps, were also published on the website for the first time.

The conductor, Joseph Kripps, whose father was Jewish, was forced to leave the orchestra and work in a food factory but was welcomed back in 1945 at the end of the war.

Bernadette Mayrhofer, an independent historian from the University of Vienna, believes that the ostracism of Jewish musicians had begun even before the 1938 Anschluss with Germany, under a harsh period of authoritarian rule in Austria known as Austrofascism.

“It was known whether someone had Jewish roots or a Jewish wife,” she told Reuters.

The unfortunate history of the orchestra, has only surfaced gradually, as until the recent findings were published online, the secrets of the Philharmonic’s archives have only been seen selectively by a handful of commissioned historians.

The Vienna Philharmonic has said it is not obliged to give public access to its archives, since it is a private organization. 

A history of the Vienna Philharmonic, ‘Democracy of Kings’, published in 1992 by the now chairman Hellsberg, did not mention many of the uncomfortable facts now coming to light on the website.

Hellsberg, talking at the preview of a documentary by Austrian state broadcaster ORF, about the orchestra’s Nazi era history, said that the orchestra had been quietly working through its history for decades and now needed to give a proper account of itself. 

Harald Walser, an Austrian Greens member of parliament, one of the Philharmonic’s most vocal critics, said he welcomed the orchestra’s move but wanted it to go further.

“It’s a step in the right direction. But we’re still a long way from having adequate access to the archives,” he said.

Fitz Truempi, one of the historians commissioned by the orchestra to write the articles on its website, said it took him three years to get access to the archives to research an earlier book, Politicized Orchestra, a study of the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics under National Socialism, published in 2011.

Truempi thinks the orchestra has come to a decision that it’s long held policy of withholding information about its past is no longer protecting but harming its image.

“For a long time, they tried to maintain strict control over their brand but, in the end, the political pressure became such that it was the best solution to open up,” he concludes.

However, in December last year Walser accused the orchestra, of destroying important documents from the World War Two period.

The Philharmonic has also been criticized for being too homogenous. An influential classical music writer, Norman Lebrecht, penned an opinion piece for Bloomberg in January that the orchestra had only six female members and no Asians even through a third of the students from Vienna’s University of Music are Asian.

March 12, 2013  |  

Call me irresponsible — oh hell, call me a cyber-utopian, throw in celebrant — but it’s undeniably true that I regard the admittedly messy, chaotic, confusing and upsetting digital information revolution as, on balance, a good thing, particularly when it comes to issues of democracy and power. After all, as noted in a recent book on the subject, one result of that revolution has been that “new methods of creating content and new channels to distribute it have become available to everyone and between everyone.” As networked technologies proliferate, they rapidly transform “our political, commercial and communications environments” — including “the very nature of our democracy itself.”

Sounds good, don’t you think? But two new books about the effects and implications of that ongoing and all-encompassing revolution — especially with regard to the role of journalistic institutions — suggest such optimism is increasingly obsolete. Instead, the authors believe, a scary digital dystopia awaits us.

The End of Big by Internet pioneer Nicco Mele, is about the nature of power in the digital age, and has as its thesis that the radical connectivity of the new information revolution — “our breathtaking ability to send vast amounts of data instantly, constantly and globally”— is upsetting traditional big institutions and empowering upstarts. It is “toxic to conventional power structures” such as Big Media, Big Business, Big Government, Big Education, etc, and ipso facto, “the end of big is at hand.”

One might think this power shift presents us with what Mele describes as “unprecedented opportunities to reshape our future for the better.” But unfortunately, he says, we may rather be “doomed to a future inconsistent with the hard-won democratic values on which our modern society is based… a chaotic, uncontrollable, and potentially even catastrophic future.”

Although he concedes that many traditional institutions are flawed and corrupt, and says “they deserve to die,” Mele is more concerned about what he calls the “destructive consequences” of radical connectivity, which puts “unprecedented power in the hands of every individual.” At first glance this may seem to be “potentially a good thing,” but Mele warns, “radical connectivity is altering the exercise of power faster than we can understand it.” The consequences are “disruptive, confusing, even dangerous.”

Why? “Without realizing it, citizens and elected leaders have abdicated control over our political and economic destinies to a small band of nerds like myself,” explains Mele. This “ revenge of the nerds” scenario worries him because he fears that technology is outstripping the ability of our institutions to keep pace with it.

The End of Big makes big claims — sometimes too big. In trying to support an overarching premise, Mele sometimes overreaches; describing what is at stake as “nothing less than the continued progress of the human race” or claiming that the “end of big in business represents one of the greatest hopes for saving our civilization” detracts from his otherwise cogent analysis. Another problem with his “end of big” metaphor is the problem of how to account for the “bigger than big” new tech giants like Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple — which briefly became the world’s largest company last year when it passed Exxon in market capitalization until the oil giant regained its premier status a few months ago.

But the biggest flaw in The End of Big may be simply that Mele takes on too much. He offers too many examples from too many sectors, such as Big Media, Big Politics, Big Brands, Big Government, etc. — many of which have already been considered elsewhere. Mele may have profited instead by biting off far less and chewing more just on technology, education, government and politics, areas where he has ample top-flight, real-world experience and is most insightful. If his book’s focus had been narrower — dare I say smaller? – he could have drilled deeper as well.

Venezuela is to formally investigate suspicions late President Hugo Chavez’s was afflicted with cancer after being poisoned by foreign enemies, the government said.

Acting President Nicolas Maduro vowed to set up an inquiry into the allegation, which was first leveled by Chavez after being diagnosed with cancer in 2011. Foreign scientists will also be invited to join a government commission to investigate the claim.  

“We will seek the truth,” Reuters cites Maduro as telling regional TV network Telesur late on Monday. “We have the intuition that our commander, Chavez, was poisoned by dark forces that wanted him out of the way.”

Maduro said it was too early to determine the exact root of the cancer which was discovered in Chavez’s pelvic region in June 2011, but charged that the United States had laboratories which were experienced in manufacturing diseases.

“He had a cancer that broke all norms,” the agency cites Maduro as saying. “Everything seems to indicate that they affected his health using the most advanced techniques … He had that intuition from the beginning.”

Chavez reportedly underwent four surgeries in Cuba, before dying of respiratory failure after the cancer metastasized in in his lungs.

Maduro compared the conspiracy surrounding Chavez’s death to allegations that Israeli agents poisoned Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to death in 2004.

In December 2011, Chavez speculated that the United States could be infecting the regions leaders with cancer after Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

“I don’t want to make any reckless accusations,” Chavez said before asking: “Would it be strange if [the United States] had developed a technology to induce cancer, and for no one to know it?”

Maduro repeated the accusation last week on the eve of Chavez’s death.

“Behind all of [the plots] are the enemies of the fatherland,” he said on state television before announcing the expulsion of two US Air Force officials for spying on the military and plotting to destabilize the country.

Venezuela’s opposition has lambasted the claim as another Chavez-style conspiracy theory intended to distract people from real issues gripping the country in the run up to the snap presidential election called for April 14.

As Tuesday marked the last day of official mourning for Chavez, ceremonies are likely to continue, fueling claims by the opposition that the government is exploiting Chavez’s death to hold onto power.

While launching his candidacy on Monday, Maduro began his speech with a recording of Chavez singing the national anthem, sending many of his supporters into tears.

The pro-business state governor Henrique Capriles, who is running for the opposition’s Democratic Unity coalition, was quick to remind both his supporters and detractors that the charismatic socialist reformer Chavez was not his opponent.

“[Maduro] is not Chávez and you all know it,” The Christian Science Monitor quotes him as saying while announcing his candidacy on Sunday. “President Chávez is no longer here.”

Maduro, a former bus driver and Chavez’s handpicked successor, has attempted to deflect criticism that he lacks the former president’s rhetorical flair by painting himself as a working class hero.

“I’m a man of the street. … I’m not Chávez,” he said Sunday. “I’m interim president, commander of the armed forces and presidential candidate because this is what Chávez decided and I’m following his orders.”  

Polls taken before Chavez’s death gave Maduro a 10 point lead over Capriles, who lost to Chavez in last October’s presidential poll.

Two Bahraini police officers were sentenced to 10 years in prison after being convicted of torturing a Shiite protester to death. Three others were acquitted for “failing to report the crime,” a judicial source said.

The two policemen were convicted of “torturing to death Ali al-Saqr,” who was arrested during the February 2011 uprising, the source told AFP.

Saqr died on April 9, 2011, from “hypovolemic shock resulting from several traumas,” according to a report by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Investigation (BICI), an international panel that investigated the events that unfolded during March and April of that year.

All five officers were found not guilty for the murder of another protester, Zakeriya Asheeri, who also died in 2011 while in detention.

“For the 4th time in 3 months a police officer [is] acquitted for killing a civilian. #bahrain culture of impunity,” Said Yousif Almuhafda, the head of the monitoring section at the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.

Several other officers are currently being investigated or standing trial on allegations of torture after hundreds of demonstrators were detained following a crackdown on the protest movement in mid-March 2011.

In late January, a court sentenced a police officer to seven years in prison for torturing a protester to death.

Complicity in torture expands beyond rank-and-file police officers, as Bahraini Princess Nora Bint Ebrahim Khalifa also appeared in court over torture allegations in January. Princess Nora, who serves in Bahrain’s Drugs Control Unit, allegedly collaborated with another officer in the torture of three activists who had been taken into custody.

Two of the Bahraini King’s sons — Nasser Bin Hammad Khalifa and Khalid Bin Hammad Khalifa — as well as one other member of the royal family, Khalifa Bin Ahmed Khalifa, were also accused of directly taking part in torturing activists in the country, a 55-page report titled ‘Citizens in the Grip of Torture’ charged.

Authorities in the kingdom have said they are implementing the recommendations of an independent commission of inquiry appointed by the king, which confirmed the use of excessive force by security forces during the uprising.

Bahrain — home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet — is ruled by a Sunni monarchy, while over 75 percent of the population is Shia.

On February 14, 2011, thousands of protesters took to the streets of the capital Manama, demanding democratic reforms and the resignation of Prime Minister Khalifa bin Salman Khalifa, the longest-serving prime minister in the world.

Since the start of the uprising, opposition activists say at least 88 protesters have been killed, including nine children.

March 12, 2013  |  

Today, Catholic Cardinals will assemble at the Sistine Chapel to elect the next Pope. But that’s not the only news out of Italy involving men closely gathered in a room. It turns out the Holy See purchased 20 shares of an apartment building housing Europe’s largest gay sauna.

The mega-spa Europa Multiclub boasts of king Turkish baths, Finnish saunas, waterfalls, whirlpools and many other amenities. It’s website describes a “comfortable world … created by males and for males only.” So, the College of Cardinals has at least one thing in common with its gay buildingmate. 

Senior Cardinal Ivan Dias lives in a 12-room apartment one floor above the club, known for hosting “bear nights,” in which “a hairy, overweight pastor of souls, is free to the music of his clergyman, remaining in a thong, because he wants to expose body and soul,” the Independent says. Dias probably won’t be in attendance, given his public attacks against the LGBT community. The Indian cardinal believes gays and lesbians can be cured of their “unnatural tendencies” through the “sacrament of penance.”

The Vatican reportedly paid €20 million ($26,020,000) for its share of the Rome apartment block in 2008. The Independent reports the Church avoided paying taxes on the properties, listing them as part of the Holy City, thanks to the previous Berlusconi administration.

At time of publication, the Vatican has yet to comment on the gay sauna next door to 18 church-owned properties.

Today is the day all Robert Langdon fans have been feverishly waiting for: the 115 voting cardinals of the Catholic church begin today their secret conclave to choose the successor to Pope Benedict XVI.

As Bloomberg puts it succinctly, “he who enters the conclave a pope exits as a cardinal” and it is notoriously tricky to try to handicap the papal vote. In processional next steps, the Cardinals will gather in the Sistine Chapel, hailing from as far as the Philippines, and may hold a single vote today with as many as four ballots on succeeding days. Politically, this conclave has been presented as a “struggle between cardinals looking to overhaul the Vatican bureaucracy known as the Curia, and those trying to maintain its influence, according to Vatican analysts. Electing a non-European, while a novelty, would not necessarily presage a change of course for the millennia-old institution shaken by the abdication of German-born Benedict. Pope Benedict XVI was chosen on the second day of the last conclave in 2005, while John Paul II was selected on the third day of the 1978 conclave.” Realistically, it will be a free for all for the scandal-riven church, and it is very much an open question who the next pope will be.

So while we await the puffs of white smoke, courtesy of Bloomberg here are brief biographies of some of the men who may be in the running, based on betting websites and consulting Vatican watchers.

Francis Arinze (Nigeria):

Born: Nov. 1, 1932.

Arinze would be the first black pope and the first African pope for more than 1,500 years — the last was Gelasius I, who reigned at the end of the fifth century and was from North Africa of Berber origin. A social and theological conservative, Arinze’s views on celibacy, women priests, homosexuality and contraception are considered close to those of Benedict XVI.

Christoph Schonborn (Austria):

Born: Jan 22, 1945.

The cardinal has guided Vienna through church scandals including allegations of priests using pornography and engaging in pedophilia. Considered a brilliant conservative theologian, he speaks French, English, Italian, Spanish and Latin, and has traveled widely on behalf of the Vatican, including trips to Moscow and Istanbul. He studied under Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, who became Benedict XVI, after becoming a priest at the age of 25. He is in favor of dialog between Catholicism and Islam, and was the highest-ranked church official to visit Iran after the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

Peter Turkson (Ghana):

Born: Oct. 11, 1948

Turkson, who studied theology in New York, is younger than Arinze and was called “one of Africa’s most energetic church leaders” by The Tablet, an influential British Catholic magazine, and in 2009 said that “if God would wish to see a black man also as pope, thanks be to God.” He has engaged with contemporary issues, including the global economic crisis by calling for more oversight of financial institutions and he has denounced the “idolatry of the market.”

Marc Ouellet (Canada):

Born: June 8, 1944

The cardinal from Quebec is an accomplished theologian whose writings were admired by Benedict, whose concerns about the modernization of the church he shared. “It would seem that, in the name of secularism, the Bible must be relativized, to be dissolved in a religious pluralism and disappear as a normative cultural reference,” Ouellet said in 2011 in his powerful role as prefect of the Congregation for Bishops. Ouellet became a priest in 1968 in the very church that his father built in La Motte, Quebec. He later taught at a seminary in Bogota, Colombia and served as prefect of the Congregation for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, making him well known among Spanish-speaking clergy.

Leonardo Sandri (Argentina):

Born: Nov. 18, 1943

The man who announced the death of John Paul II to the world in 2005, is a native of Buenos Aires who was born to a family of Italian immigrants. He rose to the heights of the church hierarchy to occupy the third most-important position in the Vatican between 2000 and 2007 as de facto chief of staff to the secretary of state. He now has a lower profile as head of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches. He has served in Madagascar, Venezuela, Mexico and the U.S. and as the Vatican’s representative to the Organization of American States.

Angelo Scola (Italy):

Born: Nov. 7, 1941

The Archbishop of Milan is the front-runner among the Italians, who until the 1970s had a virtual lock on the papacy. With Benedict he shared philosophical and theologian interests and his writings on a range of topics from bio-ethics to sexuality have been published in different languages.

Odilo Scherer (Brazil):

Born: Sept. 21, 1949

A Brazilian of German descent, Scherer is Archbishop of Sao Paolo and as such oversees 6 million Catholics in the country’s biggest archdiocese. In the birthplace of liberation theology, he struck a moderate tone by seeing worth in focusing on social injustice and poverty while reserving criticism for the movement’s “Marxism.”

Submitted by Mark J. Grant, author of Out of the Box,

“We the People”
 
Glorious words in many ways. They begin the preamble to the United States Constitution as America threw off the chains of tyranny and became a country. How much has been gained, how must lost, since those times when the citizens were dedicated to a common cause. The road has been long, no end in sight, and I rejoice in the continuation if sometimes not in a moment’s chosen path.
 
However it must be said that Americans are not the only “We the People” country on the planet. This declaration is to be found in democracies everywhere and should be cherished and praised as citizens of each nation get to make the choices appended to self-determination. The desires of the governed must always rule those who are governing and when the leadership fails in that recognition they should be replaced. When political leaders do not listen to the voice of their citizens they will be voted out if not tossed out. The United States, cast in stone some two hundred and thirty seven years since its founding, was not always such a safe bet. We have erred and lurched and struggled with our principles but still here, still beating the drum, still on our own two feet.
 
Recently one of the German politicians referenced two of the Italian largest vote getters as “clowns.” I reject the comment and I admonish Peer Steinbrueck for his inadequacy. What higher moral ground does he claim that supersedes the voice of the Italian people and I say, “None sir, and that you should be ashamed of yourself.”
 
I point all of this out this morning because there is change afoot on the Continent and to not take note of it may well be an expensive mistake. Business of late, business as usual, may not be the business of tomorrow as the citizens of various countries, not in open revolt or not in the streets, are beginning to wave a different banner and it is decidedly nationalistic and a potential new definition of just whom “We the People” are; in fact.
 
Recently, in poll after poll, the citizens of Germany, Britain and other countries in Europe are gathering around their own flags and seemingly rejecting the imposed commonality. I do not ignore the will of the people and when the politicians of various nations ignore their will then they may be replaced, not by rifles in the streets, but by peaceful votes in elections. The incessant pressures of either paying for the lifestyles of people in other nations or the demands of austerity for accepting foreign capital are driving sharp wedges in the grand scheme of Union in Europe.
 
I would not underestimate what is happening in Italy. It is a rejection, in my opinion, of not just corrupt practices in their own country but of having others govern them. It is a squared stance, I believe, staring directly at Brussels and Berlin telling them to mind their own business and to stop telling the Italians how to run their own country. I am not without sympathy for this position I assure you.
 
We have had the Arab Spring and perhaps the Italian Spring will be the wildcard of this year. When people discuss the imposed austerity measures and leave the discussion there they have not gone far enough in their thinking. I would say that the Italians, the Greeks, the Portuguese, the Spaniards do not wish to be German and may be getting tired of being told what to do by them while the British and the Dutch and others are having their patience worn thin by the demands out of Brussels and Berlin for their money. Even in Germany, as demonstrated by a recent poll, the people are getting tired of supporting other nations financially so as to exercise control. The grass grows thin upon the Continent.
 
The pledge of Mr. Draghi, always conditional upon the support of the European Union, may get diminished further if the nations of that Union do not give him support. Since all of the yields of European sovereign debt rely upon this promise then much could be lost if the promise cannot be kept. Southern Europe and Northern Europe may not be separated by an ocean but they are fathoms apart in tradition and mindset. Rome, whatever her inherent difficulties, has the capacity of leadership and just because there is a power vacuum for the moment in the Vatican and in their Parliament does not mean that they will not both be filled and perhaps with surprising results. The politicians of Europe may be ignoring Italy and the world’s investors are certainly ignoring Italy for the moment but the people of various nations, in my estimation, are not.
 
“We the People” may be in for a definitional change. The spark of the Italian elections may be the kindling for a much larger fire. I would not ignore the burning smell that is wafting through the air and I would not ignore the consequences of it.

From GoldCore

Shanghai Gold Exchange Sees Volumes Jump 24% In Year

Today’s AM fix was USD 1,582.50, EUR 1,216.37and GBP 1,065.30 per ounce.
Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,577.50, EUR 1,213.28 and GBP 1,058.37 per ounce.

Silver is trading at $29.18/oz, €22.53/oz and £19.71/oz. Platinum is trading at $1,605.25/oz, palladium at $773.00/oz and rhodium at $1,200/oz.

Gold rose $3.00 or 0.19% and closed yesterday at $1,581.10/oz. Silver rose to $29.09 and finished +0.1%.

Cross Currency Table — (Bloomberg)

Gold gained for the third straight session, the longest rally this year, on the realisation that the European crisis may worsen. Fitch Ratings cut Italy’s credit rating by one level on Friday. Fitch downgrading Italy is likely providing support as is robust demand in Asia, particularly China.

Average daily trading combined volumes on the three main gold contracts on the Shanghai Gold Exchange in the first two months of the year jumped 24% on the year, according to Reuter’s calculations.

Shanghai Share Index, 5 Year — (Bloomberg)

“The strong physical demand in China is the main reason behind gold’s resilience,” a Beijing-based trader told Reuters. Physical demand prospects out of China remain positive in the weeks ahead, UBS AG said  according to Bloomberg.

China is very vulnerable to a property crash and its own economic crisis. The Chinese stock market has performed very poorly in recent years and Chinese people realise the importance of gold as a store of value.

Gold In Chinese Yuan, 5 Year — (Bloomberg)

The market continues to digest the better than expected U.S. jobs data with the risks still emanating from Italy and the Euro zone. Contagion in the Eurozone and indeed currency crises remain real risks — risks which are being completely ignored … for now.

Sentiment is as bad as we have seen it in recent years which suggests to us that while gold may go lower in the short term – we are close to a bottom.

The global debt crisis is far from over and when it erupts anew, gold’s appeal as an important diversification and safe haven will be appreciated once again.

NEWS

Gold futures log highest close of month — Market Watch

Gold sticks in range as growth hopes weigh, Asia buying supports – Reuters

Gold Little Changed as ETP Holdings Extend Drop Amid Recovery – Bloomberg

Gold Gains for Third Day as Europe Concern Boosts Haven Appeal – Bloomberg

COMMENTARY

Don’t Be Sucked In — Euro Zone Will Break Up – Reuters

Staring Armageddon In The Face But Hiding It With Official Lies —Paul Craig Roberts — Paul Craig Roberts

Presenting The Currence Crises, Devaluations And Regime Changes Since The Collapse Of The Gold Standard — Zero Hedge

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, US Attorney General Eric Holder made an extraordinary admission.

Responding to questioning from Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, who noted that there had been no major prosecutions of financial institutions or executives by the Obama administration, Holder said: “I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them, when we are hit with indications that if we do prosecute–if we do bring a criminal charge–it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy…”

In other words, major banks are so economically important that, according to Holder, it is impossible to prosecute them for criminal activity. They are above the law.

This exchange occurred during a discussion of the Justice Department’s settlement last month with British-based HSBC, the world’s third-largest bank. HSBC had been charged with laundering billions of dollars for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels. In exchange for avoiding charges, HSBC agreed to pay $1.9 billion, or roughly two months’ profits. Top US officials explicitly vetoed any criminal charges, even on lesser counts than money laundering.

HSBC is only the latest bank to have received a free pass. Earlier this year, ten financial firms agreed to pay $3.3 billion in cash to settle charges of mortgage fraud: amid the housing market collapse, they had employees fraudulently sign off on thousands of mortgage foreclosures a month.

Last year, the government ended an investigation into Goldman Sachs without charges over its promotion of mortgage-backed securities at the height of the speculative bubble–even as Goldman Sachs bet against the assets itself.

In 2010, the Obama administration reached a settlement with Wachovia Bank on similar charges as those brought against HSBC: laundering billions of dollars of drug money, in this case for the Sinaloa Cartel. The fine was $160 million, less than 2 percent of the previous year’s profits.

Many similar arrangements could be cited. In each case, a check is signed–if there is any punishment at all–and business goes on as usual. Whatever money the financial institutions lose is more than balanced by their take of the $85 billion funneled into the markets every month by the US Federal Reserve.

In justifying the administration’s refusal to prosecute, Holder cites the banks’ immense power over economic life. That these institutions exercise dictatorial control over the economy and engage in unchecked criminal behavior is not an argument for refusing to prosecute them, however. Rather, it is an argument for expropriating them, taking them out of the hands of the criminals that run them, and placing them under the democratic control of the working class.

In its dealings with these institutions, however, the government acts as a direct representative of the financial aristocracy. First Bush and then Obama justified the bank bailouts after the 2008 crash by citing the need to “save the economy.” Since then, millions of jobs have disappeared. To pay for such bank bailouts, governments around the world are implementing brutal austerity measures, wiping out public education, health care, retirement and other social programs.

A stench of corruption hangs over the whole process. There is hardly a single Obama administration official in a position important to the banks that does not have previous ties to Wall Street. These include:

Jacob Lew was confirmed this month by the Senate as Obama’s new treasury secretary. Lew, Obama’s former chief of staff, is also the former chief operating officer of Citigroup’s Alternative Investment Unit, which bet against the housing market as it collapsed.

Mary Jo White is Obama’s pick to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. White, who will likely be confirmed easily after hearings scheduled for today, is a former attorney at the corporate law firm Debevoise & Pimpleton, where she defended Wall Street banks and executives, often against investigations by the SEC itself.

Then there is the extraordinary case of David S. Cohen and Stuart Levey. As members of corporate law firm Miller Cassidy in the 1990s, they defended banks and other corporations from white-collar criminal charges, including money laundering. They passed in and out of the Treasury Department and private practice.

In 2004, Levey joined the Bush administration as undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, responsible for overseeing narcotics trafficking and money laundering. He left in March 2011 to become HSBC’s chief legal officer. His deputy at the treasury department, and his successor, was none other than David S. Cohen. The two ex-colleagues would have both been heavily involved in forging the recent deal to settle HSBC’s money-laundering charges.

No banks or executives are prosecuted, because the individuals who would do the prosecuting and the individuals who would be prosecuted are, more or less, the same people.

Holder made his statements on the banks at the same hearing in which he laid out the Obama administration’s position that it has the authority to assassinate citizens within the United States without judicial review.

The coming together of these two statements is not simply coincidental. There is a class logic at work. With the active assistance of the state, the financial aristocracy is engaged in a looting operation, and criminality has become an integral part of the mode of wealth accumulation.

Anticipating social opposition, this same aristocracy is engaged in a conspiracy against democratic rights. While the banks and executives cannot be touched, anyone opposing these policies will face repressive police-state methods.

The political and economic system is rotten to the core. The only rational and appropriate response to such a state of affairs is to overturn this system, capitalism, and institute a new form of social organization based on the principle of social need–that is, socialism.

The active involvement of the state and all its institutions and parties in the criminal operation makes clear that the interests of the working class cannot be advanced except through a mass social and political movement, which aims to replace the government of the banks with a government of, by and for the working class.

Amid threats from both sides, North Korea yesterday cut the phone “hotline” between the two Koreas and abrogated the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War. The move came as American and South Korean troops began joint military exercises and Washington announced new sanctions against Pyongyang.

The escalation of tensions on the Korean peninsula follows last week’s UN Security Council resolution imposing further punitive measures on North Korea over its third nuclear test on February 12. As well as previous UN sanctions, the North Korean regime has also been subject to a US-led economic and diplomatic blockade since the end of the Korean War.

An editorial in North Korea’s state-run Rodong Sinmun yesterday declared that “the armistice agreement has been nullified” and warned “no one can expect what will happen next.” The 1953 armistice stopped the fighting but did not formally end the war. Pyongyang has pressed for decades for a formal peace treaty with the US, only to be repeatedly rejected.

North Korea has previously declared the armistice void, most recently in 2009 in response to a previous round of sanctions that the US pushed through the UN. Tensions flared in 2010 following the sinking of the South Korean corvette, the Cheonan, for which North Korea denied responsibility. Amid provocative US-South Korean naval exercises, the two Koreas engaged in artillery exchanges in which several South Korean soldiers and civilians on Yeonpyeong Island were killed.

On Sunday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visited an artillery unit that took part in the 2010 shelling, urging it to “deal deadly counterblows to the enemy if a single shell is fired on the waters.”

Exercise Key Resolve, involving 10,000 South Korean troops and more than 3,000 American military personnel, began yesterday and will continue until March 21. During the war games, the Pentagon has supplemented the 28,500 US troops stationed in South Korea with additional personnel, as well as extra warships and warplanes.

No military incidents or clashes involving the two Koreas have been reported to date. Moreover, several dozen South Korean managers continued their daily trip yesterday to the Kaesong industrial zone inside North Korea, where they supervise some 50,000 workers making goods for South Korean businesses.

Both sides, however, have engaged in bellicose rhetoric. Last week, as the UN Security Council prepared to impose further sanctions, Pyongyang warned that it would “exercise the right to a pre-emptive nuclear attack” to defend the country and claimed to have the ability to carry out a precision attack on Washington.

South Korea’s defence ministry warned last Friday that the North’s government would “evaporate from the face of the Earth” if it ever used a nuclear weapon. Newly-elected South Korean President Park Geun-hye told her first cabinet meeting yesterday: “We must deal strongly with a North Korean provocation.”

Kim Byung-kwan, Park’s appointee as defence minister, declared during his confirmation hearing that South Korea would respond to a North Korean artillery attack by destroying the regime. Kim, who was former deputy commander of the joint US-South Korean forces, is known to carry a photo of the president’s father–former South Korean military dictator Park Chung-hee–who ruled from 1961 to 1979.

The most chilling threat came from Washington. Obama’s National Security Adviser Tom Donilon yesterday warned: “There should be no doubt: we will draw upon the full range of our capacities to protect against, and to respond to, the threat posed to us and to our allies by North Korea.” The “full range” obviously includes the huge American nuclear arsenal. Donolon added that Washington would hold Pyongyang “full accountable” for any transfer of nuclear weapons or materials to other countries.

The US Treasury announced more penalties against North Korea yesterday, targeting the country’s main foreign exchange bank–the Foreign Trade Bank–and a senior official, Paek Se-bong, who is allegedly connected to North Korea’s missile program. The US State Department also designated another three individuals for sanctions.

The Obama administration is directly responsible for the rising tensions in North East Asia. Its “pivot to Asia” aimed at undermining China has encouraged governments throughout the region, including South Korea, to take a more aggressive stance. By putting the pressure on China’s ally North Korea, the US is also compounding the problems facing Beijing.

China has continued to economically prop up North Korea to prevent a political implosion and the possibility of a pro-US regime on its northern border. At the same time, Beijing has voted for UN sanctions and sought to rein in North Korea, fearing that Pyongyang’s nuclear tests could provide South Korea and Japan with a pretext for developing their own nuclear weapons.

South Korean lawmaker Chung Mong-joon, from Park’s right-wing Saenuri party, has already suggested that the country should build a “nuclear deterrence”. He told a meeting of the party’s National Assembly members last month that the current situation was like trying to defend oneself with a pebble against a gangster with a machine gun. The JoongAng Ilbo described North Korea’s nuclear test as an existential threat and argued that South Korea should develop its own nuclear weapons, rather than rely on the US.

Such comments only add to the pressure in Beijing, where a debate has opened up in ruling circles over China’s alliance with North Korea. While there has been no shift in China’s official stance, senior officials and academics have advocated a tougher line against Pyongyang, including ending the security treaty between the two countries.

At the same time, Beijing is well aware that the US is encouraging North Korea to adopt a more pro-Western orientation. US National Security Adviser Donilon yesterday referred to the transformation of US relations with Burma, saying it had resulted in billions of dollars in Western aid, investment and debt forgiveness. It was a not-so-subtle hint that Pyongyang could make the transition from pariah to “democracy” if it toed Washington’s line.

The US has, however, flatly refused to make any concessions to North Korea unless it dismantles its missile and nuclear programs. Pyongyang agreed to do so in the past–under the 1994 Agreed Framework and the 2005 agreement reached at six-party talks–only to be confronted with broken promises and new demands from Washington.

The aggressive US stance ensures that the Korean peninsula remains extremely tense, heightening the danger of conflict in one of Asia’s critical flashpoints.

Where do you locate yourself on the political spectrum? Are you liberal or conservative? On “the left”, “the right”, or perhaps you’re a bit of both (“moderate”). It is no secret that American mass culture often blunts the capacity for civic engagement and political awareness. Yet those who pursue an identity in acceptable political dialogue are less aware of how the parameters of American politics have been carefully crafted to elicit vicarious and seemingly meaningful participation for the politically inclined.

This is at least partially because political elites have for close to a century carefully crafted and presided over a political universe of smoke and mirrors for their subjects; one where citizens think and act as if they have political choices and agency, thereby perpetuating the myth of democratic participation and enfranchisement. Thinking along these lines is apparent in the almost century-old writings of the well-known American political commentator Walter Lippmann.

Lippmann’s many observations on media and public opinion are significant not just because he was a distinctly influential and gifted commentator, but also because of his many close working relationships and affinities with the most powerful financial and political elites of his day. In fact, historian Carroll Quigley recognizes Lippmann as “the authentic spokesman in American journalism for the [Anglo-American] Establishments on both sides of the Atlantic in international affairs.”

As World War One concluded, Lippmann played a central role in recruiting intellectual talent for “the Inquiry,” a group of several dozen analysts set up by the Wilson administration and powerful Wall Street bankers and oil barons to ostensibly establish plans for a peace settlement, what eventually crystallized as Wilson’s Fourteen Points and a transnational system of governance called the League of Nations most Americans rejected. In reality, the Inquiry was a philosophical and functional precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, gathering, analyzing, and producing recommendations on how the bankers and oil men should proceed with maintenance of their overseas assets in a vastly rearranged geopolitical environment.

In the years following the Inquiry’s dissolution Lippmann wrote his most well-known work, Public Opinion, where he lamented the US public’s rejection of an international government and expounded on how the thinking and behavior of modern individuals are largely determined through prejudice, or “stereotypes”, thus rendering citizens unfit for meaningful participation in public affairs. “For the most part we do not first see, and then define,” he famously wrote, “we define first and then see.” And, acknowledging the growing power and political implications of electronic mass media, Lippmann marveled at how “on the screen the whole process of observing, describing, reporting, and then imagining, has been accomplished for you.”

Along these lines Lippmann envisioned how political persuasions may be ready-made to develop a seeming relationship with political iconography and sloganeering where positions, sensibilities, and identification with an imagined community all take place through televisual displacement and atomization. With the media’s major control over representation and imagination comes the power to exclude undesirable political objects and ideas, thereby rendering them for all practical purposes out-of-mind.

The stereotypical dynamic and ideal endures in the binary oppositions governing much of what passes for American political discourse today: liberal/conservative, Democratic/Republican, Red/Blue, pro-choice/pro-life, Tea Party/Occupy, and so on. Far removed from the union hall, tavern, or country club where political opinions derived from lived interaction and experience, defining subjective opinion through imagined political adversaries with malevolent ulterior motives is now typically carried out in mass mediated form that provides one with their own sense of purpose and moral rectitude. It is also a perfectly suitable technique for a mechanized and streamlined journalism that has little time or resources for fathoming and assessing the nuanced complexity and broader possibilities inherent in all genuine political thinking. As political theorist Sheldon Wolin remarks, “The responsibility of the responsible media include maintaining an ideological ‘balance’ that treats the “Left” and the “Right” as polar opposites as well as moral and political equivalents.” Manufactured political opinion also become deeply ingrained in the public mind through shared cultural figures and artifacts.

In one of the most well-known situation comedies in American television history, All in the Family, Archie Bunker was an archetype that forever unified bigotry and pettiness with conservatism in the popular mind. Archie’s childish persona acted synergistically alongside the enlightened and educated liberalism of Michael Stivic. The Bunker/Stivic binary, echoed to the present in the jousting punditry of cable news, remains a template for locating ones imagined place on the political spectrum.

Stereotypes and imagined positions are the exact opposite of what perceptive minds capable of discerning controversies and problems would expect and desire from political exchange. Above the din of clashing ideologies the very same forces Walter Lippmann moved with and spoke for remain, apart from and unimaginable in the prisonhouse of political opinion they helped design and construct.

References

Gonzales, Servando. 2010. Psychological Warfare and the New World Order: The Secret War Against the American People. Spook Books.

Lippmann, Walter. 1997 (1922). Public Opinion, New York: Free Press.

Quigley, Carroll. 1975 (1966). Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, Angriff Press.

Steel, Ronald. 1980 (1970). Walter Lippmann and the American Century, New York: Atlantic Monthly Press and Little, Brown, and Company.

Wolin, Sheldon. 2008. Democracy Inc.: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, Princeton University Press.

The eye of the hurricane over Southeast Europe may soon be shifting, exposing Greece to the same 150 mph gale turmoil everyone has grown to love and expect over the past three years as soon as this month, when a new proposal by Greece is due on how to cut a massive 150,000 public sector jobs: a move which will result in an immediate surge in public unrest, and an exponential jump in strike activity. As Bloomberg reports, “Greece is locked in talks with international creditors in Athens about shrinking the government workforce by enough to keep bailout payments flowing. Identifying redundant positions and putting in place a system that will lead to mandatory exits for about 150,000 civil servants by 2015 is a so-called milestone that will determine whether the country gets a 2.8 billion-euro ($3.6 billion) aid installment due this month. More than a week of talks on that has so far failed to clinch an agreement.”

“Public sector job cuts are a major part of the program and they are one of the most politically difficult parts to achieve,” said Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank in London. “And for the Greek government, which has two left-of-center parties, it is extremely difficult to really implement those job cuts. I’m afraid this will likely stay a point of contention, review after review after review.”

As a result Europe can continue keeping its eyes closed and continue handing over billions in unconditional aid to Greece, however, with Germans increasingly unhappy with the arrangement where their country is the only designated driver at the European alcoholic relapse free for all, this may be untenable. Therefore, it is likely that Greece will have to come through with at least some major muscle cutting proposals. These in turn will certainly inflame the country, and force it to rethink its pro-European majority stance, especially now that as Kathimerini reports, the country has not one but two counter-Eurozone political powers:

Former SYRIZA leader Alekos Alavanos has announced plans to launch a movement that will campaign for Greece to leave the euro.

“All countries have a Plan B for Greece, only Greece does not have a Plan B should it have to leave the euro,” Alavanos told Skai television on Tuesday.

He said the movement would aim to stand in the European Parliament elections in 2014 and would favor a return to the drachma.

“If Greece were to exit the European Union we would be much better off than we are today and would never have had to reach this point,” he said, adding “that no country has ever managed to exit a crisis with a ‘hard’ currency. The euro is a hard and expensive currency.”

He said that his movement will also favor the nationalization of banks and for Greece to repudiate its debt.

“It is madness to have the same currency as Germany when Germany, unlike us, has a stable economy,” Alavanos said.

Alavanos is, of course, right. However, with the empirical evidence of what 2 years of Greece on the brink of European departure has shown, is that the last thing Europe will agree to is a return to a Greece that is one foot in, one foot out of the Euro, as this will immediately put the OMT in play: an OMT, which as we have repeatedly discussed in the past, is wonderful in Draghi talking points to clueless reporters, but an epic failure if and when it should actually be put into use.

And Greece, where it all started back in 2010, may be just the catalyst that brings Europe, where nothing at all has been fixed in the past three years when one ignores the central bank-manipulated markets, full circle.

The US State Department has threatened Islamabad with sanctions if the country goes through with a joint multi-billion-dollar gas pipeline project with Iran.

Ryan’s austerity budget is more of the same from the Ayn Rand enthusiast, but so long as the Democrats keep playing the game, why change course? (Photo: AP Photo)Republicans lost the election but they still shape what’s debated in Washington – the federal budget deficit and so-called “fiscal responsibility.”

The White House’s and the Democrat’s continuing failure to reshape that debate has lead directly and logically to Paul Ryan’s budget plan this week, which is a more regressive version of the same plan American voters resoundingly rejected last November.

Sadly, the President is playing into the GOP’s hands with a new round of negotiations over a “grand bargain.”

Despite February’s encouraging job numbers, the major challenge is still jobs, wages, growth, and widening inequality – not deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility.

We’d need numbers like February’s every month for the next four years to get anywhere close to the level of unemployment we had before the Great Recession. But we won’t get there because of the austerity policies the nation has embarked on, and the continuing erosion of the middle class.

Austerity economics – of which Ryan’s upcoming budget is the most extreme version – is a cruel hoax. Cruel because it hurts most those who are already hurting; a hoax because it doesn’t work.

The entire framework is based on the false analogy that the federal budget is akin to a family’s budget.

Families do have to balance their budgets. But that’s precisely why the federal government has to be the spender of last resort when consumer spending falls short of boosting the economy toward full employment.

And as long as income and wealth continue to concentrate at the very top, the broad middle class and those aspiring to join it won’t have the purchasing power to boost the economy.

So why even try for a “grand bargain” that won’t deal with these fundamentals but only further legitimize the GOP mythology and further mislead the public about what’s really at stake?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Robert Reich, one of the nation’s leading experts on work and the economy, is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. Time Magazine has named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including his latest best-seller, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future; The Work of Nations; Locked in the Cabinet; Supercapitalism; and his newest, Beyond Outrage. His syndicated columns, television appearances, and public radio commentaries reach millions of people each week. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, and Chairman of the citizen’s group Common Cause. His widely-read blog can be found at www.robertreich.org.

Iraq’s recent history includes two far reaching events, on the 2 August 1990 Iraq’s invasion into Kuwait and on 19 March 2003 the US/UK invasion into Iraq. Whether political leaders will draw lessons from these events will be, at best, questionable. Iraqis continue to be wronged. Danger to life and turmoil remain a cruel part of Iraq’s reality in early 2013. The collective suffering of a nation is visibly all pervasive. It can not be hidden.

The Iraqi puzzle of life confirms an endless number of tragedies

Ethnic tension and sectarianism have become a major element in Iraqi politics since the US/UK invasion of 2003, a polarization of inter-group relations Iraqis had not known before. This explains much of the existing hideous crime including murder, kidnapping, property destruction and, most noteworthy, the deteriorating relationships between Baghdad and the three northern Kurdish governorates.

Since the years of war, sanctions and occupation, Iraq’s once state-of-the-art medical system has all but collapsed. Malnutrition and diseases, almost forgotten in Iraq, such as respiratory infections; measles; typhoid fever and tuberculosis have re-emerged on a large scale. The planned destruction of water and sanitation facilities, especially in the 1991 war, and recurrent drug shortages, throughout the period of sanctions and after the 2003 invasion, promoted significantly ill-being, morbidity and mortality in the country (WHO).

Depleted uranium, the armour-piercing radio-active munition, and white phosphorus used by the US military in 1991 and 2003 have created serious health and environmental dangers in Iraq. In early 2000 the US Government sought to prevent WHO from surveying areas in southern Iraq where DU had been used. It also rejected any causality with increases in lung cancer, leukaemia and congenital birth defects. Fortunately national and international efforts have not deterred the collection of more evidence to show the relevance of these war contaminants.

A 2009 Iraq Government mental health survey concluded that mass displacement, a climate of fear, torture, death and violence have contributed to the high ratio of mental illness in the country. It reflects what an old man in Mosul observed:
“First they destroyed our economy and now they are trying to kill our minds.”

Iraq is said to have the third largest oil reserves in the world. Its current oil exports nevertheless remain below the average export of 2.2 million barrels/day Iraq was able to market during the years of sanctions. Sabotage against pipelines, corruption, inability to rehabilitate oil installations in the post-invasion era and Iraqi resistance to handover oil exploration to foreign interests (PSAs) are among the causes.

An immensely oil-rich country but 22.9% out of the est. 33 million Iraqis have been living in poverty and many more have to survive under near-poverty living conditions. The GNI per capita/annum (2011) amounted to a mere $2.640 (World Bank). Transparency International classified Iraq’s public sector corruption among the highest in the world — ranking 169 out of 176 countries (2012).

Rahim Hassan al-Uqailee, as head of the Iraqi Commission of Integrity wrote in an open letter to the Iraqi parliament’s anti-graft committee (2011): “The fight over stealing the money of state and its property is the unspoken part of the struggle for power in Iraq today.”

Despite the despicable gap between the rich and the poor, the Iraqi authorities signed a deal (2011) with the US Government for the purchase of 18 F-16 fighter jets at a cost of $ 3 billion! At that time almost a quarter of the Iraqi population lived in poverty and the unemployment rate exceeded 28% (UN).

There is a saying in the Middle East: “Egyptians write, Lebanese print and Iraqis read”. Prior to Iraq’s invasion into Kuwait in August 1990, Iraq had among the highest literacy rates in the Middle East. Sanctions changed that.

A World Bank/Government of Iraq survey (2007) showed that “almost 23 percent of Iraqis were illiterate”, 5 million school age children were not in school and gender disparity in education had become severe. There have been other serious developments in the education sector since 2003: a sectarian element has found its way into the school system affecting mostly Sunni and Shiite students and, most disturbingly, a 2011 Ghent University/Brussels Tribunal publication states: “Iraq’s intellectual and technical class has been subject to a systematic campaign of intimidation, abduction, extortion, random killings and targeted assassinations”. Conditions in Iraq were “reminiscent of ‘educide’ or genocide of the educated segments of Iraqi society”.

Other serious and life-threatening dangers have confronted Iraqis in recent years

“…Since the US-led invasion in 2003, Iraq has become a transit point in the flow of hashish and heroin from Iran and Afghanistan”, according to the UN. The Iraqi Ministry of Health confirms that local “addiction rates are climbing steadily” while before drug use was not an Iraqi problem.

During the 13 years of sanctions and beyond, it was difficult to obtain building materials for the construction of additional housing. This resulted in a steep rise in overcrowded accommodation which in turn promoted domestic violence, often involving women as victims. A UN report estimates that “one in five women in Iraq suffer from domestic abuse”.
Wars and violence have fundamentally changed the demographic and social profile of Iraq.

Iraq’s Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs indicates (2011) there are an estimated 4.5 million Iraqi children who have lost their parents — a horrific 14% of Iraq’s population are orphans! 70% of these children became orphans since the 2003 invasion. Around 600,000 of these are living in the streets and a few in the 18 orphanages that exist in the country, we are told.

In the Iraq tradition, it must be remembered, there was no need for orphanages. The extended family took care of those who had lost their parents. Dictatorship, wars, sanctions and crime have changed this. There are an estimated one million female-headed households in Iraq. Most of these women are widows, victims of armed conflict and sectarian violence (ICRC/2010).

Apart from extreme physical, mental, economic and social damages, Iraqis have also faced a grim reality of punitive financial limitations during the years of sanctions. From 1990 until 1996, the year when the Oil-for-Food Programme (OFFP) became operative, all of Iraq’s foreign accounts were frozen and oil was not allowed to be sold internationally. The Iraqi people were almost entirely dependent on meager help from abroad — a far cry from a dignified survival.

The OFFP (1996-2003), allegedly a “humanitarian” exemption but fully financed (!) with sanctions-limited Iraqi oil money, was little more than an underfunded supply programme. Out of a total oil income of $64 billion about $ 19 billion were transferred to the UN Compensation Commission (UNCC) in Geneva. At that time Iraq’s child mortality of 130/1000 was among the highest in the world. This transfer to the UNCC was to compensate individuals, companies and governments, especially the Government of Kuwait, for claims resulting from Iraq’s invasion into Kuwait. Had there been any moral leadership in the UN Security Council, much of this compensation could have been postponed. It would have prevented many deaths among Iraqi children!

During 6 ½ years, only $ 43 billion were available to meet the needs of 23 million Iraqis — a pittance! Out of this amount only $28 billion (1) were actually utilized for this purpose. Micro-management and extreme bureaucratization of the OFFP by the UN Security Council and also the deliberate blocking by the US & UK of much needed supplies for the people of Iraq were main causes.

The UN humanitarian programme was not meant to work!

The end result: the per capita value/ day of humanitarian goods actually benefitting Iraqis amounted to 51 US cents — a shameful reality for which the US & UK Governments were largely responsible.

As of October 2012 Iraq has paid $ 38.7 billion in compensation to the three parties identified above. The rightful demand by Iraqis to-day that time has come to obtain in turn their reparations from abroad for war devastation, air, water and soil pollution, destruction of farmland, physical infrastructure, water, sanitation and electricity facilities to date has been ignored by the international community.

This constitutes an intolerable and unacceptable double standard.

In March 2003, at the end of the Government of Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s total debt burden was identified as between $ 50 to $ 80 billion. The 19 Paris Club members, mostly European, identify an Iraq debt to them of $38.9 billion. Iraq’s other creditors are primarily Arab (GCCC) countries.

Detractors of the evidence of willful destruction of Iraq’s heritage, its culture, the artifact pilferage; the gross violation of national and international law; planted dis- and mis-information; crime; brutality; disregard for fundamental human concerns and ethical standards, will either reject these accusations as preposterous, ideological and stupid or remain mute. Pitiful as this is they have no more to offer! In the name of democracy they insist that the infamous “bigger picture”, their bigger picture, justified the means.

They do not understand what democracy and humanness really entails. It is not about potato chips and coke but about human security and the opportunity to shape one’s life in freedom from want and freedom from fear.

Iraq, a major owner of global oil and gas, should have no problem in giving its people such a life. Instead Iraq has become a failing state vying with other disadvantaged countries such as Afghanistan, Somalia and, of course, the State of Palestine, for the crown of misery.

The overall impact of these elements on life in Iraq constitute an indescribable human drama. Perpetrators, however, will not be allowed to lean back for ever and assume that their crimes will simply disappear into the far horizon of nowhere.

Accountability will prevail

The efforts of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC) founded in 2005 by Tun Dr. Mahathir, Prime Minister of Malaysia from 1981-2003 are a step in that direction. The Commission has worked for many years to produce an impressive body of evidence from legal documents and victims testimonies. This material, carefully reviewed by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, allowed the Court to pronounce in November 2011 and in May 2012 that culpability exists at the highest levels of government in the United States and in the United Kingdom for war crimes and the crimes of torture. This can not possibly come as a surprise for George W. Bush and Anthony Blair!

The Tribunal’s verdict: the two leaders and their senior advisors had committed serious crimes against peace “in that they planned, prepared and invaded the sovereign state of Iraq in violation of international law and committed crimes of torture and war crimes, ignoring the Geneva Conventions and the UN torture law.” (2)

What one has seen can not be unseen! How much can a people take?

2013 must become the year during which these perpetrators will see an end to their impunity. Especially those who were instrumental in creating decades of Iraqi suffering. Due process must be for everyone, Iraqi and non-Iraqi; facing justice, however, is not just for those who lost!

The international public, as the ‘power from below’, will intensify its efforts during this tenth year after an illegal invasion into Iraq, to reassure the Iraqi people that they are not alone in their search for redress.

Hans-C. von Sponeck, Former UN Assistant Secretary General and UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq and aMember of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission

Notes

(1) During the years of US occupation of Iraq, the monthly cost of maintaining troops in Iraq amounted to an est. US $ 12 billion. In other words, what Iraqis had from the OFFP for survival during the entire 6 ½ years corresponded to less than 3 months of the cost of maintaining US troops in Iraq!

(2) Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal — Case 1 and Case 2: Judgements of 22 November 2011 and 11 May 2012 (ISBN 978-937-10817-1-6 and ISBN 978-967-10817-2-3)

John Brennan brings heavy baggage to his new job as CIA Director — legal as well as moral — arguably making it risky for him to travel to more than 150 countries that are party to the United Nations Convention Against Torture.New CIA Director John Brennan addresses officials at the Agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. (Photo credit: CIA)

It must be hard for Brennan to recognize that he cannot land in Europe, for example, without fear of being arrested and arraigned for kidnapping (also known as “extraordinary rendition”) and torture (now antiseptically called “EIT” for “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which, by the way, is a direct translation of verschaerfte Vernehmungright out of the Gestapo handbook).

For a freshly confirmed CIA Director it is de rigueur to pay an early call on European counterparts. I remember preparing a briefing book for that purpose just before a new CIA Director named George H. W. Bush took off for the UK, Germany and France in the early spring of 1976. Unfortunately for Brennan, there may be complications to enjoying April in Paris — like a possible knock on the door from a French prosecutor and the gendarmes.

Given Brennan’s role as a senior CIA official during President George W. Bush’s “dark side” days of waterboarding detainees, renditioning suspects to Mideast torture centers and making up intelligence to invade Iraq, Brennan’s advisers are sure to remind him that he may be in as much jeopardy of being arrested as former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

After leaving the Pentagon in late 2006, Rumsfeld had his own close call with Lady Justice. In October 2007, Rumsfeld was in an auditorium in Paris preparing to deliver a lecture when he learned that the Paris Prosecutor was mulling over what to do after being served a formal complaint against Rumsfeld for ordering and authorizing torture.

The charges against Rumsfeld were brought under the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture (CAT), ratified by both the United States and France. The complaint was brought in France under the concept of universal jurisdiction.

The criminal complaint stated that because the authorities in the United States and Iraq had failed to launch any independent investigation into the responsibility of Rumsfeld and other high-level U.S. officials for torture — despite a documented paper trail and government memos implicating them in direct as well as command responsibility for torture — it was the legal obligation of states such as France to take up the case. The complaint also noted that the U.S. had refused to join the International Criminal Court, which might have had more routine jurisdiction.

In an attempt to avoid a major diplomatic headache, U.S. embassy officers advised: “Run, Rummy, Run,” before the Paris authorities decided what to do. Rumsfeld went out a side door, slipped into the embassy, and then got out of Dodge tout suite.

Rumsfeld’s skedaddle from Paris thus spared him the possible humiliation that befell Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who had been head of Chile’s military dictatorship from 1973 to 1990. While on a trip to the United Kingdom in 1998, Pinochet was arrested on a Spanish judicial warrant and was held under house arrest until 2000. The Spanish judge cited the same principle of universal jurisdiction. Pinochet was freed only after the intervention of high-powered friends, including former President George H.W. Bush and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

That was only the first of several times when European judges applied that principle, declaring themselves competent to judge crimes committed by former heads of state, despite local amnesty laws. If former heads of state are vulnerable, it seemed to follow that former defense secretaries and other senior subordinates must be as well.

If the Rumsfeld precedent were not enough to make Brennan think twice about travel to Europe, he has surely been told of the criminal complaints lodged in Switzerland (also a CAT signatory) against George W. Bush in early 2011. When the former president learned of it, he decided not to take any chances and abruptly nixed longstanding plans to address a Jewish charity dinner in Geneva on Feb. 12, 2011.

The Goods on Brennan

Brennan’s checkered past has been an open secret. On Dec. 5, 2005, after finishing a stint as acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Brennan told Margaret Warner of the NewsHour that “rendition” (also known as kidnapping) is “an absolutely vital tool … producing intelligence that has saved lives.” (In his Feb. 7, 2013, testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on his nomination to be CIA Director, Brennan backed off the “saved lives” claim, since the committee had just completed its own comprehensive study disproving it.)

On the NewsHour, Brennan described rendition as “the practice or the process of rendering somebody from one place to another place. It is moving them, and the U.S. Government will frequently facilitate that movement from one country to another.”

Brennan’s co-panelist, another former CIA operations officer, objected to turning prisoners over to foreign intelligence services, insisting that, “It would be far better if the United States retained control of that terror suspect and did the interrogation itself.”

This drew a sharp rejoinder from Brennan: “Quite frankly I think it’s rather arrogant to think that we are the best in every case in terms of eliciting information from terror suspects.” Right. In the decades since World War II, many “friendly” intelligence services have acquired a lot more experience with verschaerfte Vernehmungthan the CIA, though it often served as the tutor.

(The term verschaerfte Vernehmung was not only coined by the Nazis, but the techniques were indistinguishable from those used during the presidency of George W. Bush, according to a 2007 article in the Atlantic. The major difference, so far, is that after WWII the torturers were punished as war crimes, with the penalty often death by hanging.)

NewsHour’s Warner asked Brennan if the U.S. employs rendition “because we want another country to do the dirty work?” Brennan replied: “It’s rather arrogant to think that we’re the only country that respects human rights.”

A comprehensive study just published by the Open Society Justice Initiative reveals that, under President George W. Bush, Brennan and his counter-terrorist team suborned the officials of 54 other countries to cooperate in the rendition program, providing help of various kinds, including transiting their land, airports or airspace, or accepting secret prisons in their countries.

It is no secret that the purpose of “rendition” is to move detainees secretly to countries with experience/expertise in “enhanced interrogation techniques” or to the infamous CIA “black sites” abroad where waterboarding and other abuses took place. Such activities violate the Convention Against Torture and, often, national laws.

Some Accountability

What is new is that some governments in both “old” and “new” Europe — a distinction that Donald Rumsfeld would make derisively against France and other parts of “old” Europe — are now showing a common commitment to justice by prosecuting former heads of their own intelligence services.

Italy’s former chief of military intelligence, Nicolo Pollari, just got ten years in prison for helping the CIA abduct Egyptian cleric Osama Hassan Mustafa Nasr (aka Abu Omar) from the streets of Milan in early 2003 and send him to Egypt for more “enhanced” interrogation.

More than two dozen Americans have been tried and convicted in absentia for this case of truly extraordinary rendition, in which they exhibited notoriously adolescent tradecraft. If any of them travel to Europe, they risk arrest. John Brennan should remember that highly embarrassing flap quite well, since it came on the eve of his appointment to head a newly created Terrorist Threat Integration Center.

And in “new” Europe, in January 2013, Zbigniew Siemiatkowski, former head of Poland’s secret service and former minister of internal affairs, was indicted for his role in cooperating with the CIA renditioners and torturers. Siemiatkowski facilitated CIA renditions and the establishment of a CIA “black prison” in Poland, where the U.S. arranged interrogation and torture of terrorist suspects snatched from their home countries.

It is no overstatement that for the first time since World War II, many foreign intelligence chiefs are likely to have very mixed reactions to being seen, even in Washington, with a freshly minted CIA Director with the heavy baggage that Brennan carries.

So where might these intelligence counterparts get together without too many risks. What about the Bahamas? It has signed CAT but has not yet ratified it. So, with adequate security forces deployed, there may be a measure of safety there. For the time being at least, Bahamas could offer one of the few feasible ways that Brennan would be able to schmooze with key foreign counterparts — perhaps by offering as a bonus a timeshare week there. A short flight for travelers from Washington, DC, Bahamas would have another cost-saving advantage in saving on jet fuel.

Things to Do at Home, Like Iran

Besides worries about arrest, Brennan has other compelling reasons to stay at home for a while. Iran’s nuclear program remains on the front burner as it has since early 2008 when the Director of National Intelligence revealed the National Intelligence Estimate completed in November 2007 concluding, unanimously and “with high confidence,” that Iran had stopped working on nuclear weaponization in 2003 and had not resumed that work — a judgment revalidated every year since by the DNI.

That assessment has not prevented neocons and their favorite media personalities from trying to make Iran’s nuclear program seem more menacing. On “Meet the Press” on Feb. 3, for example, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was the subject of attempted mousetrapping by NBC’s Chuck Todd, who clearly was hoping Panetta could be maneuvered into contradicting the NIE.

It was awkward for Panetta, but — to his credit — rather than apologize when Todd pointed his finger accusing him of believing “the Iranians were not pursuing nuclear weapons,” Panetta held firm under the goading. Finally, after conferring with co-panelist Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Panetta said, with some exasperation: “I — no, I can’t tell you because — I can’t tell you they’re in fact pursuing a weapon because that’s not what intelligence says we — we — we’re — they’re doing right now. …” (emphasis added)

John Brennan, when appearing before his Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing on Feb. 7, chose to deviate from the 2007 NIE by including the following in his prepared written testimony: “And regimes in Tehran and Pyongyang remain bent on pursuing nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missile delivery systems.” (emphasis added)

Never mind Brennan’s disingenuousness in conflating Iran with North Korea. The question is how could he diverge so markedly both from what Panetta said just four days before, as well as from the unanimous assessment of the entire U.S. intelligence community that Iran stopped working on a nuclear weapon in 2003 and has not resumed that work. In no way does that continuing assessment support his claim that Tehran remains “bent on pursuing nuclear weapons” and ICBMs to deliver them.

There are, of course, reasonable grounds to suspect that Iran might be seeking a capability that eventually would allow it to rapidly break out of Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) constraints on building a nuclear weapon. That, of course, is why U.S. intelligence is riveted on monitoring related activity in Iran, as are the UN inspectors in Iran.

But “bent on pursuing” ICBMs? Really? Iran has not flight-tested a ballistic missile with ranges in excess of its 2200-kilometer-range Sajjil MRBM. Nor has it launched a space rocket that might conceivably be a suitable model for an ICBM. Has Brennan found someone — perhaps an analyst left over from the notorious 2002 NIE on WMD in Iraq — to tell him the Iranians are testing ICBMs in their hardened underground sites?

I doubt that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who observed at close hand the concocting of fraudulent “intelligence” on Iraq, will cave in to the likes of Brennan “fixing” the intelligence on Iran. However, there is no word yet this year on when the DNI will present the annual worldwide threat briefing — traditionally given in sworn testimony to Congress in January or February.

So the battle is joined. Assuming Congress, in its wisdom, does not altogether cancel the worldwide threat briefing this year, and assuming I’m right about Clapper, Brennan has his work cut out for him in squaring that circle about how “bent” Iran seems to be on “pursuing nuclear weapons.”

A version of this article also appeared on Consortium News.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. During his career as a CIA analyst, he prepared and briefed the President’s Daily Brief and chaired National Intelligence Estimates. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

President Obama prepares to board Air Force 1. (AP Photo)Civil libertarians, human rights advocates and peace advocates should insist on a renewed congressional assertion of its power under the Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, to take part in declaring war. Among the many reasons for this reassertion is that social movements typically have greater influence over elected congressional representatives than over the more remote and secretive executive branch.

Historically, American presidents have “encroached on Congress’s war making responsibilities, leaving the legislative branch increasingly irrelevent,” according to an analysis by Bennett Ramberg, a former State Department analyst in the first Bush administration.

Recent hearings by the Senate Intelligence Committee on CIA director John Brennan’s authority and the House Judiciary Committee into drones are at least momentary signs that Congress may be ready to reclaim some of its powers. Statements by President Obama literally asking Congress to write “new legal architecture” to “rein in” his presidency and those of his successors, are clear indications that the growth of an Imperial Presidency may be limited. The bipartisan vote of nearly 300 House members against the administration’s launching of the six-month 2011 Libyan war is the most concrete example of legislative unease.

As Congress considers its options, it is crucial that the public be included in a rightful role. The public sends its sons and daughters to risk their lives in war, pays the taxes that fund those wars and accepts the burden of debt, the paring back of social programs and restrictions on civil liberties in the name of war. The public has a right to know, obtained through public debate and public elections, the rationale, the costs and the predicted outcomes of any military venture. James Madison, cited by Ramberg, gave the reason centuries ago: “Those who are to conduct a war cannot in the nature of things be proper or safe judges, whether a war ought to be commenced, continued or concluded.”

Section 4(b) of the War Powers Resolution mandates that “the President shall provide such other information as the Congress may request in the fulfillment of its constitutional responsibilities with respect to committing the Nation to war and to the use of United States Armed Forces abroad.” Yet only insistent congressional pressure has forced the Obama administration to disclose some of its internal legal memoranda concerning drones, apparently in exchange for senate approval of Brennan’s nomination. It continues to resist the spirit of Section 4(b).

Hopefully, the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) will take up the reform of war-making powers as a major priority. Already, one of the CPC’s co-chairs, Representative Keith Ellison, has expressed the need to reform and reverse the administration’s secret drone war. In the Senate, strong leadership on transparency has come from Senator Ron Wyden. Libertarian Republican senator Rand Paul is demanding to know whether the White House will unleash drone strikes on American citizens. Longtime activist groups like Code Pink suddenly are finding themselves in the center of a national conversation.

Three senators who voted for Brennan’s confirmation–Wyden, Mark Udall and Susan Collins–also issued a call on March 5 “to bring the American people into this debate and for Congress to consider ways to ensure that the president’s sweeping authorities are subject to appropriate limitations, oversight and safeguards.”

By most accounts, this fuss over the Imperial Rresidency wasn’t supposed to be happening. The drone wars were supposed to be cheap for the taxpayer, erase American military casualties and hammer the terrorists into peace negotiations. The assassination of Osama bin Ladin was supposed to be the turning point. But even with the wars being low-intensity and low-visibility, the “secrets” have remained in the public eye, especially the drone war.

From a peace movement perspective, pressure from anywhere for any steps that will complicate and eventually choke off the unfettered use of drones will be an improvement over the status quo.

From a peace movement perspective, pressure from anywhere for any steps that will complicate and eventually choke off the unfettered use of drones will be an improvement over the status quo. For some, like Ramberg, a reform of the 1973 War Powers Act is overdue. That resolution, which passed during an uproar against the Nixon presidency, actually conceded war-making power to the president for a two-month period before requiring congressional authorization. The original 1973 Senate version of the war-powers bill, before it was watered down, required congressional authorization except in the case of armed attack on the US or the necessity of immediate citizen evacuation. No president has ever signed the war powers legislation, on the grounds that it encroaches on the executive branch, although most presidents have voluntarily abided by its requirements.

Ramberg lists the US military actions undertaken after the War Powers Resolution “with minimal or no congressional consultation,” as: Mayaguez (1975), Iran hostage rescue action (1980), El Salvador (1981), Lebanon (1982), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), Panama (1989), Iraq (May 1991, 1993), Somalia (1993) Bosnia (1993-95), Haiti (1993, 2004) and Kosovo (1999), leaving out Sudan (1998) and the dubious authorizations for Iraq and Afghanistan.

The immediate issue ripe for attention is the drone policy, conducted especially in Pakistan by the CIA in utter secrecy, but also spreading through Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Mali.

Drone attacks clearly are acts of war as defined by the War Powers Resolution, although the WPR was written mainly to contain the deployment of American ground forces. The drone war rests more squarely on the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), the underlying legal rationale for the “global war on terrorism.”

The challenge of reform, as opposed to emergency tinkering, will require prolonged efforts to amend and clarify both the WPR and AUMF. Allowing any president a sixty-day period before seeking congressional authorization, as the WPR does, makes no sense in drone warfare. Instead, the president should be required to seek congressional permission if he wishes to target a clearly definable “enemy,” and be required to issue public guidelines, including necessary disclosure, governing the use of force he contemplates. That means:

First, Congress should establish a special inspector general, like the SIGUR created for Iraq and Afghanistan, to define, monitor and determine civilian casualties (“collateral damage”) from drone strikes. Currently that information is collected by the CIA, which has a conflict of interest, not to mention a curtain of secrecy.

Second, Congress will need to draft guidelines sharply narrowing–or even banning–the use of “signature strikes,” which permit drone attacks against targets profiled according to identity, such as young males of military age (which could be civilians, participants in a wedding or funeral, etc.).

The open window for “reining in” the president’s executive powers could close at any time.

Third, Congress or the courts will have to restore the open-ended concept of “imminent threat” to its traditional meaning, as an immediate operational threat aimed at American citizens, US territory or facilities. Under the elastic formulation employed by Brennan and others, the simple fact of ill-defined jihadists holding meetings anywhere on the planet is an “imminent threat” justifying military action. And according to the CIA interpretation, the threat is a “continuous” one, carrying over from war to war. But if every “potential” threat is defined as “imminent,” and all the threats are continuous, the CIA, Special Forces and American military will be spread thin indeed from the jungles of the Philippines to the ghettos of Britain.

The 2001 AUMF was written to justify the unofficial military doctrine of the “long war,” developed by counterinsurgency advisers to General David Petraeus and the State Department, like David Kilcullen, who project a conflict of fifty- to eighty-years’ duration against ill-defined Muslim fundamentalists. The designated targets of the AUMF are “Al Qaeda” and “associated” terrorist groups. That overly broad definition authorizes a global war in the shadows against forces whose actual links to Al Qaeda are difficult to discern and who may or may not be threats against the United States. If targeted by the United States, however, the likelihood of their becoming threats will only increase.

A recent example in a long list of these targets is Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the 40-year-old Algerian who may or may not have been killed last week in Chad. Belmokhtar allegedly carried out the January attack on an Algerian gas plant in which thirty-seven foreign hostages died. He did so in retaliation against France’s military intervention in its former colony of Mali, and against Algeria’s siding with Western counterterrorism policies. Otherwise, Belmokhtar was nicknamed the “Marlboro Man” because of his decades-long involvement in smuggling cigarettes. Ten years ago he led one faction of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, before breaking away to form his own force in the Sahel.

The question is whether the 2001 AUMF was written to cover a regional warlord like the “Marlboro Man” whose history is “smuggling, kidnapping and fighting for decades in the Sahel,” or whether it is being used as a blanket authorization for official kill lists and CIA drone assassins everywhere.

Finally, Congress should commission an independent body to evaluate whether the war on terrorism, including the drone attacks, has made Americans “safer.” The rise of the drones–as well as cyber-warfare–has a lulling effect on public opinion since American group operations are ending and casualties are down. But the 9/11 attacks took place unexpectedly as a result of burning grievances in the Muslim world. The official metrics of safety (e.g., how many jihadist “leaders” have been killed, whether insurgent attacks are up or down) ignore the incendiary hatred and desire for revenge building in Muslim communities suffering from remote drone attacks. A few empirical studies have shown a direct correlation between the rise of suicide bombers and US/Western occupation of Muslim lands, but the mass illusion of safety from terrorism tends to persist. A national conversation, including the forgotten ways in which we are made less safe by the war on terrorism, is sorely needed.

In perspective, the effort to prevent the restoration of an Imperial Presidency is long and politically difficult, something like reversing the mass incarceration policies and police buildups that followed the neoconservatives’ “war on gangs” campaign of the early 1990s, which the Clinton administration adopted. Many liberals in general, and Democrats in particular, cringe at being labeled “soft on crime” (or “soft on terrorism”). Some on the left, on the other hand, seem to think that the threat of terrorism is manufactured. However, if another attack should occur against the United States, the danger that a second Patriot Act will pass is real. Current US policies inadvertently provoke that possibility, with the drone strikes the equivalent of attacking a hornet’s nest. Therefore, the open window for “reining in” the president’s executive powers could close at any time. Hearings to reform of the 2001 AUMF and the 1973 WPR could not be more urgent.

© 2013 The Nation

Tom Hayden is a former state senator and leader of 1960’s peace, justice and environmental movements. He currently teaches at PitzerCollege in Los Angeles. His books include The Port Huron Statement [new edition], Street Wars and The Zapatista Reader.

Russian antimonopoly officials have launched an inquiry into Google for allegedly violating correspondence privacy in their advertising, Russian media reported. Google denied the charges, claiming that e-mails are reviewed by a computer, not a human.

Google’s webmail service Gmail will be investigated by Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) for alleged unfair business practices and violating laws concerning the privacy of email correspondences, Izvestia daily revealed on Tuesday. The investigation was launched after multiple appeals by Russian citizens who were targeted by contextual advertising generated by Google’s web service engine, FAS representatives said.

Google’s mind-reader

Contextually targeted advertising is nothing new — initially, this technology used keywords that users had entered into the search engine. Google’s search engine advertising (SEA) now reads users’ emails automatically to fish out valuable information on what exactly the person is currently preoccupied with, or searching for.

Google’s office in Moscow did not deny that Gmail analyses its users’ emails: “It is the advertisement that enables us to provide services for free. We constantly work to make the ads safe, relevant and unobtrusive,” Google spokesperson Alla Zabrovskaya said. “Surely, there is nobody reading your mails or your account to pick up ads for you. It is automatic assessment algorithm similar to spam filtration that chooses ads.”

Gmail violates Russian law?

Google’s ‘mind-reading’ capabilities could violate Russian laws concerning the secrecy of private correspondence. Article 138 of Russia’s Criminal Code promises fines or corrective labor for “violation of secrecy of correspondence, telephone conversations, postal, telegraph, or other messages of citizens.” The use of “special technical means for secret collection of information” implies a maximum $10,000 fine, or up to four month behind bars.

In this case, a license agreement between Gmail and its clients cannot serve as an excuse for such practices, as long as the emails are a part of a Russian citizen’s private life, explained Sergey Kopylov, head of the legal department at Russia’s Internet Technical Center.

According to the Russian Civil Code, a license agreement is kind of contract; as long as a contract does not obey existing legislation, it must be considered void without any legal consequences, Kopylov told Izvestia.

Google vs Microsoft

Russia is hardly the first to suspect that Google is spying on those who use its services. In 2010, many users expressed frustration at how Google placed ads around their personal communications in Gmail. Since then, the company has further mastered this advertising technique.

Google’s rivals couldn’t miss the opportunity to turn the controversial innovation against the Internet giant. In November 2012, Microsoft accused Google Shopping of delivering search results based not on relevance, but according to the amount the web stores pay to promote their goods. As an alternative, Microsoft proposed its own Bing Shopping search engine, a partner of eBay-owned Shopping.com.

On February 6, 2013, Microsoft launched an aggressive anti-Google marketing campaign with the website Scroogled.com, which lashes out at Google’s questionable business practices. “Think Google respects your privacy? Think again,” Scroogled.com says, pointing out that “Google goes through every Gmail that’s sent or received, looking for keywords so they can target Gmail users with paid ads.”

Microsoft’s campaign is part of its efforts to promote its own Outlook email service, which Microsoft maintains does not violate users’ privacy. Microsoft has also asked users to sign a petition to stop Google from going through personal emails to sell ads. The company’s counter-campaign came after the web giant announced its Gmail service reached 425 million active monthly users in June 2012, surpassing Hotmail to become the world’s largest email service.

‘Using Gmail is your own choice’

Russia’s leading web companies that own mail services prefer to keep a safe distance from anything that could be construed as inspecting personal emails.

Russian internet giant Yandex believes that such privacy intrusion only irritates clients. And Mail.ru Group President Aleksey Katkov told Izvestia that his company does not use information from personal correspondences “for a number of reasons… We believe that kind of targeting [clients] is less effective than our own technologies,” Katkov said.

Russian MP Ilya Kostunov, an IT security expert, does not doubt that Google has violated correspondence secrecy laws: “Well, Internet companies do collect information about the users — but they do not read personal e-mails. I’m going to address to FAS so that they clear out if this is deceptive trade practice infringing the interests of Russian internet companies.”

Kostunov told Izvestia he is preparing legislation requiring civil servants to use only government webmail services for official correspondence, instead of using privately owned addresses registered at Gmail, Yandex or Mail.ru.

“I’d like to see inviolability of correspondence guaranteed by the state instead of Google,” he told Izvestia.

Kaspersky Lab Co-Founder and Director General of InfoWatch Natalya Kasperskaya also does not doubt that Google has broken the law, but explained that using Gmail is voluntary: “[Google’s Gmail] is free for anybody. Don’t like it — don’t use it. But if you do use it — be ready to be targeted with context ads. Your personal data is going to be combined with data from other Google services and analyzed. [Google Maps] will suggest your whereabouts. The photos of you and your relatives will be found at Picasa [Google’s photo hosting]. Your friends and acquaintances will be tracked via Google+ [social network], your preferences can be tracked by your web inquiries. The number of your credit card will be known when you pay on Android market. The more Google services you use — the less privacy you have left.”

• Cardinals head to conclave to elect pope for troubled Church (Reuters)
• Hyperinflation ‘Unthinkable’ Even With Bold Easing: Abe (Nikkei)
• Ryan Plan Revives ’12 Election Issues (WSJ)
• Republicans to unveil $4.6tn of cuts (FT) – Obama set to dismiss Ryan plan to balance budget within decade
• Italy 1-yr debt costs highest since Dec after downgrade (Reuters)
• CIA Ramps Up Role in Iraq (WSJ)
• Hollande Hostility Fuels Charm Offensive to Show He’s No Sarkozy (BBG)
• SEC testing customized punishments (Reuters)
• Judge Cans Soda Ban (WSJ)
• Hungary Lawmakers Rebuff EU, U.S. (WSJ)
• Even Berlusconi Can’t Slow Bulls Boosting Euro View (BBG) – luckily the consensus is never wrong
• Funding for Lending ‘put on steroids’ (FT)
• Investigators Narrow Focus in Dreamliner Probe (WSJ)
• With new group, Obama team seeks answer to Karl Rove (Reuters)
• Boston Booms as Workers Say No to Suburbs (BBG)

Overnight Media Digest

WSJ

* Illinois settled Securities and Exchange Commission civil-fraud charges that the state misled municipal-bond investors by failing to adequately disclose the risks of its underfunded pension system.

* Lawmakers grilling Mary Jo White, President Barack Obama’s nominee for chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, on Tuesday will have to weigh two seemingly contradictory versions of the attorney.

* U.S. aviation safety investigators examining Boeing Co’s 787 Dreamliner increasingly are focusing on manufacturing or design problems with the batteries as possible causes of overheating rather than on other parts of the jet’s electrical system, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board said on Monday.

* Starr International Co, run by the former chief executive of American International Group Inc, won the right to pursue as a class action its case against the U.S. government, alleging that elements of AIG’s financial-crisis bailout package were unconstitutional.

* A crisis of confidence in the nuclear-power industry has trickled down to Namibia, where uranium accounts for 12 percent of exports. But uranium prices are down 70 percent over the past six years.

* General Motors Co is in the process of changing advertising agencies of its Cadillac brand. Advertising and marketing work to support Cadillac, valued at about $250 million, will be moved to longtime Michigan advertising agency Campbell Ewald, according to three people briefed on the matter.

* The monopoly powers of Mexico’s telephone giant, América Móvil SAB de CV and leading broadcaster Grupo Televisa SAB, are coming under fire with a broad set of new laws that aim to open up the telecommunications and television businesses to competition.

* Many small U.S. banks are feeling a financial pinch from the government’s efforts to punish executives and directors of banks that collapsed during the height of the financial crisis.

* KKR & Co LP is considering teaming with other private equity firms to pursue biotech firm Life Technologies Corp, according to people familiar with the matter, in the latest sign that buyout shops are still willing to form “clubs” if they covet a large target.

* VeriFone Systems Inc Chief Executive Douglas Bergeron is stepping down after a dozen years at the helm of the card-payment systems maker. The company said it will hire an executive-search firm to find a successor, with Chairman Richard McGinn serving as CEO on an interim basis.

FT

Dell Inc has agreed to give Carl Icahn a closer look at its books less than a week after the activist investor joined a growing chorus of opposition to founder Michael Dell’s plan to take the world’s No. 3 personal computer maker private.

Private equity firms are looking to buy the UK property business of Germany’s second-biggest lender, Commerzbank AG, in a potential 5 billion pound ($7.45 billion) deal.

UK lender LLoyds Banking Group plans to sell 20 percent of its stake in wealth manager St James’s Place

Alibaba Group has chosen Jonathan Lu, its Chief Data Officer who has more than a decade of experience in executive roles, to lead China’s largest e-commerce company as it prepares to launch an initial public offering.

Italy’s central bank has told some of the country’s biggest banks to increase their bad loan provisions by an estimated 21 billion euros ($27.33 billion) amid deepening of a nearly two-year old recession.

Billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson is exploring moving to Puerto Rico from New York to lower his tax bill.

Richard Joseph, a former futures trader, was convicted of six counts of insider trading, leaking information from the print room at JPMorgan Cazenove. Joseph placed spread bets with CMC Markets ahead of a series of deals in 2007 and 2008.

Mexico is looking to overhaul its telecom industry by introducing sweeping proposals that will increase competition and limit the control of telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim and broadcasting giant Televisa.

NYT

* For the second time in history, federal regulators have accused an American state of securities fraud, finding that Illinois misled investors about the condition of its public pension system from 2005 to 2009.

* A state court judge invalidated New York City’s new restrictions on sweetened beverages on Monday, a day before they were set to take effect, saying the rules were “arbitrary and capricious.”

* Britain, unlike other economic powers, is responding to the financial crisis by creating two new agencies, one to oversee institutions and another to watch for market abuses.

* In advance of a summit meeting of European Union leaders on Thursday in Brussels, the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, called on the bloc’s 17 members to stay the course on austerity.

* Intrade, the online betting site, announced late on Sunday that it had halted trading and frozen customer accounts after the discovery of potential financial irregularities.

* Oppenheimer & Co will pay nearly $3 million to settle accusations by federal and state regulators that it misled investors about the performance of one of its private equity funds, in a case that signals stepped-up scrutiny of the buyout industry and how it values its holdings.

* Dell Inc has agreed to open its books to the activist investor Carl Icahn, signaling a possible truce on one front in the battle over the computer maker’s proposed $24.4 billion buyout.

* In prepared testimony for her nomination hearing, Mary Jo White placed a premium on unearthing financial fraud, as she works to deflect concerns from lawmakers who question her ability to regulate banks she recently defended.

* British authorities have opened an investigation into Hewlett-Packard Co’s claims that it was duped when it bought the business software maker Autonomy, according to regulatory documents filed on Monday.

Canada

THE GLOBE AND MAIL

* Ottawa and the Northwest Territories have reached a deal to hand the territory province-like power over its land, a move aimed at empowering local leaders to unlock more of their resource riches.

* Less than a third of the almost 300,000 members and supporters who signed up to choose the Liberal party’s next leader have so far registered to vote, prompting front-runner Justin Trudeau’s camp to complain about a host of technical glitches and request a one-week extension on registration.

* The federal government is facing questions over the legitimacy of its centerpiece for aboriginal education reform. Manitoba chiefs rejected the Harper government’s vision for aboriginal education on Monday, claiming Ottawa is trying to “bypass” first nations chiefs and shirk its treaty responsibilities.

Reports in the business section:

* Chrysler Canada is jumping back into leasing for the first time since 2008, raising the competitive stakes another notch in an auto market already awash with financing and leasing incentives.

* AT&T Inc will begin selling BlackBerry’s new BlackBerry Z10 smartphone next week, marking the smartphone’s debut in a crucial U.S. market that has largely shunned the company’s devices in recent years.

* Molson Coors Brewing Co’s Canadian arm sold far less Miller Genuine Draft beer in the country over the past three years than the targets called for under its agreement with Miller Brewing Co. That under-performance – spelled out in court filings – is at the crux of a dispute that has erupted between the two companies, as Miller tries to cancel its Canadian licensing agreement with Molson.

NATIONAL POST

* The federal government, which has come under fire over tougher employment insurance (EI) rules, is sweetening benefits for parents. It says it will allow individuals receiving parental benefits through EI to qualify for sickness benefits as well, starting March 24.

* The latest annual report on federal ad spending shows Ottawa shelled out C$78.5 million ($76.5 million) in 2011-12 telling Canadians about everything from the switch to digital TV and the War of 1812, to elder abuse and anti-drug messaging. The Harper government spent C$21 million on major advertising campaigns under its Economic Action Plan brand.

* Despite activist claims that the city’s homeless are dying due to a lack of shelter space, there is no shelter bed shortage in Toronto, according to an internal report prepared for city council.

FINANCIAL POST

* After years of growth, economists say the real estate boom is over and predict Canadian housing prices to flatline over the next decade. A TD Economics study, Long-Run Rate of Return for Canadian Home Prices, predicts a “string of lackluster performances” over the next few years.

* Alamos Gold Inc is going on the offensive in the takeover battle for Aurizon Mines Ltd, asking a securities regulator to reject both a break fee and poison pill that it believes are highly irregular.

* Travel tour operator Transat AT Inc said it has managed to wrest concessions from its flight attendants as the company continues its campaign to be more cost competitive. The bulk of the expected C$9 million in annual savings will come from Transat lowering the amount of flight attendants on its Airbus A330s to 10 from 11, and the move will also support a potential shift to a fleet of Boeing Co’s 737s.

China

SECURITIES TIMES

— Huatai Securities said on Tuesday its board of directors had sanctioned the issuance of no more than 10 billion yuan of corporate bonds on the Shanghai Stock Exchange to supplement operating funds.

— The Shanghai securities regulator said five foreign banks, including Standard Chartered, have applied for licences to distribute mutual fund products in China.

CHINA SECURITIES JOURNAL

— The Shanghai stock exchange is looking to invest more in regional stock exchanges to support smaller firms in China, its director general said on Monday.

CHINA DAILY

— China’s first special envoy for Asian affairs will have a focus on Myanmar, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday. There has been tension between China and its southern neighbour over conflict in Myanmar, close to the Chinese border.

— Roughly one in ten of the 5,000 proposals submitted to China’s top political advisory body since March 3 are related to environmental issues, said Lu Fuhe, a top national political advisor.

SHANGHAI DAILY

— French firm Carrefour, the world’s number two retailer, has implemented a system to allow shoppers to trace the origin of fruit and vegetables in their Chinese stores in Shanghai, a reflection of the recent pressure in China over food safety.

CHINA BUSINESS NEWS

— The number of dead pigs found in the Huangpu River, one of Shanghai’s key water sources, is now estimated to have increased to 2,800.

Fly On The Wall 7:00 AM Market Snapshot

ANALYST RESEARCH

Upgrades

Axiall (AXLL) upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Citigroup
Dick’s Sporting (DKS) upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at BMO Capital
Dick’s Sporting (DKS) upgraded to Conviction Buy from Buy at Goldman
Intercontinental Hotels (IHG) upgraded to Neutral from Sell at UBS
Mosaic (MOS) upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at BMO Capital
Sherwin-Williams (SHW) upgraded to Neutral from Underperform at Credit Suisse
Vantiv (VNTV) upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Raymond James
Vitamin Shoppe (VSI) upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Goldman

Downgrades

CVS Caremark (CVS) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Goldman
EverBank Financial (EVER) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Sterne Agee
RadioShack (RSH) downgraded to Sell from Neutral at Goldman
Red Hat (RHT) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Citigroup

Initiations

Fifth & Pacific (FNP) initiated with a Buy at Brean Capital
Rush Enterprises (RUSHA) initiated with a Market Perform at BMO Capital
TJX (TJX) initiated with an Overweight at Barclays
Wabash (WNC) initiated with an Outperform at BMO Capital
WABCO (WBC) initiated with an Outperform at BMO Capital
Xoom (XOOM) initiated with an Outperform at RW Baird
Xoom (XOOM) initiated with an Overweight at Barclays

HOT STOCKS

SEC charged Illinois for misleading pension disclosures
Treasury Department sold $489.9M of GM (GM) common stock in February
HP (HPQ) disclosed U.K Serious Fraud Office opened investigation related to Autonomy
KKR (KKR) has considered teaming to bid for Life Technologies (LIFE), and Thermo Fisher (TMO) and Danaher (DHR) also weigh bids for Life, valued at $12.5B with debt, DJ reports
Diamond Foods (DMND) sees second half sales down more than first half
Rio Tinto (RIO) slowed Guinea iron ore investment, to cut staff, Reuters reports
Said Guinea iron ore project not frozen, to work with government on funding, Bloomberg reports
Hill International (HIL) sees FY13 consulting fee revenue $500M-$520M
Cadence Design (CDNS) acquired Tensilica for $380M in cash
Pall Corp (PLL) signed 30 year agreement to supply Embraer (ERJ) with KC-390 manifolds
MRC Global (MRC), NAWAH entered into alliance to open distribution facility in Iraq
Lakeland Industries (LAKE) reported $11.5M goodwill impairment charge in Brazil

EARNINGS

Companies that beat consensus earnings expectations last night and today include:
Costco (COST), BioScrip (BIOS), Stewart Enterprises (STEI), XenoPort (XNPT), Heckmann (HEK)

Companies that missed consensus earnings expectations include:
Stage Stores (SSI), FuelCell (FCEL), Chiquita Brands (CQB), Hill International (HIL), Casey’s General Stores (CASY), Urban Outfitters (URBN)

Companies that matched consensus earnings expectations include:
Douglas Dynamics (PLOW), Flow International (FLOW), Manitex (MNTX)

NEWSPAPERS/WEBSITES

• Multinationals (GE, HPQ, CAT, HON) have been increasing their footprint in Asia for years as they have moved from selling into the region to also investing here. But the transformation is gaining critical mass as Western companies’ market-share leads in Asia over cash-flush local competitors narrow, forcing Western firms to invest more, tailor their products and transfer top executives to Asia, the Wall Street Journal reports
• Rising fuel prices have GM (GM) and Chrysler Group (FIATY) taking another look at selling smaller pickup trucks–vehicles that the Detroit Three automakers (F) abandoned in the U.S. amid weak demand. Both see the vehicles helping them to hit higher fuel-economy targets and to regain market share from Toyota (TM), the current top-selling small hauler., the Wall Street Journal reports
• Two groups of AIG (AIG) shareholders won class-action status from a federal judge on in a $25B lawsuit by former CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg over alleged losses caused by the U.S. government’s bailout of the insurer, Reuters reports
• As the jobs market showing signs of healing, economists think they know what’s next for monetary policy: the Fed will at some point reduce its monthly bond purchases, and soon after, end them altogether. But perhaps they shouldn’t be so sure, Reuters reports
• Shares of companies that own and operate their truck fleets (WERN, KNX, SWFT, HTLD) are outperforming those that act as brokers for trucking services, driven by stronger U.S. freight activity, Bloomberg reports
• The Treasury Department, exiting its ownership stake in GM (GM), accelerated its sell- down of the automaker in February, saying it received $489.9M in proceeds from the sale of common shares, Bloomberg reports

SYNDICATE

Emeritus (ESC) announces 7.97M share secondary offering by holders
Government Properties (GOV) 9.95M share Spot Secondary priced at $25.20
HeartWare (HTWR) announces public offering of 1.5M shares of common stock
Lexington Realty (LXP) files to sell 15M shares of common stock
Salesforce.com (CRM) announces proposed $1B offering of convertible senior notes
Sapiens (SPNS) files to sell $40M of common stock, 6M shares for holders
Sun Communities (SUI) announces 4.5M share common stock offering
U.S. Silica (SLCA) announces 8.5M share secondary offering by stockholder
Yandex (YNDX) announces 24.25M Class A ordinary shares offering by holders

Washington is obsessed with the deficit, and fixated on austerity. Boehner, McConnell and a chorus of know-nothing fear-mongers raise the issues of debt and deficits as if they were an imminent and substantial danger. Obama is sabotaging the social safety net in order to get a “grand bargain” so we can shrink the deficit. The press can talk about nothing else. As a nation, we’re being held hostage to a series of “hold-our-breath-until-we-turn-blue” ultimatums, all because of the deficit.What children can understand, but many politicians refuse to acknowledge…

Let’s be clear: the deficit is not our biggest problem right now. Climate change is. It isn’t even our biggest economic problem. A stagnating economy is. And–as the majority of economists have pointed out, and as the European experience clearly shows–austerity will only make our economy worse.

Yes, in a decade or so, if we do nothing, medical and retirement obligations will cause deficits to increase. But right now, the deficit is shrinking, and it is projected to keep shrinking until then.

Putting the long-term deficit ahead of the short-term economic stagnation we are experiencing is like putting money into a retirement account you won’t need for twenty years instead of fixing a massive hole in the roof of your house that’s letting in the rain. In short, it’s stupid.

Basically there are two ways to tackle the deficit. Grow our way out of it; or shrink our way out of it. In Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland we’re seeing the fruits of the “shrink your way out” strategy. Massive unemployment, decreased services, an overall smaller economy and at least for the short term, little or no effect on deficits due to reduced revenues.

On the other hand, here in the US, even with the modest economic gains we’ve experienced since Bush’s Great Recession, we are growing our way out of it.

Given this evidence, it is one of the great mysteries of the universe that Washington is obsessed with austerity. Well, actually, it isn’t. Republicans have been singing lead soprano in a bad musical written by self-interested fat cats and plutocrats like Pete Peterson, and Democrats and the press have been their willing castrato chorus for going on 30 years now. The real objective of the whole show? Killing off the remains of the New Deal and Great Society programs they love to hate.

But let’s get back to the real problems we face: a stagnating economy, and a climate in crisis. What if we could solve both with the same set of policies?

Well, we can.

To mitigate the worse effects of climate change we need massive investments in new energy and transportation infrastructure, a complete overhaul of our agriculture system, and dramatic improvements in the efficiency of our existing and new building stock. This level of investment would, in turn, kick start an economic boom, just as the transition to fossil fuels did more than a century ago.

Here’s why.

First, mature industries like oil development and coal mining have done what every smart industry does — they’ve cut labor wherever they can, because labor is one of the most expensive aspects of production. That’s the main reason the number of jobs per ton of coal produced, for example, has plummeted over time. In fact, a variety of studies prove that clean energy investments produce more jobs per dollar spent and megawatt produced than investments in fossil fuels do. So investing in fossil fuel infrastructure is, on net, a job killer when viewed across the entire economy.

What’s this got to do with the deficit? To understand this, you have to understand why the economy tanked. Popular versions of this story attribute it to the collapse in housing prices and the cascading effect this had on consumers and securities. And while that’s true, fundamentally the real-estate collapse was only a symptom.

The real problem was that for most of America, wages had been stagnant for 30 years. As a result, consumers were bankrolling their lifestyle with debt and using the transitory and self-reinforcing equity bubble in real estate as an ATM. So, the root problems were flat wages and an over-leveraged market, both caused by deregulation.

And why were wages flat? Laissez faire policies favoring corporate interests over people’s interests. Things like anti-union laws, frozen minimum wages, tax subventions that encouraged the export of jobs to low-wage countries … the list is long and the tale of greed it tells, sad.

Trickle down was the ultimate dirty trick. An economy grows because consumers demand products. But with over 40% of our national wealth owned by only 1% of the population, and 80% of the people owning just 7% of the wealth, there weren’t enough consumers to fuel our economy. That was a key cause of our economic collapse in 2008; it’s the reason our economy is stagnating now; and it’s the reason austerity and trickle down won’t work. It’s the reason Obama’s acceptance of deficits as our most pressing problem and his search for a “Grand Bargain” is stupid economics, morally bankrupt and bad politics to boot.

But what if the demand for jobs — fueled by a complete overhaul of our economy to make it less carbon intensive and less destructive to the climate — increased dramatically? Well, then workers would have more leverage; wages would go up; demand for goods, products and services would go up; the economy would boom; tax revenues would go up; and the deficit would go down.

Oh, and by the way, we might just save civilization, as we know it.

John Atcheson is author of the novel, A Being Darkly Wise, an eco-thriller and Book One of a Trilogy centered on global warming. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the San Jose Mercury News and other major newspapers. Atcheson’s book reviews are featured on Climateprogess.org.

President Obama called for a modest raise in the federal minimum wage to $9 in his State of the Union Address, and several Democratic legislators have upped his bid with a proposed increase to $10.10.Prevailing wage laws, which protect local construction sector workers from private sector undercutting, are the kind of legislation that ALEC-affiliated state legislation would dismantle. (Photo: Rubber Dragon / Flickr / Creative Commons)

But an insidious effort to lower the wage floor is already underway much closer to the ground–in the state legislatures where right-wing lobbyists have been greasing the skids for years for an onslaught of anti-worker policies.

An extensive analysis recently published by labor advocacy organization the National Employment Law Project tracks more than 100 bills introduced in 31 states since January 2011 that “aim to repeal or weaken core wage standards at the state or local level.” Each bears the fingerprint of notorious super-lobbying organization the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which acts as a forum for “private sector leaders” to advise public officials. Most of the anti-worker bills were proposed by lawmakers directly linked to ALEC and include language that echoes that of “model legislation” developed by ALEC. Among the proposals are measures to undercut minimum wages for teenage workers, restrict overtime pay and repeal or ban local laws to improve working conditions.

ALEC has been called out by activists for pushing legislation that advances a classic right-wing agenda, from school privatization to rolling back healthcare reform. But the “wage suppression” tactics are a particularly callous attempt by ALEC-affiliated legislators to feed corporate profits by starving workers.

The wage-suppression laws are the latest strike in a war of attrition waged by ALEC and “private sector leaders” (as the organization calls them) against labor and workplace rights, aimed at forcing low-wage workers into even deeper economic insecurity.

While efforts to pass pro-worker policies in Washington have met with resistance, ALEC-sponsored bills seek to outlaw protections for workers at the state and local level, such as living wage ordinances and paid leave mandates. In several states, including Arizona, Connecticut, Maryland and Michigan, lawmakers have introduced ALEC-associated legislation to preempt prevailing wage laws, which ensure workers receive relatively fair wages in government-contracted work, including the public infrastructure projects that fuel local construction sectors.

NELP points out that only a minority of these bills have actually been enacted, but the sheer volume of anti-worker legislative proposals is nonetheless alarming at a time when the labor movement, which has traditionally struggled to beat back pro-corporate legislation, is weaker than ever. 

The ALEC-inspired bills to weaken state minimum wage laws strike directly at state’s efforts to lift workers above the absurdly low federal minimum of $7.25 an hour. Some states have set base wages significantly higher than the federal minimum–like Vermont’s minimum hourly wage of $8.60, adjusted automatically to keep pace with the cost of living.

Noting that conservatives will hold majority control of most state houses this year, NELP analyst Jack Temple says, “Since legislation to raise the federal minimum wage usually depends on momentum from the states, bills like these that weaken or repeal wage standards at the state level serve to undercut the momentum needed to pass national legislation in Congress.”

The measures to prevent local officials from raising the bar for workers betrays ALEC’s underlying agenda. Though the organization purports to champion the “rights” of local authorities to act independently of “big government,” NELP reports, it’s really more about emancipating big business from regulation:

Despite ALEC’s putative support for limited government and local sovereignty, living wage preemption proposals would establish state-wide mandates that severely restrict the freedom that city governments have to set standards for businesses that receive public support.

According to Temple, with so many wage-suppression bills clogging state legislatures, even if many do not pass:

The significance of these bills for advocates at the state level concerns the sheer amount of energy and time that must be spent fighting back bills like these, which drains the time and resources that could otherwise be dedicated to improving wage standards rather than just protecting the laws already on the books.

A bill creeping through the Florida legislature seems poised to undercut emerging efforts to improve workers’ lives. HB 655 would ban towns and cities from taking local initiatives to raise wages and give workers paid leave time, thus blocking key policies that could improve the lives of workers surviving on the state’s threadbare minimum wage of $7.79 (about a third of what a single parent of two would need to earn a decent living). On the heels of a recent campaign, led by local labor groups, to establish paid sick days in Miami-Dade County, the bill would effectively block local officials from granting workers the basic protection of not having to lose wages for calling in sick.

Florida is just one battleground in a nationwide movement to improve protections and wage standards for the working poor, as labor advocates push for raises in state and federal minimum wages in tandem with the White House’s proposal. But NELP’s report reveals how groups like ALEC have already gotten a head start in our state legislatures. 

Without strong unions or even an adequate social safety net, minimum wage laws are the last line of defense between low-wage workers and abject poverty. So it makes sense that ALEC is now driving to pull the floor from under them; they might as well kick them when they’re down.

When we first reported on China’s “hogwash” yesterday, the number of floating pigs in Shanghai’s water supplying Huangpu River was a “modest” 1200. It has since tripled to 3300. From SCMP: “The agriculture and environmental protection departments in Shanghai’s Songjiang district have pulled more than 3,300 dead pigs out of the Huangpu River, which flows through the municipality, in the past week.” What is worse is that at least one pig-related virus has been found in a water sample: “Porcine circovirus, a common hog disease that is not known to be infectious to humans, was found in a sample taken from the water, Shanghai’s animal disease control department was quoted as saying by eastday.com a major Shanghai news portal.” The good news is that tests by the Shanghai Animal Disease Prevention and Control Centre on five sets of internal organs taken from the dead pigs has ruled out five other diseases including foot-and-mouth, hog cholera and blue-ear. Of course, this is China, whose disclosure record is second only to Japan, where as a reminder the government said the radiation level was under control days after the Fukushima explosion, even as the reality was far grimmer.

More from SCMP:

The website quoted local water and environmental authorities as saying tests of water samples collected from six sites on the river showed that the poor water quality on the Songjiang district section of the Huangpu, a source of drinking water for Shanghai, was similar to the same period last year.

However, it said tap water from water suppliers in Songjiang and several neighbouring districts was in line with national standards.

According to the dead pigs’ ear labels, most of them floated down the river from Jiaxing, Zhejiang. Some were also from Pinghu in Zhejiang or from neighbouring Jiangsu province, xinmin.cn quoted a staff member at the Songjiang District Agricultural Commission as saying.

China News Service quoted an official from Zhejiang’s provincial agricultural department as saying that most of the dead pigs were young and they had died at least a month ago. He said that instead of dying from illness, most had died due to cold weather, even though average temperatures in Jiaxing in winter are above zero degrees Celsius.

The district government has asked for help from the municipal government for centralised treatmeant of the carcasses because there were too many for it to handle, the website said.

The Jiaxing Daily, the Communist Party’s newspaper in Jiaxing, said the casual disposal of dead pigs was common in the Zhejiang city.

A report in the newspaper on Monday of last week said it had received many complaints from readers about dead pigs.

Expect to read some more about this dead pig onslaught, before the local media quietly but forecfully is told to end all coverage of this latest food-related scandal.

Context: As yet there are no context links for this item.

Transcript

JESSICA DESVARIEUX, PRODUCER, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Jessica Desvarieux in Baltimore. And now it’s time for our weekly Bill Black report.

Bill Black is an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri—Kansas City. He’s a white-collar criminologist and former financial regulator. He is the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One. And he’s a regular contributor to The Real News. Welcome, Bill.BILL BLACK, ASSOC. PROF. ECONOMICS AND LAW, UMKC: Thank you.DESVARIEUX: So, Bill, what do you have for us this week?BLACK: I have report from the absolute silly season. So this is the complete death of logic and sense by pretty much everybody involved who are the serious people in Washington, D.C., who seem determined to screw up our economy royally. So here, to review the bidding, this is what we’ve got. We have the Republicans, and the Republicans hate everything European. Everything European is as�you know, it’s a laugh line, it’s a derisive line and such, except austerity. So they take the one policy that everybody can see has produced a disaster in Europe, thrown the Eurozone back into recession, and is potentially even going to tear the European Union apart, is going to cause government after government to fall, and they say, that’s the policy we need in the United States, we need to emulate Europe, and with no discussion that maybe that’s insane. So that’s the Republican version of insanity. Then we have the White House version of insanity. And the White House version of insanity is: austerity bad–would cause the United States to go back into recession, and therefore sequester terrible–not only forces us back into recession, but causes us to cut all kinds of great programs. So what do we see out of the White House? We have the Conyers bill. And Representative Conyers has this very intelligent bill. It is the most wonderful thing in Washington, D.C. It is literally one sentence. And the bill says: the sequester is repealed. Right? And they will not–the administration will not support this. And this is what I’ve been talking about. This really is smoking out the true intentions of the White House. And what you’re seeing time after time, now expressly, is that the president wants to cut the safety net, wants to cut Social Security, wants to cut Medicare, wants to cut public programs. Indeed, he wants to cut public programs in comparison to raising taxes at a ratio of two to one–in other words, $2 of spending cuts for every increase of $1 in taxes. But all of that’s insane. We don’t want to cut spending. We don’t want to net increase taxes now. That’s how you throw millions of people out of work. Meanwhile, we get almost complete silence about the real crisis in America, which is an employment crisis, where we have well over 10�million people who want to work full time, who are able to work full time, but we don’t provide them with any work.DESVARIEUX: Bill, so how is this playing out in mainstream media? Specifically, MSNBC, some people call it, you know, the right hand of the White House. How are they playing this whole sequestration?BLACK: Well, pretty clearly in the nighttime ones it is just exceptionally pro this administration, whether or not it makes any sense. So MSNBC is simultaneously saying all these things. One, it’s saying: sequestration disastrous, austerity disastrous. And support the president; he wants a balanced package. What is that a balanced package of? It’s a balanced package of austerity. It’s a balanced package of austerity plus cuts to the safety net, which, you know, 15�minutes ago, in media terms, MSNBC was railing against, I think quite appropriately and such. So it is the silly season everywhere you look. And Dean Baker has a spectacular column that people should read that basically says this is because the president simply will not tell the truth to the American people. The truth to the American people is, if anything, the deficit is too small. We’ve been doing one measure of austerity after another since mid 2011. And you can see what’s happened to the recovery in jobs. It has strangled the recovery. It’s time to stop shooting ourself in the foot and above. But right now that’s not where we’re headed. So, you know, I will channel my mother’s side of the family, the Irish side, and, you know, wish everyone an early St.�Patrick’s Day. It is, again, the most important holiday of the year.DESVARIEUX: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

End

DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

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Go offshore young man and avoid paying taxes. Plunder at will in those foreign lands, and if you get in trouble, Uncle Sam will come rushing to your assistance, diplomatically, financially and militarily, even if you have managed to avoid paying for those government services. Just pretend you’re a multinational corporation.

That’s the honest instruction for business success provided by 60 of the largest U.S. corporations that, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis, “parked a total of $166 billion offshore last year” shielding more than 40 percent of their profits from U.S. taxes. They all do it, including Microsoft, GE and pharmaceutical giant Abbott Laboratories. Many, like GE, are so good at it that they have avoided taxes altogether in some recent years. 

But they all still expect Uncle Sam to come to their aid with military firepower in case the natives abroad get restless and nationalize their company’s assets. We still have a blockade against Cuba because Fidel Castro more than a half century ago dared seize an American-owned telephone company. During that same period, we have consistently intervened to maintain the lock of U.S. corporations on the world’s resources, continuing to the present task of making Iraq and Libya safe for our oil companies. 

America’s multinational corporations still need the Navy to protect shipping lanes and the Commerce Department to safeguard U.S. copyrights. They also expect the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department to intervene to provide bailouts and cheap money when the corporate financial swindlers get into trouble, like GE, which almost went aground when its GE Capital financial wing got caught in the great banking meltdown. 

They want a huge U.S. government to finance scientific breakthroughs, educate the future workforce, sustain the infrastructure and provide for law and order on the home front, but they just don’t feel they should have to pay for a system of governance, even though it primarily serves their corporate interests. The U.S. government exists primarily to make the world safe for multinational corporations, but those firms feel no obligation to pay for that protection in return.

Think of that perfectly legal and widespread racket when you go to pay your taxes in the next weeks, and consider that you have to make up the gap left by the big boys’ antics. Also, when you contemplate the painful cuts coming because of the sequester that undoubtedly will further destabilize the economy, remember that, as the Wall Street Journal estimated, the tax savings of just 19 of those companies would more than cover the $85 billion in spending reductions triggered by the congressional budget impasse.

The most skilled at this con game are the health care and technology companies, which, as a Senate investigation last year revealed, have become quite expert at shifting marketing rights and patents offshore to low-tax countries. Microsoft boosted its foreign holdings by $16 billion last year, and by the end of the company’s fiscal year on June 30, 2012, had $60.8 billion stashed internationally. Through creative accounting, Microsoft was able to claim that only 7 percent of its pretax profit last year was domestically generated.

Oracle increased its foreign holdings by one-third, including new subsidiaries in low-tax Ireland, and thereby was able to add a cool $272 million to the company’s bottom line by avoiding U.S. taxes. Abbott estimates that it saved $1.6 billion in U.S. taxes through its operations in more than a dozen countries. By moving $8.1 billion of its profits overseas, Abbott was able to claim a pretax loss on its U.S. operations. Johnson & Johnson, another health industry giant, has almost all of its cash–$14.8 billion out of $14.9 billion–abroad, yet still claims to be a U.S. company. 

One of the longtime leaders in offshore tax avoidance has been that once-American-as-apple-pie company GE, which in a more innocent time hired Ronald Reagan to advertise its wares. Now GE has nearly two-thirds of its jobs abroad, avoided U.S. taxes in the previous two years and has $108 billion stashed overseas.

Two years ago, President Obama appointed GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt to chair his Jobs Council, despite the fact that Immelt had cut his company’s U.S. workforce by a fifth. GE’s expertise is no longer in appliance manufacturing, a division Immelt has tried to shed, but rather in financial manipulation. 

GE Capital was a leader in the financial scams that still haunt the U.S. economy, and Immelt has been most effective in lobbying Washington politicians to rig the tax laws to benefit his and other multinational corporations. He has created some jobs, but unfortunately, they are abroad, along with his company’s untaxed profits. 

For all these multinational corporations, the love of profit trumps loyalty to country.

© 2013 TruthDig.com

Robert Scheer is editor of Truthdig.com and a regular columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle.

The US has threatened Islamabad with sanctions over Pakistan’s partnership with Iran to construct a section of a gas pipeline. Washington said that the much-delayed $7.5-billion project violates sanctions on Iran, a claim denied by Pakistan.

Iran and Pakistan expect the completed pipeline will deliver 21.5 million cubic meters (760,000 million cubic feet) of gas per day to Pakistan from its giant offshore South Pars field in the Persian Gulf by December 2014.

Iranian contractors will construct the pipeline, which crosses Pakistani territory. Tehran has agreed to lend Islamabad $500 million, one-third of the estimated $1.5 billion cost of the 750-kilometer pipeline, according to Fars news agency.

After Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari launched the project on Monday on the Iran-Pakistan Border, the US threatened to respond with sanctions if the project “actually goes forward.”

“We have serious concerns if this project actually goes forward that the Iran Sanctions Act would be triggered,” State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said, commenting on the so-called ‘peace pipeline.’

Iran has completed 900 kilometers of the pipeline’s segment on its side of the border with Pakistan. Monday’s ceremony marked the beginning of work on the Pakistani segment, which will start at the Iranian town of Chahbahar near the border.

“We’ve heard this pipeline announced about 10 or 15 times before in the past. So we have to see what actually happens,” Nuland said.

Conceived in 1990s, the project initially involved Iran, Pakistan and India. However, India pulled out of the project in 2009, citing cost and security issues. The United States has persistently opposed Pakistani and Indian involvement in the project, insisting it would violate sanctions against Iran over its controversial nuclear activity.

Nuland reiterated that the US is working to increase Pakistan’s energy supplies through other means: “This pipeline project, if it actually goes forward — we’ve seen that promise many times — would take Pakistan in the wrong direction right at a time that we’re trying to work with Pakistan on better, more reliable ways to meet its energy needs.”

The US is “supporting large-scale energy projects in Pakistan that will add some 900 megawatts to the power grid by the end of 2013,” she added.

Pakistan sees the pipeline as a way of easing severe energy shortages, which have sparked demonstrations and battered a weak government. At the same time, Islamabad needs the financial aid it receives from the US.  

In response to Washington’s threats of sanctions, President Ahmadinejad accused “foreign elements” of using Iran’s nuclear program as a pretext to thwart Iran-Pakistan relations, saying they have no grounds to oppose the pipeline project since it deals with natural gas.  

“With natural gas you cannot make atomic bombs. That’s why they should have no excuse to oppose this pipeline,” Reuters reported, quoting a translation of a televised statement by Ahmadinejad. “I want to tell those individuals that the gas pipeline has no connection whatsoever with the nuclear case.”

The Iran-Pakistan pipeline could undermine US hegemony in the Middle East and South Asia, Eric Draitser, an independent geopolitical analyst and founder of StopImperialism.com wrote for RT: “The pipeline brings the two countries closer together and, in so doing, helps to solidify a relationship united by a common mistrust of the US.”

Anthony Skinner, director of British-based Maplecroft risks consultancy, echoed the idea that Pakistan wants to show its place on the international stage by daring to make decisions that “defy the US.”

“The Pakistani government wants to show it is willing to take foreign policy decisions that defy the US,” Skinner said, according to Reuters. “The pipeline not only caters to Pakistan’s energy needs, but also lodges brownie points with the many critics of the US amongst the electorate.”

Draitser also believes that the “peace pipeline” will be a success, especially if China decides to become involved: “In this very plausible scenario, China would finally get the ‘holy grail’ it has sought for years: land-based access to energy imports from the Middle East. For China, an energy-starved economy that continues to grow, this would greatly enhance their regional position.”

“It would also transform the balance of power in Asia, as the era of US domination of energy resources in the Middle East would be over,” he added. “So, were the project to be extended to China, the pipeline would become the focus of a new power paradigm, making it one of the most important economic development projects in the world.”

Lawyers for Guantanamo Bay inmates have claimed “all but a few men” are on a hunger strike over their Qurans being taken away. The condition of the strikers “appears to be rapidly deteriorating and reaching a potentially critical level,” they said.

Most of 130 people housed in Camp 6 of Guantanamo Bay may be involved in the strike.

“My client and other men have reported that most of the detainees in Camp 6 are on strike, except for a small few who are elderly or sick,” Pardiss Kebriaei, a New York lawyer representing Yemeni detainee Ghaleb Al-Bihanim, told AFP. Men have reported coughed up blood, lost consciousness and were forced to move to other wings of the facility for observation.

The first reports of the widespread hunger strike in Guantanamo emerged in early March.

The protest was allegedly sparked by interference with the inmates’ personal belongings.

“Since approximately February 6, 2013, camp authorities have been confiscating detainees’ personal items, including blankets, sheets, towels, mats, razors, toothbrushes, books, family photos, religious CDs, and letters, including legal mail; and restricting their exercise, seemingly without provocation or cause,” the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) said in a March letter to the US Military.

They added that men’s Qurans were confiscated in a “desecrating” manner, and that prayer time was not respected. Most, if not all, of the Guantanamo detainees come from the Middle East, and are devout Muslims.

Prison officials have acknowledged that the hunger strike is taking place. However, they deny that it is a large-scale event: Nine detainees are refusing food, five of whom are being fed through tubes inserted into their stomachs, according to Robert Durand, director of public affairs for the Joint Task Force Guantanamo.

Durand also said that the claims of desecration of the Quran were unfounded.

“To be clear: there have been no incidents of desecration of the Quran by guards or translators, and nothing unusual happened during a routine search for contraband,” he told AFP.

Guantanamo Bay is a US Military prison facility opened on the wake of 9/11, as part of the George W. Bush administration’s ‘War on Terror.’ The prison currently holds 166 people, many of whom have spent over a decade there without official charges brought against them. Washington has alleged the inmates are terrorists who plotted or acted against the American people. Guantanamo Bay became a source of heated public debate after it was revealed that US forces had tortured detainees.

Barack Obama promised to close the facility at the beginning of his first term as president, but the facility remains open.

The ten thing you need to know on Tuesday 12 March 2013…

1) MANSION MISCHIEF

“Playing parliamentary silly buggers” is how one Lib Dem MP described the Labour motion on the mansion tax to us, as Nick Clegg and David Cameron agreed a government amendment that both coalition parties could sign up to. The deal, which makes it clear the Lib Dems support a new levy on homes over £2m while the Tories do not, saves the PM and DPM the awkwardness of a coalition split over the issue.

Labour had mischievously tabled today’s debate in an attempt to either divide the coalition, or force Lib Dem MPs to vote against their own policy. Both of which would be a good laugh for Ed Miliband and Ed Balls. Expect Opposition MPs to have a lot of fun at the Lib Dems expense during this afternoon’s Commons debate. Or rather, more so than usual.

Today’s Memo is edited by Ned Simons as Mehdi Hasan is in Rome helping to choose the new Pope.

2) THE (OTHER SORT OF) BIG HOUSE

Chris Huhne meanwhile is swapping his mansion for the other sort of big house today, after being sentenced to eight months in jail. “Well, I certainly lied and lied again,” the former energy secretary told Channel 4 News. “I think my political career is very clearly over but I think that I have other things to offer, doing other things, and I will.”

It’s not all bad for Huhne, his former colleague on the Lib Dem benches, Lembit Opik, has offered to visit him in prison — perhaps seeking a captive audience for his stand-up routine. Surely Huhne has suffered enough?

3) WHO ARE THE 0.2%?

A total of 1,513 votes were cast in the Falklands referendum, with 98.8% of the islanders declaring themselves in favour of remaining British. Just three votes, or 0.2% of the ballot, voted against. There will no doubt be a witch-hunt to find out who the hell those three people were.

William Hague welcomed the utterly unsurprising vote, saying: “We have always been clear that we believe in the rights of the Falklands people to determine their own futures and to decide on the path they wish to take. It is only right that, in the twenty-first century, these rights are respected.

“All countries should accept the results of this referendum and support the Falkland Islanders as they continue to develop their home and their economy. I wish them every success in doing so.”

This morning David Cameron said Argentina should “should take careful note of this result”. No word on which way all the penguins voted.

4) THE RYAN PLAN

WASHINGTON – Under the splash headline ‘Austerity Now’ (that pun is so 2010 guys, we’ve used it at least five times, keep up) our American colleagues report that former Republican vice-presidential candidate and chairman of the House Budget Committee Chairman, Paul Ryan, said on Monday he can balance the US federal budget in 10 years without raising taxes any further by achieving $4.6 trillion in additional government spending cuts.

5) CAMERON ‘QUIZZED’

David Cameron will be at the liaison committee at 4pm this afternoon for 90 (it will seem longer) minutes. The format of the sessions, where the chairman of the different Commons select committees each get to question the prime minister means they are about as forensic as yesterday’s PM Direct event where Cameron had to resort to asking himself questions as none were forthcoming from the audience.

Pity the poor aides and journalists who get stuck in camera shot behind the prime minister and have to avoid nodding off live on Sky News (for as long as the broadcasters can bare to cover it that is).

6) POLL ‘BOOSTS’ TORY RIGHT

A Guardian/ICM poll has found that public “overwhelmingly believes a hard line on Europe, immigration and traditional families would make the party more appealing”.

According to the paper by a majority of 67%-25%, voters say, “the Conservatives would be more appealing if they took a tougher line with Europe”. Some 75%-21% believe the same about the party taking a “a tougher line on immigration. And voters judge by 69%-24% that the Tories’ appeal could be boosted by keeping “themselves on the side of traditional families” — in what will be read as a rejection of gay marriage.

The findings will be seized upon by Tory MPs who believe the key to electoral success in 2015 is to abandon Cameron’s modernising agenda and move to the right to take-on Ukip.

7) TAXI!

The Evening Standard reports that Lutfur Rahman, the mayor of Tower Hamlets in East London, has charged a series of mysteriously expensive taxi journeys to the public. One trip is said to have cost £71 despite the cab only travelling a distance of 400 metres. Another cost £121 when the same journey taken on the capital’s Docklands Light Railway would have cost just £2.10.

8) IRISH ASK UK TO STAY

Irish premier Enda Kenny has become the latest European leader to urge Britain to remain within the European Union. The Taoiseach, in London for a series of engagements including talks with Cameron, insisted Britain has much to gain from its membership.

“We see the British relationship with the EU as being a two-way relationship – Britain benefits from its membership of the EU, and the EU is better off with Britain as a leading member making a valued contribution,” Kenny said.

9) NEW POPE TIME

From the BBC: “Cardinals gathered in Rome to elect a new pope will begin voting later on Tuesday, with no clear frontrunner in sight. The 115 cardinal-electors will attend a special Mass in the morning before processing into the Sistine Chapel to begin their deliberations in the afternoon. They will vote four times daily until two-thirds can agree on a candidate.”

10) DRONE WARS

WASHINGTON – A new medal that would honor drone pilots and cyber warriors and outrank battlefield combat medals such as the Purple Heart and Bronze Star is facing backlash from veterans organizations and members of Congress, with a bipartisan group of 22 senators pressing the Pentagon to change the designation. As HuffPost reports, the backlash to the medal centers around the fact that it will take precedence over traditional several combat awards, which require that the recipient risk his or her life in order to receive them.

140 CHARACTERS OR LESS

@Queen_UK Queen of the Falklands. By popular consent. #YourQueenLovesYou #DontCryForOneArgentina

@Mike_Fabricant At the request of a Minister in charge of the legislation last night, I have changed my photo back to the pony.

900 WORDS OR MORE

Steve Richards in The Independent: “Labour and the Tories both think they’ll lose 2015 and they can’t both be right.”

Benedict Brogan in the Daily Telegraph:”If Cameron wants his troops to rally, he must act like a general.”

Mehdi Hasan in The Huffington Post UK: “Get Rid Of Dave? How Exactly Would That Help the Tories?”

Got something you want to share? Please send any stories/tips/quotes/pix/plugs/gossip to Mehdi Hasan (mehdi.hasan@huffingtonpost.com) or Ned Simons (ned.simons@huffingtonpost.com). You can also follow us on Twitter: @mehdirhasan, @nedsimons and @huffpostukpol

Facebook’s ‘like’ button can reveal more than you realize, a new study has showed. By liking posts and links, you may be revealing personal secrets, like your sexuality or religious and political views. The findings have raised privacy concerns.

A study by the National Academy of Sciences examined 58,000 Facebook users in the US, who volunteered their likes, demographic profiles and psychometric test results. Researchers managed to draw “surprisingly accurate” findings about a given user’s race, IQ, sexuality, substance use, personality and political views by analyzing the topics and items they ‘liked,’ even if they set strong privacy settings for their page.  

The study’s authors developed an algorithm that uses Facebook ‘likes’ to create personality profiles, potentially revealing a user’s personality. Anyone with training in data analysis could be able to derive such information, even if users had not explicitly shared it, they explained.

As a result, researchers were able to predict whether men were homosexual with 88 percent accuracy by their ‘like’ clicks on sites related to gay marriage or same-sex relations. Preferences of music and TV shows, for example, were also more revealing than users may have imagined: Men who liked the musical TV show ‘Glee’ were more likely to be gay, the study showed.

In 82 percent of cases, Christians and Muslims were correctly identified among the volunteer profiles. And the study was not only predictive of sexuality or religion, but also a user’s IQ.

Those with higher IQs tended to more frequently like ‘The Colbert Report’ TV show, for example, or films like ‘The Godfather’ and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ Those with lower IQs liked Harley Davidsons and Bret Michaels of the rock band Poison.

Similarly accurate predictions were also made about users’ political views, and could even predict potential voting patterns during elections, mapped to users’ relationship status, their number of Facebook friends and a half-dozen other personality traits.

“The important point is that, on one hand, it is good that people’s behavior is predictable because it means Facebook can suggest very good stories on your news feed,” South China Morning Post quoted Michal Kosinsky, one of the academics behind the study as saying.

While the study could be seen as a new step towards creating more personalized content, it also highlighted the potential threats to privacy posed by Facebook. “What is shocking is that you can use the same data to predict your political views or your sexual orientation. This is something most people don’t realize you can do,” Kosinsky warned.

Similar profiles could be created using other digital data, including Web searches, emails and mobile phone activity, according to a co-author of the study: ``Your likes may be saying more about you than you realize,” David Sitwell, a Cambridge University researcher said, according to AFP. “But you don’t realize that years later all those likes are building up against you.”

Facebook declined to comment on the study.

The people of the Falkland Islands have voted overwhelmingly to remain a British overseas territory, with 99.8% declaring themselves in favour during a two-day referendum in the capital Port Stanley.

A total of 1,517 valid votes were cast, a turnout of 92% of the islanders eligible to vote.

In a clear message of defiance to the Argentine government, 1,513 voted to remain under British rule, with just three – 0.2% – voting against the referendum question “Do you wish the Falkland Islands to retain their current political status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom?”

David Cameron used the vote to call on Argentina to respect the wishes of the people of the Falkland Islands, saying it should take “careful note” of the referendum result and that Britain would always be there to defend the Falkland Islanders.

Foreign Secretary William Hague welcomed the outcome, saying it “demonstrates more clearly than ever” the islanders wish to remain as an overseas territory.

• David Cameron: We will always defend the Falklands

But in Argentina Senator Daniel Filmus, who is close to President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, described the vote as a “publicity stunt”.

“We must denounce this trickery that pretends to represent the popular participation of an implanted population,” he said, according to The Guardian.

“This publicity stunt has no validity for international law.”

The poll, which was ratified as “free and fair” by international observers, came against a backdrop of heightened Argentine pressure for negotiations with London over the sovereignty of the islands they know as Las Malvinas.

Argentina maintained that the vote was illegal and “pointless”, and that islanders – an “implanted people” – have no voice in a dispute that must be settled bilaterally.

But the near-unanimous result of the referendum clearly reinforced the islanders deep feelings that they are British and want to remain a self-governing overseas territory.

Nigel Haywood, governor of the Falkland Islands, said the referendum was a “massive demonstration of the way the Falkland Islanders feel and of the way they see their future”.

He said: “Obviously it is a major principle of the United Nations that a people have their right to self-determination, and you don’t get a much clearer expression of the people’s self-determination than such a large turn out and such a large yes vote.”

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Following the vote Mr Hague said: “I welcome today’s result, which demonstrates more clearly than ever the Falkland Islanders’ wish to remain an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom.

“We have always been clear that we believe in the rights of the Falklands people to determine their own futures and to decide on the path they wish to take. It is only right that, in the 21st century, these rights are respected.

“All countries should accept the results of this referendum and support the Falkland Islanders as they continue to develop their home and their economy. I wish them every success in doing so.”

The islands’ 2,563 residents did all they could in the lead up to the referendum to show their sympathies, waving Union Jack flags and dressing up in red-white-and-blue.

Dick Sawle, a member of the Legislative Assembly – the Falkland Islands government – who was at the count in Port Stanley, called the result “absolutely fantastic”.

The vote will “send out the strongest possible message to the rest of the world about our right to self-determination, a right which was fought for in 1982 and which we’ve honoured tonight,” he told the BBC.

“What it means is that the people here have expressed their will, their wishes, it means they have expressed their opinion on what they want for the political status of the Falkland Islands.

“And that of course means that our right to self-determination has been enshrined for the future, it means that at any time in the future we can exercise that right to change the status quo if we wish to do so.

“But people here have very, very clearly said they wish to remain as a British Overseas Territory with those rights.

“The British government is 100% behind us and it will be our job now as a government to get that message out to the rest of the world and every country that will listen to us.”

Argentina considers the “Islas Malvinas” to be part of its national territory, taken from them by the British more than 180 years ago, and President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner took the issue to the United Nations (UN) on the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War last year.

Mr Sawle said the Falklands government would take the referendum result to the UN this summer, and said the vote had paved the way to strengthen the government of the Falkland Islands.

He said: “We will see more authority being devolved to the Falkland Islands government… make no mistake about it, this government is set to become even stronger than before, and with this massive vote of the people behind us this gives us this very clear mandate that we need for the future.”

Speaking after the vote, islander Lynda Buckland called it “absolutely brilliant”.

“It sends a message out to the rest of the world that we are British and we want to remain that way. My family has been here since 1842 and that is longer than most Argentines have been in Argentina.

“What this is all about is getting the rest of the world to realise what our neighbours are doing to us.”

Journalist Celina Andreassi, from the Argentina Independent in Buenos Aires, said the strength of the Yes vote had been “quite predictable”.

“The majority of people here agree with the official position, that the issue is not about self-determination and it is not about whether the islanders consider themselves British or not, because obviously everyone knows that they do and that they are British.

“The issue for most people here is that whether the territory is Argentine or British, not the people themselves.

“I really don’t think this referendum is going to make much of a difference… both sides are going to remain really strong in their position and we are probably going to continue where we are for a long, long time.”

Falklanders have voted to remain a British Overseas Territory, following months of political tensions between Britain and Argentina over the fate of the islands. Three decades ago the two nations fought a short war over the disputed territory.

Islanders voted almost unanimously to remain under the sovereignty of the United Kingdom, with 98.8-per cent of votes in favor. The ballot was decided during a two-day referendum with just three people, or 0.2 per cent, voting against.

The ballot asked one yes or no question: “Do you wish the Falkland Islands to retain their current political status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom?”

The referendum saw 92-per cent turnout from the 1,672 British citizens eligible to vote in the territory of about 2,900 people. International election observers monitored the vote despite Buenos Aires’ request for South American countries to boycott it.

Following the vote, Foreign Secretary William Hague called on all nations to respect the result: “We have always been clear that we believe in the rights of the Falklands people to determine their own futures and to decide on the path they wish to take. It is only right that, in the 21st century, these rights are respected,” he was quoted as saying by the Telegraph.

Argentina, which calls the islands Las Malvinas, considers them to be part of its territory. The reinstatement of its sovereignty over them is enshrined in its constitution.

The Latin American country believes that Argentina inherited the territory from the Spaniards in 1767 before Britain took them over in 1833.

An attempt to reclaim sovereignty led London and Buenos Aires in to a short war in 1982. In two months of fighting, 255 British and about 650 Argentine were killed before Argentina surrendered.

In 2010, a British company began oil exploration near the archipelago, leading to an exacerbation of the conflict.

Political analyst Adrian Salbuchi argues that the Falklands are a hot spot for British interests, just like the Middle East.

“Britain is trying to legitimize its presence there because one of the key factors is oil. There are huge oil reserves in the ocean, but they are actually a part of the continental shelf, which even geologically and geographically belongs to Argentina. So they need to have all the legal trimmings in place as much as possible.”

In early 2013, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner sent a letter to British Prime Minister David Cameron calling for negotiations that would lead to the return of the archipelago to Buenos Aires.

Cameron replied that the population of the islands supports the UK’s sovereignty, which was proven by the two-day vote.

March 11, 2013  |  

“The very rich,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, “are different from you and me.”

It turns out he was right. According to a new study by the think-tank Demos ( PDF), the affluent tend to hold a different vision of a just society than the public at large, and it is that vision which tops the political agenda in Washington and in state houses across the country.

The report, authored by David Callahan and J. Mijin Cha, found that “wealthy interests are keenly focused on concerns not shared by the rest of the American public, like keeping taxes low on capital gains, and often oppose policies that would foster upward mobility among low-income citizens, such as raising the minimum wage.”

The policy preferences of the wealthy (average income over $1 million annually) vary widely from those of the general public… [A recent] survey found that the general public is more open than the wealthy to a variety of policies designed to reduce inequality and strengthen economic opportunity, including: raising the minimum wage, increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit, providing generous unemployment benefits, and directly creating jobs. For example, only 40 percent of the wealthy think the minimum wage should be high enough to prevent full-time workers from being in poverty while 78 percent of the general public holds this view. Affluent voters are also less supportive of labor unions and less likely to support laws that make it easier for workers to join unions–even as research shows that unions are crucial to enabling people to work their way into the middle class. 

One especially significant difference between the opinions of the wealthy and the population as a whole centers on deficit reduction. According to a study cited by Demos, “87 percent of affluent households believed budget deficits were a ‘very important’ problem, the highest percentage of all listed perceived problems.” Jobs and education, which rank at or near the top of most Americans’ list of priorities, were “a distant second to budget deficits among the concerns of wealthy Americans.”

According to an exit poll conducted after the 2012 election, 59 percent of the public rated the economy as the country’s number one problem, while only 15 percent cited the federal budget deficit. But as the Demos report notes, “the affluent [not only] participate more in civic life; they also have greater influence over public policy.”

Peter G. Peterson epitomizes that finding. The Wall Street mogul and Nixon administration cabinet member has reportedly dedicated a billion dollars of his fortune to promoting the idea that “entitlements” are going to impoverish our grandchildren.

Meanwhile, Callahan and Cha note that the affluent, “are significantly less inclined than other groups of Americans to support an active role for government in addressing mass unemployment.”

These are good examples of what the authors describe as “ the interplay between declining upward mobility and growing political inequality.” Perhaps the most troubling finding in the Demos report is that the wealthy are, on average, less likely to support policies that allow people to pull themselves up the economic ladder. “Even when the affluent do support policies for upward mobility,” write Callahan and Cha, “they often do not prioritize these policies over other goals, such as lower taxes.”

A case in point is higher education. While affluent Americans and business leaders broadly support access to higher education, along with the general public, spending in this area has been cut in some states where governors have prioritized cutting taxes–with strong support from wealthy voters and corporate interests.

While most Americans believe that they live in a highly meritocratic society where one’s fortunes are limited only by one’s innate talents and work ethic, several studies released in recent years suggest that Americans enjoy significantly less upward mobility than do the citizens of a number of other industrialized nations. German workers have 1.5 times the upward movement of Americans, Canada’s economy is nearly 2.5 times as mobile, and Denmark is three times as mobile. Norway, Finland, Sweden, and France are all more upwardly mobile societies than the United States. Of the countries included in the studies, the United States ranked near the bottom; only in the United Kingdom was it tougher to shake off a low social status one had been born with.

Amnesty International has called on heir to the British throne Prince Charles to tell the “truth” about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record during his three-day visit to the Arab country this week.

The rights organization urged the Prince of Wales to raise human rights issues with the Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz while there, The Daily Mirror reported on Monday.

Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, will visit Saudi Arabia as part of a nine-day tour of the Middle East that began on March 11, with stops in Jordan, Qatar and Oman.

“We’re not going to try to fill Prince Charles’ luggage with Amnesty reports. But if he or Camilla were to voice their royal displeasure at reports that a young Saudi jewel thief is facing crucifixion in a matter of days, that surely is their prerogative,” said Kate Allen, the UK Director of Amnesty.

Amnesty’s concerns about human rights in Saudi Arabia include, death penalty, freedom of speech and protests, torture, unfair trials and women’s rights.

Saudi Arabia, which is accused of brutal crackdown on peaceful anti-regime protests, is considered as Britain’s largest trading partner in the Middle East, with bilateral trade worth more than £15 billion every year.

Since February 2011, protesters have held demonstrations on an almost regular basis in Saudi Arabia, mainly in the Qatif region and the town of Awamiyah in Eastern Province, primarily calling for the release of all political prisoners, freedom of expression and assembly, and an end to widespread discrimination.

However, the demonstrations have turned into protests against the repressive Al Saud regime, especially since November 2011, when Saudi security forces killed five protesters and injured many others in the province.

According to Human Rights Watch, the Saudi regime “routinely represses expression critical of the government.”

SSM/MOS/HE

British pound has continued to fall against the dollar, raising fears that the country could slide into a triple-dip recession.

Sterling once again slid against dollar to $1.4868 on Monday, its lowest level since the early days of the coalition in 2010, and during the 2008-2009 recession.

Earlier in February, the currency plunged to a two-year low against dollar to $1.5073, after credit ratings agency Moody’s downgraded the British government’s bond rating from the top AAA to AA1 due to the country’s rising debt and slowing growth.

“The overriding concern is that the government is giving little indication that it will take its foot off austerity which is hurting economic growth,” said Market analyst Nawaz Ali from Western Union.

Earlier last week, British Business Secretary Vince Cable urged Chancellor George Osborne to change his economic course by borrowing more in order to stimulate growth in the economy.

Cable also announced that the Chancellor’s deep cuts to capital spending have had adverse “economic consequences”.

Osborne and British Prime Minister David Cameron, however, have so far rejected calls for a change in fiscal policy, saying that increasing government expenditure or cutting taxes would not help Britain’s struggling economy.

MOS/SSM/HE

Counting will begin on Monday in a referendum over whether the Falkland Islands should remain British.

Islanders started voting on Sunday in the poll that is being staged in response to increasing demands from Argentina, which calls the territory Las Malvinas, for sovereignty negotiations.

The result of the referendum is expected on Tuesday

The tiny community is expected overwhelmingly to vote in favour of retaining its status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom and the results are due to be announced in the early hours of Tuesday.

Outside observers have been monitoring the referendum in order to prove it is free and fair but the result is unlikely to appease Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who is desperate to use the issue to improve her ailing domestic popularity.

In January, she wrote an open letter to David Cameron, urging the prime minister to abide by a 1960 UN resolution calling on members to “end colonialism in all its forms and manifestations”.

Falkland Islands UK Representative Sukey Cameron suggested on Sunday the territory could become independent in the future.

“That may well happen in 50, 70, 100 years’ time but now we are very happy with our relationship as it stands with the UK,” she told Sky News.

She added: “There are some people on the island who may vote ‘no’ but voting ‘no’ isn’t necessarily voting yes to Argentina.”

MPs will debate the result of the referendum in the Commons on Tuesday night.

Foreign Office minister Hugo Swire will respond to the short debate, which has been called by Tory Guy Opperman.