The seven-day hostage standoff in Midland City, Alabama has been ended by a police action in which law enforcement officers stormed an underground bunker to save a five-year-old child, and it has been reported that the kidnapper has been killed.

GVN/HGL

A member of the British Parliament has resigned after pleading guilty to perverting the course of justice on speeding offence.

Chris Huhne quit as MP for Eastleigh constituency in Hampshire after he admitted lying over allegations that his ex-wife Vicky Pryce had taken speeding points on his behalf ten years ago.

The claims against the former British Energy Secretary first emerged in 2011 when his marriage to Vicky Pryce came to an end after he announced his relationship with PR adviser Carina Trimingham.

Pryce is due to go on trial on Tuesday while no sentencing date has so far been set for Huhne.

The average punishment for perverting the course of justice is ten months. The penalty could also carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

British Deputy Prime Minister and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said he was “shocked and saddened” by the humiliating end to Huhne political career.

MOS/SSM/HE

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been strongly criticised by MPs over the “flawed” decision to switch fighter aircraft for the Royal Navy’s new carriers .

It was announced in the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review that the Government would adopt the carrier variant of the US-built F35 Joint Strike Fighter rather than the “jump jet” version chosen by the previous Labour government.

Ministers argued that the carrier variant was a more capable aircraft and that it would increase “interoperability” with other navies – even though it meant mothballing one of the two carriers on grounds of affordability.

However last May, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond announced the MoD was reverting to the jump jet version amid fears the costs of fitting the necessary catapults and arrestor gear – “cats and traps” – were spiralling out of control.

In a highly critical report, the Commons Defence Committee said the 2010 decision to go for the carrier variant was a mistake which led to increased costs and further delays to the carrier programme.

“It is clear that the decision was rushed and based upon incomplete and inaccurate policy development. It was taken without the MoD understanding how the change could be implemented,” the committee said.

“Perhaps the primary example of how little the MoD understood about this decision is the fact that it was supposed to improve interoperability. This turned out to be incorrect.

“We urge the MoD to learn the lessons of this closed, rushed and flawed decision of 2010.”

The committee also complained that the lack of a proper defence industrial strategy put the UK at a disadvantage compared with competitor countries.

It said that such a strategy should combine a commitment to maintain the ability of the UK to act nationally with an understanding of where a level mutual interdependence or partnership with allies is acceptable.

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-defence(MoD)

Beleaguered retailers weathered the snowstorms that swept Britain last month after sales were boosted by shoppers tempted out with new year offers and promotions, figures have shown.

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) said like-for-like January retail sales grew at the fastest rate since December 2011, up 1.9% on the previous year, as shoppers also bought televisions, tablet computers and smartphones.

BRC director-general Helen Dickinson said that while sales suffered during the cold snap, it was short-lived and failed to cancel out the positive showing across the month.

She said: “People were tempted out by offers and promotions but also treated themselves to full-priced and premium products early in January, particularly must-have technology items. These factors, coupled with recovering consumer confidence, have added up to a more successful January than we saw last year.”

The BRC also said demand for footwear was strong, with Wellington boot sales boosted by the snow. But demand for cold weather gear including knitwear hats and scarves failed to prevent the overall clothing sector posting its worst performance for 14 months, as sales of spring and summer collections suffered and shoppers turned to supermarket ranges.

The surge in online sales growth over Christmas slowed to 10% last month, with the benefits of shopping from home in the snow outweighed by concerns about collecting in-store.

Signs that sales held up in January will be a relief to the retail sector after a troubled few weeks with the collapse of high-profile chains HMV, Jessops and Blockbuster. It will also boost hopes that the UK can avoid a triple-dip recession after gross domestic product figures showed the economy contracted in the final three months of last year.

David McCorquodale, head of retail at KPMG, said the January sales figures gave retailers reasons to be cheerful and were a strong start to what is anticipated to be a tough year.

He said: “While technology advances may have hastened the demise of HMV, Blockbuster and Jessops, many retailers will look back at the last two months with pride after implementing successful seasonal campaigns where they have served the customer well.”

But he warned that sales were only one side of the equation and only time would tell about the true cost of promotions and margin squeezes used to drive sales.

An Energy Department plan to allow the recycling of scrap metals emitting very low levels of radiation is drawing opposition because of concerns about potential health hazards. But the upside for U.S. atomic bomb-makers is that waste now requiring costly storage could be sold for a profit.

In something of a stealth maneuver during the 2012 holiday season, the U.S. Department of Energy set about to give every American a little more radiation exposure, and for some a lot, by allowing manufacturers to use radioactive metals in their consumer products — such as zippers, spoons, jewelry, belt buckles, toys, pots, pans, furnishings, bicycles, jungle gyms, medical implants, or any other metal or partly-metal product.

The Energy Dept. announced its plan in the Federal Register on Dec. 12 and invited comment for 30 days, through Jan.11. Citing its need to address environmental concerns under the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), the agency said, in part, that its plan was: “to delegate authority to manage radiological clearance and release of scrap metal from radiological areas to each Under Secretary for sites under his or her cognizance. … 

“ This Draft PEA for the Recycling of Scrap Metals Originating from Radiological Areas analyzes the potential environmental impacts associated with resuming the clearance of scrap metal, originating from DOE radiological areas, for recycling pursuant to improved procedures designed to assure that clearance for release is limited to metals meeting stringent criteria.”

Translated from the bureaucratese, this is a proposal to lift a ban on recycling radioactive metals left over from American bomb-making and other nuclear activities and allow them to be used commercially with “stringent” but largely unenforceable criteria for their use. The initial ban was ordered in 2000, by then Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson.

Largely ignored by mainstream media, the plan caught the attention of an alert member of Congress, Rep. Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts, who wrote a three-page letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Jan. 11, beginning:

“I write to convey my grave concerns regarding your December 2012 proposal to rescind the agency-wide suspension of the release of radioactively contaminated scrap metal from Department of Energy (DOE) facilities for purposes of recycling it into consumer products that could ultimately by utilized by pregnant women, children or other vulnerable populations. This proposal is unwise, and should be immediately abandoned.”

Although Rep. Markey was writing on the date of the original deadline, the Energy Department had invited the public to respond to an email address that was non-functional during the first nine days of the response period, Dec. 12-20. On Dec. 28, the department announced in the Federal Register that the comment period was extended to Feb. 11.

On Jan. 16, while taking note of Markey’s letter, the Wall Street Journal covered the story by starting this way: ”The Department of Energy is proposing to allow the sale of tons of scrap metal from government nuclear sites – an attempt to reduce waste that critics say could lead to radiation-tainted belt buckles, surgical implants and other consumer products. …

“The approximately 14,000 tons of metal under review for possible initial release is only a fraction of the tens of millions of tons of metal recycled annually, it said. Smaller amounts could be eligible for release in future years. Selling the metals could bring in $10 million to $40 million a year, the DOE estimates.” 

Minimizing Radiation Dangers

As is common in nuclear industry proposals of all sorts, the Energy Department sought to assure readers of its proposal that any radiation exposure resulting from recycling radioactive waste into the commercial mainstream would have minimal impact on any given individual. The article in the Journal included a chart from the department that reinforced its claim that “would at worst expose a person to very low levels of additional radiation.”

This approach ignores the current scientific consensus that there is NO safe level of radiation exposure. Since there is already a measurable level of background radiation worldwide, and since worldwide radiation levels have increased as a result of nuclear weapons testing and nuclear accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima, the fundamental safety question is whether any additional radiation exposure is safe in any meaningful sense.

This approach also fails to deal with the reality that once the department has released radioactive materials for commercial use, it loses almost all control over how and where they’re used, and in what concentrations. The same material used in a ceiling light fixture will pose less risk than if it is used in a belt buckle of jewelry, worn close to the skin. These uses are less dangerous than material inside a human body, in a joint replacement or heart valve.

The issue is of global concern because other countries are recycling their radioactive waste as well, with uncertain control and safety. As Rep. Markey noted in his letter, “Just a year ago, Bed Bath and Beyond recalled tissue holders made in India that were contaminated with low levels of the radio-isotope cobalt-60 that were shipped to 200 of its stores in twenty states.

“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, when discussing the discovery of the contaminated products, said that, ‘There’s no real health threat from these, but we advise people to return them.’ “

While that may seem contradictory, it’s mainly because the choice of the word “real” is not very accurate. It’s true that there’s no threat of immediate injury from a low level of radiation, whereas a high enough level will be lethal. It’s also true that there may be no “realistic” threat from a radioactive tissue box, but that’s not the same as “no threat,” since harm from radiation exposure is cumulative.

Rep. Markey’s letter illustrates this concern, as he notes that the Energy Department is proposing to release contaminated metals into the market place, as long as, quoting from the document, it “can be shown that the release will result in less than 1 millirem (mrem) above background to a member of the public in any calendar year.” [One millirem is a tiny amount of radiation.]

Nevertheless, Markey expresses doubt about even this low standard: “I believe this standard, even it were the appropriate standard, will be impossible to assure or enforce.” [Emphasis added]

No One in Charge of Risk

There is no federal agency with responsibility for such oversight or enforcement. This regulatory vacuum was illuminated by the discovery in 2009 of thousands of contaminated consumer products from China, Brazil, France, Sweden and other countries, as reported by Mother Nature Network:

“The risk of radiation poisoning is the furthest thing from our minds as we shop for everyday items like handbags, furniture, buttons, chain link fences and cheese graters. Unfortunately, it turns out that our trust is misplaced thanks to sketchy government oversight of recycled materials.

“The discovery of a radioactive cheese grater led to an investigation that found thousands of additional consumer products to be contaminated. The source is recycled metals tainted with Cobalt-60, a radioactive isotope that can cause cancer with prolonged exposure.” 

According to a Scripps Howard News Service investigation in 2009, records of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission “… show 18,740 documented cases involving radioactive materials in consumer products, in metal intended for consumer products or other public exposure to radioactive material.

“The U.S. Government Accountability Office estimates there are some 500,000 unaccounted for radioactively contaminated metal objects in the U.S., and the NRC estimates that figure is around is 20 million pounds of contaminated waste….

“In 2006 in Texas, for example, a recycling facility inadvertently created 500,000 pounds of radioactive steel byproducts after melting metal contaminated with Cesium-137, according to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission records. In Florida in 2001, another recycler unintentionally did the same, and wound up with 1.4 million pounds of radioactive material.” 

Nuclear engineer Arnie Gunderson echoed Markey’s warning in his Jan. 13 podcast, pointing out that the nuclear industry has been trying to do something like this for decades. The reason, he explained, was that radioactive materials are now liabilities for those who own them and are responsible for protecting them and eventually storing them safely. But if they can sell the material, the liability instantly becomes an asset.

NIRS, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, has come out strongly against the Energy Department initiative, noting the long history of the industry to unburden itself of its radioactive waste and any responsibility for it:

“We’ve fought this battle before. In the late 1980s, NRC adopted a policy it called ‘Below Regulatory Concern (BRC),’ that would have allowed about 30% of the nation’s ‘low-level’  radioactive waste to be treated as normal garbage and dumped in landfills, be burned in incinerators, and yes, be recycled into consumer products….

“NIRS and our allies responded with one of our largest organizing campaigns ever…. 15 states passed laws banning BRC within their borders. Hearings were held in the House and in 1992, Congress officially overturned the BRC policy.”

The grassroots action contributed to Secretary Richardson’s ban on selling radioactive metals for commercial use, the ban that the current Energy Department proposal would overturn. The department has offered no new basis for its recycling program beyond streamlining what it proposed before. NIRS counters that:

“Nothing has changed since 2000 that would justify lifting its current ban. Rather, just the opposite: since then the National Academy of Sciences has acknowledged that there is no safe level of radiation exposure, and we’ve learned that women are even more vulnerable to radiation than men (while children have long been known to be more vulnerable than adults).”

NIRS and other advocacy organizations are currently engaged in a campaign to submit comments before the Feb. 11 deadline to ask the Energy Department to withdraw this proposal.

William Boardman runs Panther Productions. Reader Supported News is the publication of origin for this work.

As Digby noted, it seems the Republicans are now trying to kill the Frankenstein monster they created:

Karl Rove was instrumental in creating this monster. Now it’s got a mind of its own.

It’s hard to know how this will play out. The Tea Party is really just the re-branding of the far right of the Republican Party. But it may just be that the establishment made a mistake in doing that. They don’t see themselves as Republicans anymore. They see themselves as a distinct movement that wants to explicitly run the Republican Party.

The wingnuts have always had real power within their Party but they didn’t know it. Now they do. And they have spent the last 30 years having people like Karl Rove rev them up and expand their egos into believing they represent a majority of Americans and have a responsibility to hew to their principles no matter what. It was a good way to market conservatism. But it was never true.

Rove, Tea Party in GOP civil war:

As they try to pick up the pieces from last fall’s defeat, the establishment and Tea Party wings of the GOP are at each other’s throats.

Karl Rove, fresh off the multi-million dollar disaster that was 2012, has launched a new initiative, The New York Times reported Saturday. Known as the Conservative Victory Project, the group, a spin-off of Rove’s American Crossroads, will help recruit establishment Republicans, as well as defend Senate incumbents against challenges from more conservative candidates.

The aim, in a nutshell, is to push back against the Tea Party and bring the GOP’s nominating process back under the control of the party’s Washington power-brokers. In recent cycles, Tea Party-backed Senate candidates have won the Republican nomination over more moderate GOPers, only to be defeated in the general election. In several cases–think of Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” remarks–they’ve been done in thanks in part to campaign trail slip-ups that more seasoned candidates might have avoided.

But the news has triggered a full-blown revolt among conservative activists, both inside and outside Washington. Read on…

And here’s more from Steve Benen: Welcoming the Conservative Victory Project to the field:

The Conservative Victory Project is the latest effort from Rove, and will exist as an appendage of sorts to the American Crossroads super PAC.

Its efforts will not go unchallenged.

Roll Call reported over the weekend that the Senate Conservatives Fund, founded by former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint (R), is already condemning Rove’s new project.

“This is a continuation of the establishment’s effort to avoid blame for their horrible performance in the 2012 elections,” Senate Conservatives Fund Executive Director Matt Hoskins said. “They blew a ton of races up and down the ticket because they recruited moderate Republicans who didn’t stand for anything. Now they want to use this new PAC to trick donors into giving them more money so they can lose more races.”

Club for Growth spokesman Barney Keller echoed the sentiment: “They are welcome to support the likes of Arlen Specter, Charlie Crist and David Dewhurst. We will continue to proudly support the likes of Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.”

Hoskins and Keller have a point. On the other hand, so does Rove. In fact, the great irony of this fight is that neither side of the Republican divide has any credibility at all.

Rove’s American Crossroads raised breathtaking amounts of money in 2012, promising right-wing donors an impressive return on investment, and proceeded to lose nearly every race Rove targeted. Right-wing groups, meanwhile, weren’t much better, and helped nominate ridiculous candidates that led to Democratic victories.

Rove and his allies argue, “Listen to us or we’ll be stuck with another bunch of candidates like Akin, Mourdock, O’Donnell, and Angle.” Simultaneously, the Club for Growth and its allies argue, “Listen to us or we’ll be stuck with Karl Rove’s 99% failure rate.”

The opportunity for a round of bitter proxy fights will materialize very soon: Steve King in Iowa, Paul Broun in Georgia, and Joe Miller in Alaska are each poised to launch right-wing Senate bids, and by most measures, these candidates are so far from the mainstream they’re very likely to fail — after winning their respective primaries.

The Conservative Victory Project will likely try to take them down during their respective primaries, and even-further-right-wing groups will push in the opposite direction.

It won’t be pretty, but Democrats will love every minute of it.

Syrian Army soldiers have killed dozens of foreign-sponsored militants during mop-up operations on the outskirts of Damascus.

A number of gunmen were killed during intense clashes with Syrian troops in the Corniche neighborhood of the town of Daraya — which is located 8 kilometers (5 miles) southwest of Damascus — on Monday, the SANA news agency reported.

Government forces also uncovered trenches and tunnels that militants had dug around the Al-Sadeq al-Amin Mosque in the area to use as weapons and munitions caches and defused a number of explosive devices in and around the mosque.

In addition, Syrian troops raided terrorist hideouts in the cities of Tal Kerdi, Douma, and Harasta on Monday, killing dozens of anti-government gunmen in the process. They also seized an assortment of weapons and munitions after the battles.

And Syrian Army troops defused 10 explosive devices, weighing between 30 and 60 kilograms, on the road leading to Tal Kerdi.

Meanwhile, a unit of government forces killed a number of foreign-backed militants in the town of al-Ziyabiyeh.

Separately, Syrian Army soldiers attacked gunmen in the towns of al-Hejjeira and al-Husseiniyeh and killed a large number of them.

Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011. Many people, including large numbers of security forces, have been killed in the violence.

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

MP/HGL

In the same way as any and every risk-asset in the world, the price of yield-providing CMBS (commercial mortgage backed securities) have risen to post-crisis highs in the last few months. These are some of the epicentric deals from the crisis that now trade close to par once again. However, the last month or so has not seen CMBS prices push higher with stocks and it appears, as the FT notes, that the reason is becoming clear in the post-holiday-shopping period.

CMBX prices flat since 2013 began…

CMBS cash-flow streams are set to drop considerably as up to 15 per cent of the country’s suburban retail centres forecast to close over the next five years in the face of online competition.

The US’s more than 1,300 regional malls, defined as centres larger than 450,000 sq. ft., are being threatened by the boom in internet shopping and tougher competition and as they add, the prospects for second-tier malls are dimming.

Retail is regarded as an especially risky component of CMBS as a mall can go downhill if an important tenant shuts its store because other tenants are usually able to renegotiate their leases if a traffic-driving anchor tenant leaves. That can have severe consequences for CMBS exposed to the mortgage on the property.

FT: Online sales threat to American malls

By Stephen Foley and Barney Jopson in New York

Credit market investors are falling out of love with US shopping malls as up to 15 per cent of the country’s suburban retail centres are forecast to close over the next five years in the face of online competition.

The proportion of retail properties being put into commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) deals has slumped in the past three years because of concerns about the sector.

The US’s more than 1,300 regional malls, defined as centres larger than 450,000 square feet, are being threatened by the boom in internet shopping and tougher competition.

“I think 200 are going out of business,” said Gerry Mason, executive managing director at property group Savills. “We’re 15-20 per cent overbuilt. There are just too many stores.”

The future of megamalls, which include cinemas, bowling alleys and restaurants designed to lure consumers, appear safe but the prospects for second-tier malls are dimming.

Traders are watching the health of stores such as Sears and JC Penney, where sales are falling, and announcements from retailers such as bookseller Barnes & Noble last week, which said it would shut a third of its outlets over the next decade .

CMBS are bonds backed by a pool of mortgages on commercial property, ranging from office towers to apartment blocks. Retail property accounted for 56 per cent of the pools coming to market in 2010, according to RBS, but that fell to 42 per cent in the second half of 2011 and dropped to 36 per cent last year. In CMBS deals so far this year, the average is down to 30 per cent.

“Investors expressed concern about retail exposure in the long term,” said Richard Hill, CMBS strategist at RBS. Analysts say the market appears to be dividing between mega and second-tier malls, with mortgages on megamalls increasingly being securitised separately in single-property CMBS.

Simon Property Group, the largest US mall owner, reported strong earnings on Monday, boosted by higher rents and sales at its high-end malls.

Retail is regarded as an ­especially risky component of CMBS because a mall can go downhill if an important tenant shuts its store. Other tenants are usually able to renegotiate their leases if a traffic-driving anchor tenant leaves. That can have severe consequences for CMBS exposed to the mortgage on the property.

Ecommerce accounts for roughly $1 in every $10 spent by US shoppers and its market share continues to rise. In last year’s end-of-year shopping season, online sales increased 14 per cent while sales overall were up by just 3 per cent, according to ComScore and the National Retail Federation.

Ecommerce has already contributed to the demise of Circuit City, an electronics chain, and Borders, a bookstore. Sears and JC Penney, who often serve as mall anchor tenants have announced store closures in the past 18 months, as have Gap, the fashion chain, and Best Buy, another electronics chain.

(h/t Manal Mehta)

A man has been charged with the murder of teenager Hani Abou El Kheir in central London.

Ahmed Mikhaimar, 19, of Pimlico, has been remanded in custody to appear at Redbridge Magistrates on Tuesday.

He is accused of killing 16-year-old Hani, who was stabbed to death in Pimlico – one of London’s most affluent areas – on January 27.

The teenager, who lived on the nearby Churchill Gardens estate, was taken to King’s College Hospital after the attack but died later.

A post-mortem examination gave the cause of death as multiple stab wounds.

Two other teenagers arrested on suspicion of Hani’s murder have been released on bail, while four other people were bailed on Sunday night.

A man aged 48, a woman of 47 and two girls aged 16 and 17, who were arrested on Saturday on suspicion of assisting an offender were bailed to a date in March, Scotland Yard said.

Two boys aged 16 and 17 arrested on suspicion of murder on Saturday have been bailed to dates still to be fixed, while an 18-year-old man arrested on suspicion of murder on Saturday remains in custody.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi says relations between Iran and Egypt are strong and good.

“Relations with Cairo have been developing progressively since the popular revolution in this country, and this is because of the two countries’ determination,” the Iranian foreign minister said in an interview with IRNA in Berlin.

Salehi stated, “Egypt is a very important country in the region,” and expressed hope that the two countries would expand their political ties in the future.

He made the remarks just before leaving the German capital for Cairo to attend the 12th summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

The OIC meeting, which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will also attend, began on February 2 and runs until February 7.

The OIC, which was established in 1969, has 57 member states spread over four continents.

Iran severed its diplomatic ties with Egypt in 1980, after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, because Egypt signed the Camp David Accords with Israel and offered asylum to former Iranian dictator Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

However, the Egyptian revolution of February 2011, which deposed former dictator Hosni Mubarak, led to a thaw in relations between Tehran and Cairo, although full diplomatic relations between the two countries have not yet been restored.

NT/HGL

Via Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

It was just a matter of time before the most powerful crony capitalist bank in America decided to join the housing trade. Making money running the food stamp program just wasn’t enough for Your Crony Highness Jamie Dimon and company, it’s time to join his financial oligarch brothers in the bidding war to corner the housing market and become your overlord. That way they can control how you eat (food stamps) and where you sleep. It’s become very clear what the large financial interests in these United States are attempting. Funnel all the low interest crony American money, with a dash of Chinese laundered money, into the “housing recovery.” From Bloomberg:

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) is giving its wealthiest clients the chance to invest in the single-family rental market after other investments linked to the U.S. housing recovery jumped in value.

The firm’s unit that caters to individuals and families with more than $5 million, put client money in a partnership that bought more than 5,000 single family homes to rent in Florida, Arizona, Nevada and California, said David Lyon, a managing director and investment specialist at J.P. Morgan Private Bank. Investors can expect returns of as much as 8 percent annually from rental income as well as part of the profits when the homes are sold, he said.

The bank’s wealthy clients are joining a growing number of private-equity firms and individuals buying rental homes in the regions hardest hit by the U.S. housing crash. Blackstone Group LP (BX) has spent $2.7 billion, and said last month it accelerated purchases as home prices rise faster than anticipated. Even after home values in November gained by the most in six years, investors are wagering on rental properties as an alternative to housing-related stocks and mortgage debt that’s already soared.

The strategy is similar to institutional buyers including Blackstone, the world’s largest buyout firm, Thomas Barrack’s Colony Capital LLC, and Oaktree Capital Group LLC. (OAK) They’re aiming to profit from low prices on distressed properties, often those in foreclosure and sold at auction – and the demand for rentals from people who don’t want to own a home or can’t qualify for a mortgage.

Now here’s where the article gets really interesting.

“It’s hard to find a private-equity firm on the planet that doesn’t have a strategy in this space,” Gary Beasley, chief executive officer at Waypoint Homes, said last week at the American Securitization Forum’s annual conference in Las Vegas. The Oakland, California-based company has bought homes in California, Arizona, Illinois and Georgia.

Sure seems like the right time to buy housing. You know, after every single pool of aggressive private capital in the nation and abroad is already bidding.

Now take a look at how poor the returns are. This is what happens when things get too crowded.

“If you look at some of the really beaten down areas – Miami, Orlando, Vegas, Tampa – we do think the return on that asset, if you just buy a home, collect the rent and do whatever you need to do on the cost side, you’re getting a return of somewhere between 6 percent and 8 percent,” Bordia said. Non- agency mortgage-backed securities are generally yielding 4 percent to 6 percent, he said.

Even as the housing market probably will do well across the nation, areas where property prices already are high such as San Diego, Los Angeles, Denver and San Francisco, will see lower rental yields, of 4 percent to 5 percent, Bordia said.

Are you kidding me? A 6%-8% yield is all you get for taking on all the responsibilities of upkeep, rent collection as well as the risk of capital depreciation. I’ll take the check please.

Finally, just when you thought the lunacy couldn’t get any more extreme…

While buying single-family homes to rent is among “the smarter ways to invest going forward,” Pastolove advises wealthy clients to buy the properties to rent themselves if they are able. Morgan Stanley isn’t purchasing homes or managing them; instead it’s making loans to high-net-worth customers at rates lower than a typical mortgage, and using their investment portfolios as collateral. That provides people the capital to purchase investment properties, he said.

This. Will. Not. End. Well.

Full article here.

If someone unfamiliar with the state of education reform in this country were to watch this little lovefest with Stephanopoulis and Michelle Rhee, they might be left with the conclusion that she’s a Democrat with a hunger to fix the schools, a radical reformer who independently decided she would take her mighty years of experience with DC Schools and carry the message to the masses.

Of course, that’s exactly what Rhee wants, and Stephanopoulis delivered. No uncomfortable questions from George about the DC cheating scandal, her ties to the for-profit privatization movement, or what, exactly, is wrong with our public schools. Instead, we get this:

STEPHANOPOULOS: We’ve also seen that there’s been a backlash, though, against how we assess how schools and teachers are doing. Just this week, teachers in Seattle saying we’re not going to go forward with these standardized tests anymore. A lot of parents resisting it, as well.

RHEE: Yeah. Well, I think we’ve got to strike a balance. You don’t want a situation where there’s an overemphasis on testing, but at the same time, we had decades where there was no accountability whatsoever and our school system was graduating kids who didn’t have basic skills and knowledge. They couldn’t read and do math appropriately and at grade level, and that means they couldn’t find appropriate jobs.

There’s an exchange just begging for a follow-up question, right? What does “strike a balance” mean? And how is it credible for Michelle Rhee to claim there’s a need to strike a balance when she is the queen of using test results to denigrate schools and teachers across the nation?

Of course, the purpose of the interview was to let her pimp her new book, which comes out tomorrow. That would be the same book where she uses a non-profit organization (StudentsFirst) funded by the likes of Rupert Murdoch and the DeVos family to push her brand of “Rhee-form” — privatization of our public school system.

It still doesn’t let GSteph off the hook. Even in this New York Times interview, the question of the cheating scandal came up to at least remind people that Rhee’s career and subsequent fame has come via scandal, not substance.

It aggravates me that this woman is involved at any level in our debate over improving public schools –not only because I don’t agree with her on a policy level, but because she is pushing the message of the right-wing school reformers who see public education as a money tree waiting to be shaken.

This is a woman who believes teachers are not professionals and can therefore be replaced with bright-eyed future hedge fund managers who serve a couple of years and move on. She believes classrooms can be sardined with sixty students and one good teacher and learning will happen. Forget student safety or any semblance of individual instruction. Just plop those kids down and crank up the ‘structured learning programs’ developed by companies that ask questions about pineapples and rabbits and it’ll all be good. The test scores will prove it!

GSteph could have asked Rhee what she thought about Jeb Bush and ALEC’s involvement in promoting privatization interests in Florida. That would have been revealing. But he didn’t.

Instead, he served as her Rhee-seller. When does media stop giving this woman a pass and start looking at what she is really trying to do to public education in this country?

February 4, 2013  |  

On Tuesday, a coalition of congressional lawmakers, led by Reps. Jared Polis (D-CO) and Earl Blumenaur (D-OR) will introduce legislation to permit for the regulated commercial production, retail sales and taxation of cannabis to adults in states that have legalized its consumption. The historic measures mark the first time members of Congress have sought to legalize the social use of marijuana and are indicative of the shifting tone in public and political opinion regarding the plant once dubbed the “assassin of youth.”

America is at a tipping point regarding the public’s desire for common-sense alternatives to marijuana prohibition. Never in modern history has there existed greater public support for ending the nation’s nearly century-long experiment with pot prohibition and replacing it with a system of legalization and regulation. And following the Election Day victories in Washington and Colorado this past November, even some congressional lawmakers are gaining the confidence necessary to align themselves with public opinion when it comes to pot.

Cannabis prohibition financially burdens taxpayers, encroaches upon civil liberties, engenders disrespect for the law, impedes legitimate scientific research into the plant’s medicinal properties, and disproportionately impacts communities of color. Furthermore, the criminalization of cannabis simply doesn’t achieve its ostensible goals. Since 1970, an estimated 22 million US citizens have been cited or arrested for violating marijuana laws. Yet despite this vigorous criminal enforcement, over 100 million Americans acknowledge having consumed cannabis, and one in 10 admits to consuming it regularly. Prohibition hasn’t dissuaded a significant portion of the general public from consuming pot or reduced its availability, but it has damaged the lives and careers of millions of people who were arrested and sanctioned for choosing to ingest a substance that is safer than alcohol or tobacco.  

After witnessing decades of failure, a majority of Americans are now saying “Enough,” turning their backs on cannabis criminalization and demanding alternatives. National polling affirms this emerging public sentiment, as do the historic and much-talked about Election Day results in Colorado and Washington — where for the first time ever, a majority of the electorate decided in favor of legalizing the consumption, production, and retail sale of cannabis by adults.

In the three months since the November 6 election, it has become apparent that these victories at the ballot box have only strengthened the public’s desire for change.  For example, a December 2012 Public Policy Polling telephone survey of US voters found that 58 percent of the public believes that marijuana “should be legal.” Only 34 percent of respondents opposed the notion of legalizing cannabis. A newly released poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International reports that 53 percent of Americans believe that “the government should treat marijuana the same as alcohol,” while over 70 percent of respondents say that the federal government should butt out of the affairs of states that have legalized the plant. A post-election survey by the polling firm Angus Reid found that 54 percent of US citizens favor legalizing cannabis, and two out of three predicted that marijuana would be legal nationwide within 10 years. Their prediction may be accurate — assuming the marijuana law reform movement continues to build upon its existing momentum. It can do so in the following ways.


Address Polling Gaps
 


Despite Americans’ significant support for legalizing pot, there remain pivotal pockets of opposition. For example, self-described Democrats and Independents favor marijuana legalization by far greater percentages than do self-identified Republicans or conservatives. Republicans are the controlling party in many states, particularly in many southeastern and Midwestern states that lack the ballot initiative process and where cannabis possession and cultivation penalties still remain disproportionately harsh, such as in Florida, Oklahoma, Georgia, and Texas. If marijuana law reform advocates ever expect to replicate their recent ballot box victories in the legislatures of these and other politically right-leaning states, they must do a better job in the years ahead convincing self-identified and politically elected Republicans that this is an issue deserving action and support.

Polls also reveal an age divide within the public’s support for legalization. Predictably, those aged 18 to 65 — who likely have had firsthand experience with the drug — typically express far greater support for legalization than those over 65, many of whom likely have never consumed or even seen cannabis.

February 4, 2013  |  

On Tuesday, a coalition of congressional lawmakers, led by Reps. Jared Polis (D-CO) and Earl Blumenaur (D-OR) will introduce legislation to permit for the regulated commercial production, retail sales and taxation of cannabis to adults in states that have legalized its consumption. The historic measures mark the first time members of Congress have sought to legalize the social use of marijuana and are indicative of the shifting tone in public and political opinion regarding the plant once dubbed the “assassin of youth.”

America is at a tipping point regarding the public’s desire for common-sense alternatives to marijuana prohibition. Never in modern history has there existed greater public support for ending the nation’s nearly century-long experiment with pot prohibition and replacing it with a system of legalization and regulation. And following the Election Day victories in Washington and Colorado this past November, even some congressional lawmakers are gaining the confidence necessary to align themselves with public opinion when it comes to pot.

Cannabis prohibition financially burdens taxpayers, encroaches upon civil liberties, engenders disrespect for the law, impedes legitimate scientific research into the plant’s medicinal properties, and disproportionately impacts communities of color. Furthermore, the criminalization of cannabis simply doesn’t achieve its ostensible goals. Since 1970, an estimated 22 million US citizens have been cited or arrested for violating marijuana laws. Yet despite this vigorous criminal enforcement, over 100 million Americans acknowledge having consumed cannabis, and one in 10 admits to consuming it regularly. Prohibition hasn’t dissuaded a significant portion of the general public from consuming pot or reduced its availability, but it has damaged the lives and careers of millions of people who were arrested and sanctioned for choosing to ingest a substance that is safer than alcohol or tobacco.  

After witnessing decades of failure, a majority of Americans are now saying “Enough,” turning their backs on cannabis criminalization and demanding alternatives. National polling affirms this emerging public sentiment, as do the historic and much-talked about Election Day results in Colorado and Washington — where for the first time ever, a majority of the electorate decided in favor of legalizing the consumption, production, and retail sale of cannabis by adults.

In the three months since the November 6 election, it has become apparent that these victories at the ballot box have only strengthened the public’s desire for change.  For example, a December 2012 Public Policy Polling telephone survey of US voters found that 58 percent of the public believes that marijuana “should be legal.” Only 34 percent of respondents opposed the notion of legalizing cannabis. A newly released poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International reports that 53 percent of Americans believe that “the government should treat marijuana the same as alcohol,” while over 70 percent of respondents say that the federal government should butt out of the affairs of states that have legalized the plant. A post-election survey by the polling firm Angus Reid found that 54 percent of US citizens favor legalizing cannabis, and two out of three predicted that marijuana would be legal nationwide within 10 years. Their prediction may be accurate — assuming the marijuana law reform movement continues to build upon its existing momentum. It can do so in the following ways.


Address Polling Gaps
 


Despite Americans’ significant support for legalizing pot, there remain pivotal pockets of opposition. For example, self-described Democrats and Independents favor marijuana legalization by far greater percentages than do self-identified Republicans or conservatives. Republicans are the controlling party in many states, particularly in many southeastern and Midwestern states that lack the ballot initiative process and where cannabis possession and cultivation penalties still remain disproportionately harsh, such as in Florida, Oklahoma, Georgia, and Texas. If marijuana law reform advocates ever expect to replicate their recent ballot box victories in the legislatures of these and other politically right-leaning states, they must do a better job in the years ahead convincing self-identified and politically elected Republicans that this is an issue deserving action and support.

Polls also reveal an age divide within the public’s support for legalization. Predictably, those aged 18 to 65 — who likely have had firsthand experience with the drug — typically express far greater support for legalization than those over 65, many of whom likely have never consumed or even seen cannabis.

The accusations of corruption against senior Popular Party officials, including Spanish Prime Minister Rajoy would not have necessarily been market move. The accusations raise more questions than they answer.  However, Rajoy’s denial may have deterred Asian traders early Monday, but European investors were more skeptical.  

Confidence in the Rajoy government has been eroding as the economy deteriorates.  The fourth quarter contraction was deeper than the Bank of Spain expected.  News on Monday included the largest jump in unemployment since January 2013. In addition, Spain’s three largest banks, Santander, BBVA and CaixaBank announced large write downs in recent days, in part due to large real estate provisions, reminding investors a key source of Spain’s vulnerability.

Calls for Rajoy’s resignation from opposition forces were given more credence by the financial press than they deserve.  Nevertheless, the political fragility is palatable.  The one thing that could bolster the government’s support is German Chancellor Merkel’s best wishes, but an substantial improvement in the Spanish economy.  This does look to be forthcoming for at least several months.   

The decline in sovereign yields over the past six months has been a powerful tonic.  Spanish financial institutions are large holders of government bonds.  Their access to the capital markets also improved.  This is part of the positive contagion.  

Spanish bonds sold off sharply on Monday.  It seemed to trigger a slide in the euro after new multi-month highs were set before the weekend above $1.37.  The last part of the euro’s rally took place even as Spanish yields were rising in absolute terms and relative to Germany.  

The Spanish-German 2-year spread bottomed on Jan 11 near 200 bp.  It finished last month at 230 bp and is now just above 260 bp.  The Spain’s 2-year yield bottomed on Jan 10 at about 2.11% and had risen to 2.50% by the end of of Jan and was near 2.88% on Monday.   

A similar story is told by the performance of the 10-year bonds.  Spanish 10-year bond yields have been rising and driving the premium over Germany has been rising for a few weeks. Spain’s premium fell to 330 bp on Jan 11 and has been trending higher since.  The premium stood at 355 bp at the end of Jan and 382 bp on Monday. The Spanish 10-year yield bottomed the same day just below 4.90% and is now at 5.43%

The review of the recent action illustrates that the euro has been able to rally in the face of the increase in Spanish bond yields and widening premium over Germany.  The key question now is whether this phase is over and the the risk emanating from the periphery will again be a driver of the foreign exchange market and the capital markets more broadly.  

It is coming too amid increased political fallout of the third bailout of Italy’s third largest bank, Monte Dei Paschi. The center-left PD has suffered the most in the polls three weeks ahead of the election.  Although it is still ahead, the margin over Berlusconi’s PDL has narrowed.  Berlusconi, the consummate politician is running circles around this rivals, appealing the basest populist instincts.

As an aggregator of information, the market generates noise and a signal.  We suspect the flare up in political tensions is noise and that the underlying signal generated by the OMT backstop (which is the inducement cited by some of the world’s largest money managers for returning to the European debt market) and the more recent passive tightening of monetary conditions in Europe will continue to underpin the euro.  

The latter is taking place at the same time the Federal Reserve renewed its commitment to buying $85 bln a month in long-term assets.  Although US job creation has accelerated, the economy is downshifting.  Over the past four quarters, the economy has posted average annualized growth of 1.6%.  Over the past three year, quarterly average has been 2.0%.  Moreover, the impact of the end of the payroll savings tax holiday and the sequester warns of a couple more quarters of weak growth.

We anticipate that new euro buying will emerge on this pullback. Investors may rightfully be cautious ahead of the ECB meeting. Sharp sell-offs, like the one seen Monday, are rarely one-day phenomenons. Technically, there seems to be scope for euro losses toward $1.34.  

Chris Huhne has pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice over claims his ex-wife took speeding points for him a decade ago.

The former Cabinet minister is now expected to stand down as an MP after entering the plea on the first day of his trial at Southwark Crown Court in London.

His former wife Vicky Pryce, a former Government economics adviser, denies a charge of perverting the course of justice and her trial is expected to proceed.

Huhne arrived at the court on Monday morning with his girlfriend Carina Trimingham, who he admitted having an affair with in 2010.

The relationship led to the breakdown of his 26-year marriage to Pryce, with whom the politician has three children.

Ms Trimingham watched from the public gallery as he pleaded guilty.

The ex-Energy Secretary, who had harboured hopes of one day leading the Liberal Democrats, now finds his career in tatters and could face a jail term.

Perversion of the course of justice carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Huhne, 58, spoke clearly as he said “guilty” when asked for his plea. At a pre-trial hearing last week, he had denied the offence.

The charges date back to March 2003 when Huhne’s car was allegedly caught speeding on the motorway between Stansted Airport and London.

It was claimed that he persuaded economist Pryce, 60, to take the points so that he could avoid prosecution.

The claims only emerged in 2011 after his marriage fell apart because of his affair.

Mr Huhne stood down from the Cabinet last year, vowing to clear his name.

“I am innocent of these charges, and I intend to fight this in the courts, and I am confident that a jury will agree,” he said at the time.

More follows…

Following our earlier discussion of the echo-boom in housing, David Stockman appeared on Yahoo’s Daily Ticker with Lauren Lyster to pour come much-needed cold water ‘reality’ onto the hopes of an increasingly sheep-like investing public. Homebuilder stocks up 100%-plus simply reflects that “we are in a bubble once again.” The former CBO Director added that “in a world of medicated money by the central bank, things aren’t what they appear to be,” as he explained there is “no real organic sustainable recovery.”

Stockman further contends, “It’s happening in the most speculative sub-prime markets, where massive amounts of ‘fast money’ is rolling in to buy, to rent, on a speculative basis for a quick trade. And as soon as they conclude prices have moved enough, they’ll be gone as fast as they came.” Critically, he points out we live in a world of boomers looking to be trade-down sellers, not one of trade-up buyers, as “the fast money will sell as quickly as they can and the bubble will pop almost as rapidly as it’s appeared.

He concludes that the American Dream of home-ownership ‘forced’ upon the citizens was a huge policy mistake as he chides, “let the market decide,” as he clearly sees Bernanke recreating yet another speculative bubble.

Click image for full clip (no embed):

February 4, 2013  |  

The Boy Scouts of America sure like their policy of excluding gays and lesbians from scouting. They liked it enough to defend it all the way up to the Supreme Court. But this is 2013, and a majority of Americans now support marriage equality — and nine in 10 oppose job discrimination on the basis of sexual preference.

The Boy Scouts of America sure hate losing donors left and right over their 1950s view of human sexuality. They hate it enough to finally overturn the ban.­

Scouting, of course, is as Real-American as apple pie. So, given that a photograph of the president shooting skeet is enough to elicit baboon-like howls from the hard-right, you can only imagine the reaction many of the brethren had to this vicious assault on… well, it’s not entirely clear what these folk think is under attack. Is it religious liberty? Let’s say it’s religious liberty!

OK, even if it’s not obvious how a private organization adapting its bylaws in response to changing social mores hurts America, there can be no doubt that there’s a vicious assault on something underway, according to the right. 

Here are some of the best reactions we’ve seen from the denizens of the fever-swamps.

1. This seems like a fine opportunity to bash Islam!

Over at Rightscoop, the first thing that sprang to mind on hearing the news that a secular organization is adapting to the times was, “There goes those damn Muslims again!” Responding to Obama’s scandalous comment that “gays and lesbians should have access and opportunity the same way everyone else does,” Rightscoop harumphed:

So I guess, based on that logic, Obama must also believe that Muslims should allow gays to be members of their mosques, even having gay Imams. I’d love for someone to ask him that question. Of course you know he’d say that about Christianity.

Gotcha there, Mr. Muslim-in-Chief! Not every Boy Scout is a terrorist, but…

Anyway, the BBC reports, “a prayer room described as Europe’s first gay-friendly mosque is opening on the outskirts of Paris. The new centre is run by Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed, a gay Islamic scholar, married to a gay man, and the founder of Homosexual Muslims of France.”

And here in the U.S., “Muslims for Progressive Values” has “grown from a few friends to a thousand members and spawned a string of small mosques and spiritual groups that stretched from Atlanta to Los Angeles,” according to the Huffington Post. And in that network, “women are leading congregations in prayer, gay imams are performing Islamic marriages, and men and women are praying side by side.”

But hey, why let a religion’s diversity get in the way of a good stereotype?

2. Serious question: Why do you want to make God weep?

You’d think the Almighty could fight her own battles. She is, after all, omnipotent. But it never hurts to have Rick Santorum in your corner, and he’s here to explain what this move is really about: the continuing victimization of people like Rick Santorum:

What makes these organizations so effective, I believe, is precisely their ability to appeal to something “other,” to some higher authority to which we are accountable. I believe what makes the Scouts so successful, therefore, is loyalty to its first principles, its history and its understanding of what it means to live in duty to God.

Wednesday’s vote is a challenge to the Scouts’ very nature and is another example of the left attempting to remove God from all areas of public life.

February 4, 2013  |  

The Boy Scouts of America sure like their policy of excluding gays and lesbians from scouting. They liked it enough to defend it all the way up to the Supreme Court. But this is 2013, and a majority of Americans now support marriage equality — and nine in 10 oppose job discrimination on the basis of sexual preference.

The Boy Scouts of America sure hate losing donors left and right over their 1950s view of human sexuality. They hate it enough to finally overturn the ban.­

Scouting, of course, is as Real-American as apple pie. So, given that a photograph of the president shooting skeet is enough to elicit baboon-like howls from the hard-right, you can only imagine the reaction many of the brethren had to this vicious assault on… well, it’s not entirely clear what these folk think is under attack. Is it religious liberty? Let’s say it’s religious liberty!

OK, even if it’s not obvious how a private organization adapting its bylaws in response to changing social mores hurts America, there can be no doubt that there’s a vicious assault on something underway, according to the right. 

Here are some of the best reactions we’ve seen from the denizens of the fever-swamps.

1. This seems like a fine opportunity to bash Islam!

Over at Rightscoop, the first thing that sprang to mind on hearing the news that a secular organization is adapting to the times was, “There goes those damn Muslims again!” Responding to Obama’s scandalous comment that “gays and lesbians should have access and opportunity the same way everyone else does,” Rightscoop harumphed:

So I guess, based on that logic, Obama must also believe that Muslims should allow gays to be members of their mosques, even having gay Imams. I’d love for someone to ask him that question. Of course you know he’d say that about Christianity.

Gotcha there, Mr. Muslim-in-Chief! Not every Boy Scout is a terrorist, but…

Anyway, the BBC reports, “a prayer room described as Europe’s first gay-friendly mosque is opening on the outskirts of Paris. The new centre is run by Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed, a gay Islamic scholar, married to a gay man, and the founder of Homosexual Muslims of France.”

And here in the U.S., “Muslims for Progressive Values” has “grown from a few friends to a thousand members and spawned a string of small mosques and spiritual groups that stretched from Atlanta to Los Angeles,” according to the Huffington Post. And in that network, “women are leading congregations in prayer, gay imams are performing Islamic marriages, and men and women are praying side by side.”

But hey, why let a religion’s diversity get in the way of a good stereotype?

2. Serious question: Why do you want to make God weep?

You’d think the Almighty could fight her own battles. She is, after all, omnipotent. But it never hurts to have Rick Santorum in your corner, and he’s here to explain what this move is really about: the continuing victimization of people like Rick Santorum:

What makes these organizations so effective, I believe, is precisely their ability to appeal to something “other,” to some higher authority to which we are accountable. I believe what makes the Scouts so successful, therefore, is loyalty to its first principles, its history and its understanding of what it means to live in duty to God.

Wednesday’s vote is a challenge to the Scouts’ very nature and is another example of the left attempting to remove God from all areas of public life.

SAN FRANCISCO – February 4 – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged the Supreme Court Friday to block DNA collection from everyone arrested for a crime, arguing that law enforcement must get a warrant before forcing people to give samples of their genetic material.

EFF’s amicus brief was filed Friday in Maryland v. King — a case challenging a law in the state of Maryland that requires DNA collection from all arrestees, whether they are ultimately convicted of a crime or not. Maryland officials claim that DNA is necessary for definitive identification, but they do not use the sample to “identify” the arrestee. Instead, they use the sample for other investigatory purposes — retaining and repeatedly accessing the wealth of personal information disclosed by an individual’s genetic material despite lacking individualized suspicion connecting the arrestee to another crime. This violates the Fourth Amendment.

“Your DNA is the roadmap to an extraordinary amount of private information about you and your family,” said EFF Staff Attorney Jennifer Lynch. “It contains data on your current health, your potential for disease, and your family background. For government access to personal information this sensitive, the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant.”

In addition to Maryland, 27 states and the federal government have laws that mandate DNA collection from anyone arrested, even if they are not yet convicted of a crime. EFF has filed amicus briefs in a number of cases challenging these unconstitutional laws. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has shown increasing sensitivity to the power of sophisticated technology to undermine traditional privacy protections.

“Let’s say you were picked up by police at a political protest and arrested, but then released and never convicted of a crime. Under these laws, your genetic material is held in a law enforcement database, often indefinitely,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. “This is an unconstitutional search and seizure.”

The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in Maryland v. King later this month.

For the full brief in Maryland v. King:
https://www.eff.org/document/amicus-brief-16

Contacts:

Jennifer Lynch
  Staff Attorney
  Electronic Frontier Foundation
  jlynch@eff.org

Lee Tien
  Senior Staff Attorney
  Electronic Frontier Foundation
  tien@eff.org

SAN FRANCISCO – February 4 – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged the Supreme Court Friday to block DNA collection from everyone arrested for a crime, arguing that law enforcement must get a warrant before forcing people to give samples of their genetic material.

EFF’s amicus brief was filed Friday in Maryland v. King — a case challenging a law in the state of Maryland that requires DNA collection from all arrestees, whether they are ultimately convicted of a crime or not. Maryland officials claim that DNA is necessary for definitive identification, but they do not use the sample to “identify” the arrestee. Instead, they use the sample for other investigatory purposes — retaining and repeatedly accessing the wealth of personal information disclosed by an individual’s genetic material despite lacking individualized suspicion connecting the arrestee to another crime. This violates the Fourth Amendment.

“Your DNA is the roadmap to an extraordinary amount of private information about you and your family,” said EFF Staff Attorney Jennifer Lynch. “It contains data on your current health, your potential for disease, and your family background. For government access to personal information this sensitive, the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant.”

In addition to Maryland, 27 states and the federal government have laws that mandate DNA collection from anyone arrested, even if they are not yet convicted of a crime. EFF has filed amicus briefs in a number of cases challenging these unconstitutional laws. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has shown increasing sensitivity to the power of sophisticated technology to undermine traditional privacy protections.

“Let’s say you were picked up by police at a political protest and arrested, but then released and never convicted of a crime. Under these laws, your genetic material is held in a law enforcement database, often indefinitely,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. “This is an unconstitutional search and seizure.”

The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in Maryland v. King later this month.

For the full brief in Maryland v. King:
https://www.eff.org/document/amicus-brief-16

Contacts:

Jennifer Lynch
  Staff Attorney
  Electronic Frontier Foundation
  jlynch@eff.org

Lee Tien
  Senior Staff Attorney
  Electronic Frontier Foundation
  tien@eff.org

WASHINGTON – February 4 – Civil rights lawyers today filed a motion asking a federal court to end the NYPD’s illegal surveillance of American Muslims and establish an independent monitor to review the Department’s counterterrorism efforts. Faiza Patel, Co-Director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, is available for interview.

The motion revives a class-action suit that 16 political groups brought against New York City in 1971 after they were illegally spied on by the NYPD. The suit was settled through a consent decree, which prescribes a set of guidelines regulating the Department’s collection of information about political activity. The guidelines, commonly known as the Handschu guidelines, were modified after September 11 to give the NYPD greater freedom in its counterterrorism operations, but still contain important limits on the Department’s ability to investigate political activity and keep tabs on individuals.

“The Police Commissioner has defended the NYPD’s covert operations in American Muslim neighborhoods on the basis that they complied with the Handschu guidelines,” said Faiza Patel, Co-Director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program. “Today’s filing shows that in fact the NYPD has systematically violated the Guidelines. This pattern of violations was facilitated by a chronic lack of oversight, which the City Council should remedy by establishing an independent monitor that ensures the Department’s policies and actions are lawful, effective, and consistent with the civil liberties of all Americans.”

Declarations by civil rights advocates, members of the Muslim community, and an ex-NYPD informant were filed with today’s motion. The declarations describe how undercover officers and informants infiltrated mosques, schools, restaurants, and grocery stores to spy on Muslims, and the fear and distrust that such invasive surveillance has sparked among the community. Testimony by the Department’s intelligence chief Thomas Galati also reveals that a key part of the extensive spying program has proved woefully ineffective – such operations have not yielded any leads or triggered a single terrorism investigation. This is not surprising, given that the operations are based on religious stereotypes rather than evidence of unlawful or terrorist activity.

For more information, or to set up an interview with Faiza Patel, please contact Erik Opsal at erik.opsal@nyu.edu or 646-292-8356.

WASHINGTON – February 4 – Civil rights lawyers today filed a motion asking a federal court to end the NYPD’s illegal surveillance of American Muslims and establish an independent monitor to review the Department’s counterterrorism efforts. Faiza Patel, Co-Director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, is available for interview.

The motion revives a class-action suit that 16 political groups brought against New York City in 1971 after they were illegally spied on by the NYPD. The suit was settled through a consent decree, which prescribes a set of guidelines regulating the Department’s collection of information about political activity. The guidelines, commonly known as the Handschu guidelines, were modified after September 11 to give the NYPD greater freedom in its counterterrorism operations, but still contain important limits on the Department’s ability to investigate political activity and keep tabs on individuals.

“The Police Commissioner has defended the NYPD’s covert operations in American Muslim neighborhoods on the basis that they complied with the Handschu guidelines,” said Faiza Patel, Co-Director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program. “Today’s filing shows that in fact the NYPD has systematically violated the Guidelines. This pattern of violations was facilitated by a chronic lack of oversight, which the City Council should remedy by establishing an independent monitor that ensures the Department’s policies and actions are lawful, effective, and consistent with the civil liberties of all Americans.”

Declarations by civil rights advocates, members of the Muslim community, and an ex-NYPD informant were filed with today’s motion. The declarations describe how undercover officers and informants infiltrated mosques, schools, restaurants, and grocery stores to spy on Muslims, and the fear and distrust that such invasive surveillance has sparked among the community. Testimony by the Department’s intelligence chief Thomas Galati also reveals that a key part of the extensive spying program has proved woefully ineffective – such operations have not yielded any leads or triggered a single terrorism investigation. This is not surprising, given that the operations are based on religious stereotypes rather than evidence of unlawful or terrorist activity.

For more information, or to set up an interview with Faiza Patel, please contact Erik Opsal at erik.opsal@nyu.edu or 646-292-8356.

WASHINGTON – February 4 – Most Americans are likely to spend almost as much on gasoline over the life of their vehicle as its original cost but could save thousands with a fuel-efficient vehicle, according to a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), which also found most drivers see their oil company stock grow less than a penny a year from their own fill-ups.

Rising gas prices and drivers’ trips to the pump are translating into big profits for the oil industry. Just last week, ExxonMobil and Chevron posted near-record profits in 2012 of $44.9 billion and $26.2 billion, respectively. These profits, however, come at a big cost to consumers. Americans pay thousands of dollars every year to fill up their vehicles, and this expense is taking an increasing chunk out of their wallets.

Examining where all that money paid at the pump actually goes, the new report found that of the $50 a driver pays at the pump, on average, $33 will go directly to oil companies. That means that if a driver bought a car in 2011 and drove it for 15 years — the lifetime for an average vehicle — they would spend more than $22,000 on gasoline, $14,000 of which would go directly to oil companies.

“Filling up at the pump isn’t cheap,” said Joshua Goldman, the report’s author and policy analyst for UCS’s Clean Vehicles program. “You’re basically paying for a second car every 15 years. The only thing really benefitting from your oil use is oil companies’ bottom line.”

Filling up does not do much to feed money into communities either. In fact, just 81 cents of an average $50 fill-up goes to the local gas station owner. “In the end, gas stations make more money off the bottled water, beef jerky, and other things you buy inside than off the fuel you buy outside,” Goldman added.

Even if a driver owns shares in the same oil companies they buy gas from, their oil use does virtually nothing to benefit their personal stock portfolio. In fact, an average driver with $20,000 in ExxonMobil stock would see less than a penny of growth in their investment after spending $1,700 to fill up with gas from ExxonMobil over the course of a year.

Even if ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson were to spend an estimated $3,200 filling up a Chevy Suburban — one of the most fuel-inefficient vehicles in the country — over the course of a year, his $150 million in ExxonMobil stock would only grow 34 cents through his fill-ups.

By contrast, efficiency can deliver large returns for drivers. For instance, a Ford Fusion SE Hybrid costs $3,500 more than its base conventional gas model, but consumes $9,000 less in gasoline over its lifetime.

“Saving money by investing in a fuel-efficient vehicle is a win whether you own oil stocks or not,” Goldman said. “Even Rex Tillerson would see more personal benefit from owning a fuel-efficient vehicle than continuing to fill up a gas guzzler at ExxonMobil stations.”

Exxon itself has realized the potential savings of investing in efficiency as it has reduced energy use at its refineries by 9 percent over the last nine years.

Automakers are starting to offer more gas-saving models thanks in part to historic new standards finalized in 2010 and strengthened last year to nearly double the fuel economy of new vehicles by 2025. Tapping into fuel-efficient technologies can not only help save drivers money, but also help create new jobs and put the nation on a path toward cutting its projected oil use in half within 20 years, according to UCS’s Half the Oil Plan.

According to data from the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, extracting oil and gas produces less than one job per $1 million of output, and is among the least job-intensive industries in the United States. When consumers reduce spending on gasoline, they spend more money in areas of the economy such as retail, which employs about 12 people per $1 million of output.

“Since the oil industry profits from our fill-ups, we cannot expect them to lead the charge to cut our oil use,” Goldman said. “Thankfully, it’s easier than ever for consumers to choose fuel efficiency and keeping the money saved on gas in their pockets and their communities instead of oil company coffers.”

WASHINGTON – February 4 – Most Americans are likely to spend almost as much on gasoline over the life of their vehicle as its original cost but could save thousands with a fuel-efficient vehicle, according to a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), which also found most drivers see their oil company stock grow less than a penny a year from their own fill-ups.

Rising gas prices and drivers’ trips to the pump are translating into big profits for the oil industry. Just last week, ExxonMobil and Chevron posted near-record profits in 2012 of $44.9 billion and $26.2 billion, respectively. These profits, however, come at a big cost to consumers. Americans pay thousands of dollars every year to fill up their vehicles, and this expense is taking an increasing chunk out of their wallets.

Examining where all that money paid at the pump actually goes, the new report found that of the $50 a driver pays at the pump, on average, $33 will go directly to oil companies. That means that if a driver bought a car in 2011 and drove it for 15 years — the lifetime for an average vehicle — they would spend more than $22,000 on gasoline, $14,000 of which would go directly to oil companies.

“Filling up at the pump isn’t cheap,” said Joshua Goldman, the report’s author and policy analyst for UCS’s Clean Vehicles program. “You’re basically paying for a second car every 15 years. The only thing really benefitting from your oil use is oil companies’ bottom line.”

Filling up does not do much to feed money into communities either. In fact, just 81 cents of an average $50 fill-up goes to the local gas station owner. “In the end, gas stations make more money off the bottled water, beef jerky, and other things you buy inside than off the fuel you buy outside,” Goldman added.

Even if a driver owns shares in the same oil companies they buy gas from, their oil use does virtually nothing to benefit their personal stock portfolio. In fact, an average driver with $20,000 in ExxonMobil stock would see less than a penny of growth in their investment after spending $1,700 to fill up with gas from ExxonMobil over the course of a year.

Even if ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson were to spend an estimated $3,200 filling up a Chevy Suburban — one of the most fuel-inefficient vehicles in the country — over the course of a year, his $150 million in ExxonMobil stock would only grow 34 cents through his fill-ups.

By contrast, efficiency can deliver large returns for drivers. For instance, a Ford Fusion SE Hybrid costs $3,500 more than its base conventional gas model, but consumes $9,000 less in gasoline over its lifetime.

“Saving money by investing in a fuel-efficient vehicle is a win whether you own oil stocks or not,” Goldman said. “Even Rex Tillerson would see more personal benefit from owning a fuel-efficient vehicle than continuing to fill up a gas guzzler at ExxonMobil stations.”

Exxon itself has realized the potential savings of investing in efficiency as it has reduced energy use at its refineries by 9 percent over the last nine years.

Automakers are starting to offer more gas-saving models thanks in part to historic new standards finalized in 2010 and strengthened last year to nearly double the fuel economy of new vehicles by 2025. Tapping into fuel-efficient technologies can not only help save drivers money, but also help create new jobs and put the nation on a path toward cutting its projected oil use in half within 20 years, according to UCS’s Half the Oil Plan.

According to data from the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, extracting oil and gas produces less than one job per $1 million of output, and is among the least job-intensive industries in the United States. When consumers reduce spending on gasoline, they spend more money in areas of the economy such as retail, which employs about 12 people per $1 million of output.

“Since the oil industry profits from our fill-ups, we cannot expect them to lead the charge to cut our oil use,” Goldman said. “Thankfully, it’s easier than ever for consumers to choose fuel efficiency and keeping the money saved on gas in their pockets and their communities instead of oil company coffers.”

WASHINGTON – February 4 – Environmental Working Group (EWG) joined a diverse group of stakeholders today to call on Congress to reform the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) because of its negative impact on the environment, farmers and taxpayers. The RFS requires refiners to blend 15 billion gallons of conventional biofuels (i.e. corn ethanol) into the U.S. fuel supply by 2015.

EWG Vice President of Government Affairs Scott Faber released the following statement:

“Corn ethanol has not only been a disaster for consumers, most farmers and taxpayers; it’s also been a disaster for the environment. In fact, it’s worse for the environment than Canadian tar sands.

“By dramatically increasing the price of corn, the corn ethanol mandate has, in just the last four years, contributed to the conversion of 23 million acres of wetland and grassland — an area the size of Indiana — to cropland. Thanks to the mandate, we have lost more wetlands and grasslands in the last four years than in the previous 40.

“By encouraging farmers to plow up wetlands and grasslands, the corn ethanol mandate is causing more carbon to be released into the atmosphere, causing more fertilizers and pesticides to wash off farm fields and destroying more habitat that supports wildlife — and millions of jobs. What’s more, burning more and more corn ethanol in gasoline releases more benzene, a known carcinogen, and other toxic air pollutants that are linked to asthma, bronchitis, and other respiratory ailments.”

WASHINGTON – February 4 – On the eve of the Arctic Council environment minister’s meeting, a leaked copy of the Council’s much-heralded oil spill response agreement reveals deeply inadequate measures and a lack of effective penalties after nearly two years of development.

The document, entitled Co-operation on Marine Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response in the Arctic, is set to be adopted by foreign ministers at the main Arctic nations meeting in May. [1]

A draft obtained by Greenpeace contains vague language asking countries to take ‘appropriate steps’ to deal with a spill, but without specifying a minimum level for what those might be; and contains a series of major omissions including any discussion of oil company liabilities or effective arrangements in case of a transboundary incident.

Ben Ayliffe, head of the Arctic Oil campaign for Greenpeace International, said:

“This draft agreement does not inspire confidence in the ability of the Arctic Council to protect this fragile region when the worst happens. It’s incredibly vague, it fails to hold oil companies liable for the impact of their mistakes, and there is nothing here that ensures adequate capacity to deal with a spill in these nations.

“Serious questions remain about the role that oil companies played in drafting this agreement, and whether the Arctic Council is prepared to police this pristine natural environment effectively. The eyes of the world are watching but currently the Arctic Council is not standing up to scrutiny.”

Photos issued on the Arctic Council’s Flickr photostream show oil industry representatives participating in the working group, including the final meeting in which the document was finalised. [2]

The agreement asks so little of Canada, Denmark, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the US, that it is effectively useless, Ayliffe said.

Despite promises that this would be the first legally-binding agreement of its kind, it fails to outline any essential response equipment, methods for capping wells, or cleaning up oiled habitat and wildlife, relying instead on vague statements that Arctic nations should “ensure” they try and take “appropriate steps within available resources.”
“No oil company has ever proven it can clean up an oil spill in ice. The agreement offers nothing whatsoever in terms of identifying how a company would stop and clean up a Deepwater Horizon-style disaster,” Ayliffe continued. “Instead, this document is akin to the UN Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty simply saying, ‘If it’s not too much trouble, please have a national plan to not detonate atomic bombs’.”
The Arctic Council fails to set out a minimum set of technical capabilities that nations need to have in place before drilling. Given that many Arctic drilling areas are exceptionally remote, there is no guarantee that resources would be either available or adequate. [3]
-ENDS-
For more information, please contact:
Ben Ayliffe, Greenpeace International, head of Arctic oil campaign +44 7815 708683
Greenpeace International press desk hotline +31 (0)20 718 24 70
Prof. Richard Steiner, biologist and oil spill expert, +1-907-360-4503

NOTES

[1] The full version of Marine Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response in the Arctic can be found here: http://act.gp/W7vvWm

[2] Photos issued on the Arctic Council’s Flickr photostream show oil industry representatives participating in the working group, including the final meeting in which the document was finalised. Peter Velez represented Shell as part of the US delegation (second from the left), while Vladimir Dimitrov represented Gazprom (not pictured). http://www.flickr.com/photos/arctic_council/8199302131/sizes/k/in/set-72…

[3] Even Shell Alaska’s own vice-president Pete Slaiby admits: “There’s no sugar-coating this, I imagine there would be spills.” www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20310752

Earlier today the US Treasury released its latest Borrowing Estimates for Q1 and Q2 of calendar 2013. In brief: in the ended quarter, the Treasury borrowed some $297 billion, $9 billion more than the $288 billion previously predicted. One reason for this miss is the build up of cash in the quarter which ended at $93 billion instead of the $60 billion initially expected. However the extra cash buffer will be used in Q1, in which Treasury now expects to burn some $63 billion instead of the $30 billion forecast before, ending the quarter with $30 billion in cash. To get there, Treasury will need to raise some $331 billion in debt in January through March, just shy of the prior estimate of $342 billion in funding need in this quarter. And since the US debt to the penny counter has been stopped since the debt ceiling breach, and is still at the December 31, 2012 debt limit of $16.432 billion, this means we now know, approximately, that US debt on March 31, 2013 will be $16,763,730,050,569.10, give or take a dime, or said otherwise, assuming a generous 1% sequential growth in Q1 GDP, a 105% debt/GDP in two months.

From the Treasury:

And what this means:

While it was relatively well-known (or expected) that YUM’s China business was hurting (after its PR snafu), this is considerably worse than expected (hoped for). Revenues and earning met considerably lowered expectations but the outlook is drastically slashed:

• *YUM!: PUBLICITY STILL SIGNIFICANTLY HURTING CHINA KFC SALES
• *YUM SEES CHINA COMP SALES JAN AND FEB COMBINED DOWN 25% :YUM US
• *YUM! SAYS CHINA DIVISION JAN. EST. COMP SALES FELL 37% :YUM US

which leaves them

• *YUM SEES YR ADJ. EPS DOWN MID-SINGLE DIGITS VS $3.25, EST $3.57

But there’s always hope…

• *YUM! SEES KFC CHINA COMP SALES POSITIVE IN 4Q :YUM US

The stock is down 8% after-hours (for now).

The question is – of course – WWJCD – “I think the bulls are right and the bears are letting a short-term Chinese speed-bump scare them away from a great story” It was $67.52 then…$61.00 now

And from the Press Release:

CHINA UPDATE

KFC sales in the last two weeks of the fourth quarter were significantly impacted by the intense media attention surrounding an investigation by the Shanghai FDA (SFDA) into poultry supply management at Yum! China. The investigation was prompted by a report broadcast on China’s national television (CCTV), which aired on December 18, 2012. The report showed that a few poultry farmers were ignoring laws and regulations by using excessive levels of antibiotics in chicken. Regrettably, some of this product was purchased by two poultry suppliers of KFC China. The investigation caused further media attention, including social media commentary, and this negatively affected consumer perceptions of poultry safety, and KFC in particular.

On January 25, 2013, the SFDA concluded its investigation and released its recommendations. We appreciate their thorough and diligent review. The SFDA identified issues and provided “Supervisory Recommendations” to Yum! China to strengthen our poultry supply chain practices including refined voluntary self testing procedures, improved reporting and communications and enhanced supplier management. Our team in China has taken a comprehensive review of our current system and is in the process of incorporating all of the SFDA’s recommendations. We have always recognized the importance of building a world-class supply chain in China, which is why we have implemented a wide range of quality assurance and testing practices over the years above legal and regulatory standards. The SFDA’s recommendations will further strengthen those practices. The SFDA did not bring a case against Yum! China and no fine was assessed.

The past seven weeks of media attention have been intense and negative towards the KFC brand image. Even though this is a very disappointing setback, we are more committed than ever to continue to strengthen our efforts, restore the confidence of our customers and win back their brand loyalty. To that end, the China team will soon be launching a brand reputation quality campaign to re-assure consumers of our high quality food, along with aggressive marketing plans.

2013 OUTLOOK

We are confident the YRI and U.S. businesses will deliver annual operating profit growth consistent with our ongoing growth model. Given current uncertainties related to KFC sales in China, it is difficult to confidently forecast our overall financial performance. We have made the assumption that KFC China same-store sales will improve as the year progresses and will be positive in the fourth quarter. With these assumptions, we estimate a mid-single digit EPS decline in 2013 versus prior year, excluding Special Items. This includes an expectation for a significant decline in EPS performance in the first half of the year followed by EPS growth in the second half.

The first quarter for our China business includes only the months of January and February and is highly impacted by consumer spending during the Chinese New Year holiday. The timing of this holiday changes each year. This year it is important to note that while the timing impact of Chinese New Year is neutral to our first quarter, there is a significant negative impact to January sales and a corresponding significant benefit to February sales due to the timing of this week-long holiday. We expect that the underlying performance of our China business will remain relatively unchanged for the balance of the first quarter, with a same-store sales decline of approximately 25% for January and February combined (China’s first quarter).

and from the CEO:

Although we cannot predict how long it will take to restore sales, we are steadfast in our belief that the power and popularity of the KFC brand in China will ultimately drive a full sales recovery.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski discussing public broadband back in 2011.

Wow, this is a shocker. I was beginning to believe that the United States would never catch up with the rest of the world. Now it’s up to us to let our elected officials know voters are behind this latest proposal:

The federal government wants to create super WiFi networks across the nation, so powerful and broad in reach that consumers could use them to make calls or surf the Internet without paying a cellphone bill every month.

The proposal from the Federal Communications Commission has rattled the $178 billion wireless industry, which has launched a fierce lobbying effort to persuade policymakers to reconsider the idea, analysts say. That has been countered by an equally intense campaign from Google, Microsoft and other tech giants who say a free-for-all WiFi service would spark an explosion of innovations and devices that would benefit most Americans, especially the poor.

The airwaves that FCC officials want to hand over to the public would be much more powerful than existing WiFi networks that have become common in households. They could penetrate thick concrete walls and travel over hills and around trees. If all goes as planned, free access to the Web would be available in just about every metropolitan area and in many rural areas.

The new WiFi networks would also have much farther reach, allowing for a driverless car to communicate with another vehicle a mile away or a patient’s heart monitor to connect to a hospital on the other side of town.

If approved by the FCC, the free networks would still take several years to set up. And, with no one actively managing them, con­nections could easily become jammed in major cities. But public WiFi could allow many consumers to make free calls from their mobile phones via the Internet. The frugal-minded could even use the service in their homes, allowing them to cut off expensive Internet bills.

“For a casual user of the Web, perhaps this could replace carrier service,” said Jeffrey Silva, an analyst at the Medley Global Advisors research firm. “Because it is more plentiful and there is no price tag, it could have a real appeal to some people.”

[…] The FCC’s plan is part of a broader strategy to repurpose entire swaths of the nation’s airwaves to accomplish a number of goals, including bolstering cellular networks and creating a dedicated channel for emergency responders.

Some Republican lawmakers have criticized Genachowski for his idea of creating free WiFi networks, noting that an auction of the airwaves would raise billions for the U.S. Treasury.

That sentiment echoes arguments made by companies such as AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Intel and Qualcomm, in a letter to the FCC staff late last month, that the government should focus its attention on selling the airwaves to businesses.

For once, maybe the government will actually do something for its citizens instead of big business. Stay tuned.

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Port Said has become a city of numbers, its narrative punctuated by a grim arithmetic: 21 sentenced to death in a trial for 72 killed in a soccer riot. 32 killed after the verdict was announced. Seven killed in a funeral march the next day. Four more shot dead the night after that.

An anti-Morsi protester shouts slogans and holds empty bullet casings found in the same area as last week’s protest, in Port Said February 1, 2013. (Photo: Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters)In a struggle to make sense of the toll, residents resort to macabre calculations. “Maybe when the number of dead reaches 72, like in the stadium last year, the shooting will stop in Port Said,” says Adel Shehata.

Shehata’s 21 year-old son, Mohammed–known to friends and family as ‘Hommos’–is one of 21 men, all of them local soccer fans, who were sentenced to death by a judge in a Cairo court on January 26 on charges relating to the deaths of 72 people in Port Said’s soccer stadium last year. Fans of Port Said’s Masry club stormed the field after a match on February 1, 2012 and attacked the vastly outnumbered visiting supporters of Cairo’s Ahly club. The majority of those killed were crushed to death in a stampede. As the massacre unfolded, security forces and riot police looked on and did nothing to intervene.

Lying on the Mediterranean at the mouth of the Suez Canal, Port Said is a duty-free port and tourist resort of 600,000 known for its exceptional 19th Century Italian and Greek architecture, its fishing industry and its proud legacy as a center point of resistance during the tripartite war launched against Egypt by Britain, France and Israel after Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the canal in the 1950s. Yet residents say they have been relegated to a pariah city, alienated and persecuted for the past year over the soccer violence.

Charges were brought against 73 people, including Masry fans, senior police officers and club officials. Shehata says he was at the match with Hommos and that after the final whistle they immediately left together and went home. A week later, police came to their house in the middle of night and arrested Hommos. He has been behind bars for the past year and now faces execution by the state.

“My son is innocent. My most pessimistic assessment was that he would get a one-year sentence and be let go with time already served,” Shehata says. “When I heard the verdict it was like I was struck in the head. I lost complete awareness of my surroundings.”

In the year leading up to the trial, hardcore Ahly fans–known as Ultras–have been calling for retribution and justice for those killed in Port Said, staging multiple protests and acts of civil disobedience. The verdict was widely viewed as a political ruling to placate the Ahly Ultras and pointed to the broadly-held view of a judiciary trying cases based on political considerations rather than the rule of law. The same judiciary has not imprisoned a single police officer since the beginning of the revolution for the killing of hundreds of protesters. 

Friends and family members who had gathered outside the prison in Port Said to hear the verdict erupted in grief and anger at the news of the 21 death sentences. Some approached the prison and reportedly tried to storm it. A staggering 32 people were killed, most of them shot by police, and hundreds more wounded.

The following morning, a massive funeral march for the victims came under fire from tear gas and live ammunition from police on rooftops. Overcome with tear gas, mourners were forced to drop the coffins they carried on their shoulders, spilling the bodies onto the street. At least seven more people were killed.

Armed residents attacked the police station. Its white facade was pockmarked with bullet holes. A charred and smashed police truck remained parked outside. The street was littered with broken glass and burned tires. The police stayed inside and off the streets. Port Said was in rebellion.

“Resistance in Port Said is natural given the city’s history,” says Badr El-Farghali, a 65 year-old former MP with the Tagammu party. “We are the guardians of the Suez Canal for the Egyptian people. Right now we are resisting a backwards and oppressive force.”

The mounting death toll in the coastal city came amidst widespread protests and clashes with security forces in cities across the country that marked the second anniversary of the revolution and spoke to a broader sense of alienation, injustice and a near-complete erosion of state legitimacy across Egypt. 

Amid the violence, President Mohammed Morsi took to the airwaves to deliver a nationally-televised speech. Instead of condemning the excessive use of force by security forces, the president saluted the police and army for “their efforts to protect the country.” 

In an angry, finger-wagging address, Morsi declared a 30-day state of emergency in the three Suez Canal provinces: Port Said, Suez and Ismailia and said a curfew was in place from 9pm to 6am. He added, “I instructed interior ministry officials to strictly deal with whoever threatens the people, public and private institutions. Everybody should be aware that Egypt’s institutions are capable of defending the country against any threats.”

Morsi’s move engendered only more resistance. Port Saidis gathered in their thousands at 9pm to defy the curfew. While the protests in Cairo were largely dominated by young men and activists, the curfew marches in Port Said were diverse, comprising men and women of all ages and social classes leading vigorous chants of “whoa it’s 9 o’clock” and “the curfew is ruined you sons of bitches” to openly mock the president. They also called for nominal independence for Port Said, a manifestation of the deep sense of betrayal by the central government in Cairo.

“There is no curfew,” Shehata says. “The curfew should be on the police, not on Port Said.”

The day after Morsi’s speech at least four more people were killed in the area around the El-Arab police station. One of them was 23 year-old Osama Sherbini who was shot through the cheek and neck and died where he fell.

“I accuse the president for the death of Osama,” says his uncle, Mossab Sherbini. “In his speech, he was provocative and ordered the police to use more violence.” He says he wanted to get an autopsy but was pressured by several hospital officials to bury his nephew quickly. He waited 15 hours for a doctor before giving up. “We wanted to lay him to rest,” Mossab says. “They killed him and all his dreams. Why?”

The violence in Port Said has subsided yet the protests have not. State institutions, most notably the police and security forces, are untouched by reform and have become increasingly isolated from citizens on the street. Port Said, along with much of Egypt, is rejecting the authority of the state.

“No one will stop these youth,” says Mossab. “They open their breasts to the bullets. Morsi is finished, it’s just a matter of time.”

© 2013 The Nation

Sharif Abdel Kouddous is an independent journalist based in Cairo. He is a Democracy Now! correspondent and a fellow at The Nation Institute.  Follow his website Egypt Reports. Follow him on twitter: @sharifkouddous

more Sharif Abdel Kouddous

PBS ombud Michael Getler (1/31/13) responded to FAIR activists who wrote to him about the recent Nova special on drones (1/23/13) that was underwritten by Lockheed Martin, a major military contractor and drone manufacturer.

FAIR (Action Alert, 1/28/13) pointed out that this connection violates PBS‘s guidelines concerning sponsorship and conflicts of interest.

Getler agreed, explaining that “the Lockheed funding does present a perception and commercial test problem for PBS. My feeling is that this particular program would have been much better off without Lockheed support.”

There was a further lack of disclosure. Getler noted that he

saw no mention of Lockheed when I watched the program online or when I looked at the Nova website. And there was never any mention of Lockheed in the body of the program, even though that huge defense company is heavily involved in drone development, which I didn’t know and I’m sure vast numbers of online viewers—unless they are in the Air Force or CIA—also probably did not know.

That lack of disclosure left Getler feeling “deceived by Nova“—though he noted that “Lockheed Martin was clearly identified on screen” as a funder in the broadcast version of the program.

Getler concluded by writing, “I think Nova handled this situation poorly and did not comply with the spirit, at least, of the guidelines when it came to being upfront with viewers.”

Nova thought otherwise. Its statement began:

WGBH fully adheres to PBS funding guidelines and takes our public trust responsibility very seriously. With regard to Nova “Rise of the Drones,” Lockheed Martin’s sponsorship of Nova is not a violation of the PBSunderwriting guidelines.

Nova’s defense is that Lockheed “had no editorial involvement in the program.” But as the PBS guidelines make abundantly clear, this is not a defense at all. The fact that a funder’s interests exist is a problem—not just whether the funder interfered in the editorial content of the program:

When there exists a clear and direct connection between the interests or products or services of a proposed funder and the subject matter of the program, the proposed funding will be deemed unacceptable regardless of the funder’s actual compliance with the editorial control provisions of this policy.

Since it is indisputable that Lockheed manufacturers drones, the guidelines as written say this is “unacceptable.” Since Nova does not believe the underwriting guidelines mean what they say mean, the real issue here is whether PBS itself believes in its rules. As FAIR has pointed out (Press Release, 4/3/02 ), PBS has historically found certain funding arrangements problematic—when the funder is a labor union, or a producer of a film about domestic violence is the leader of a battered women’s support group. Major corporate funders, though, get a pass.

Nova also argues that including a guest who has a business relationship to the funder “has no relevance to the story.” But basic journalistic ethics—for any medium, not just public television—tell you that such disclosures are important.

Nova seemed to prefer that viewers not know Lockheed’s connection to the subject of the program at all. The program’s response to the FAIR alert did mention that they “will include Lockheed Martin in the list of funders on the Nova website for full transparency.”

FAIR thanks the hundreds of activists who wrote to PBS, and to ombud Michael Getler for writing a thoughtful response.

Prisoners earning 23 cents an hour in U.S. federal prisons are manufacturing high-tech electronic components for Patriot Advanced Capability 3 missiles, launchers for TOW (Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided) anti-tank missiles, and other guided missile systems. A March article by journalist and financial researcher Justin Rohrlich of World in Review is worth a closer look at the full implications of this ominous development. (minyanville.com)

The expanding use of prison industries, which pay slave wages, as a way to increase profits for giant military corporations, is a frontal attack on the rights of all workers.

Prison labor – with no union protection, overtime pay, vacation days, pensions, benefits, health and safety protection, or Social Security withholding – also makes complex components for McDonnell Douglas/Boeing’s F-15 fighter aircraft, the General Dynamics/Lockheed Martin F-16, and Bell/Textron’s Cobra helicopter. Prison labor produces night-vision goggles, body armor, camouflage uniforms, radio and communication devices, and lighting systems and components for 30-mm to 300-mm battleship anti-aircraft guns, along with land mine sweepers and electro-optical equipment for the BAE Systems Bradley Fighting Vehicle’s laser rangefinder. Prisoners recycle toxic electronic equipment and overhaul military vehicles.

Labor in federal prisons is contracted out by UNICOR, previously known as Federal Prison Industries, a quasi-public, for-profit corporation run by the Bureau of Prisons. In 14 prison factories, more than 3,000 prisoners manufacture electronic equipment for land, sea and airborne communication. UNICOR is now the U.S. government’s 39th largest contractor, with 110 factories at 79 federal penitentiaries.

The majority of UNICOR’s products and services are on contract to orders from the Department of Defense. Giant multinational corporations purchase parts assembled at some of the lowest labor rates in the world, then resell the finished weapons components at the highest rates of profit. For example, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Corporation subcontract components, then assemble and sell advanced weapons systems to the Pentagon.

Increased profits, unhealthy workplaces

However, the Pentagon is not the only buyer. U.S. corporations are the world’s largest arms dealers, while weapons and aircraft are the largest U.S. export. The U.S. State Department, Department of Defense and diplomats pressure NATO members and dependent countries around the world into multibillion-dollar weapons purchases that generate further corporate profits, often leaving many countries mired in enormous debt.

But the fact that the capitalist state has found yet another way to drastically undercut union workers’ wages and ensure still higher profits to military corporations – whose weapons wreak such havoc around the world – is an ominous development.

According to CNN Money, the U.S. highly skilled and well-paid “aerospace workforce has shrunk by 40 percent in the past 20 years. Like many other industries, the defense sector has been quietly outsourcing production (and jobs) to cheaper labor markets overseas.” (Feb. 24) It seems that with prison labor, these jobs are also being outsourced domestically.

Meanwhile, dividends and options to a handful of top stockholders and CEO compensation packages at top military corporations exceed the total payment of wages to the more than 23,000 imprisoned workers who produce UNICOR parts.

The prison work is often dangerous, toxic and unprotected. At FCC Victorville, a federal prison located at an old U.S. airbase, prisoners clean, overhaul and reassemble tanks and military vehicles returned from combat and coated in toxic spent ammunition, depleted uranium dust and chemicals.

A federal lawsuit by prisoners, food service workers and family members at FCI Marianna, a minimum security women’s prison in Florida, cited that toxic dust containing lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic poisoned those who worked at UNICOR’s computer and electronic recycling factory.

Prisoners there worked covered in dust, without safety equipment, protective gear, air filtration or masks. The suit explained that the toxic dust caused severe damage to nervous and reproductive systems, lung damage, bone disease, kidney failure, blood clots, cancers, anxiety, headaches, fatigue, memory lapses, skin lesions, and circulatory and respiratory problems. This is one of eight federal prison recycling facilities – employing 1,200 prisoners – run by UNICOR.

After years of complaints the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General and the Federal Occupational Health Service concurred in October 2008 that UNICOR has jeopardized the lives and safety of untold numbers of prisoners and staff. (Prison Legal News, Feb. 17, 2009)

Racism & U.S. prisons

The U.S. imprisons more people per capita than any country in the world. With less than 5 percent of the world population, the U.S. imprisons more than 25 percent of all people imprisoned in the world.

There are more than 2.3 million prisoners in federal, state and local prisons in the U.S. Twice as many people are under probation and parole. Many tens of thousands of other prisoners include undocumented immigrants facing deportation, prisoners awaiting sentencing and youthful offenders in categories considered reform or detention.

The racism that pervades every aspect of life in capitalist society – from jobs, income and housing to education and opportunity – is most brutally reflected by who is caught up in the U.S. prison system.

More than 60 percent of U.S. prisoners are people of color. Seventy percent of those being sentenced under the three strikes law in California – which requires mandatory sentences of 25 years to life after three felony convictions – are people of color. Nationally, 39 percent of African-American men in their 20s are in prison, on probation or on parole. The U.S. imprisons more people than South Africa did under apartheid. (Linn Washington, “Incarceration Nation”)

The U.S. prison population is not only the largest in the world – it is relentlessly growing. The U.S. prison population is more than five times what it was 30 years ago.

In 1980, when Ronald Reagan became president, there were 400,000 prisoners in the U.S. Today the number exceeds 2.3 million. In California the prison population soared from 23,264 in 1980 to 170,000 in 2010. The Pennsylvania prison population climbed from 8,243 to 51,487 in those same years. There are now more African-American men in prison, on probation or on parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began, according to Law Professor Michelle Alexander in the book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”

Today a staggering 1-in-100 adults in the U.S. are living behind bars. But this crime, which breaks families and destroys lives, is not evenly distributed. In major urban areas one-half of Black men have criminal records. This means life-long, legalized discrimination in student loans, financial assistance, access to public housing, mortgages, the right to vote and, of course, the possibility of being hired for a job.

State Prisons contracting slave labor

It is not only federal prisons that contract out prison labor to top corporations. State prisons that used forced prison labor in plantations, laundries and highway chain gangs increasingly seek to sell prison labor to corporations trolling the globe in search of the cheapest possible labor.

One agency asks: “Are you experiencing high employee turnover? Worried about the costs of employee benefits? Unhappy with out-of-state or offshore suppliers? Getting hit by overseas competition? Having trouble motivating your workforce? Thinking about expansion space? Then Washington State Department of Corrections Private Sector Partnerships is for you.” (educate-yourself.org, July 25, 2005)

Major corporations profiting from the slave labor of prisoners include Motorola, Compaq, Honeywell, Microsoft, Boeing, Revlon, Chevron, TWA, Victoria’s Secret and Eddie Bauer.

IBM, Texas Instruments and Dell get circuit boards made by Texas prisoners. Tennessee inmates sew jeans for Kmart and JCPenney. Tens of thousands of youth flipping hamburgers for minimum wages at McDonald’s wear uniforms sewn by prison workers, who are forced to work for much less.

In California, as in many states, prisoners who refuse to work are moved to disciplinary housing and lose canteen privileges as well as “good time” credit, which slices hard time off their sentences.

Systematic abuse, beatings, prolonged isolation and sensory deprivation, and lack of medical care make U.S. prison conditions among the worst in the world. Ironically, working under grueling conditions for pennies an hour is treated as a “perk” for good behavior.

In December, Georgia inmates went on strike and refused to leave their cells at six prisons for more than a week. In one of the largest prison protests in U.S. history, prisoners spoke of being forced to work seven days a week for no pay. Prisoners were beaten if they refused to work.

Private prisons for profit

In the ruthless search to maximize profits and grab hold of every possible source of income, almost every public agency and social service is being outsourced to private for-profit contractors.

In the U.S. military this means there are now more private contractors and mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan than there are U.S. or NATO soldiers.

In cities and states across the U.S., hospitals, medical care facilities, schools, cafeterias, road maintenance, water supply services, sewage departments, sanitation, airports and tens of thousands of social programs that receive public funding are being contracted out to for-profit corporations. Anything publicly owned and paid for by generations of past workers’ taxes – from libraries to concert halls and parks – is being sold or leased at fire sale prices.

All this is motivated and lobbied for by right-wing think tanks like that set up by Koch Industries and their owners, Charles and David Koch, as a way to cut costs, lower wages and pensions, and undercut public service unions.

The most gruesome privatizations are the hundreds of for-profit prisons being established.

The inmate population in private for-profit prisons tripled between 1987 and 2007. By 2007 there were 264 such prison facilities, housing almost 99,000 adult prisoners. (house.leg.state.mn.us, Feb. 24, 2009) Companies operating such facilities include the Corrections Corporation of America, the GEO Group Inc. and Community Education Centers.

Prison bonds provide a lucrative return for capitalist investors such as Merrill-Lynch, Shearson Lehman, American Express and Allstate. Prisoners are traded from one state to another based on the most profitable arrangements.

Militarism and prisons

Hand in hand with the military-industrial complex, U.S. imperialism has created a massive prison-industrial complex that generates billions of dollars annually for businesses and industries profiting from mass incarceration.

For decades workers in the U.S. have been assured that they also benefit from imperialist looting by the giant multinational corporations. But today more than half the federal budget is absorbed by the costs of maintaining the military machine and the corporations who are guaranteed profits for equipping the Pentagon. That is the only budget category in federal spending that is guaranteed to increase by at least 5 percent a year – at a time when every social program is being cut to the bone.

The sheer economic weight of militarism seeps into the fabric of society at every level. It fuels racism and reaction. The political influence of the Pentagon and the giant military and oil corporations – with their thousands of high-paid lobbyists, media pundits and network of links into every police force in the country – fuels growing repression and an expanding prison population.

The military, oil and banking conglomerates, interlinked with the police and prisons, have a stranglehold on the U.S. capitalist economy and reins of political power, regardless of who is president or what political party is in office. The very survival of these global corporations is based on immediate maximization of profits. They are driven to seize every resource and source of potential profits.

Thoroughly rational solutions are proposed whenever the human and economic cost of militarism and repression is discussed. The billions spent for war and fantastically destructive weapons systems could provide five to seven times more jobs if spent on desperately needed social services, education and rebuilding essential infrastructure. Or it could provide free university education, considering the fact that it costs far more to imprison people than to educate them.

Why aren’t such reasonable solutions ever chosen? Because military contracts generate far larger guaranteed profits to the military and the oil industries, which have a decisive influence on the U.S. economy.

The prison-industrial complex – including the prison system, prison labor, private prisons, police and repressive apparatus, and their continuing expansion – are a greater source of profit and are reinforced by the climate of racism and reaction. Most rational and socially useful solutions are not considered viable options.

Global Research News Hour Episode 13

 “It’s easy to take an issue like the 9/11 truth movement and demonize it…that happened in the election of 2008. Even though at the time it was a rising tide and growing numbers of people… had actually rejected the official explanation and were actively looking at the evidence hoping to find out what really happened, even though that was happening, the Conservatives in that election chose to demonize those folks, and I guess I appeared to be one of them because I was willing to talk about it with respect.”

-Lesley Hughes

During the Canadian federal election of 2008, Lesley Hughes, overnight, went from the Liberal Party’s star candidate to a political liability.

An article Hughes wrote in 2002 entitled “Get the Truth” offered readers a contrarian viewpoint on the war in Afghanistan as retaliation for 9/11.

The anonymous blogger Black Rod, unearthed the article, conflated it into an anti-Semitic 9/11 conspiracy theory, and circulated it throughout the on-line community and the mainstream press.

Liberal leader Stephan Dion, under pressure from B’Nai Brith, the Canadian Jewish Congress, and his political opponents, not to mention uncomfortable media scrutiny, removed the candidacy of Ms. Hughes without ever confronting her about it directly.

Hughes, humiliated, dropped off the media radar screen and spent the subsequent few months licking her wounds. She finally found herself a lawyer and launched a defamation suit against the above-named groups, as well as Conservative candidate Peter Kent, the entities she saw as most responsible for this disastrous blow to her reputation.

In December of last year, at the end of a four year ordeal, Hughes was finally cleared of all charges of anti-Semitism.

Who is Lesley Hughes?

Hughes is much more than the “earnest middle-aged mother and community activist” described by National Post columnist and author Jonathan Kay in his 9/11 Truth hit-piece “Among the Truthers.”

Lesley Hughes is a Winnipeg-based broadcast and print journalist.

In the province of Manitoba, she became a house-hold name as co-host of the popular morning program Information Radio, a CBC show she helmed for more than ten years.

Her prowess as an interviewer earned her the distinction of sitting in briefly for CBC icon Peter Gzowski on the nationally broadcast Morningside, earning her praise from executive producer Patsey Pehleman for being “fresh and different.”

Over the course of a career that has spanned more than three decades, Lesley has interviewed a multitude of global movers and shakers, including former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, humanitarian Mother Theresa, South African President Nelson Mandela, dissident intellectual Noam Chomsky, French President Francois Mitterand, and playwright Tennessee Williams to name just a few.

She has since contributed articles to major newspapers. She covered the 1992 Earth Summit from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil for the Globe and Mail. She reported from the World Poverty Summit in Copenhagen, and the Information Summit in Geneva. She has authored book reviews for the Winnipeg Free Press. She continues to write the back column for the distinguished Canadian organ of progressive political thought known as Canadian Dimension Magazine.

Hughes has had her work carried by Radio Denmark, Radio Antilles and the Grenadian Voice.

Hughes has been a media trainer, instructing students at the University of Winnipeg. She was designated as the University of Manitoba’s Outstanding Alumnus for Distinguished Achievement, named one of Canada’s top three columnists for a weekly community newspaper by the Canadian Community Newspaper Association, and honoured Manitoba’s Woman of the Year in Communications and Best Interviewer (Radio) by Winnipeg ACTRA among other accolades.

The recent court ruling has affirmed what informed people, supporters and detractors alike, know all too well. Lesley Hughes has not an anti-Semitic bone in her body!

Lesley Hughes, regardless of what one might think of her politics, is an inspirational, compassionate, hard-working, brilliant and breath-takingly decent human being. It is a sad commentary on the times we live in that she could be brought down from her well-earned pedestal in Canadian life, simply for…well…doing her job as a journalist.

In this exclusive interview for the Global Research News Hour, Lesley Hughes from the living room of her Winnipeg home explains how she was affected personally and professionally by the allegations, her take on the corrosive effect of anonymous blogging on journalism, and about how attacks on 9/11 skeptics signals a new kind of McCarthyism.

She also introduces her upcoming memoir, “Hit and Run: My Brilliant Life in Canadian Politics.”

Also featured in this one hour programme is an interview with Richard Sanders of the Coalition Opposed to the Arms Trade, (coat.ncf.ca) about how Canadian Pension Plan investments are aiding and abetting Israeli War Crimes. We also hear an assessment of the recent Israeli elections by Chicago based writer and broadcaster Stephen Lendman.

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Length (59:39)
Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

The Global Research News Hour hosted by Michael Welch airs on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg Thursdays at 10am CDT. The programme is now broadcast weekly by the Progressive Radio Network in the US, and is available for download on the Global Research website.

Free market idealists argue that capitalism works for anyone with a little initiative and a willingness to work hard. That might be true if job opportunities were available to everyone. But the facts reveal a lack of opportunity, largely because the very system of capitalism that’s supposed to work for everyone is betraying its most productive members.

It’s a step-by-step process of hypocrisy disguised as free enterprise:

1. Let the public pay for the research.

Since World War 2 our federal government has played the dominant role in the research of new technologies, with an emphasis on the long-term basic research that painstakingly perfects design while not yet producing revenue. Corporate R&D, on the other hand, is heavy on the profit-making late stages of development.

Government has contributed significantly to the development of today’s most modern technologies. Business has taken full advantage. Even during the frenetic growth of the 1990s, industry funding for computer research declined dramatically while government research funding continued to climb. As of 2009 universities were still receiving ten times more science & engineering funding from government than from industry.

2. Use the publicly-funded technologies to double profits in 8 years.

From 2003 to 2011 total corporate profits more than doubled from $900 billion to almost $2 trillion.

A big part of that is the financial industry, which has adapted the (nationally built) Internet to fashion trillion-dollar trading schemes. Up until 1985 financial firms never earned more than 16 percent of domestic corporate profits. Their share recently reached 41 percent.

3. Use the recession as an excuse to cut taxes in half.

For the twenty years prior to the 2008 recession, corporations paid an average annual rate of 22.5% in federal taxes. Since then the average has been 10%.

4. Quietly hoard all the excess money.

Anywhere from $2.2 trillion to $3.4 trillion in cash is being held by non-financial corporations, who have chosen to fatten stockholders rather than invest in new production facilities and the employees needed to make them profitable.

Once again, the financial industry leads the way. Just 12 large banks hold 69 percent of industry assets, close to $8 trillion. But they’re not making their money available to consumers or small businesses. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, community banks, which hold less than one-fifth of industry assets, provide over half of all small business loans.

5. Pay existing workers what they earned in 1970.

Less, actually. Average real wages were $17.42 in 2007, down from $19.34 in 1972 (based on 2007 dollars). Wages as a percentage of the economy, at 44% of GDP, are at an all-time low.

Jobs that remain are increasingly low-wage positions. Apple is a good example of the race to the bottom for wages, with an estimated $420,000 profit per employee and a $12 per hour pay rate for its store workers.

6. Eliminate all the other people who helped increase productivity.

Not only are “job creators” failing to create jobs with their cash hoards, but they’re also cutting jobs in order to ‘streamline’ their operations. Evidence comes from The Nation, Market Watch, and Business Insider.

— Verizon, which made $38 billion in 2008-11 and paid no tax, cut 41,100 jobs.
— AT&T, which made $9 billion in 20011 and paid no tax, cut 54,000 jobs.
— Merck, which made $34 billion in 2008-11 and paid a 7% tax, cut 13,000 jobs.

Other leading job-cutters:

— Citigroup, which made a $28 billion profit in 2010-11 and paid no tax.
— Boeing, which made $15 billion in profits in 2008-11 and paid no tax.
— IBM, which made $75 billion in profits in 2008-11 and paid less than 2% in taxes.
— HP, which $40 billion in profits in 2008-11 and paid an 11% tax.
— Pepsico, which made a $10 billion profit in 2011 and paid a 6.3% tax.
— Proctor & Gamble, which made almost $60 billion in profits in 2008-11 and paid 11% in taxes.
— Google, which avoided about $2 billion in 2011 taxes by shifting revenue to a Bermuda tax haven.

7. Ignore the facts.

And do nothing to address the mistreatment of American workers. CEOs, Congress, and the media are all skilled at this final step of betrayal.

Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, an active member of US Uncut Chicago, founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org), and the editor and main author of “American Wars: Illusions and Realities” (Clarity Press). He can be reached at paul@UsAgainstGreed.org.

The other day, I talked to an old friend I hadn’t spoken to in months — mostly because she’s a wingnut and I couldn’t take her pre-election insanity. So one of the first things she does is start complaining that her 40-year-old daughter’s Social Security taxes went up “$200 a week and that’s a lot when she’s paying $55,000 a year for her daughter in college.” (Her daughter makes $250K a year.) Through clenched teeth, I said, “Your daughter makes ten times what I do, and I wish I made enough to pay those taxes. I really don’t want to hear her whining.” Which shut her up for a bit.

My world and that of the people I know is much more like this:

In the current listless economy, every generation has a claim to having been most injured. But the Labor Department’s latest jobs snapshot and other recent data reports present a strong case for crowning baby boomers as the greatest victims of the recession and its grim aftermath.

These Americans in their 50s and early 60s – those near retirement age who do not yet have access to Medicare and Social Security – have lost the most earnings power of any age group, with their household incomes 10 percent below what they made when the recovery began three years ago, according to Sentier Research, a data analysis company.

Their retirement savings and home values fell sharply at the worst possible time: just before they needed to cash out. They are supporting both aged parents and unemployed young-adult children, earning them the inauspicious nickname “Generation Squeeze.”

New research suggests that they may die sooner, because their health, income security and mental well-being were battered by recession at a crucial time in their lives. A recent study by economists at Wellesley College found that people who lost their jobs in the few years before becoming eligible for Social Security lost up to three years from their life expectancy, largely because they no longer had access to affordable health care.

“If I break my wrist, I lose my house,” said Susan Zimmerman, 62, a freelance writer in Cleveland, of the distress that a medical emergency would wreak upon her finances and her quality of life. None of the three part-time jobs she has cobbled together pay benefits, and she says she is counting the days until she becomes eligible for Medicare.

In the meantime, Ms. Zimmerman has fashioned her own regimen of home remedies – including eating blue cheese instead of taking penicillin and consuming plenty of orange juice, red wine, coffee and whatever else the latest longevity studies recommend – to maintain her health, which she must do if she wants to continue paying the bills.

“I will probably be working until I’m 100,” she said.

Digby writes about it, too, explaining why the whole “intergenerational warfare” schtick is a fake rationale aimed at cutting Social Security and Medicare:

In fact, the real downside for the younger generation will be the fact that many of those older people will be forced to work much longer than they originally planned because their retirement income from pensions, 401Ks and real estate holdings were depleted which could have an effect on the job prospects for younger people. In that case, and further depletion of retirement security and health care through the plans such as those advanced by Peterson and Co will make things worse for the young people they are supposedly trying to “help.” And it goes without saying that young people will someday get old — if they’re lucky — and many of them will also need these programs. It should not escape their notice that the deepest cuts come to them, not the older generation.

In fact, they should look at what happened to this baby boom generation as an object lesson in timing. You just never know when the bottom is going to fall out and all your best laid plans for saving and accumulating wealth are shot to hell because a bunch of greedy bankers and financiers decided to gamble with other people’s money. Most of those who wind up depending on Social Security are hard-working people who did everything right.

And that’s why these millionaire plutocrats are such con artists. They are trying to preserve America for the young, alright. But it’s for their own heirs. That’s how moneyed elites turn themselves into Aristocrats.

Obama’s Flip-Flops on Money in Politics: A Brief History

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Posted on Feb 4, 2013

The White House/Pete Souza

By Justin Elliott, ProPublica

This piece first appeared on ProPublica.

When President Obama told supporters that he would morph his campaign into a new nonprofit that would accept unlimited corporate donations, the announcement set off a familiar round of griping from campaign finance reformers.

The creation this month of Organizing for Action, which will promote the president’s second-term agenda, appears to be the fourth reversal by Obama on major money-in-politics issues since 2008.

“No big bank or corporation will donate million-dollar checks to OFA without the expectation that it will impact which issues they engage on, and that’s very troubling,” said Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

The Washington Post noted that in reorganizing his campaign as a tax-exempt social welfare group, the president is embracing a structure that has been criticized for allowing anonymous money into politics.

Conservatives who’ve been attacked by the Obama camp for their reliance on such “dark money” groups called out the president’s “brazen hypocrisy.” Neither the White House nor Organizing for America responded to requests for comment.

Here’s a brief history of Obama’s other shifts on money-in-politics issues going back to 2008:

In November 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama pledged to take part in the presidential public financing system for the general election, calling himself “a longtime advocate for public financing of campaigns.” Under the system, created in the wake of Watergate, a candidate receives taxpayer money ($84 million in 2008) and cannot accept most private donations or spend beyond the amount of the government grant.

Less than a year later, in June 2008, Obama reversed himself and announced he was opting out of the system. He maintained he still supported the system in principle but said it should be reformed.

Obama became the first candidate to decline general election public financing since the creation of the system and went on to raise a then-record $745 million for the cycle. He outspent John McCain, who did accept public money, by four-to-one. Obama’s 2008 decision generally takes at least some of the blame from campaign finance observers for killing the system.

Neither Obama nor Mitt Romney accepted public financing in the 2012 race. The Obama campaign raised $782 million for the cycle.

When the U.S. Supreme Court issued its 2010 Citizens United decision, opening the way for the creation of super PACs financed with unlimited corporate or individual money, Obama became the ruling’s biggest critic.

“Last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections,” Obama said in his State of the Union address a few days after the decision. “I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities.”

That criticism turned into a pledge not to use the new funding vehicles. In July 2011, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told the Washington Post: “Neither the president nor his campaign staff or aides will fundraise for super PACs. Our campaign will continue to lead the way when it comes to transparency and reform.”

Seven months later, the campaign reversed itself and embraced a super PAC founded by former White House aides called Priorities USA Action. “[O]ur campaign has to face the reality of the law as it currently stands,” wrote campaign manager Jim Messina in a blog post.

With the blessing of the campaign, top Obama aides, such as then-Chief of Staff Jack Lew and confidantes like Rahm Emanuel, were dispatched to solicit super PAC donations from Democratic millionaires and billionaires. Priorities USA ultimately spent more than $60 million to help re-elect the president.

• Inaugural festivities funding

After Obama’s victory in 2008, his inaugural committee abided by what it called “an unprecedented set of limitations on fundraising as part of President-elect Obama’s pledge to put the country on a new path.” That meant taking no corporate money and no individual contributions in excess of $50,000 to pay for the myriad parties and balls that end up costing tens of millions of dollars.

The second time around, Obama reversed the policy. The inaugural committee organizing this month’s inaugural festivities accepted corporate money and imposed no limits on giving. A spokesperson cited the need to “meet the fund-raising requirements for this civic event after the most expensive presidential campaign in history.”

• Unlimited special interest spending

Just a few months ago, the Obama campaign sent me a memo on the president’s campaign finance record, highlighting his repeated denunciations of special interest money in politics.

“That’s one of the reasons I ran for President: because I believe so strongly that the voices of ordinary Americans were being drowned out by the clamor of a privileged few in Washington,” he said in May 2010, decrying the way Citizens United “gives corporations and other special interests the power to spend unlimited amounts of money – literally millions of dollars – to affect elections throughout our country.”

In 2012, the Obama campaign specifically called out social welfare, or 501(c)(4),  groups that spent hundreds of millions of dollars of anonymous money on political ads.

That’s why campaign finance reformers are so angry: Organizing for Action is a 501(c)(4) that will advocate for the president’s second-term agenda.

The group has said that despite its status, it will voluntarily disclose donors. But it’s not clear whether that will involve full, prompt disclosure of who is giving and how much, or simply providing a list of names at some point.

A spokeswoman for the new group told NBC this week the disclosure issue is “still being worked out.”

Unnamed Democratic officials have told media outlets that the group will take corporate money (though not donations from registered lobbyists). Indeed, at a meeting this month at the Newseum in Washington, Obama campaign aides pitched top Democratic donors, reported Politico, which obtained a ticket to the event.

The meeting was sponsored by a trade association founded by Fortune 100 companies, including UnitedHealthcare, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, and Duke Energy.

Social welfare groups are formed to promote the common good and may be involved in politics. Under IRS rules, they are not supposed to be primarily engaged in campaigns.

It’s unclear whether Organizing for Action will get involved in electoral politics as other such nonprofits have in recent years. The group’s spokeswoman told NBC it will run “issue” ads to support Obama’s agenda – but that’s a category of political advocacy that has been open to wide interpretation.

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GOP Congressman Calls Sen. McCain Out for ‘Racist’ Tweet

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Posted on Feb 4, 2013

Flickr/Gage Skidmore

Sen. John McCain’s attempt at humor has seriously backfired once again. On Monday, the Arizona Republican tweeted a joke comparing Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the monkey the country claims it sent to outer space.

Obviously it didn’t go over well, seeing as McCain later told his critics on Twitter to “lighten up.”

What McCain probably did not expect, however, was that he would be admonished by someone within his own party. But that’s exactly what happened when freshman Rep. Justin Amash, who is Arab-American, tweeted back, “Maybe you should wisen up & not make racist jokes.”

Or really, any jokes in general. Given McCain’s history of tweeting “horrifying wisecracks,” it might be time for him to reconsider how he uses Twitter.

BuzzFeed:

McCain had sent a tweet in response to the strange news that Ahmadinejad was offering himself up to be Iran’s first astronaut, writing, “So Ahmadinejad wants to be first Iranian in space – wasn’t he just there last week?” and linking to a story about the monkey.

…Amash, 31, is a libertarian Republican who was endorsed by Ron Paul and who has in a way molded himself in Paul’s image – which includes calling out more senior Republicans.

Brian Rogers, a spokesman for McCain, declined to comment on Amash’s reaction, saying in an email that “As Senator McCain said in his follow-up tweet, he was poking fun at Ahmadinejad’s outer space ambitions…” and including a link to the “lighten up” tweet.

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–Posted by Tracy Bloom.

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In today’s On the News segment: The NRA’s enemies list includes major health, education and law enforcement professional organizations, and more.

Jim Javinsky here – in for Thom Hartmann — on the news…

You need to know this. If the NRA, and its foaming-at-the-mouth leader, Wayne LaPierre weren’t scary enough, it turns out the gun-happy organization has now created an enemies list. As the ThinkProgress blog points out — the NRA’s “Nixonian enemies list” is comprised of individuals, and organizations, that have “lent monetary, grassroots or some other type of direct support to an anti-gun organization.” The list includes medical organizations, that often have to deal with gun violence first hand in hospitals, like the American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association. The list also includes educators, who are now too often the victims of gun violence, including the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. Law enforcement groups tasked with patrolling gun violence also made the list, like the National Association of Police Organizations. So, too, have religious organizations, and even several musicians, like Art Garfunkel, Frank Zappa, and Boyz 2 Men. Apparently, MacGyver even made the list. And the NRA’s descent into madness continues.

In screwed news…if at first you don’t succeed at rigging an election, then try, try, try again. After a few legislative defeats, and several prominent Republicans coming out against plans to rig the Electoral College in several blue states, it looked as though Republicans had come to their senses about pursuing these blatantly undemocratic tactics, to try and steal the election. But Republicans in Pennsylvania have now said, “not so fast.” According to the New Castle News, Pennsylvania’s Republican state Senate leader, Dominic Pileggi, will introduce legislation that divides the states Electoral College votes proportionately, based on the popular vote — rather than the winner-take-all system, that’s currently in place. Had this plan been in effect last November, Mitt Romney would have received 8 of Pennsylvania’s Electoral College votes, rather than the zero he actually received. While this won’t benefit Republicans quite as much as the last scheme, which doled out Electoral College votes based on Congressional districts, it will still make it much more difficult for Democrats to win the White House in future elections. That’s why this effort in Pennsylvania, cannot be ignored.

In the best of the rest of the news…

Super Bowl 47 is in the books — and the Baltimore Ravens captured their second world championship on Sunday night. In what was dubbed “The Har-bowl” with two competing Harbaugh brothers coaching both teams, the Ravens were able to hold off a huge comeback in the second half by the 49ers. The game didn’t exactly go off without a hitch though. A massive power outage in the stadium, at the start of the second half, delayed the game by more than a half-hour. It’s also worth mentioning that the Superdome in New Orleans, which hosted last night’s game, was renovated to accommodate the Super Bowl, thanks in large part to $470 million of taxpayer funds, following Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately most of the financial gains from hosting the Super Bowl won’t go to the taxpayers, but instead billionaire sports-team owners.

We don’t need no standardized tests! Across the nation, more and more teachers are fighting back against mandatory standardized testing. Over the last few decades, the use of standardized testing in our schools has exploded, as part of the corporate school reform agenda. These tests do little to improve the actual education of students, but do funnel huge profits to standardized testing companies. In Seattle, teachers at three schools have come forward saying the will sit out this year’s mandatory testing. Teachers in Providence, Rhode Island and Portland, Oregon have also stood up against their states’ standardized testing regime. And in Illinois, the Chicago Teachers Union launched a new campaign last week, to eliminate certain types of standardized testing. This movement is growing — stay tuned.

In the post-Bush Great Recession economy, it’s harder and harder for Americans to have a good retirement. According to a new survey by the organization — Conference Board — two-thirds of workers between the ages of 45 and 60, are now planning to delay their retirement. That’s a big jump from 2010 — when only 42% of workers had plans to put off their retirement. Job losses, low salaries, and declining home values are some of the main reason why Americans can no longer stick to their retirement plans.

Vending machines at school may soon disappear. The USDA has proposed a new rule, which could go into effect as early as next year, that would ban most candy, sugar-filled drinks, and greasy foods from being sold in our schools. The new rule would require schools to provide snacks that have less than 200 calories. Over the next 60 days, the USDA will take comments and feedback about the proposed rule. According to data, local and state regulations on unhealthy vending machines may have played a role in slowing childhood obesity rates.

And finally… Abbottabad, Pakistan will forever be remembered as the city where Osama Bin Laden was found, and eventually killed in his compound, by U.S. Special Forces. But the local government wants the city remembered for something else — namely — an amusement park. Pakistan is planning to build a $30 million amusement park and zoo in Abbottabad. The entire complex will span 500 acres, and include restaurants, attractions, and other touristy clubs. The local government says its decision to build the park has nothing to do with the 2011 Bin Laden raid at all — and is strictly about promoting tourism.

And that’s the way it is today — Monday, February 4th, 2012. I’m Jim Javinsky – in for Thom Hartmann — on the news.

Serial paedophile child killer Marc Dutroux, who is one of Belgium’s most notorious criminals, has asked a court to release him early from prison.

Dutroux, now aged 56, is serving a life term for kidnapping, torturing and abusing six young girls in 1995 and 1996, and murdering four of them, including two eight-year-olds.

Two other girls, aged 12 and 14, were rescued from the cellar of a property belonging to the former electrician near the southern Belgian town of Charleroi.

The killer – dubbed the “monster of Charleroi” by the press – has been in jail for 16 years and wants to be released and then be monitored with an electronic ankle bracelet.

Under Belgian law, criminals can be freed after serving a third of their sentences, or after 15 years in the case of those who have received life, a perpetual sentence in Belgium.

Dutroux’s former wife, Michelle Martin – who let two girls starve to death in the cellar while her husband was in jail for theft – was approved for early release in July.

She now lives in a convent.

Dutroux was taken from a high-security prison to the central Brussels courthouse as a helicopter hovered overhead and 125 officers stood guard over the building.

He was then slipped into the court unseen through a back door.

A handful of protesters outside demanded the killer be hanged, saying “the rope for paedophiles”.

Dutroux’s request to be released has horrified Belgians and revived demands for a re-write of the country’s legislation on parole.

The court is not expected to rule on Dutroux’s request for freedom until February 18, and prison officials and prosecutors have recommended he should not be let out.

At the end of the hearing, his lawyer Pierre Deutsch said he would not make any statement until the court decision later this month.

Mr Deutsch had said his client would ask for early release on the grounds he could find “a job, or at least an income, accommodation, and show why the risk of recidivism should as far as possible be discounted”.

Public shock in 1996 about the case turned to fury when it emerged police had missed a string of clues that could have led to Dutroux being apprehended earlier.

Officers had visited one of his houses while two victims, both eight years old, were being held there without finding them. The pair later starved to death in a makeshift dungeon.

There was also anger that he had been released from prison in 1992 after serving just three years of a 13-year sentence for the abduction and rape of five girls.

(AFP Photo / Eva Hambach)

Google’s search algorithms expose racial discrimination, a new study by Harvard professor purports. It claims ads related to criminal records are more likely to pop up when “black-sounding names” are ‘googled’.

­Latanya Sweeney, Professor of Government and Technology in Residence at Harvard, had found out that Google searches involving “black-sounding names” are more than 25 percent likely to produce ads that imply that person has been arrested than “white-sounding names”.

What are “black- and white-sounding names”?

In her paper “Discrimination in Online Ad Delivery” (published January 28) Sweeney refers to the a Job Discrimination study that “used a correlation of names given to black and white babies in Massachusetts between 1974 and 1979.”

First, using those findings, she collected a list of more than 2,000 names that were suggestive of race.

Names such as Lakisha, DeAndre, Jermaine, Leroy and Darnell more often tend to suggest that the person was black, while names like Allison, Kristen, Greg or Jack were considered to be white-identifying names.

Sample face images on google.com retrieved for searches “latisha”. (Image from arxiv.org)

Sweeney has taken a look at the so-called public record ads like InstantCheckMate or PeopleSmart and some others. She compared search results on Google.com and Reuters.com.

It turned out that “black-sounding names” are more likely than “white-sounding” to trigger ads including the word “arrest”.

Searching for names like Leroy, Jamal or Kenya yielded a greater percentage of ads with the word “arrested” in the ad’s text, while for Jack or Greg, for instance, neutral ads, with no criminal related text, popped up.

In Google search InstantCheckMate ads contained the word “arrested” in 92 per cent of returns (in 332 cases out of 366) when “black-sounding” names were looked for, 8 per cent of neutral ads popped up.

For comparison, on Reuters search InstantCheckMate ads suggested checking criminal records in 60 per cent of all black identifying names.

Sweeney tried her own name. A computer scientist with no criminal past, she discovered that prior to presenting her academic merits, she first of all was greeted by an ad that suggested checking if “Latanya Sweeney, arrested?”

Sweeney followed the link and paid a fee to discover there was no criminal record associated with that name.

“Perhaps you are in competition for an award, an appointment, a promotion, or a new job…” the scientist writes in her paper, giving a bunch of circumstances for which an online researcher seeks to learn more about a person.

“Appearing alongside your list of accomplishments is an advertisement implying you may have a criminal record whether you actually have one or not,” Sweeney concluded.

However, she hesitated to give a cause for the differences in ads, saying more information “about the inner workings of Google AdSense [Google’s online ad tool]” is required. 

Sweeney suggested that the search engines might be just a reflection of society’s prejudices and delivered ads are simply based on the most popular links previous users have clicked on.

“So the ad text getting the most clicks eventually displays more frequently,” she explained.

Google AdSense has responded Sweeney’s findings saying that it does not conduct any racial profiling in its search software.

Sample ads and criminal reports for “latanya farrell” (a,b), “latanya sweeney” (c,d). (Image from arxiv.org)

(Photo via FrackAction)Hundreds of anti-fracking activists a packed legislative hearing in Albany, NY on Monday to demand that Governor Cuomo protect the state’s air and water supply and not lift the ban on the controversial drilling practice known as fracking.

“New Yorkers don’t want the gas industry to poison them and ruin New York. We know that once the gas industry ruins our water, food and environment, we will be left with an enormous mess after the fracking industry is gone,” said Alex Beauchamp of Food & Water Watch. “We hope Governor Cuomo will listen to the loud opposition voices and protect us and the generations to come from such a true health and human rights disaster.”

Anti-fracking group, Frack Action, wrote on their Facebook page: “As [Department of Environmental Conservation] (DEC) Commissioner Martens testifies this morning in Albany, the hearing room is packed with a long line out the door of New Yorkers opposed to fracking. We’re in Albany today to say NOT ONE WELL!”

After the hearing, protestors–including actor Mark Ruffalo and Gasland director Josh Fox– gathered on the Capitol steps to ask the Cuomo Administration to open the secret health review being conducted by the Department of Health for public comment and participation.

Frack Action reports, “Rather than undertake a comprehensive health impact assessment of fracking that would involve transparency and public participation, the Administration instead hired outside experts to review its own controlled internal health review that was written by the administration.”

Earlier in the day, the Siena Research Institute released new poll data showing New York voters are split (40-40 percent) on the issue of fracking, with opponents significantly more passionate in their position than supporters. Associated Press reports, “in the Southern Tier region where drilling would most likely start, the poll showed 48 percent opposed.” 

In a letter to the editor of the Times Union, Albany resident Judith Brinks writes:

I’ve attended Albany City Council and Albany County Legislature meetings and listened to gas company representatives say how safe fracking is and how there is nothing harmful in the chemicals they are using. I’ve experienced the opposite.

Very good friends lived just below the New York state line in Pennsylvania, and I watched the land and the health of my friends deteriorate as the fracking machinery invaded the territory until my friends felt they had to leave. My friends were lucky to sell their homestead and move to Ithaca where they are counting on New York to be smarter and more responsive to its citizens than Pennsylvania. I certainly hope their trust is well-placed.

_____________________

Paul Gascoigne still believes he can “get back on track” after his latest “relapse”, according to players’ chief Gordon Taylor.

Gascoigne, who has spoken about alcoholism problems in the past and was sectioned five years ago under the Mental Health Act, appeared to be unwell and trembling at a charity appearance in Northampton on Thursday.

His agent Terry Baker said the 45-year-old had been drinking and needs immediate help, suggesting Gascoigne’s life is “always in danger”.

The Professional Footballers’ Association has vowed to continue giving the former England midfielder as much support as possible – and having been in contact with Gascoigne over the weekend, the union’s chief executive Taylor said: “He still feels he is capable of getting back on track and [that] it is a relapse he has had.

“I can only say, whatever help he needs, he must come on [board] and we will help to provide it.

“I think he does need specialist care and a very strong 24-hour support system, but again, it needs him to be part of that.”

Match Of The Day presenter Gary Lineker admits he is struggling to see a positive outcome for his former England and Tottenham team-mate Gascoigne.

He tweeted: “I can only hope he finds peace somehow, but fear those hopes may be forlorn.”

Mr Taylor has expressed his concern that the case could be comparable with that of George Best, the former Manchester United and Northern Ireland winger who died aged 59 in 2005 after a long struggle with alcoholism.

However, he is adamant the PFA will not be giving up on Gascoigne – and after ex-Manchester United goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel commented on Twitter that the organisation needed to “step up” their efforts to help the troubled star, Mr Taylor has also stressed how much work they have already put in.

He said: “I can’t think of a player who has had more support and constant help over the number of years that we have been there for Paul.

“It is quite ironic – it is nice that people like Peter Schmeichel care about him, but they don’t appreciate the work we have done for him, a lot of which has to be confidential.

“If anything, I have been criticised at times for keeping faith and trying to keep going with him.”

Malala Yousafzai Vows to Keep Fighting in First Interview After Taliban Attack

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Posted on Feb 4, 2013

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In her first video statement since she was shot and nearly killed by the Taliban in October over her support of girls’ education, 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai says she will continue the campaign that led to her being attacked. The Pakistani schoolgirl’s statement was released by a PR firm just hours after surgery to reconstruct the teen’s skull at a British hospital was deemed a success.

“Today you can see that I am alive,” the former Truthdigger of the Week says, adding that after undergoing weeks of treatment at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital she is “getting better, day by day”

Yousafzai goes on to thank her supporters, saying that her recovery is “because of the prayers of people. Because all people–men, women, children–all of them have prayed for me. And because of all these prayers God has given me this new life, a second life.”

She concludes by vowing to continue fighting for the very cause that made her a target of the Taliban. “I want to serve. I want to serve the people,” Yousafzai says in the video. “I want every girl, every child, to be educated. For that reason, we have organized the Malala Fund.”

The Malala Fund, which was launched in late 2012 with a $10 million donation from Pakistan, is a charity that supports girls’ education.

The Associated Press:

Malala drew the world’s attention when she was shot in the head by Taliban militants on Oct. 9 while on her way home from school in northwestern Pakistan. The Islamist group said it targeted her because she promoted girls’ education and “Western thinking” and criticized the militant group’s behavior when it took over the scenic Swat Valley where she lived.

The shooting sparked outrage in Pakistan and many other countries, and her story has captured global attention for the struggle for women’s rights in her homeland. In a sign of her impact, the teen made the shortlist for Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” for 2012.

…Malala was airlifted to Britain from Pakistan in October to receive specialized medical care and protection against further Taliban threats. She is expected to remain in the U.K. for some time as her father, Ziauddin, has secured a post with the Pakistani consulate in the English city of Birmingham.

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–Posted by Tracy Bloom.

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February 4, 2013  |  

Amour brings us Georges and Anne, a nice-looking couple in their 80s. They are former music teachers who share a spacious Paris apartment filled with books, records and the sound of their pleasant banter. The two are active and still enjoy one another’s company after decades of marriage; clearly, they are still in love.

Then, fate strikes a blow that is coming to many of us. Anne has a stroke, and begins her painful, crescive descent into total incapacity. After surgery that leaves her partially paralyzed, Anne expresses her wish to stay at home rather than return to the hospital. Georges cares for her as best he can, spoonfeeding her and changing her diaper. Nurses come several days a week, but even so, Georges is overwhelmed by the extent of her need and the horror of watching her decline.

Georges and Anne seem to have ample resources. A maid helps with the cleaning, and the care provided by the highly rated French universal system, which is financed by government national health insurance, appears to be timely and adequate. There are conversations about treatment, children, and the wishes of the dying, but never does the issue of money come up. At least they are spared that indignity.

Director Michael Haneke is not out to make an overt political statement, though the need for assisted euthanasia in old age certainly hovers like a plaintive ghost. For an American audience, what we see in Amour is the extreme hardship of old age and illness — even under the best of circumstances, where love, money and humane healthcare cushion the blow.

But what happens when the blow isn’t cushioned? That’s what more and more Americans can look forward to. According to a study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, the number of Americans spending their retirement years in poverty is on the rise since 2005.

This is happening because pensions are disappearing and the recession has wiped out home equity and savings. Those who lose a job as older workers face an increasingly bleak labor market. Do-it-yourself retirement plans like 401(K)s are leaving many people short of resources in their golden years. And there’s not much older folks can do to lift themselves out of poverty once it sets in.

In America, the chances of poverty increase the longer you live. Almost 15 percent of Americans age 85 and up were living in poverty in 2009. Most of them have serious medical problems, the costs of which are a major driver of economic hardship. Women and minorities are especially vulnerable.

Social Security has not been adequate to the increasing needs of seniors, and yet politicians still talk about cutting benefits and raising the age of eligibility — moves which, if enacted, will be disastrous, increasing the numbers of the elderly poor. Holding down healthcare costs requires major changes in our system, including allowing Uncle Sam to bargain with pharmaceutical companies (currently prohibited), breaking up monopolies, and eventually, joining the ranks of advanced countries and introducing a single-payer system. And yet cutting Medicare benefits seems to be the only answer many pols can come up with, an idea that not only doesn’t solve the problem, but creates more agony.

Many people don’t start out poor in retirement, but for Americans, old age is not only the gateway to major heath challenges and life adjustments, but also to penury. In addition to those below the poverty line, there are millions who are “near poor” and struggling to stay afloat.

Haneke’s married couple, Georges and Anne, go through enormous emotional and physical suffering in a tale of the ravages of old age. They bring poignancy to the fearful confrontation with mortality we all must face. But their fate is by no means the worst possible picture. Add to this a pile of medical bills, desperate arguments with insurers, and choices between food and medicine and you’ve got horror on another order of magnitude. Toss in an eviction notice and the nightmare becomes Boschian. And yet this is what millions of people in the richest country in the world are facing. Does any American director have the courage to stare unflinchingly at that scenario? Let’s hope so, because the politicians refuse to face reality. And painful as it is, we won’t escape it by sticking our heads in the sand.

February 4, 2013  |  

Amour brings us Georges and Anne, a nice-looking couple in their 80s. They are former music teachers who share a spacious Paris apartment filled with books, records and the sound of their pleasant banter. The two are active and still enjoy one another’s company after decades of marriage; clearly, they are still in love.

Then, fate strikes a blow that is coming to many of us. Anne has a stroke, and begins her painful, crescive descent into total incapacity. After surgery that leaves her partially paralyzed, Anne expresses her wish to stay at home rather than return to the hospital. Georges cares for her as best he can, spoonfeeding her and changing her diaper. Nurses come several days a week, but even so, Georges is overwhelmed by the extent of her need and the horror of watching her decline.

Georges and Anne seem to have ample resources. A maid helps with the cleaning, and the care provided by the highly rated French universal system, which is financed by government national health insurance, appears to be timely and adequate. There are conversations about treatment, children, and the wishes of the dying, but never does the issue of money come up. At least they are spared that indignity.

Director Michael Haneke is not out to make an overt political statement, though the need for assisted euthanasia in old age certainly hovers like a plaintive ghost. For an American audience, what we see in Amour is the extreme hardship of old age and illness — even under the best of circumstances, where love, money and humane healthcare cushion the blow.

But what happens when the blow isn’t cushioned? That’s what more and more Americans can look forward to. According to a study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, the number of Americans spending their retirement years in poverty is on the rise since 2005.

This is happening because pensions are disappearing and the recession has wiped out home equity and savings. Those who lose a job as older workers face an increasingly bleak labor market. Do-it-yourself retirement plans like 401(K)s are leaving many people short of resources in their golden years. And there’s not much older folks can do to lift themselves out of poverty once it sets in.

In America, the chances of poverty increase the longer you live. Almost 15 percent of Americans age 85 and up were living in poverty in 2009. Most of them have serious medical problems, the costs of which are a major driver of economic hardship. Women and minorities are especially vulnerable.

Social Security has not been adequate to the increasing needs of seniors, and yet politicians still talk about cutting benefits and raising the age of eligibility — moves which, if enacted, will be disastrous, increasing the numbers of the elderly poor. Holding down healthcare costs requires major changes in our system, including allowing Uncle Sam to bargain with pharmaceutical companies (currently prohibited), breaking up monopolies, and eventually, joining the ranks of advanced countries and introducing a single-payer system. And yet cutting Medicare benefits seems to be the only answer many pols can come up with, an idea that not only doesn’t solve the problem, but creates more agony.

Many people don’t start out poor in retirement, but for Americans, old age is not only the gateway to major heath challenges and life adjustments, but also to penury. In addition to those below the poverty line, there are millions who are “near poor” and struggling to stay afloat.

Haneke’s married couple, Georges and Anne, go through enormous emotional and physical suffering in a tale of the ravages of old age. They bring poignancy to the fearful confrontation with mortality we all must face. But their fate is by no means the worst possible picture. Add to this a pile of medical bills, desperate arguments with insurers, and choices between food and medicine and you’ve got horror on another order of magnitude. Toss in an eviction notice and the nightmare becomes Boschian. And yet this is what millions of people in the richest country in the world are facing. Does any American director have the courage to stare unflinchingly at that scenario? Let’s hope so, because the politicians refuse to face reality. And painful as it is, we won’t escape it by sticking our heads in the sand.

Egypt’s culture minister resigns

The Pakistani schoolgirl shot in the head by the Taliban has spoken out about her recovery for the first time since she was nearly killed.

Malala Yousufzai, 15, underwent successful surgery to reconstruct her skull and restore her hearing at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham at the weekend.

She escaped death by a matter of inches when she was shot on a school bus in northwestern Pakistan on October 9 last year – as the bullet entered just above her left eye and ran along her jaw, “grazing” her brain.

The Islamist gunmen said they targeted her because she promoted girls’ education and “Western thinking”.

In a message recorded by the hospital on Sunday, Malala said she was “feeling alright” and “happy that both the operations were successful”.

She said: “I can also walk a little bit, I can talk and I’m feeling better.”

Despite having five hours of surgery, Malala added: “It does not feel like I had a very big operation.”

Her doctors have expressed their delight at her recovery. They hope that the latest procedures – to put a titanium plate on her damaged skull and to fit a cochlear implant – will be the last surgery she needs.

Neurosurgeon Anwen White said that her “brain is healing very well” and she did not expect any long lasting cognitive problems.

She said the teenager would continue with rehabilitation and then “hopefully be discharged home fairly soon”.

University Hospitals Birmingham medical director Dave Rosser said Malala was “doing very well”.

He added that just a day after the operations Malala was “already talking about resuming her work and furthering her cause for women’s education”.

“Most of us would be feeling sorry for ourselves 24 hours after an operation like that, not talking about helping other people.”

In another video interview, filmed before her surgery on January 22 but only just published, Malala is heard saying that she was “getting better, day by day”.

Speaking clearly but with a slight stiffness in her upper lip, she said: “Today you can see that I am alive. I can speak, I can see you, I can see everyone.

“It’s just because of the prayers of people. Because all people – men, women, children – all of them have prayed for me. And because of all these prayers God has given me this new life, a second life.

“And I want to serve. I want to serve the people. I want every girl, every child, to be educated. For that reason, we have organised the Malala Fund.”

Malala was airlifted to Britain from Pakistan in October to receive specialist medical care and protection against further Taliban threats.

She is expected to remain in the UK for some time as her father, Ziauddin, has received a diplomatic post based in Birmingham.

The Malala Fund is a girls’ education charity set up in late 2012. It launched with a \$10m (£6.4m) donation from Pakistan.

February 4, 2013  |  

1. Tennessee bill would prohibit discussion of “non-heterosexual” sexuality in schools and force teachers to warn parents if their kids identify as LGBT.

SB 234, colloquially known as the “ Don’t Say Gay” bill, bars elementary and middle-school teachers from discussing “non-heterosexual” sexuality with their students. Even more shocking, a new version of the bill would require counselors and teachers to warn parents if they think their child is gay. 

By way of justification the bill’s sponsor, Republican senator Stacey Campbell, said, “ The act of homosexuality is very dangerous to someone’s health and safety.” 

Campbell’s hateful bill is the real threat to health and safety. As Think Progress’ Annie-Rose Strasser notes, “Kids who are LGBT often face alienation, if not outright abandonment, because they come out. Forty percent of homeless youth are LGBT, and many of them report that the reason they left home was to escape an environment hostile to their sexual orientation.”

It seems that this is the strategy of cultural conservatives: restrict open discussion that could pave the way for a more tolerant generation, and harm children while doing so.

2. Missouri bill would require first-graders to study gun safety with the NRA.

A Missouri Republican is sponsoring a bill that would require all first-grade students to endure something called the “National Rifle Association’s Eddie Eagle Gunsafe Program.”

The program would send instructors to every public school in Missouri to teach first-graders what to do if they encounter an unsecured firearm. Also, the bill would require all teachers to attend eight hours of intruder response classes. But the NRA won’t pay for substitute teachers during training time, which is projected to cost school districts $16 million.

State Sen. Jamilah Nasheed of St. Louis believes that money would be better allocated toward math and science tutoring programs. Nasheed seems to be on the right track, considering that Missouri’s public education system ranks 47th in the nation. “I think we should be teaching kids to read, write and do math,” she told the Associated Press.

3. Arkansas bill would ban abortions as early as five weeks into pregnancy.

In a blow to women’s rights, the Arkansas state senate approved a bill that would ban abortions when doctors detect a fetal heartbeat. If passed by the House into law, women would be denied abortions as early as five weeks into pregnancy. Arkansas would become the most anti-choice state in the country.

Not only do Arkansas lawmakers want to strip away a woman’s right to choose–they also want to invade women’s privacy in the process. The bill, sponsored by the openly racist Republican state senator Jason Rapert, would require doctors administer vaginal probes to detect whether women pass the cut-off of fetal heartbeat.

It gets worse: doctors who perform abortions after the cut-off would face up to six years in prison and $10,000 in fines. Essentially, the bill would jail doctors who adhere to 40 years of federal law.

In a speech to her colleagues, Democratic state senator Linda Chesterfield captured the cruelty of the proposed legislation: “I don’t want to go back to when women used kerosene and clotheshangers because they didn’t have a choice.”

4. Mississippi bill aims to exempt state from certain federal laws.

In response to Obama’s Affordable Care Act and gun control proposals, Republican state representatives Gary Chism and Jeff Smith introduced a bill aiming to neutralize federal laws conservatives disagree with.

Chism says his bill will “stand up for the 10th Amendment.” But Mississippi College law professor Matt Steffey points out the stupidity of his assessment–noting that federal law trumps state law whenever there is conflict.

A Dale County Alabama helicopter flies over the scene of a shooting and hostage taking near Midland City, Alabama February 1, 2013. (Reuters / Philip Sears)

As the Alabama hostage crisis continues into its seventh day, police say they have discovered more details about the captor holding a 5-year-old boy in an underground bunker after taking him off a school bus.

Jimmy Lee Dykes, a 65-year-old Vietnam veteran, fatally shot an Alabama school bus driver and took the 5-year-old boy from the bus, taking him to the bunker underneath his home. Holding the boy hostage, Dykes promised not to hurt him and kept an open line of communication with authorities.

Authorities delivered items including medicine, a Hot Wheels toy car, and food, including Cheez-Its, to the 5-year-old using a ventilation pipe. The boy suffers from a mild form of autism, but the captor has done his best “to make the environment as comfortable as possible for the child,” the FBI said.

The FBI has not discussed a motive for the kidnapping, but neighbors described the assailant as a loner with no children of his own. Dykes lives along a dirt road outside of Dothan, a small town in southeast Alabama. The 65-year-old is estranged from his family and told some of his family member “to go to hell”, said Mel Adams, a Midland City Council member who has known Dykes since they were ages 3 and 4, in an AP interview. The man has an adult daughter, but lost touch with her two years ago. He also has a brother and a sister that he has lost contact with.

The kidnapper’s neighbors told AP that Dykes once beat a dog to death with a lead pipe, threatened to shoot children for stepping onto his property, and guarded his property at night with a gun and a flashlight.

Jimmy Lee Dykes is shown in this undated handout photo. The man is suspected of shooting a school bus driver to death and taking a five-year-old boy hostage in an underground bunker as the standoff with police continues in Midland City, Alabama. (Reuters)

The descriptions of the violent loner are contradicted by his leadership and success while in the Navy, for which he served from 1964 to 1969. While serving, Dykes won several awards, including the Vietnam Service Medal and the Good Conduct Medal.

But his conduct deteriorated thereafter. Dykes was arrested in 1995 for improper exhibition of a weapon and in 2000 for marijuana possession. Last week he killed 66-year-old Charles Albert Poland Jr., a bus driver who was buried Sunday, and is still keeping the 5-year-old boy in the 8 by 6 ft. bunker.

Neighbor Michael Creel said that Dykes originally built the underground bunker in his yard to provide protection from hurricanes. It contains a steel shipping container that stores tools and supplies.

“He said he lived in Florida and had hurricanes hit. He wanted someplace he could go down in and be safe,” the younger Creel said. Dykes’ neighbor also described the captor as a man who was very interested in politics and was an avid critic of the Obama administration.

“He was very into what’s going on with the nation and the politics and all the laws being made. The things he didn’t agree with, he would ventilate,” he said. “He’s against the government, starting with Obama on down.”

Asked whether Dykes was trying to copy 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who shot 26 people at an Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Creel said he doubts that and that his neighbor most likely is just letting out his anger against the government and his neighbors by shooting the bus driver and kidnapping the boy.

“He had a whole bus load full of kids, and he could have walked up there and shot the whole crowd of them,” Creel said. “I think he’s just a really angry and bitter guy with some anger management issues. He is just against everything — the government and his neighbors.”

Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson thanked the captor for taking care of the child, but neighbors and psychologists continue to worry about the boy’s mental well-being.

Jeffrey Gardere, a child psychologist, told NBC that the boy “is most likely terrified.”

“The overriding thought in his head is that he wants his mother, that he just wants to be out of that situation,” he said.

“I wish that I could just hug him and hid him and tell him it was going to be all right,” said neighbor Sherri Johnson Parker.

Authorities are continuing their negotiations with Dykes, using the ventilation pipe that they have also been using to send down supplies.

While the New Year’s deficit deal divided congressional Republicans, there’s one point on which they’re all reading from the same hymnal: No more tax talk! The revenues under the deal are relatively modest–they leave rich people’s taxes Protestors in support of a Robin Hood tax. (Photo: Martin Argles /Observer)well short of Clinton era rates. But Republicans, while claiming to care deeply about the deficit, have locked arms to take further tax increases off the table. We can’t let them.

The truth is, we could do our economy a world of good with some smart and fair tax hikes. While the current deficit hysteria is unmoored from reality, the right tax hikes could improve economic incentives, reduce obscene inequality and fund much-needed programs. Rather than the usual dust-ups over competing flavors of austerity, our budget debate should have healthy tax hikes front and center.

To start with, Congress should listen to Sarah Anderson, who directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. As Anderson noted at The Huffington Post last week, while progressive taxation may appear an uphill battle, politics is fluid, and “Openings will come…. The even more important challenge is to push progressive reforms into the center of the debate so they get plucked when the stars are aligned.”

Anderson has a few good taxes in mind to start with. First: Close the carried-interest loophole, so that money made by managing private equity or hedge funds no longer gets preferential treatment over wages earned by teaching kids or mining coal (President Obama offered welcome support for this change in his Super Bowl Sunday interview). Second: Cap executive pay deductibility, so that calling obscene bonuses “performance-based” no longer lets them be easily exempted from taxation. Third: Tax financial transactions, so bad behavior can be discouraged, and the people who crashed the economy can be required to pay for the cost of recovery. And fourth: Shut down offshore tax haven loopholes, so our tax code stops seducing money away from America.

Each of these tax changes would be a victory for the 99 percent, and a step towards economy sanity. We have a long way to go. As Oxfam International wrote in a briefing published last month, the world’s 100 richest billionaires alone last year made four times as much money as it would have taken to end extreme poverty. While “great progress” has been made in the fight to improve the lives of the world’s poorest, Oxfam warns, “as we look to the next decade, and new development goals we need to define progress, we must demonstrate that we are also tackling inequality–and that means looking at not just the poorest but the richest…. In a world of finite resources, we cannot end poverty unless we reduce income inequality.”

The Republican Party will pull out all the stops to avert any progress on taxes. But as House Ways and Means Committee Chair Dave Camp reminded us last month, even GOP congressmen know that taxing the wealthiest is politically popular. GOP sources told The Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim and Zach Carter that Camp is considering legislation that could transform the tax treatment of derivatives, discouraging extreme risk-taking and recouping little-taxed profit. Ironically, Grim and Carter’s sources suggested that the bill was motivated by payback: Camp resented top CEOs for supporting the (quite conservative) Fix the Debt in calling for a Grand Bargain, rather than taking the Grover Norquist line and refusing to entertain any tax increases at all. But if true, the story is telling: It shows that Republicans know that their CEO friends are depending on them to shield them from reasonable taxation, and that the top 1 percent are vulnerable to public outrage if a true tax debate breaks out.

That’s the debate we need now. It’s time for a few good tax hikes.

© 2013 The Nation

Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor of The Nation.

more Katrina vanden Heuvel

While the New Year’s deficit deal divided congressional Republicans, there’s one point on which they’re all reading from the same hymnal: No more tax talk! The revenues under the deal are relatively modest–they leave rich people’s taxes Protestors in support of a Robin Hood tax. (Photo: Martin Argles /Observer)well short of Clinton era rates. But Republicans, while claiming to care deeply about the deficit, have locked arms to take further tax increases off the table. We can’t let them.

The truth is, we could do our economy a world of good with some smart and fair tax hikes. While the current deficit hysteria is unmoored from reality, the right tax hikes could improve economic incentives, reduce obscene inequality and fund much-needed programs. Rather than the usual dust-ups over competing flavors of austerity, our budget debate should have healthy tax hikes front and center.

To start with, Congress should listen to Sarah Anderson, who directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. As Anderson noted at The Huffington Post last week, while progressive taxation may appear an uphill battle, politics is fluid, and “Openings will come…. The even more important challenge is to push progressive reforms into the center of the debate so they get plucked when the stars are aligned.”

Anderson has a few good taxes in mind to start with. First: Close the carried-interest loophole, so that money made by managing private equity or hedge funds no longer gets preferential treatment over wages earned by teaching kids or mining coal (President Obama offered welcome support for this change in his Super Bowl Sunday interview). Second: Cap executive pay deductibility, so that calling obscene bonuses “performance-based” no longer lets them be easily exempted from taxation. Third: Tax financial transactions, so bad behavior can be discouraged, and the people who crashed the economy can be required to pay for the cost of recovery. And fourth: Shut down offshore tax haven loopholes, so our tax code stops seducing money away from America.

Each of these tax changes would be a victory for the 99 percent, and a step towards economy sanity. We have a long way to go. As Oxfam International wrote in a briefing published last month, the world’s 100 richest billionaires alone last year made four times as much money as it would have taken to end extreme poverty. While “great progress” has been made in the fight to improve the lives of the world’s poorest, Oxfam warns, “as we look to the next decade, and new development goals we need to define progress, we must demonstrate that we are also tackling inequality–and that means looking at not just the poorest but the richest…. In a world of finite resources, we cannot end poverty unless we reduce income inequality.”

The Republican Party will pull out all the stops to avert any progress on taxes. But as House Ways and Means Committee Chair Dave Camp reminded us last month, even GOP congressmen know that taxing the wealthiest is politically popular. GOP sources told The Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim and Zach Carter that Camp is considering legislation that could transform the tax treatment of derivatives, discouraging extreme risk-taking and recouping little-taxed profit. Ironically, Grim and Carter’s sources suggested that the bill was motivated by payback: Camp resented top CEOs for supporting the (quite conservative) Fix the Debt in calling for a Grand Bargain, rather than taking the Grover Norquist line and refusing to entertain any tax increases at all. But if true, the story is telling: It shows that Republicans know that their CEO friends are depending on them to shield them from reasonable taxation, and that the top 1 percent are vulnerable to public outrage if a true tax debate breaks out.

That’s the debate we need now. It’s time for a few good tax hikes.

© 2013 The Nation

Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor of The Nation.

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An increase in Islamophobia has caused Muslims to become victims of hate crimes more than any other time in the British history, according to a British minister.

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, Senior Minister of State for Faith and Communities, quoted figures from the Association of Chief Police Officers showing that more than 60 per cent of all religious hate crimes reported to police in Britain are now perpetrated against Muslims, and called for it to be dealt with effectively.

In an interview with Geo News, Warsi appealed to more than 1,500 mosques in Britain to report anti-Muslim hate crimes to the police and a special project funded by the government called Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks (Tell MAMA) project – a one-stop shop that works with agencies, like Victim Support and Neighbourhood Watch, to encourage reporting, support victims and record incidents.

She said more mosques need to take the issue of reporting hate crimes seriously and work with the relevant agencies so that the real depth of the problem could be assessed.

“Muslim women often complain of bad behaviour they face in the town centers. Objectionable material is sent to mosques and Islamic centres and Muslims are targeted in specific due to their appearance and for various other reasons. The problem is really alarming but the real problem is lack of reporting. There should be a register in every mosque to register any incident. Some mosques are already doing but more needs to be done. Our community faces major challenges, we don’t want our children to grow up in an environment where they are hated, viewed with suspicion and treated differently. That’s why I am asking the community to come forward and fulfill their responsibility”, Warsai said.

Last year there were 13,277 prosecutions for racially and religiously motivated hate crimes, 83% of which were successful. But this does not reflect the full picture because there is a shortage of statistical information on hate crime and it is known that Muslims, of all the religious groups, are less inclined to report hate crimes to the police and as a result suffer the most.

MOL/HE

Remains found beneath a council car park in Leicester have solved the 500-year-old mystery about the final resting place of King Richard III, archaeologists say.

Researchers said they had concluded “beyond reasonable doubt” that the skeleton, which showed evidence of an abnormal lateral curvature of the spine, was the monarch.

There were cheers at the University of Leicester as the announcement was made.

Bone specialist Jo Appleby said a study of the bones provided “a highly convincing case for identification of Richard III”.

“The analysis of the skeleton proved that it was an adult male but was an unusually slender, almost feminine, build for a man. This is in keeping with historical sources which describe Richard as being of very slender build,” she said.

DNA samples from a Michael Ibsen, a Canadian-born furniture maker who is a direct descendant of Richard’s sister, Anne of York, provided further certainty.

Dr Turi King, the project geneticist, said: “There is a DNA match between the maternal DNA from the descendents of the family of Richard III and the skeletal remains we found at the Greyfriars dig. In short, the DNA evidence points to these being the remains of Richard III.”

The skeleton, with severe trauma to the skull and an arrow in the back, was unearthed on the first day of a three-week dig at the site of what is believed to have been the choir of Greyfriars Church.

Historical records show the long-lost church was the burial site of the monarch, following his brutal death at the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.

The skeleton was found in good condition with its feet missing in a grave around 680 metres below ground level. Its hand were crossed over the front of the pelvis and there was no evidence of a coffin or shroud found with it.

The king’s remains will now be reinterred at Leicester Cathedral, the nearest consecrated ground, in keeping with archaeological practice.

Shakespeare portrayed Richard III as a hunchbacked tyrant but modern historians argue that the king was the victim of Tudor propaganda. His brief reign from 1483 saw liberal reforms, including the introduction of the right to bail and the lifting of restrictions on books and printing presses.

Richard III was the last Plantagenet monarch, a Yorkist defeated by Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII.

“It will be a whole new era for Richard III,” the Richard III Society’s Lynda Pidgeon said. “It’s certainly going to spark a lot more interest. Hopefully people will have a more open mind toward Richard.”

Last week there was a real media hate-fest for Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, with some of the more influential publications on both sides of the Atlantic really hating on the guy. Even by the hate-filled standards to which we have become accustomed, it was impressive.

It’s interesting, since this is one of the only countries in the world where the reporting of the more liberal media – NPR or even the New Yorker – is hardly different from that of Fox News or other right-wing media (more on that below).

The funniest episode came from El País, which on Thursday ran a front page picture of a man that they claimed was Chavez, lying on his back in a hospital bed, looking pretty messed-up with tubes in his mouth. The picture was soon revealed as completely fake. Oops! The paper, which is Spain’s most influential publication (and with a lot of clout in Latin America, too), had to pull its newspapers off the stands and issue a public apology. Although, as the Venezuelans complained, there was no apology to Chavez or his family. Not surprisingly, since El Pais really hates Chavez. For a really funny pictorial response to El Pais, click here. 

The New York Times, for its part, ran yet another hate piece on its op-ed page. Dog bites man. Nothing new here, they have doing this for almost 14 years – most recently just three months ago. This one was remarkably unoriginal, comparing the Chavez government to a Latin American magical realist novel. It contained very little information – but being fact-free allowed the authors to claim that the country had “dwindling productivity” and “an enormous foreign debt load”. Productivity has not “dwindled” under Chavez; in fact real GDP per capita, which is mostly driven by productivity growth, expanded by 24 percent since 2004 (for an explanation of why 2004 is a reasonable starting point, see here). In the 20 years prior to Chavez, real GDP per person actually fell. As for the “enormous foreign debt load”, Venezuela’s foreign public debt is about 28 percent of GDP, and the interest on it is about 2 percent of GDP. If this is enormous – well let’s just say these people don’t have a good sense of quantity.

The authors were probably just following a general rule, which is that you can say almost anything you want about Venezuela, so long as it is bad – and it usually goes unquestioned. Statistics and data count for very little when the media is presenting its ugly picture. 

This is especially true for Jon Lee Anderson, writing in the January 28 issue of the New Yorker (“Slumlord: What has Hugo Chávez wrought in Venezuela?“). He mentions in passing that “the poorest Venezuelans are marginally better off these days”. Marginally? From 2004-2011, extreme poverty was reduced by about two-thirds. Poverty was reduced by about one-half. And this measures only cash income. It does not count the access to health care that millions now have, or the doubling of college enrollment – with free tuition for many. Access to public pensions tripled. Unemployment is half of what it was when Chavez took office.

I shouldn’t have to emphasise that Venezuela’s poverty reduction, real (inflation-adjusted) income growth, and other basic data in the Chavez era are not in dispute among experts, including international statistical agencies such as the World Bank or UN. Even opposition economists use the same data in making their case against the government. It is only journalists like Anderson who avoid letting commonly agreed upon facts and numbers get in the way of their story.

Anderson devotes many thousands of words, in one of America’s leading literary magazines, to portraying the dark underside of life in Venezuela – ex-cons and squatters, horrible prisons: “A thick black line of human excrement ran down an exterior wall, and in the yard below was a sea of sludge and garbage several feet deep.” He draws on more than a decade of visits to Venezuela to shower the reader with his most foul memories of the society and the government. The article is accompanied by a series of grim, depressing black-and-white photos of unhappy-looking people in ugly surroundings (I couldn’t help thinking of all those international surveys that keep finding Venezuelans to be among the happiest people in Latin America and the world – did Anderson never meet even one of these Venezuelans?).

I am all in favour of journalism that exposes the worst aspects of any society. But what makes this piece just another cheap political hack job is the conclusions that the author draws from his narrow, intentionally chosen slice of Venezuelan reality. For example:  

They [Venezuelans] are the victims of their affection for a charismatic man… After nearly a generation, Chavez leaves his countrymen with many unanswered questions, but only one certainty: the revolution that he tried to bring about never really took place. It began with Chavez, and with him, most likely it will end.

Really? It sure doesn’t look that way. Even Chavez’s opponent in the October presidential election, Henrique Capriles, had to promise voters [SP] that he would preserve and actually expand the Chavez-era social programmes that had increased Venezuelans’ access to health care and education. And after Chavez beat him by a wide margin of eleven percentage points, Chavez’s party increased its share of governorships from 15 to 20 of 23 states, in the December elections that followed. In those elections, Chavez was not even in the country.

But it’s the one-sidedness of the New Yorker’s reporting that is most overwhelming. Imagine, for example, writing an article about the United States at the end of President Clinton’s eight years – interviewing the homeless and the destitute, the people tortured in our prisons, the unemployed and the poor single mothers struggling to feed their children. Could you get away with pretending that this is all of “What Clinton has wrought in America?” Without mentioning that unemployment hit record lows not seen since the 1960s, that poverty was sharply reduced, that it was the longest-running business cycle expansion in US history?

This is an imperfect analogy, since many people outside the US know something about the country, and wouldn’t buy such a one-sided story line. And also because the improvements of the Clinton years didn’t last that long: the stock market bubble burst and caused a recession in 2001; the gains from the recovery that followed went mostly to the richest one percent of the population; and then the housing bubble burst, causing the worst recession since the Great Depression – from which we are still recovering. Unemployment today is considerably above the level of Clinton’s first year in office, and poverty has rebounded dramatically; and we could take another decade to get back to full employment. Whereas in Venezuela, progress has not been reversed; there really is no going back now that the majority of the country has gotten used to sharing in the country’s oil wealth – not just through government programmes but primarily through a higher level of employment and income in the private sector. Maybe that’s not “revolutionary” enough for Anderson, but it’s enough for Venezuelans to keep re-electing their president and his party.

As for the media, it is a remarkable phenomenon, this outpouring of animosity towards Chavez and his government, from across the western media spectrum. How is it that this democratically elected president who hasn’t killed anyone or invaded any countries gets more bad press than Saddam Hussein did (aside from the months immediately preceding invasions of Iraq)? Even when he is fighting for his own life?

The western media reporting has been effective. It has convinced most people outside of Venezuela that the country is run by some kind of dictatorship that has ruined it. Fortunately for Venezuelans, they have access to more information about their country than the foreigners who are relying on one-sided and often inaccurate media. So they keep re-electing the president and the party that has improved their lives – much to the annoyance of the major media and its friends.

Ex-England footballer Paul Gascoigne has been admitted to a treatment centre in the United States.

The alcoholic former Tottenham Hotspur, Lazio and Newcastle United star, 45, has “willingly” been admitted to an unnamed centre, his management company has revealed.

The move came after fears for the Italia 90 and Euro 96 legend who appeared unwell and shaking during a charity appearance in Northampton last week, when he broke down sobbing on stage in front of a room full of fans.

In a statement, GamePlan Solutions said Gazza had been touched by the help and support shown by fans and figures within football over the past few days.

“Alcoholic Paul Gascoigne has been experiencing a tough time of late. He has been asking for help and has willingly been admitted to a treatment centre in America,” it read.

“He has complex issues that are currently being dealt with by professionals.

“Paul has been extremely touched and overwhelmed by the generous offers of help and support over the past few days.

“He is motivated to fully understand and control his addiction problem under guidance.”

An informed Iranian source has strongly refuted Yemen’s claims that a ship loaded with weapons and surface-to-air missiles which has been intercepted off the Yemeni coast originated from Iran.

“Contradictory news has been circulating in recent days about the seized ship which have led to many ambiguities in this regard,” an informed source in Iran’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

The unnamed source added that Iran attaches importance to maintaining security and stability of regional countries, particularly Yemen, emphasizing that such “irresponsible claims are not in line with the interests of the two countries.”

On Saturday, Yemen said that the seized ship was an Iranian vessel trying to smuggle explosives and rockets into the Arab country.

Officials in Washington had earlier said that the ship was intercepted on January 23 in coordination with the US Navy.

It is not the first time that Yemen has made unfounded claims about the detention of Iranian shiploads of arms in its territory.

On December 29, 2012, the London-based Arab daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat reported that Yemen’s Navy had detained an Iranian ship ‘containing weapons’ in the port of Saleef, a claim which was strongly rejected by an Iranian naval commander.

“I do not confirm this report and I think that many such reports are political games,” Iranian Navy’s Deputy Commander Rear Admiral Gholam-Reza Khadem Bigham said.

SF/SS/MA

Malian soldiers walk past a destroyed vehicle at the prefecture of the recently liberated town of Konna. (Reuters / Eric Gaillard)

(21.5Mb) embed video

French President Francois Hollande is triumphant about his operation in Mali, but stories are emerging which show a different side of the war. Journalist Gonzalo Wancho tells RT that for every two rebels killed in airstrikes, a dozen civilians died.

“We’re learning what happened in battle day by day. In the town of Konna, we heard stories from the fog of war. [Rebels] fled to the north when French troops showed up. It’s reported that the cost of that victory was high. While French planes killed only two rebels, the number of civilian casualties were an estimated 14,” journalist Gonzalo Wancha told RT.

It comes just days after French President Francois Hollande declared “victory” in northern Malian cities. But the victory also had its price:

“I wasn’t home when the bombing began. I started praying when I learned my house was under attack. They ruined everything I had — my family and my livelihood. [My children were 11, 10, and 6]. They all died,” Idrís Meiga, a farmer from Konna, told RT.

Meiga’s story is not unique. In fact, it is becoming all too common to hear of similar tragedies in northern Mali.

“Some kids came running up to us and said their mom had died. I brought them to our house. Their mother died after an hour of clinging to life. The children have nobody else but us,” resident Abdul Kampó said.

Another story involved a mother who died from shell splinters, leaving three children behind — including a newborn baby.  

Two young brothers drowned in a nearby river as they attempted to flee from the fighting.

These residents refuse to be persuaded by military claims of “victory.” 

“People [in the town] say [French] war crimes must be prosecuted under the Geneva Convention,” Wancha said.

And while Hollande maintains that French military intervention in Mali will be short lived, the consequences of this war will affect the lives of these innocent civilians for a lifetime.

Meanwhile, airstrikes continue in Mali’s far north. Earlier Monday, 30 jets targeted training and communication centers of Islamist militants in the town of Tessalit.

The move was an effort to cut off nearby supply routes. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told France’s Inter radio that rebels “cannot stay there a long time unless they have new supplies.”

It is believed that French civilians are being held hostage by militants in the area.

Both France and the Malian government have come under criticism for their alleged activity against terrorists and Islamist supporters in the African country.

Days ago, three suspected Jihadists who were arrested in the liberation of Timbuktu said they were tortured by Malian soldiers who used a method similar to waterboarding.

“To force me to talk they poured 40 liters of water in my mouth and over my nostrils, which made it so that I could not breathe anymore. For a moment I thought I was actually going to die,” said one of the men who said he was from the central Malian town of Niono.

According to a report by Human Rights Watch, Malian government forces executed at least 13 suspected Islamist supporters and “forcibly disappeared” five others from the towns of Sévaré and Konna last month.

The United States made a deal long time ago that has sealed our nation’s fate today.

German folklore tells a story of a man named Faust, who, bored with his life as a scholar and seeking unlimited knowledge, power and pleasure, makes a deal with the devil to attain all of these things.

In return, however, Faust agrees to give the devil his soul at the end of 24 years.

This is where the term “a Faustian bargain” comes from – and it refers to someone willing to sacrifice their moral integrity just to attain power and pleasure for a limited time.

Today, the United States is the most powerful and wealthiest nation on the planet.

No other nation even comes close in terms of military power. The United States spends more on so-called “defense” than the next 17 top military nations combined. And when it comes to our supposed biggest threat in the future, the Chinese, we spend six times more on our military than they do.

And in terms of wealth, the United States GDP in 2010 was $14.5 trillion – nearly three times the GDP of China, the second wealthiest nation on the planet.

Unfortunately, just like Faust, all of this power and wealth did not come honestly. It came as a result of a bargain – a bargain with the Devil of War.

Out of the chaos of World War II, it was the United States that triumphed and embarked on empire building for the remainder of the 21st century. Despite seeing the dangers of hyper-militarism in Japan and Germany, the United States would go on to make the very same mistakes, relying on never-ending war to expand its influence, wealth and power around the planet.

It was none other than the Father of the Constitution himself, James Madison, who warned early in the infancy of this nation that, “No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

But, as soon as World War II – the supposed war to end all wars – ended, the United States got involved in the never-ending warfare game.

The drop-off in military spending after Japan’s surrender was immediately replaced by Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, who both triggered a massive expansion of war spending. That included overt war spending in Korea, and covert war spending all around the world to destabilize governments and contain what was then called “Soviet aggression.”

To ensure that global capitalism reigned supreme to enrich the oligarch class of bankers, corporate executives and oil barons, our military intervened all around the world throughout the 1950s – meddling in Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia and Cuba.

President Eisenhower knew the consequences of the Faustian Bargain with the Devil of War. “Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron,” he said in 1953.

In that same “Cross of Iron” speech, Eisenhower explained how increased war spending eats away at a nation from within. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,” Eisenhower said.

He went down the list, “The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.”

This was during a time when our nation was spending roughly $50 billion a year on defense. Now we spend upwards of $900 billion or a trillion.

Despite his own warnings, Eisenhower did little to renegotiate the terms of this morally repugnant deal. And by the start of the 1960s, he knew something had gone terribly wrong.

In his 1961 farewell address, Eisenhower warned, “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex.” He noted, “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

But our lawmakers didn’t listen to Eisenhower. The Vietnam War, plus more covert wars in South America, Asia and the Middle East to ensure that global capitalists in the United States had favorable regimes to do business with around the world, would ramp up our military budget through the 1960s and 1970s – taking the Pentagon’s annual spending to nearly $200 billion.

During the 1980s, spending on war would grow exponentially with more covert operations across the globe, and high-tech missile defense boondoggles like “Star Wars.” During his two terms in the White House, Reagan would increase annual military spending from less than $200 billion to nearly $350 billion. At the same time, Reagan slashed taxes and cut spending to social programs.

Although the Soviet Union fell and defense spending leveled off in the 1990s, the perpetual war machine continued to grind on. There was Desert Storm in Iraq, military intervention in Kosovo, airstrikes in Sudan, and another bombing raid on Iraq to close out the decade.

And then George W. Bush moved into the White House; 9/11 happened, and military spending went through the roof. Two new wars were started, and a brand new covert drone warfare program was unleashed across the planet. Our defense budget tripled under Bush and then Obama. We now spend between $700 billion and a trillion dollars every year to maintain this deal with the Devil of War.

On every corner of the planet, we have between 700 and 1,000 military bases of all sizes and purposes. They include massive installments like Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and small, secret facilities in Africa used primarily to launch drones.

And almost every single dollar that you and I and everyone else in this country pay in income taxes goes to supporting this massive military empire. Our defense and war spending eats up 94 percent of all federal income tax revenue.

And in return, the Billionaire Class has profited immensely with oil and shipping lanes wide open, and favorable business deals in foreign markets. But within, the United States is rotting. This Faustian deal is sun-setting.

We learned last week that the American economy contracted by .1 percent in the fourth quarter despite the fact that overall consumption in the economy grew by 2.2 percent. The reason why the economy shrank was because the war budget shrank by 22 percent that month.

In other words, when missiles, tanks and warplanes aren’t being manufactured, our economy runs into trouble.

As President Obama said in his Super Bowl interview with CBS on Sunday, “The economy shrank a little bit despite the fact that housing is recovering, manufacturing is going strong, car sales are up … the big problem was defense spending was cut 22 percent.”

With so much of our economy dependent on perpetual war, we officially have a war economy, which means we must continue this endless war or suffer further economic ruin beyond what we’re already experiencing with rampant joblessness, declining wages and spiraling budget deficits on a local, state and federal level.

But drive around the Washington, DC suburbs in Virginia and you’ll see enormous palaces built in gated communities where the war profiteers reside. In 2002, the five largest war profiteering corporations saw $2.4 billion in profits. But by 2011, their profits had grown 45 percent to $13.4 billion. They’ve been the real winners in this Faustian Bargain.

And it’s difficult to rectify this wealth across the Potomac with the desperation across America. For the hundreds of billions we spend every year on them and their wars, we could be sending an entire generation to college for free. We could bring financial security to the 50 million Americans living in poverty by giving them a living wage. And we could establish a single-payer health care system to finally put an end to the carnage of 40,000 Americans who die every year in America because they don’t have health insurance – far more than any threat presented by a terrorist or a communist.

As economic hardship for the vast majority of us intensifies, then this deal with the United States made with the Devil of War creeps closer to its due date. We’ve acquired our enormous wealth and power for the few, but the day when we must hand over our national soul is quickly approaching.

Do we really want to be a devilish empire that brings carnage to the rest of the world while our own population at home suffers? We know how that story ends – it ends in collapse. It always has throughout history.

That’s why we must renege on this deal. We must take on the military industrial complex and re-think empire. It will be painful, fraught with danger and likely accompanied by economic pain, but it’s the only way to save our national soul.

When our founders were drafting the Constitution, they went out of their way to give warmaking powers to Congress, not the President.

They understood that if the President could make war on his own, he’d be no different than a king.

And they also understood, as James Madison said, that such power “would be too much temptation” for one man.

And so they vested that power in Congress.

But since World War II, one President after another has usurped that power.

The latest usurper is President Obama, who did so in Libya, and with drones, and now is prepared to do so in cyberspace.

According to The New York Times, the Obama Administration has concluded that the President has the authority to launch preemptive cyberattacks.

This is a very dangerous, and very undemocratic power grab.

There are no checks or balances when the President, alone, decides when to engage in an act of war.

And this new aggressive stance will lead to a cyber arms race. The United States has evidently already used cyber weapons against Iran, and so many other countries will assume that cyber warfare is an acceptable tool and will try to use it themselves.

Most troubling, U.S. cybersupremacy–and that is Pentagon doctrine–will also raise fears among nuclear powers like Russia, China, and North Korea that the United States may use a cyberattack as the opening move in a nuclear attack.

For if the United States can knock out the command and control structure of an enemy’s nuclear arsenal, it can then launch an all-out nuclear attack on that enemy with impunity. This would make such nuclear powers more ready to launch their nuclear weapons preemptively for fear that they would be rendered useless. So we’ve just moved a little closer to midnight.

Now, I don’t think Obama would use cyberwafare as a first strike in a nuclear war. But our adversaries may not be so sure, either about Obama or his successors.

They, too, worry about the temptations of a President.

© 2013 The Progressive Magazine

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine.

When our founders were drafting the Constitution, they went out of their way to give warmaking powers to Congress, not the President.

They understood that if the President could make war on his own, he’d be no different than a king.

And they also understood, as James Madison said, that such power “would be too much temptation” for one man.

And so they vested that power in Congress.

But since World War II, one President after another has usurped that power.

The latest usurper is President Obama, who did so in Libya, and with drones, and now is prepared to do so in cyberspace.

According to The New York Times, the Obama Administration has concluded that the President has the authority to launch preemptive cyberattacks.

This is a very dangerous, and very undemocratic power grab.

There are no checks or balances when the President, alone, decides when to engage in an act of war.

And this new aggressive stance will lead to a cyber arms race. The United States has evidently already used cyber weapons against Iran, and so many other countries will assume that cyber warfare is an acceptable tool and will try to use it themselves.

Most troubling, U.S. cybersupremacy–and that is Pentagon doctrine–will also raise fears among nuclear powers like Russia, China, and North Korea that the United States may use a cyberattack as the opening move in a nuclear attack.

For if the United States can knock out the command and control structure of an enemy’s nuclear arsenal, it can then launch an all-out nuclear attack on that enemy with impunity. This would make such nuclear powers more ready to launch their nuclear weapons preemptively for fear that they would be rendered useless. So we’ve just moved a little closer to midnight.

Now, I don’t think Obama would use cyberwafare as a first strike in a nuclear war. But our adversaries may not be so sure, either about Obama or his successors.

They, too, worry about the temptations of a President.

© 2013 The Progressive Magazine

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine.

Greek Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras has been sent a bullet and a death threat from a group protesting against home foreclosures in the recession-hit country, police sources say.

Security officials reported on Monday that a group known as “ Cretan Revolution” sent the package to the minister’s office, warning Stournaras against any attempts to seize homes and evict their owners.

Stournaras, who was appointed finance minister in June 2012, has infuriated many Greeks by defending austerity measures demanded by the European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the price to release the bailout aid.

The recent death threat sent to the Greek finance minister is the latest in a series of such attacks in the country over the past weeks.

On January 14, unknown assailants carried out a gunshot assault on the office of Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras at the headquarters of his ruling New Democracy party in the capital, Athens.

Greece has been at the epicenter of the eurozone debt crisis and, experiencing its sixth year of recession and grappling with harsh austerity measures.

Tough austerity measures adopted by the government have led to massive protests across the country.

Jobless levels in Greece are the highest recorded in the eurozone. Last year’s October rate broke every record that the state statistics agency had recorded since it began monthly reports in 2004.

On January 16, the IMF approved a $4.31-billion (3.24-billion euro) loan installment to Greece on the condition that the country imposes spending cuts and other austerity measures.

MKA/JR

Boy Scouts May Not Survive With Gay Members, Santorum Says

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Posted on Feb 4, 2013

Gage Skidmore (CC-BY-SA)

Noted homophobe Rick Santorum is urging the Boy Scouts of America not to capitulate to the “intolerant liberal mind” and overturn its discriminatory policy of banning gays from joining the youth organization.

Removing the prohibition would pose a challenge “to the Scouts’ very nature,” Santorum writes in an op-ed for the conservative website World News Daily titled, “Stop the War on Scouts.” He adds that this is yet “another example of the left attempting to remove God from all areas of public life.”

Santorum concludes that if the organization does overturn its policy, “Scouting may not survive this transformation of American society.” He adds, in overly dramatic fashion, that “for the sake of the average boy in America, I hope the board of the Scouts doesn’t have its fingerprints on the murder weapon.”

The former Pennsylvania senator’s column comes as the Boy Scouts of America prepares to discuss ending its decades-long national policy of barring Scouts and troop leaders because of their sexuality.

Santorum’s hardly the only Republican to express distaste over the group ending its long-standing ban. Texas Gov. Rick Perry expressed a similar sentiment, saying that he hoped the board members would “follow their historic position of keeping the Scouts strongly supportive of the values that make Scouting this very important and impactful organization.”

Santorum in World News Daily:

This is not a new fight. Liberal activist lawyers went to court to force the Boy Scouts to change, but the Supreme Court in 2000 upheld the Boy Scouts’ right to set its own policies. In that case, the Court ruled that the freedom of association, a constitutional right, permits a private organization to exclude someone from membership when “the presence of that person affects in a significant way the group’s ability to advocate public or private viewpoints.”

That did not deter lawyers, anti-scouting public officials and liberal Christian denominations from keeping the Boy Scouts in their cross-hairs. All of these attacks have been cheered by a mainstream media that see an opportunity to advance a liberal cause while vilifying a theistic-based organization standing by its outdated principles of developing boys into men.

Over the years I have been a champion of the unique role that civil society, through voluntary associations, plays in shaping individual character and the common good. What makes these organizations so effective, I believe, is precisely their ability to appeal to something “other,” to some higher authority to which we are accountable. I believe what makes the Scouts so successful, therefore, is loyalty to its first principles, its history and its understanding of what it means to live in duty to God.

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Submitted by John Aziz of Azizonomics blog,

Lanny Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General who claimed that prosecuting banks for crimes poses a risk to the financial sector and so corrupt bankers are “too big to jail” has lost his job:

MARTIN SMITH: You gave a speech before the New York Bar Association. And in that speech, you made a reference to losing sleep at night, worrying about what a lawsuit might result in at a large financial institution.

LANNY BREUER: Right.

MARTIN SMITH: Is that really the job of a prosecutor, to worry about anything other than simply pursuing justice?

LANNY BREUER: Well, I think I am pursuing justice. And I think the entire responsibility of the department is to pursue justice. But in any given case, I think I and prosecutors around the country, being responsible, should speak to regulators, should speak to experts, because if I bring a case against institution A, and as a result of bringing that case, there’s some huge economic effect – if it creates a ripple effect so that suddenly, counterparties and other financial institutions or other companies that had nothing to do with this are affected badly – it’s a factor we need to know and understand.

But the man who put him there, and who is ultimately responsible for the policy – the Attorney General himself – is here to stay.

Simon Johnson notes:

Attorney General Eric Holder expressed similar views in the context of discussing why more severe charges weren’t brought against Zurich-based UBS AG last year for manipulating the London interbank offered rate. And Neil Barofsky, a onetime senior prosecutor and former inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program that administered the bank bailouts, provided a scathing assessment of Justice Department policy.

The Justice Department likes to quote Thomas Jefferson: “The most sacred of the duties of government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens,” a line that appears in its latest budget documents.

This sentiment is hardly consistent with saying that some companies have characteristics that put them above the law. Jefferson himself was very worried about the concentrated power of financiers – he would have seen today’s problems much more clearly than do Holder and Breuer.

Fundamentally, Obama’s continued support for Holder illustrates that Obama is still committed to the policy of holding financiers to a lesser standard of justice than other citizens.

The continued failure to implement even the Volcker rule – let alone a Glass-Steagall-style separation between retail and investment banking – illustrates that Obama is committed to letting bailed-out banks continue to operate in the risky manner that led to the crisis. So does the total failure to ensure a level playing field for retail investors in a market now totally dominated by algorithms.

The big banks continue to ride roughshod over the American people with the complicity of the political class. Too Big to Jail is an affront to the Constitution, an affront to the Bill of Rights, an affront to those like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Lysander Spooner, Frederick Douglas and all those who at various times crusaded to make equality before the law a reality in America.

The only sensible way forward is that lawbreakers on Wall Street must be prosecuted in the same way as other lawbreakers. That means that Eric Holder and all others associated with Too Big To Jail must lose their jobs.

But I doubt that will happen any time soon.

The British Parliament has summoned a senior police chief to ask about conditions under which police was secretly authorized to steal identities of at least 80 children.

The parliamentary committee hearing will be held on Tuesday with Pat Gallan, the Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner in charge of the complaints department, responding to the revelations, British media reported.

Earlier, the daily The Guardian said in an investigative report that for three decades police have been using the identities of dead children, without informing or consulting their parents, through infiltrating protest groups.

The report revealed that how two undercover police officers and others have been using the identities of dead children.

Keith Vaz, chair of the home affairs select committee has said he is “shocked” at the “gruesome” practice.

“The committee will hear from those who have been involved in undercover operations as well as their victims,” he said. “I have asked the deputy assistant commissioner Pat Gallan to deal with the issues that have arisen.”

The operation is known to have been orchestrated by the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a secretive Met unit disbanded in 2008, according to the report.

Dozens of SDS officers are believed to have searched through birth and death certificates to find a child who had died young and would be a suitable match for their alias.

The officers then adopted the entire identity of the child as if the child had never died. One police officer has said the process was like “resurrecting” a dead person’s identity.

The disclosure comes after two years of revelations concerning undercover police officers having sexual relationships with women they are spying on. Eleven women are currently bringing legal action against the Met for damages.

“The activities of undercover police officers caused disbelief when they were revealed in 2011. These revelations [about the use of dead children’s identities] are shocking”, Vaz said.

MOL/JR/HE

The UN Security Council is set to take “very firm and strong measures” if Pyongyang goes ahead with its planned high-level nuclear test, the council president says.

The council is “unified and they are very firm and resolute. I would expect very firm and strong measures to be taken,” said Kim Sook, on Monday.

“We cannot sit idly by and do nothing vis-a-vis some devastating provocative action done by North Korea,” sook added.

This comes after Pyongyang said on January 24 that it would launch more long-range rockets and carry out a high-level nuclear test aimed at its “arch-enemy the United States.”

On January 22, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution to impose new sanctions on North Korea for launching a long-range rocket on December 12, 2012.

Pyongyang announced it had launched a long-range rocket from the Sohae Satellite Launching Station, located in Cholsan County of North Pyongan Province, and successfully placed a satellite into orbit.

The rocket launch, however, drew widespread criticism from the European Union and the UN.

On December 14, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un said the country would go ahead with its space program and would launch more rockets and send more satellites into orbit.

However, Washington and its allies said the North Korean rocket launch had been a cover for testing an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

MAM/JR

February 4, 2013  |  

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is an undeniably smart man. Cruz is by all accounts a brilliant litigator, one talented enough in the courtroom to clerk for a Supreme Court justice and win a number of difficult cases as Texas’ Solicitor General. It wouldn’t have been crazy to expect that Cruz would bring a degree of argumentative rigor into the Senate after his victory in the 2012 election.

Well, Cruz had two golden opportunities to showcase his keen analytical mind, as he sits on both Senate committees that held high profile hearings last week, one on gun violence prevention, the other on Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE)’s nomination to be Secretary of Defense. And Cruz distinguished himself alright. Just not in the way one might have hoped.

The Senator misrepresented official documents to the point of falsehood, placed the words of an raving call-in viewer on a television show in Hagel’s mouth, and played “six degrees of guilt by association” with Hagel’s record in a manner that would make Sen. Joe McCarthy blush. And yet, Cruz’ behavior, embarrassing as it was, was by no means irrational. Rather, it’s a perfect illustration of how the Republican Party’s internal structure, particularly its allied media and electoral base, incentivizes the replacement of real policy thinking with fact-free paranoic fantasism.

Let’s begin with Cruz’ monologue at the gun hearing. The proposed assault weapons ban bore the brunt of his ire. He leaned heavily what he claimed were two Department of Justice papers – one from what he sneeringly characterized as the “Janet Reno Department of Justice under President Clinton” – that had proven the 1994 ban failed to reduce gun violence. In his words, the Senate was about “to reenact a law that, according to the Department of Justice, did absolutely nothing to reduce gun violence.”

Literally every claim in that sentence is false.

First, the Senate is not “reenacting” the 1994 ban. The law proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) closes a series of loopholes that even gun regulation proponents admit limited the first ban’s effectiveness. Second, the studies in question were not official judgments of the Department of Justice, as Cruz says, but research by Professor Christopher S. Koper supported by the Department.

Which brings to the third, and most important, point: any fair reading of Koper’s work suggests Cruz has entirely mischaracterized its findings about the ban — a reading shared by Prof. Koper himself. Koper’s research found, among other things, clear evidence that the 1994 ban limited criminal access to assault weapons as well more tentative evidence that assault weapon shootings were more deadly. While it’s true the studies didn’t find evidence that the bans reduced the homicide rate, they didn’t, as Cruz suggests, conclude from that that the ban didn’t work. Rather, Koper said that he didn’t have enough data, given that the ban was only in effect for ten years, to prove for one way or another. That’s why Koper, in a 2004 op-ed, referred to the then-expiring ban as a “ work in progress” rather than, as Cruz suggested, a failure. And the assault weapons ban is far from the only issue on which Cruz did violence to the facts in the gun hearing.

As fact-free as Cruz’ diatribe during the guns hearing was, it had nothing on his performance the following day during Senator Hagel’s confirmation. During the excruciatingly long proceedings, Cruz had three chances to interrogate Hagel, each time resorting to grosser distortions of the former Senator’s statements to prove that Hagel was every Israeli’s worst nightmare.

Some of the Fake Ingredients Added to Food May be DANGEROUS

In a predictable trend, food manufacturers are fraudulently diluting high-quality food with inferior quality items.

As ABC News reports:

A new scientific examination by the non-profit food fraud detectives the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP), discovered rising numbers of fake ingredients in products from olive oil to spices to fruit juice.

“Food products are not always what they purport to be,” Markus Lipp, senior director for Food Standards for the independent lab in Maryland, told ABC News.

In a new database to be released Wednesday, and obtained exclusively by ABC News today, USP warns consumers, the FDA and manufacturers that the amount of food fraud they found is up by 60 percent this year.

In addition, 70% of all ground beef was found to contain “pink slime”.

Butchers use “meat glue” to create “bigger” cuts of beef, chicken, lamb and fish, even though it leads to much higher levels of food poisoning:

British hamburgers were found to contain horse meat and pork … and it could happen in the U.S. as well.

Indeed, modern red meat is arguably not really meat at all.

And selling genetically modified food without labeling them as such is arguably food fraud as well, since a large majority of Americans want genetically modified foods to be labeled, genetically engineered foods have been linked to obesity, cancer, liver failure, infertility and all sorts of other diseases (brief videos here and here), and the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t even test the safety of such foods.

Bad Policy Made Food Fraud Predictable

This trend was predictable because food manufacturers have been trying to hide food inflation in various ways.

The inflation in food prices, in turn, has been caused by quantitative easing – printed in an attempt to hide bank fraud – and the use of the printed money for wild speculation by the big banks has driven up food and related commodity prices.

And – instead of fighting for safer food – the Department of Justice and FDA often target whistleblowers and do everything they can to cover up wrongdoing. The Department of Agriculture is no better. And the Feds are treating people who expose abuse in factory farms as potential errorists … and the states want the same power.

Widespread food fraud is the predictable result.

French troops have been called to protect one of Niger’s biggest uranium mines as security fears spike. Analyst John Laughland tells RT, that France taking the military lead in Mali and coming to Niger might be a sign of a continent-size interest.

Niger’s President Issoufou asked his counterpart Hollande for military help after the recent hostage crisis at an Algerian gas plant and over the growing threat of militant attacks since France launched its Operation Serval in neighboring Mali.

French company Areva plays a major part in mining in Niger, the world’s fifth-largest producer of uranium. The company gets much of its uranium from the two mines it operates in the country, at Arlit and Imouraren.

Arlit was attacked by militants three years ago and four hostages — three French nationals among them — are still being held.Asked if he could confirm that French Special Forces are now guarding the uranium mine, President Issoufou told channel TV5: “Absolutely I can confirm.”

Niger’s uranium mines are a major source of raw material for French nuclear power plants, so observers wonder if energy resources are a factor in the West’s increased interest in the African continent.

For more on that, RT talks to the director of studies at the Institute of democracy and cooperation in Paris, John Laughland.

RT: So is this all about protecting France’s economic interests?

John Laughland: That explains part of it. There’s no secret that Niger is a big exporter of Uranium. There’ve been discoveries of gas and oil in Mali itself. So, yes, the energy factor explains a lot in international politics. But I think there are other factors as well. I think the two main factors in this are France has a desire to strengthen her role on the international stage, in particular vis-à-vis her European partners and also American strategic plans for Africa.

It’s important to know, that America, which strongly supports France in this Malian intervention, and who has sent Joe Biden, the vice-president, to Paris even as I am speaking to you now. America has plans for establishing a military presence and a military control over the whole of the African continent. The structure in question is known as AFRICOM and one has to speculate, that America might be interested (together with Britain and France) in establishing some kind of permanent military presence in a continent, where, as I am sure many of your viewers know, China has been establishing an economic presence now very successfully for a large number of years.

General view of installations at Somair mineral treatment plant near the uranium opencast mine in Arlit. (AFP Photo / Pierre Verdy)

RT:Talking about a lot of geo-strategic positioning here. We know that France is leading their campaign into Mali, America is offering logistical support, Prime Minister Cameron has now sent 300 of troops to be boots on the ground as well. Are we talking about securing vast mineral wealth, what else can we read into it?

JL: We are indeed observing, as you say in your question, a pattern that was established really during the Libya campaign in 2011, when, as your viewers all remember, France took the lead, Britain joined in very quickly and America came in as it were on their coattails. Some people speculated, they used the phrase that America was leading from behind, that America had decided to put forward its European allies to do (as it were) its dirty work. Is it just the ground resources? Yes! It’s obvious, that securing of energy resources is one of the key factors behind many (if not most) geo-political developments today. And this fact frankly is admitted, for instance by NATO, which declares the securing of energy resources, to be one of its legitimate policy goals in its own official documents.

But as I say, I think we have to also look at this as an intervention, which is being undertaken for internal French and internal European policy reasons. France militarily until 2011, when it invaded, when it attacked (together with Britain and America and indeed the whole of NATO) Libya to ever throw Gaddafi, France had not have a great military presence. And I think there must have been people in Paris, who were wondering why the only militarily active country in Europe was the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom undertook a large number of military operations…

RT:Niger’s President has claimed his country’s looking to re-negotiate mining deals with France while also searching for new partners, including possibly China. If indeed you are right and America and European powers are trying to get solid boot on the ground there in Niger and Mali, what does China think about all this?

JL: There’s a scramble for Africa, isn’t there? China has been (as it were) peacefully colonizing Africa for a number of years. There are large economic interests, China’s interests all over the African continent, many of them connected with energy. And if the President of Niger says these kinds of things, it’s obviously a sort of brinkmanship — he is obviously trying to beat up the price between two rivals.

Of course, the issue of energy sources is key and may even be the decisive factor. But, as I say, there are also even broader strategic issues, including the desire, which I believe to be the case on the part of America, to have permanent military bases in Africa. It will be like Iraq. You know — there’s a terrorist threat, or an alleged terrorist threat, a military operation — and that leads to permanent bases. And this has been the pattern of interventions, of American interventions and the western interventions generally now for decades.

RT: France is ultimately leading the campaign in Mali and Niger. But as many know, France’s economy continues to stumble. Do you really think that Paris can afford an aggressive foreign policy at this point?

JL: No. I don’t think Paris can afford anything at the moment. The labor ministry famously said ten days ago, that the country was bankrupt. But I don’t think that European politicians in that sense are rational. That’s partly why I am a little sceptical about these very rational explanations for these interventions, such as the desire to control resources. I am very often more struck by the short-term nature of decision making.

And I think, as I say, that there could well be some rivalry (I am sure there is) between Britain and France on this. The idea is to beat up France’s military profile on the European stage and of course also to strengthen President Hollande’s own standing within France itself.

If you’re Al Gore and you own 20 percent of Current TV, and Current TV is sold to Al Jazeera, which is owned by Qatar’s royal family, and Qatar’s royal family also profits from oil trading, have you sold out the cause of global warming?

That’s the question Howie Kurtz brought up on Reliable Sources this morning. I think it’s a manufactured issue, but Dana Milbank begs to differ, saying “[H]e’s been a big spokesman on global warming, a principled man and now he is this big, fat target.” Continuing his rant, Milbank said Gore is “worth $300 million more than Mitt Romney and basically he’s seen as a guy now who enriched himself, rather than advancing his cause — opening up to the criticism of people like this global warming denier.”

The Blaze writer Amy Holmes was predictably banal in her response, claiming Gore has “been telling the rest of the world to, you know, restrain and constrain our spending while he personally is becoming a wealthier man through, you know, his attack on Mother Nature.”

What does that even mean? Does anyone think Al Gore bought Current TV in order to further his cause around global warming –so he could make a boatload of money on climate change? Really?

Finally, what does Mitt Romney’s wealth have to do with it, anyway? Gore’s wealth has come from sitting on the boards of Google and Apple after he left public office. He cashed in. Did anyone decide he was insincere about global warming because of those affiliations?

Gore and his partner Joel Hyatt bought a struggling cable network for $70 million in 2004. When Current was sold in 2013 for a price reported to be about $500 million, Gore’s profit would be 20 percent of that sale price, less any financing that may have been obtained between 2004 and 2013. I have no idea what those financing arrangements might have been, but they either financed or else put their own funds in over the years in order to keep the doors open on what wasn’t a particularly profitable enterprise.

For its part, Al Jazeera needed a channel with carriers. They have online traction, but were having difficulty finding cable carriers that would include their channel. By purchasing Current, they hoped to use Current’s position as a channel already carried to build a news network competitive with CNN, which might explain why Time-Warner cable dropped Current the day the deal was announced.

I’m sure Comcast will follow suit, because when you own everything from cable to internet to pipeline to content creators, why bother with any voices you don’t like?

At any rate, I’m having a great deal of difficulty connecting his sale of Current TV to Al Jazeera with a sellout of his credibility on climate change. I also don’t view him as the sole authority on the question, but he is one who has credibility simply because he has been passionate and has put his money where his mouth is.

Gore defended himself during an interview with Matt Lauer earlier this week, reminding viewers that Al Jazeera has actually done a better job covering climate change issues than American media outlets. I haven’t actually done a comparison, but it is true that our corporate media ignores climate change as much as they possibly can, because our oil barons appear to be even more militant about what their media can report.

To me, the jury is still out. I have mixed feelings about Al Jazeera English and am not sure whether Al Jazeera America will turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing. But if it pushes our corporate media to move toward something like journalism again, then I view that as a benefit and not a sellout.

PBS’ Terrence Smith summed it up well before Howie ‘rehabilitated’ him:

SMITH: This strikes me as nonsense. He — I think there’s a certain amount of envy here for all the money he’s made.

KURTZ: Is the questioning nonsense? Should he get a free pass on interviews on something —

SMITH: Fine. But —

KURTZ: You think the issue is nonsense.

SMITH: I think the idea that he is somehow adding to global warming by handing this over to Al Jazeera…

KURTZ: It’s a question of political hypocrisy.

HOLMES: Sure, it’s a fair question.

SMITH: A stretch beyond a stretch.

Yes, it is a stretch beyond a stretch. But it also highlights a pervasive idea that has now soaked in and taken root in media; that is, that media outlets are nothing more than the mouthpieces of their owners, and shouldn’t have independence or credibility on their own.

Full transcript is here.

First Italian bank failures, then Greek strikes, and now Spanish protests: Europe is back at square one where the only thing fixed are the local football matches.

A secret review has concluded that US President Obama has the authority to launch a preemptive cyber attack on any country on the basis that they are considered a ‘cyber threat’ — even if there is no concrete evidence of this threat.

It may not be long before the US conducts crippling attacks on foreign soil with little more than a mouse click, thereby sparing itself the effort of sending its military oversees or declaring war.

The Obama administration is currently drawing up a set of rules about how the US military can defend against or conduct cyberattacks, the New York Times reports. The Obama administration is also allowing intelligence agencies to declare potential threats. But even if these threats are nothing more than a suspicion without evidence, the military now has the authority to attack foreign nations, regardless of whether or not the US is involved in a conflict with them.

This would not only spare the US from sending its own troops overseas, but it would also allow the administration to make decisions without the deliberation that usually occurs before sending Americans into a conflict zone. And if the administration conducts an attack based on false premises, it would be saved the embarrassment that occurred when President George W. Bush sent thousands of US troops into a war with Iraq that lasted nearly 9 years, based on the false premise that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and was a security threat.

With no overseas deployments necessary to conduct a cyberattack, the administration would have nothing to lose by anonymously targeting and destroying infrastructure based on its own suspicions of a threat. The administration’s new rules would also allow the military to operate domestically, the thought of which has always made many people uncomfortable.  The White House in October signed a presidential policy directive that aims to “finalize new rules of engagement that would guide commanders when and how the military can go outside government networks to prevent a cyberattack that could cause significant destruction or casualties.”

 A senior administration official told the Times that the US has so far kept its cyber capabilities restrained and that the new rules could allow the administration to exercise its full potential.

“There are levels of cyberwarfare that are far more aggressive than anything that has been used or recommended to be done,” the official said.

The administration has already used computer worms to cripple other countries’ infrastructure, including a series of attacks against Iran’s nuclear power plants, one of which took out nearly 1,000 of the 5,000 centrifuges of the Natanz plant. The attack was controlled from inside the Pentagon, which now has a new Cyber Command and a growing budget that would allow it to conduct more extensive cyberattacks. 

The Pentagon’s foundation of such an office demonstrates the administration’s preparation for cyberwarfare, in which both the US and terrorists can strike each other by taking down power grids, financial systems and communications networks. The Cyber Command office is experiencing a growing budget, while the Department of Defense is preparing for spending cuts and is slashing budgets for other Pentagon departments, indicating the importance of its work to the administration.

The rules have been in development for nearly two years, but they were leaked to the Times at a convenient moment for the administration: The New York Times, Bloomberg L.P., the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post all claim that their computers have been penetrated by Chinese hackers and had been targeted for years. The computer security company Mandiant also alleged that Chinese hackers had stolen contacts, information and files from more than 30 US newspaper journalists and executives, many of which had written about Chinese leaders and political and legal issues in China.

But the Chinese Ministry of National Defense has denied that its people had anything to do with the suspected attacks, stating that “Chinese laws prohibit any action including hacking that damages Internet security.” The ministry also expressed anger about the accusations, stating that “to accuse the Chinese military of launching cyberattacks without solid proof is unprofessional and baseless.”

“We have seen over the last years an increase in not only the hacking attempts on government institutions but also nongovernmental ones,” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters on Thursday, emphasizing that the Chinese “are not the only people who are hacking us.”

The administration has also recently announced that an unnamed American power station was crippled for weeks by cyberattacks, without releasing details about the location of the plant. With little proof about the alleged cyberattacks and the suspected threats, the White House now reserves the right to make major cyberwarfare decisions, despite Congress’ long-standing disapproval.

“The [National Security Administration’s] cyber security operations have been kept very, very secret, and because of that it has been impossible for the public to react to them,” said Electronic Privacy Information Center attorney Arnie Stepanovich in November. “[That makes it] very difficult, we believe, for Congress to legislate in this area.”

The Obama administration has long pushed for Congress to pass the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, which would grant the government greater access to the Internet and cybersecurity information from the private sector. US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, claims it is necessary to prevent a “cyber 9/11” attack that would knock out water, electricity and gas, causing destruction similar to that left behind by Hurricane Sandy.

But privacy advocates have long expressed concern that this measure would give the government access to Americans’ personal e-mails, online chat conversations, and other personal information that only private companies and servers might have access too, prompting Congress to reject the measure.

Alongside privacy concerns, the Obama administration’s increasing access to cybersecurity information and cyberwarfare capabilities provides the president with an unknown amount of power to conduct anonymous attacks on foreign infrastructure.

While using this technology to attack military objects, such as anti-aircraft or missile defense radars in war zones, would not surprise anyone, the US now also reserves the right to attack other countries with which it has not declared war.

With the US ranking first in a 2012 study that drew up a “Cyber Power Index”, other nations whose conduct conflicts with US wishes could become more vulnerable than ever — especially since International Law allows countries to defend themselves against foreign threats, and these “threats” can now be concluded based on vague intelligence analysis of a ‘potential’ cyber attack.

Egan-Jones may have been barred from rating sovereigns for 18 months due to missing a comma here or there in its NRSRO application (when everyone knows this was merely retribution for downgrading the US ahead of all the other rating agencies), but now the time has come for that other rating agency which dared to follow in EJ’s footsteps and downgrade the US of AmericaAA+ in August 2011 to be punished: Standard & Poors. Moments ago we learned that federal and state prosecutors will five civil charges against S&P for its mortgage bond ratings during the housing crisis.

• U.S. AND STATE PROSECUTORS PLAN TO FILE CIVIL CHARGES ALLEGING WRONGDOING BY S&P’S RATINGS SERVICES IN ITS RATING OF MORTGAGE BONDS BEFORE THE FINANCIAL CRISIS.

Certainly if S&P is being targeted so will be the Octogenarian of Omaha’s pet rating company, Moody’s as well, not to mention French Fitch. Or maybe not: after all these were the two raters who sternly refused to downgrade the US when the country boldly penetrated the 100% debt/GDP target barrier, and which at last check has some 105% in debt/GDP with no actual plan of trimming spending. As in ever.

And in these here united banana states, it is only reasonable to expect that such crony, corrupt behavior is not only not punished but solidly rewarded.

From the WSJ:

The Justice Department and state prosecutors intend to file civil charges alleging wrongdoing by Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services in its rating of mortgage bonds before the financial crisis erupted in 2008, according to people familiar with the matter.

The allegations likely would be made in lawsuits by federal and state officials that are expected to be filed as soon as this week, the people said. The alleged wrongdoing by S&P, a unit of McGraw-Hill Cos., MHP -1.68% centers on allegations related to the model used by S&P to rate mortgage bonds.

The likely move by U.S. officials would be the first federal enforcement action against a credit-rating firm for alleged illegal behavior related to the crisis. Several state attorneys general are expected to join the case, making it one of the highest-profile and widest-ranging enforcement crisis-era crackdowns.

The expected civil charges against S&P follow the breakdown of long-running settlement talks between the Justice Department and S&P, the people said.

Many details of the looming enforcement action couldn’t be immediately determined, such as why prosecutors are zeroing in on S&P rather than rivals Moody’s Corp. MCO -0.92% and Fitch Ratings, a unit of Fimalac SA FIM.FR +0.13% and Hearst Corp.

All three credit-rating firms have faced intense criticism from lawmakers for giving allegedly overly rosy ratings to thousands of subprime-mortgage bonds before the housing market collapsed.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission concluded two years ago that the top credit-rating agencies were “key enablers of the financial meltdown.”

Natural News have teamed up with Infomatic Films to produce “GMO a Go-Go!”, an animated film all about genetically modified organisms and how good they are – well, for Big Pesticide anyway. “GMOS, changing the human genome one meal at a time!”

This new animated video gives us all the basics on why GMOs are dangerous, as well as informing children, tongue-in-cheek, that they don’t have to worry about eating good healthy vegetables any more.

With a horror theme, we are gradually introduced to how genetically modified seeds and crops are made and how they produce pesticides within the plants to kill insects. We also find that these insects are now getting immune to the built-in pesticides as nature adapts to get around the problem.

For more information, visit: www.infomaticfilms.com

Use the following for Tweets : @infomaticfilms #gmoagogo

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Transcript

Hassan Ghani

An award for integrity and honesty, for work that essentially prevented a war.Thomas Fingar, now a Professor at Stanford University, oversaw the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran in 2007, during a period when the Bush administration was beating the drums of war. Its conclusion, that all 16 US intelligence agencies judged with high confidence that Iran had given up its nuclear weapons programme in 2003, placed an insurmountable obstacle on the path to conflict.Critics of the report’s conclusions say it was politicised. But speaking to us in Oxford, where he’s currently teaching as part of an overseas programme, Thomas Fingar told us that unlike the flawed WMD report on Iraq in 2002, his assessment has withstood scrutiny over the years.Professor Thomas Fingar, Chairman of National Intelligence Council (2005-2008)“The assessment of our estimate has been reviewed many times. Many times before we issued it, many times in the years since, in the years since with additional information. Judging by the public statements, the annual threat testimony and the other statements of the administration, which must be consistent with the classified report, they haven’t changed it. It stood up as good analytic tradecraft. There are people who characterise it as if it was written in order to prevent war — that’s not why it was written, it was written to describe the situation as best we understood it.Hassan GhaniWhen asked what went wrong in 2002, Fingar says those authoring the NIE on Iraq caved in to pressure to produce a rushed report.Professor Thomas Fingar, Chairman of National Intelligence Council (2005-2008)“They produced an estimate in 17 days. That was the congressionally imposed deadline agreed to by George Tenet. So they produced something in 17 days, which had two weekends in there. It’s a classic case of you want something real bad, you get something real bad. Stuff pulled off the shelf not really re-evaluated, no ability to go back and really tear into this stuff. And we were not going to make that mistake again with the Iran estimate. So we took the heat and said ‘you don’t get it until we’re ready’.”Hassan GhaniBut he that ultimately politicians can choose to ignore the intelligence agencies, if they don’t get the results they want.Professor Thomas Fingar, Chairman of National Intelligence Council (2005-2008)“The decision to go to war had clearly been made before that estimate was undertaken. Troops were moving, you could not have been in Washington and not known there was going to be war. For I&R we said there’s not evidence of a reconstituted nuclear programme — that was the only one that really mattered — and we said no, evidence isn’t there, the evidences can all be explained in other ways. That’s the third sentence of the estimate. So if you cared about this enough to read to the third sentence, you’d know that there was a dissent on the major justification for the conflict.”Hassan GhaniThe Sam Adams associates present their award each year for integrity in intelligence. Many previous awardees have been intelligence professionals and whistleblowers.2010 Sam Adams awardee, Julian Assange of Wikileaks, was piped into the ceremony by video link. He used the opportunity to tackle an upcoming Hollywood movie, which he says is an attack on Wikileaks, and renews the push for war with Iran.Julian Assange, Wikileaks“We have something here, which is a recent acquisition of Wikileaks. The script to a tens of millions of dollar budget Dreamworks movie. What is it about? It is about us, nominally. It is about Wikileaks the organisation. It is a mass propaganda attack against Wikileaks the organisation and the character of my staff and our activities and so on. But it is not just an attack against us, it fans the flames to start a war with Iran. It’s coming out in November, it’s being filmed now. So that’s the reality of where we’re at. Not merely a war of intelligence agencies, but a war of corrupt media, corrupt culture.”Hassan GhaniSam Adams himself was a CIA analyst in the Vietnam-era, tasked with estimating enemy strength in numbers. His conclusion that the Viet-cong numbered at least half a million, twice the official figure, was swept under the rug at the time, seen as politically unacceptable. He later did go public, but too late to have an impact on the war.Raymond McGovern, Former CIA Analyst“He went to an early death at age 55, with great remorse that he had not gone outside the system, that he had not said what he knew back in 1967, half way through the war. The way he explained it to me is, that Vietnam memorial, made of granite in a V, that whole left section wouldn’t be there, because there would be no names to carve into that granite. If he had spoken out, if I had spoken out, if we had spoken around 1967, when we had that cable from General Abrahams saying ‘we can’t go with the honest figures, because we’ve been projecting a view of progress’.”Hassan GhaniAnd so just as interesting as this year’s award winner, are those presenting it to him. Former US Army Colonel Ann Wright resigned as a State department official in protest over the Iraq War. She argues that too many within government are carried along with political tides, often at the expense of what’s best for the nation.Ann Wright, Former US State Dep. Official“There were so many people, that were a part of the decision to go ahead and invade and occupy Iraq, that knew better. That knew that the rationale for it was wrong, but they went along with the senior leadership of our country, who for whatever reason it was, whether it was for oil or for whatever it was, wanted to take out the Saddam Hussein regime.”Hassan GhaniLike other Sam Adams associates, she sees whistleblowers as an essential check to keep the system in balance.Ann Wright, Former US State Dep. Official“So many whistleblowers find that the system doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. Because usually it’s something that the government system is doing wrong and whistleblowers are saying ‘wait wait, this is going wrong’ or ‘maybe there’s even criminal acts that are happening that the government’s involved in and we’ve got to stop that and change it’. And we find that many times the government and senior officials in the government don’t want to hear that.”Hassan GhaniPrevious Sam Adams award winner, Coleen Rowley, blew the whistle after 9/11 on major intelligence sharing failures within the FBI in the run up to the attacks. Her 9/11 commission testimony helped re-organise the agency and the way information is shared.Coleen Rowley, Former FBI Agent, Whistleblower“They realised that 9/11 occurred because the agencies blocked information from each other, they blocked it vertically, horizontally, and they blocked it from the public. So the people who are in those environments, when information is blocked and there is lack of sharing, what is their choice? They almost have to either become a whistleblower or then live forever with the consequences of knowing that they could have done something. That’s why Wikileaks, or a method of sharing information, and of course I talked about sharing information between agencies, but it’s also with the public. The 9/11 commission said if the information even had been shared of Moussawi’s arrest, that would have probably prevented 9/11. So it’s an incredible situation, most people think that secrecy is protecting them, and it’s the exact opposite.”Hassan GhaniRowley believes much more information should be made public, whether or not it’s politically embarrassing.Coleen Rowley, Former FBI Agent, Whistleblower“We’ve had some good inspector general investigations, for instance of torture in the CIA, to this day though it remains secret. And you see the opposite is Abu Ghraib, that report was made public, and so at least the public learned about it, and there was at the time an outcry about the fact that it was discovered that abuses were occurring in Abu Ghraib. But the CIA torture report, I think it’s probably a good investigation, but the public still doesn’t know, and so what’s happened? There’s a movie out there that’s using a false narrative — the public doesn’t know that it’s false, because how would they know? Because they’ve never seen the truth. It’s a pretty incredible situation, the truth really matters.”Hassan GhaniThe US government says it’s necessary to prosecute whistleblowers to protect national security. And for whistleblowers who do choose to go public, the consequences are increasingly dangerous.Coleen Rowley, Former FBI Agent, Whistleblower“Especially under Obama, there have been prosecutions, I think it’s 7 now, twice as many as all Presidents of all time, under the official espionage act. If you go back to deepthroat, and the FBI who knew that the highest level of President’s men were actually engaging wrongdoing — would that repeat today? I really wonder, especially now with the surveillance and the monitoring.”Hassan GhaniThomas Drake is the only whistleblower so far who’s managed to fight espionage charges under Obama and win – there are six other cases. A former senior executive at the NSA, he blew the whistle to the media on a failed billion dollar surveillance programme which he believed violated the constitution.Thomas Drake, Former NSA Executive, Whistleblower“I would I eyewitness to massive fraud, waste and abuse on a multi-billion dollar program, a boondoggle programme called trailblazer, when there was actually a superior alternative, and was also a program that would have completely honoured the fourth amendment and the exclusive statute by which the US government, NSA, was authorised to violate the fourth amendment rights fo Americans. That was under FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They wilfully broke the law, criminally. But what happened later, as all of this came out and I ended up going to a reporter, decriminalised the reporting of the government wrong doing. They criminalized the reporting of government criminal conduct.”Hassan GhaniDrake says he was careful not to reveal any classified information, and after reviewing laws on disclosure, thought that the worst that could happen is that he would lose his job. Instead, he faced espionage charges amounting to 35 years in prison.Thomas Drake, Former NSA Executive, Whistleblower“I was turned into enemy of the state, I mean I’m charged with the espionage act, I’m being put into the same category as historical spies in US history, the Alder Hiss’, the Robert Hanssens, the Alrdich Ames of the world. That the category of people you become associated with. So it’s probably one of the worst things an american can be charged with, under the espionage act, because you are painted into a very dark corner, you have betrayed your country. I was put under investigation by the bush administration, but the Bush administration never actually indicted me, it took the Obama administration to actually indictment me. And when they indicted me, they threw everything they had at me.In 2008, his presidential campaign, he actually lauded whistleblowers, he called them out as patriots. Who better to call the government onto the carpet when they’re up to no good. And yet he’s presided over the most draconian crackdown on truth tellers and whistleblowers of any administration, actually all administrations combined. It truly is unprecedented.Hassan GhaniDespite immense pressure to plead out, Drake maintained his innocence, and on the eve of trial government prosecutors dropped the charges. But Thomas Drake has been left blacklisted, financially bankrupt, and disturbed at the path his country is following.Thomas Drake, Former NSA Executive, Whistleblower“I’m having great difficulty recognising my own country, in terms of the government, the form of government under which I took an oath to support and defend four times in my government career. Any yet I was criminalized, and was painted as an enemy of the state, for simply speaking truth to power, and it was clear they were going to make me an object lesson, and they threw everything they had at me.Hassan GhaniOf course, it’s not just US administrations that face accusations of covering up fraud and criminal acts under the guise of national security. Annie Machon was an agent in the British spy agency MI5. She claims Britain is ahead of the US in terms of stifling whistleblowers from within the intelligence community.Annie Machon, Former MI5 Agent, Whistleblower“They a rethink about the official secrets act and launched a new in 1989, the 1989 official secrets act, which obviated, got rid of, the public interest defence. And the only reason that clause was put in was to stifle whistleblowing. There’s already that old law to stop treachery, so this is designed to stifle whistleblowers. And it has been used many times in the UK since, against David Shayler, Richard Tomlinson, Katherine Gun, and it has a very chilling effect on the idea that if you see crimes committed by the spy agencies, what do you do with that information? The only person that you can go to legally under the OSA of 1989 is the head of the agency you wish to make a complaint against. So you can imagine how many of those complaints are upheld.And I think it’s particularly pertinent at the moment, certainly in the last 10 years, where we’ve seen false information fed into the political process, where we’ve seen politicisation of intelligence in the run up to the Iraq war, with the Downing Street memo and the head of MI6 saying the intelligence facts had to be fitted around the policy. And also where we see torture and extraordinary rendition, where our British spies are being used to do that and they are protected under a lot of secrecy laws, and the government in fact wants to make greater protection for them by setting up secret courts, where the accused can’t even see what they’re accused of. It’s Kafkaesque.”Hassan GhaniAllegations against British intelligence services of complicity in torture do still make it through to the media when the alleged victims speak out. But with tight laws around disclosure in the UK, it’s impossible to say whether or not what we hear is just a fraction of what’s taking place.Annie Machon, Former MI5 Agent, Whistleblower“I worked in MI5 in the mid-1990s for six years. That I would say would be the only marginally ethical decade of its hundred year existence, because up until 1989 it did not officially exist – it could do whatever it wanted – and post 9/11 the gloves came off with the intelligence agencies. So in the 1990s peace was breaking out, they didn’t get involved in torture, they stopped looking at political activists, the whole shebang. So that was actually the more ethical era, and yet in those six years David Shayler and I saw so much going wrong that we felt compelled to blow the whistle. So how much worse is it now? That has to be the question. I think all we’re seeing now with extradition and torture cases is definitely very much the tip of the iceberg.Hassan GhaniIt’s clear that the act of whistleblowing, even in the public interest, is under serious threat. Some may consider this a positive development in terms of national security. Others see it as the end of public accountability for those in positions of power.Thomas Drake, Former NSA Executive, Whistleblower“If the government begins to exercise increasing influence, even if it’s self-censorship where people will not speak up because they’re afraid that they’re going to be noticed by the government, that means that critical information about government activities will never see the light of day. And especially the secret side of government, you would think that’s the part of government you want the most accountability with. Well, if they’re choking off the sources and they’re making it very clear, even though I was able to prevail and hold off the government and remained a free man, the message was still sent.”

A secret legal review on the use of America’s growing arsenal of cyberweapons has concluded that President Obama has the broad power to order a pre-emptive strike if the United States detects credible evidence of a major digital attack looming from abroad, according to officials involved in the review. 

That decision is among several reached in recent months as the administration moves, in the next few weeks, to approve the nation’s first rules for how the military can defend, or retaliate, against a major cyberattack. New policies will also govern how the intelligence agencies can carry out searches of faraway computer networks for signs of potential attacks on the United States and, if the president approves, attack adversaries by injecting them with destructive code – even if there is no declared war.

…

Cyberweaponry is the newest and perhaps most complex arms race under way. The Pentagon has created a new Cyber Command, and computer network warfare is one of the few parts of the military budget that is expected to grow.

…

Mr. Obama is known to have approved the use of cyberweapons only once, early in his presidency, when he ordered an escalating series of cyberattacks against Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities.

…

As the process of defining the rules of engagement began more than a year ago, one senior administration official emphasized that the United States had restrained its use of cyberweapons. “There are levels of cyberwarfare that are far more aggressive than anything that has been used or recommended to be done,” the official said.

The attacks on Iran illustrated that a nation’s infrastructure can be destroyed without bombing it or sending in saboteurs.

While many potential targets are military, a country’s power grids, financial systems and communications networks can also be crippled. Even more complex, nonstate actors, like terrorists or criminal groups, can mount attacks, and it is often difficult to tell who is responsible. Some critics have said the cyberthreat is being exaggerated by contractors and consultants who see billions in potential earnings.

One senior American official said that officials quickly determined that the cyberweapons were so powerful that – like nuclear weapons – they should be unleashed only on the direct orders of the commander in chief.

…

While the rules have been in development for more than two years, they are coming out at a time of greatly increased cyberattacks on American companies and critical infrastructure. The Department of Homeland Security recently announced that an American power station, which it did not name, was crippled for weeks by cyberattacks. The New York Times reported last week that it had been struck, for more than four months, by a cyberattack emanating from China. The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post have reported similar attacks on their systems.

“While this is all described in neutral terms – what are we going to do about cyberattacks – the underlying question is, ‘What are we going to do about China?’ ” said Richard Falkenrath, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “There’s a lot of signaling going on between the two countries on this subject.”

International law allows any nation to defend itself from threats, and the United States has applied that concept to conduct pre-emptive attacks.

Pre-emption always has been a disputed legal concept. Most recently Mr. Bush made it a central justification for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, based on faulty intelligence about that country’s weapons of mass destruction. Pre-emption in the context of cyberwar raises a potentially bigger quandary, because a country hit by a pre-emptive cyberstrike could easily claim that it was innocent, undermining the justification for the attack. “It would be very hard to provide evidence to the world that you hit some deadly dangerous computer code,” one senior official said.

…

During the attacks on Iran’s facilities, which the United States never acknowledged, Mr. Obama insisted that cyberweapons be targeted narrowly, so that they did not affect hospitals or power supplies. Mr. Obama frequently voiced concerns that America’s use of cyberweapons could be used by others as justification for attacks on the United States. The American effort was exposed when the cyberweapon leaked out of the Iranian enrichment center that was attacked, and the “Stuxnet” code replicated millions of times on the Internet.

…

But the military, barred from actions within the United States without a presidential order, would become involved in cases of a major cyberattack within the United States. To maintain ambiguity in an adversary’s mind, officials have kept secret what that threshold would be; so far, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has only described the “red line” in the vaguest of terms – as a “cyber 9/11.”

The Obama administration has urged stronger firewalls and other systems to provide a first line of defense, and then “resiliency” in the face of cyberattacks. It failed to get Congress to pass cybersecurity legislation that would have allowed the government to mandate standards. 

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay. And welcome to this week’s edition of The Black Financial and Fraud Report with Bill Black, who joins us now from Kansas City, Missouri, where he teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri—Kansas City. He’s a white-collar criminologist, a former financial regulator, and author of the book The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One.

Thanks again for joining us, Bill.

BILL BLACK, ASSOC. PROF. ECONOMICS AND LAW, UMKC: Thank you.

JAY: So what caught your attention this week?

BLACK: Followups and feedback to the Frontline special The Untouchables on the failure not only to prosecute, but to even investigate the elite banksters who caused the ongoing crisis.

And so the following things have happened. Lanny Breuer, the head of the criminal division and the most outspoken proponent of too-big-to-prosecute has unexpectedly resigned. It’s possible that he’d been planning it, but that wasn’t public. And so people are speculating whether he’s doing so in response to the heavy criticisms he received in the Frontline documentary.

And the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency responded to a written article that Frontline did in conjunction with the broadcast, and that writing quoted me–and that’s what the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency focused on. They said that it was ridiculous to make a comparison between the 30,000 criminal referrals by the Office of Thrift Supervision back during the savings and loan crisis and the zero criminal referrals by the Office of Thrift Supervision in the current crisis, because that didn’t count criminal referrals that the associations, the savings and loans made. Of course, savings and loans don’t make criminal referrals against their CEOs, so I had a bit of fun responding to that. But the OCC response in essence says that there were no criminal referrals because there were no crimes. So, again, this is the virgin crisis theory of life.

Now, the second thing is a commentary in The Economist–of course, a generally conservative but intelligent news magazine about commerce. And it–you know, if you didn’t have this, you’d have to create it in The Onion as satire. This column says that the real problem with fraud in the current crisis is the victims, right? The victims allowed themselves to be defrauded, and therefore it’s important not to have prosecutions, because this way victims will learn that they have to protect themselves.

JAY: Well, I would think con men all over the world would be happy with that guideline.

BLACK: Well, as I said, it really belongs in The Onion, the satirical magazine. But no, The Economist lacks any sense of irony and actually does say that you should blame the victims of the fraud as the principle folks that you should blame out of this crisis. And the guy has this weird historical analogy to Athens back in the Peloponnesian Wars and such that is of stunning irrelevance. So I’m spending some amount of time preparing a new response to that one.

But the third one is Iglesias, who has written a column in which he said, well, it’s too bad that Frontline seems to have been successful, in that the populists are winning–he calls them the “populists”–in this criticism of Geithner and Holder, the attorney general, and Lanny Breuer, still the head of the criminal division, and that we really should be probably applauding them, because it was essential, if you’re going to bail out the biggest banks, that you not allow any prosecutions, because if you had allowed any prosecutions, then the banks would have been driven by prosecutions back into insolvency.

So, you see, really you have to make sure–this is even worse than blaming the victims, in a way–you have to make sure that the victims get no recovery from the frauds, because if the victims got recovery, well, the victims suffered such massive losses, roughly $20 trillion lost in wealth, that it would bankrupt the fraudulent banks. And of course we can’t allow that. So we have to make sure that we have no prosecutions, because otherwise it would be illogical.

And Iglesias is not someone who is familiar with regulation or economics or finance, but he does have an undergraduate education in philosophy–he’s a philosophy major. And this column, like a earlier one he did in 2001 that was somewhat similar, are remarkable in that they’re utterly devoid of any discussion of ethics or what it would mean in terms of a democracy if you could have the most elite institutions gain a competitive advantage over honest institutions by fraud, become so massively large that they couldn’t be closed down, and would have dominant crony capitalism power over the government that would lock in their hegemony forever, essentially.

JAY: Yeah, let me give some defense of Lenny Breuer. They were handed this–.

BLACK: That’s good, because he needs a defense lawyer.

JAY: Yeah, I know. I’m an obvious likely defender of them. But the argument would go this way, that, you know, the way American economy has worked over this whole last century has given rise to a situation with these massive financial monopolies, and it is to a large extent a big confidence game, and in every sense of the word, and if you start arresting some of these CEOs, especially at a time that was so precarious in ’08-’09 and is still, in reality, very precarious, even though they don’t want to admit it, that you might unravel the whole financial system again, because nobody’s going to trust anybody again, and it becomes chaotic, and everybody pulls their money out, and that, you know, if you’re not willing to go that other step, which is to create some kind of public banking alternative, then you are left with a situation that you can’t prosecute these guys, ’cause it’s just too much risk to the whole global system.

BLACK: Well, as someone who actually was a defense lawyer, I would suggest continuing your current career, ’cause–. So the logic of that is that the only way to maintain trust in an institution that is fundamentally fraudulent is to make sure you never investigate and develop the facts that it is fraudulent, and if people are successfully deceived, then they will have trust in the organization.

JAY: Well, isn’t that the logic that they’re following?

BLACK: It is pretty close. That’s what I’ve often said, that, like, you know, seriously, folks, your idea is that you were going to achieve financial stability by leaving the felons in charge of our largest banks. That is really creative finance.

JAY: Thanks very much for joining us, Bill.

BLACK: Thank you.

JAY: 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.

The Ministry of Defence was strongly criticised by MPs today over the “flawed” decision to switch fighter aircraft for the Royal Navy’s new carriers .

It was announced in the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review that the Government would adopt the carrier variant of the US-built F35 Joint Strike Fighter rather than the “jump jet” version chosen by the previous Labour government.

Ministers argued that the carrier variant was a more capable aircraft and that it would increase “interoperability” with other navies – even though it meant mothballing one of the two carriers on grounds of affordability.

However last May, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond announced the MoD was reverting to the jump jet version amid fears the costs of fitting the necessary catapults and arrestor gear – “cats and traps” – were spiralling out of control.

In a highly critical report, the Commons Defence Committee said the 2010 decision to go for the carrier variant was a mistake which led to increased costs and further delays to the carrier programme.

“It is clear that the decision was rushed and based upon incomplete and inaccurate policy development. It was taken without the MoD understanding how the change could be implemented,” the committee said.

“Perhaps the primary example of how little the MoD understood about this decision is the fact that it was supposed to improve interoperability. This turned out to be incorrect.

“We urge the MoD to learn the lessons of this closed, rushed and flawed decision of 2010.”

The committee also complained that the lack of a proper defence industrial strategy put the UK at a disadvantage compared with competitor countries.

It said that such a strategy should combine a commitment to maintain the ability of the UK to act nationally with an understanding of where a level mutual interdependence or partnership with allies is acceptable.

“We do not understand how we can have confidence in a national security strategy which does not show a clear grasp of what is needed for the defence of the United Kingdom, and how this can be ensured,” the committee said.

“The overriding reason for the purchase of any item of defence equipment must be its quality and the requirements of the armed forces. We consider nonetheless that the Government should take into account in buying equipment the enhanced opportunities for export of equipment in use by UK armed forces.”

Defence equipment minister Philip Dunne said the MoD’s newly published 10-year equipment plan would ensure the armed forces get the hardware they need in the years ahead.

“The increased financial contingency will help cover future risk and make our equipment programme affordable. There is also greater information for industry about our priorities, helping them to invest in the future capabilities our troops need,” he said.

He insisted that the switch to the carrier variant of the F35 had been “right at the time”, but that “unacceptable cost growth, technical risk and project delays” meant the decision to revert to the jump jet was “in the best interest of defence”.

Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy said: “This is another blow to the country’s confidence in the Government’s competence on defence.

“Days after confusion and contradiction on defence spending the chaos of the aircraft carrier decision is laid bare.

“This wasted time and money led to a serious capability gap and exposed lacking knowledge of defence procurement.

“The UK has paid at least an extra £100 million to have no aircraft to fly from an aircraft carrier for years.

“This is an important report. Industry have warned that without a defence industrial strategy tens of thousands of jobs are at risk and now influential experts outline the damage and competitive disadvantage brought by its absence.

“There is a loss of skills, contradictions in export policy, worries over investment in science and no strategy to support sovereign capabilities.

“A new industrial strategy must improve the speed of procurement, share the burden of risk with industry, support small businesses and strengthen collaboration between companies, the Department and the military.

“Labour has consistently called for a defence industrial strategy and our procurement review chimes with this report’s analysis. Ministers must respond, listen to these arguments and change course.”

The Ministry of Defence was strongly criticised by MPs today over the “flawed” decision to switch fighter aircraft for the Royal Navy’s new carriers .

It was announced in the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review that the Government would adopt the carrier variant of the US-built F35 Joint Strike Fighter rather than the “jump jet” version chosen by the previous Labour government.

Ministers argued that the carrier variant was a more capable aircraft and that it would increase “interoperability” with other navies – even though it meant mothballing one of the two carriers on grounds of affordability.

However last May, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond announced the MoD was reverting to the jump jet version amid fears the costs of fitting the necessary catapults and arrestor gear – “cats and traps” – were spiralling out of control.

In a highly critical report, the Commons Defence Committee said the 2010 decision to go for the carrier variant was a mistake which led to increased costs and further delays to the carrier programme.

“It is clear that the decision was rushed and based upon incomplete and inaccurate policy development. It was taken without the MoD understanding how the change could be implemented,” the committee said.

“Perhaps the primary example of how little the MoD understood about this decision is the fact that it was supposed to improve interoperability. This turned out to be incorrect.

“We urge the MoD to learn the lessons of this closed, rushed and flawed decision of 2010.”

The committee also complained that the lack of a proper defence industrial strategy put the UK at a disadvantage compared with competitor countries.

It said that such a strategy should combine a commitment to maintain the ability of the UK to act nationally with an understanding of where a level mutual interdependence or partnership with allies is acceptable.

“We do not understand how we can have confidence in a national security strategy which does not show a clear grasp of what is needed for the defence of the United Kingdom, and how this can be ensured,” the committee said.

“The overriding reason for the purchase of any item of defence equipment must be its quality and the requirements of the armed forces. We consider nonetheless that the Government should take into account in buying equipment the enhanced opportunities for export of equipment in use by UK armed forces.”

Defence equipment minister Philip Dunne said the MoD’s newly published 10-year equipment plan would ensure the armed forces get the hardware they need in the years ahead.

“The increased financial contingency will help cover future risk and make our equipment programme affordable. There is also greater information for industry about our priorities, helping them to invest in the future capabilities our troops need,” he said.

He insisted that the switch to the carrier variant of the F35 had been “right at the time”, but that “unacceptable cost growth, technical risk and project delays” meant the decision to revert to the jump jet was “in the best interest of defence”.

Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy said: “This is another blow to the country’s confidence in the Government’s competence on defence.

“Days after confusion and contradiction on defence spending the chaos of the aircraft carrier decision is laid bare.

“This wasted time and money led to a serious capability gap and exposed lacking knowledge of defence procurement.

“The UK has paid at least an extra £100 million to have no aircraft to fly from an aircraft carrier for years.

“This is an important report. Industry have warned that without a defence industrial strategy tens of thousands of jobs are at risk and now influential experts outline the damage and competitive disadvantage brought by its absence.

“There is a loss of skills, contradictions in export policy, worries over investment in science and no strategy to support sovereign capabilities.

“A new industrial strategy must improve the speed of procurement, share the burden of risk with industry, support small businesses and strengthen collaboration between companies, the Department and the military.

“Labour has consistently called for a defence industrial strategy and our procurement review chimes with this report’s analysis. Ministers must respond, listen to these arguments and change course.”

WASHINGTON – February 4 – The National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area Chapter has added its voice to the growing chorus of community groups and civil liberties organizations opposed to the introduction of tasers as an additional weapon for San Francisco Police Department officers:

Although the community needs more tools to address violence, homelessness, and people facing mental health crises, giving police tasers is not the solution. SFPD and city leaders must prioritize the use of non-weaponized, de-escalation methods by well-trained Crisis Intervention Teams, not the addition of another potentially deadly weapon to an already over-militarized police force.

Tasers are dangerous weapons. In a 2008 report, “Less than Lethal,” Amnesty International found that from June 2001 through August 2008, there were 334 deaths from TASER International products in the U.S. And, according to a UCSF study: “The number of in-custody sudden deaths rose dramatically during the first year California law enforcement agencies began using stun guns ….” Deaths mostly involve cardiac arrest, though there are many other risks to life and limb from the use of these weapons. These weapons override an individual’s nervous system, paralyzing muscles and causing the individual to fall and lose control of bodily functions. The fall alone can cause broken bones and other significant injury. Tasers cause excruciating pain. The United Nations Committee Against Torture has declared that tasers cause acute pain and sometimes death, and that their use is a form of torture.

Chief Suhr has used the fatal shooting, last July, of an individual by an officer as providing the impetus for his pushing the issue. But there is little proof that the officer in that incident would have used a taser in that circumstance if one had been available, or that the officer’s use of a taser would not have resulted in death. More relevant than that one example are the many examples of police interactions with residents daily, where officers don’t don’t currently fire guns but would use a taser, if available.

The fact is, when given a new weapon, officers are more likely to find new opportunities to use them, rather than use them as a replacement for other weapons. Adding tasers is likely to lead to more violence from officers against the community, not less. As a progressive community, San Francisco must not go down this path. We should follow the lead of other communities and law enforcement agencies that have realized, often far too late, that tasers are a risky tool of violence, not a tool designed to decrease violence; and that they create significant legal liability for local government. As a recent example, the University of Cincinnati removed tasers from its police force following the death of Everette Howard Jr. Howard’s family announced a $2 million settlement with the University just this year.

At a time when many of us are facing economic uncertainty, and resources for mental health care and education are suffering, it is disconcerting that cities would turn to law enforcement as a solution to problems of homelessness, mental illness and violence. San Francisco needs to bypass this dangerous tool and begin to focus on real solutions that respect human rights and dignity.

link: http://www.nlgsf.org/news/lawyers-guild-opposes-adding-tasers-sfpd-weapon

Now that Europe is clearly unfixed once more, it is time to shift attention back to broke Greece where as we showed yesterday things are certainly back to the “new normal” with 24 hour strikes again on the daily agenda. And just to keep it real, Greek police reported that the new Greek Finance Minister received a care package with just two contents earlier today: a bullet and a death threat.

From Reuters:

Greece’s finance minister was sent a bullet and a death threat from a group protesting home foreclosures, police officials said on Monday, in the latest incident to raise fears of growing political violence.

The package was sent by a little-known group called “Cretan Revolution”, which warned the minister against any efforts to seize homes and evict homeowners, police sources said. The group sent similar letters to tax offices in Crete last week.

Yannis Stournaras, a respected economist who became finance minister in June, has angered many Greeks by championing austerity policies demanded by the European Union and International Monetary Fund as the price for bailout aid.

It was unclear as of this posting how the mainstream media will spin the particular development in Greece as favorable for the economy, and supportive of all time highs in the S&P. We will provide an update once we know the answer.

One thing we do know is that it is becoming very possible that the next time a bullet is delivered to the Greek authorities, it could well be traveling faster than just at snail mail pace.

Finally, it is time Greece took a hint from the US and banned all bullets. That would surely eliminate all such fan mail in the future.

Now that Europe is clearly unfixed once more, it is time to shift attention back to broke Greece where as we showed yesterday things are certainly back to the “new normal” with 24 hour strikes again on the daily agenda. And just to keep it real, Greek police reported that the new Greek Finance Minister received a care package with just two contents earlier today: a bullet and a death threat.

From Reuters:

Greece’s finance minister was sent a bullet and a death threat from a group protesting home foreclosures, police officials said on Monday, in the latest incident to raise fears of growing political violence.

The package was sent by a little-known group called “Cretan Revolution”, which warned the minister against any efforts to seize homes and evict homeowners, police sources said. The group sent similar letters to tax offices in Crete last week.

Yannis Stournaras, a respected economist who became finance minister in June, has angered many Greeks by championing austerity policies demanded by the European Union and International Monetary Fund as the price for bailout aid.

It was unclear as of this posting how the mainstream media will spin the particular development in Greece as favorable for the economy, and supportive of all time highs in the S&P. We will provide an update once we know the answer.

One thing we do know is that it is becoming very possible that the next time a bullet is delivered to the Greek authorities, it could well be traveling faster than just at snail mail pace.

Finally, it is time Greece took a hint from the US and banned all bullets. That would surely eliminate all such fan mail in the future.

WASHINGTON – February 4 – A new paper finds that significant reductions in carbon emissions are possible through reducing work hours, and could help to reduce climate change. The paper, “Reduced Work Hours as a Means of Slowing Climate Change,” by David Rosnick of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), finds that 8 – 22 percent of every degree of warming through 2100 would be cut by an annual 0.5 percent reduction in work hours.

Assuming 40-60 percent of potential global warming is effectively locked-in, about one-quarter to one-half of the warming that is not already locked in could be cut through this reduction of work hours.

“As productivity increases, especially in high income countries, there is a social choice between taking some of these gains in the form of reduced hours, or entirely as increased production,” said economist David Rosnick, author of the paper. “For many years, European countries have been reducing work hours — including by taking more holidays, vacation, and leave — while the United States has gone the route of increased production.

“The calculation is simple: fewer work hours means less carbon emissions, which means less global warming.”

The paper estimates the baseline impact from emissions associated with four different climate change scenarios, using the Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse-gas Induced Climate Change produced by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.

The paper notes that the pursuit of reduced work hours as a policy alternative would be much more difficult in an economy where inequality is high and/or growing. In the United States, for example, just under two-thirds of all income gains from 1973—2007 went to the top 1 percent of households. In this type of economy, the majority of workers would have to take an absolute reduction in their living standards in order work less. The analysis of this paper assumes that the gains from productivity growth will be more broadly shared in the future, as they have been in the past.

“Increased productivity need not fuel carbon emissions and climate change,” CEPR Co-Director Mark Weisbrot said. “Increased productivity should allow workers to have more time off to spend with their families, friends, and communities. This is positive for society, and is quantifiably better for the planet as well.”

While we may not all need to turn to meth labs for our income, it would appear the exuberant wealth creation of the last month or so is up against a tough place here – as credit has been warning all of January. S&P 500 futures are testing critical support here for the 5th time in 5 days, EURUSD is breaking below key support levels, and the decoupling with Europe is very concerning (as opposed to cleanest dirty shirt) as one only needs to look at last year to see that… Dow 14,000 and S&P 1,500 have been lost for now – get back to work Mr. Bernanke…

Birinyi and Bernanke are not happy…

The last time Europe and US decoupled…

and S&P 500 is testing key support…

as EURUSD breaks below initial support levels…

and remember credit has been dropping hints for a while…

Charts: Bloomberg and Capital Context

While we may not all need to turn to meth labs for our income, it would appear the exuberant wealth creation of the last month or so is up against a tough place here – as credit has been warning all of January. S&P 500 futures are testing critical support here for the 5th time in 5 days, EURUSD is breaking below key support levels, and the decoupling with Europe is very concerning (as opposed to cleanest dirty shirt) as one only needs to look at last year to see that… Dow 14,000 and S&P 1,500 have been lost for now – get back to work Mr. Bernanke…

Birinyi and Bernanke are not happy…

The last time Europe and US decoupled…

and S&P 500 is testing key support…

as EURUSD breaks below initial support levels…

and remember credit has been dropping hints for a while…

Charts: Bloomberg and Capital Context

Watch: Sandy Hook Chorus Performs With Jennifer Hudson at Super Bowl

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Posted on Feb 4, 2013

Screenshot

During the pregame of Super Bowl XLVII, children from the Sandy Hook Elementary School chorus joined Jennifer Hudson to perform a touching rendition of “America the Beautiful” in front of a worldwide audience of millions.

“We have come to New Orleans to represent the Sandy Hook Family and the community of Newtown, Connecticut,” a statement from the school said. “Our wish is to demonstrate to America and the world that, ‘We are Sandy Hook and We Choose Love.’ ”

The performance, which comes less than two months after a deadly mass shooting at the school, “had some of the players on the sideline and countless fans in the stands on the verge of tears,” Sports Illustrated reported.

SI.com:

Judging by the responses on social media, the performance appeared destined to become one of the most poignant memories of the Super Bowl, regardless of what played out in the game.

“Sandy hook elementary chorus singing America the beautiful and Alicia keys national anthem makes me proud to be American,” model Kate Upton, who was attending the game, said on her Twitter page.

Gerald Rokoff, standing near a portal in the Superdome’s upper deck, turned and said, “Beyond beautiful,” when the children finished singing.

Numerous viewers made references on social media to tearing up or getting goose bumps.

Read more

–Posted by Tracy Bloom.

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The controversial Japanese whaling industry, which has met fierce criticism and often combative oversea confrontations, is “effectively dead in the water” without large government subsidies says a new report by animal watchdog group, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw).

A Japanese whaling fleet’s mothership, the Nisshin Maru, seen from Sea Shepherd vessel the Bob Barker. (Photo: Sam Sielen/AFP/Getty) Breaking the story on the uneaten ‘warehouses of whale meat,’ the Guardian cites a new report, to be published Tuesday, which found that–despite a dramatic drop in whale meat consumption–the Japanese government continues to siphon millions from public tax dollars to keep the industry afloat.

Whale meat consumption has reportedly fallen to about 1% of its 1960s peak, with stockpiles of unsold whale meat topping 5 million kilograms.

According the report, despite this obvious glut, the Japanese government spent at least ¥30bn ($4.8bn) on whaling between 1987 and 2012, including last year’s subsidies of ¥2.28bn ($366m) which were siphoned off from money budgeted for reconstruction from the 2011 tsunami.

“With growing wealth and modernisation, the people of Japan have lost their yen for whale meat,” the report says. “Yet fisheries officials and other government figures continue to siphon off millions of taxpayer yen to prop up an industry that is effectively dead in the water.”

An unnamed Japanese anti-whaling activist and volunteer with ocean conservationist group Sea Shepard says that, despite the significant drop in popularity, Japanese whaling continues primarily because of “greed and bureaucracy, and also because the Japanese, like any country, don’t like being told what to do by other countries.”

“The fisheries agency is using international opposition to whaling to build domestic support,” said Patrick Ramage, the director of Ifaw’s global whale program. “But I don’t think that argument is selling any better than all that whale meat now sitting in warehouses.”

Obama’s Deportation Record

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Posted on Feb 4, 2013

By 2014, the Obama administration will have deported more people than were expelled from 1892 to 1997; a majority of Californians believe that increasing the number of guidance counselors in schools would be more beneficial for safety than adding armed police officers; and while some see the fall of print journalism as a tragedy, others see it as an opportunity. These discoveries and more below.

On a regular basis, Truthdig brings you the news items and odds and ends that have found their way to Larry Gross, director of the USC Annenberg School for Communication. A specialist in media and culture, art and communication, visual communication and media portrayals of minorities, Gross helped found the field of gay and lesbian studies.

Obama on Track to Deport a Record 2 Million People by 2014
At current rates, deportations enforced under the Obama presidency are set to hit 2 million by 2014 according to a new report [3] from the University of California-Merced.

Spain is in the Hands of Thieves
No doubt. Spain is in the hands of thieves. The Barcenas, Pallerols, Crespo, Nóos and Mercurio cases, added to the Gürtel case, Millet, Champion, Pretoria and many others, show that those who have been giving us lessons of austerity have been benefitting: not only the bankers and businessmen but also, when the cameras have not focussed on them, the politicians, who have filled their pockets in order to live in opulence and extravagance.

Counselors are More Important for School Safety than Police Officers
To improve school safety, Californians overwhelmingly believe that having guidance counselors in every school would be more effective than deploying armed police officers.

The Clocks at Grand Central Station Are Permanently Wrong
… And they’re that way on purpose.

Should What Happens at Applebee’s Stay at Applebee’s?
A stiffed server, an uploaded receipt, a digital backlash–it’s all a case study in how the Web changes the power dynamic between servers and customers.

Making Web Sites Completely Addictive
Looking for a real estate agent who loves dogs? You’ll find 314 results for “dog lover” on Corcoran’s redesigned Web site.

The Origins of ‘Big Data’ : An Etymological Detective Story
Words and phrases are fundamental building blocks of language and culture, much as genes and cells are to the biology of life.

Noble and Ignoble Ai Weiwei: Wonderful Dissident, Terrible Artist
What if Ai Weiwei, the much admired Chinese dissident artist, were a character in a novel?

United States of Widespread and Concentrated Poverty
Poverty has become widespread across the United States in recent years. As it turns out, the concentration of poverty has also been increasing.

The Fall of Journalism
Why are newspapers published? To make money for the publisher, of course.

More Below the Ad

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U.S. President Barack Obama has been granted sweeping powers to order preemptive cyber-strikes on any given country, anonymous officials involved in a “secret legal review” of U.S. cyber warfare rules, told the New York Times Monday.

(Jim Watson, AFP/Getty Images) Speaking to the Times, the unnamed officials said quickly advancing tactics of cyber-warfare can be unleashed exclusively via the direct orders of the President–should the administration suspect signs of a major digital attack. If the president approves a strike, the government will be able to “attack adversaries by injecting them with destructive code–even if there is no declared war,” the Times reports.

The administration has been working to hash out the nation’s first written rules on how and when the military and several government agencies can initiate acts of cyber-warfare; however, the rules will remain classified.

“What we know about the legal questions Obama has grappled with is all secret. The development of ‘cyber-security’ policy or cyber warfare policies indicate a further expansion of the body of secret law under Obama,” Kevin Gosztola writes at FireDogLake.

What we do know, as the anonymous officials told the Times, is that under the new cyber-warfare rules, which utilize an increasingly loose interpretation of preemptive war, President Obama can initiative cyber-warfare on countries that we are not officially at war with–much like the highly controversial drones strikes, or targeted assassinations, that Obama has approved in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia in recent years.

“The rules will be highly classified, just as those governing drone strikes have been closely held,” the Times reports. “John O. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s chief counter-terrorism adviser and his nominee to run the Central Intelligence Agency, played a central role in developing the administration’s policies regarding both drones and cyber-warfare…”

“There is no indication that any group of members in Congress or judicial body will have to approve of a preemptive strike before it is carried out,” writes Gosztola. “As has become typical, the president wants to be able to conduct war without needing authorization.”

“There are levels of cyber-warfare that are far more aggressive than anything that has been used or recommended to be done,” one official told the Times.

The New York Times writes:

Mr. Obama is known to have approved the use of cyber-weapons only once, early in his presidency, when he ordered an escalating series of cyber-attacks against Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. The operation was code-named Olympic Games, and while it began inside the Pentagon under President George W. Bush, it was quickly taken over by the National Security Agency, the largest of the intelligence agencies, under the president’s authority to conduct covert action. […]

The attacks on Iran illustrated that a nation’s infrastructure can be destroyed without bombing it or sending in saboteurs. […]

While many potential targets are military, a country’s power grids, financial systems and communications networks can also be crippled. […]

One senior American official said that officials quickly determined that the cyber-weapons were so powerful that – like nuclear weapons – they should be unleashed only on the direct orders of the commander in chief.

Gosztola adds:

…like with the drone program, President Barack Obama is presiding over the creation and development of a power that previous presidents never imagined having. The national security state is effectively appointing him and all future presidents the proverbial judge, jury and executioner when it comes to cyber warfare. […]

The policy will expand the imperial presidency and the public and civil society organizations, which have a distinct interest in knowing what the government is doing, will be kept in the dark on what is legal and illegal in cyber operations. The Congress will barely make any effort to defend its right to provide oversight of this new power. And any future details on this power will mostly come from selective leaks provided by officials, who do not think they will face repercussions for talking to the press. The policy itself, the rules for cyber war, will remain concealed.

Isn’t this the cutest story you ever did hear?

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Friday responded to news that he is the target of a new recall campaign, blasting out a frantic email to his supporters asking for money to help fend off the challenge.-

“Just three weeks after I was sworn into office for a sixth term as Maricopa County Sheriff, a group of radical extremists filed a recall campaign to forcibly remove me from office,” Arpaio wrote. “This is very serious.”

On Wednesday, activists from the Respect Arizona coalition filed registration paperwork officially kicking off a campaign to remove the controversial sheriff from his post. While they’ll need 300,000 signatures to trigger the recall election, leaders of the group have experience in the form of a successful 2011 effort to topple Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce (R), who was widely regarded as the architect of the state’s highly controversial SB 1070 immigration law.

Organizers of the Arpaio recall effort erected a website that calls for a new sheriff “that respects families, respects immigrants and respects Latinos.”

Arpaio has drawn national scrutiny for his harsh record on immigration enforcement, including federal allegations and other lawsuits accusing him civil rights violations and racial profiling. Complaints have also been raised over a number of deaths at his notorious jail tent cities, as well as his alleged mishandling of hundreds of sex abuse cases in Maricopa County.
—
Arpaio, who crushed his opponents in 2012 by raising $8.5 million, asks for a maximum per-person contribution of $430 to help him battle back against the group, which he calls “clowns,” or “small band of thugs,” or “radical extremist forces.”

The words ‘clown’, ‘thug’ and radical extremist go a really long way in describing the sheriff because of his long record of abuses while in office.

In a strongly worded critique of the country’s best-known sheriff, the Justice Department on Thursday accused Sheriff Joe Arpaio of engaging in “unconstitutional policing” by unfairly targeting Latinos for detention and arrest and retaliating against those who complain.

After an investigation that lasted more than three years, the civil rights division of the Justice Department said in a 22-page report that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, which Mr. Arpaio leads, had “a pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos” that “reaches the highest levels of the agency.” The department interfered with the inquiry, the government said, prompting a lawsuit that eventually led Sheriff Arpaio and his deputies to cooperate.

“We have peeled the onion to its core,” said Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, noting during a conference call with reporters on Thursday morning that more than 400 inmates, deputies and others had been interviewed as part of the review, including Sheriff Arpaio and his command staff. Mr. Perez said the inquiry, which included jail visits and reviews of thousands of pages of internal documents, raised the question of whether Latinos were receiving “second-class policing services” in Maricopa County.

Let us hope he is booted out of office as quickly as possible.

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay. And welcome to this week’s Africa report, and this week with Maurice Carney, who now joins us from our office in D.C. Maurice is executive director and cofounder of Friends of the Congo.

Thanks for joining us again, Maurice.

MAURICE CARNEY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND COFOUNDER, FRIENDS OF THE CONGO: Pleasure being with you, Paul.

JAY: So what are you reporting on this week?

CARNEY: Well, you know, there’s a great deal taking place on the continent and, of course, here in the U.S. as it portends for U.S. policy towards Congo in particular and the African continent as a whole.

Just dealing with the Congo itself and recent developments, there was some hope that was put behind a peace deal that was announced by the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, that would be signed earlier this week at the African Union Summit. However, this vaunted peace deal that would include the signing of eight African countries to try and bring some stability to the east of the Congo faltered. On the morning that the deal was to be signed, the UN announced that the signatures were not ready.

And part of the problem is that we have discord between regional forces on the African continent and how they envision bringing stability to east of the Congo.

JAY: Okay. Just for people that haven’t followed the story, just give us a really quick context about what’s been going on.

CARNEY: Well, since April 2012, there has been a Rwanda-backed revolution that’s destabilized the east of the country, of the Congo, that has displaced nearly 1 million people. The United Nations had done several reports through its group of experts that document that this rebel militia they call the M23 is being backed, you know, financed, armed, sponsored primarily by Rwanda, and to some degree Uganda. And as it–this November, they’d captured a major city in the east of the Congo, Goma, with an estimated population of about 1 million.

And as a condition for them relinquishing the city back to the Congolese government–that is, the Rwanda-backed militia M23, the Congolese government would enter into peace talks with them, ostensibly to bring about stability and address the grievances that this group has put in front of the Congolese government.

However, the main players in the instability in the east of the Congo is Rwanda and Uganda. And the United Nations has tried to step in to try and work with the African Union, the Southern African Development Community, International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, to establish a comprehensive peace agreement that will bring about stability in the region.

So, earlier this week, there was a presentation by the United Nations and Ban Ki-moon that there is going to be an agreement that will be signed that would advance the peace accord and advance stability in the region. But that accord was not signed. And the reason for the disconnect between the United Nations and the gathering African nations is that African nations have proposed what they call a neutral force of about 4,000 soldiers or so that will go into east of Congo to try and stabilize the region; however, there is an existing 17,000 or so UN troops that are in the Congo. So the question was: with this introduction of a African force, who would actually have command of the 3,000 or 4,000 forces that the African nations would actually, you know, set up in the east of the Congo? And apparently there wasn’t an agreement on that. The UN wanted the command to be under UN, and Africans wanted to control the force that they would be sending in.

JAY: So where’s the United States in all this, given that Rwanda and Uganda are close allies of the U.S.?

CARNEY: Well, that’s a key question. You know, the United States has a crucial role to play, considering, as you said, that Rwanda and Uganda are the allies and the United States provide training, financing, military equipment to these nations, who are in turn arming war criminals in the Congo. What has happened is that the United States has tried to protect their allies.

So the UN, the group of experts at the UN have called, have presented a list of individuals to be sanctioned, of Rwandan individuals. However, the United States, through its UN ambassador, Susan Rice, has prevented the sanctioning of these individuals. Rwanda itself has violated, broken the UN arms embargo in the Congo that prevents the supply of weapons to rebel militia. And Rwanda has done that. But Rwanda hasn’t been sanctioned, again protected by the United States.

So what we see at the UN and in the international community is an attempt really to hold Rwanda accountable and bring about some kind of stability without sanctioning Rwanda, without putting top Rwandan officials on the sanctions list, and without withholding more aid.

But what really needs to happen is that Rwanda, and to a lesser degree Uganda, needs to be challenged directly, to be held accountable. I know the United Nations, you know, they’ve come up with a series of proposals. They’ve talked about sending drones to eastern Congo to document what’s been going on there.

But really, at this stage, after 16 years of Rwandan and Ugandan involvement in the Congo, further documentation’s not what’s needed. What is needed is the political will on the part of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the international community to hold these nations accountable for the destabilizing of eastern Congo. And that’s been the challenge, trying to get to that point where Rwanda could be fully held accountable, and to a lesser degree, but an important degree nonetheless, Uganda can be held accountable as well. And, unfortunately, the peace accords that are put on the table thus far have obviated this necessary step, because if Rwanda’s not held accountable, Uganda’s not held accountable, they’ll continue to support militia in the east of Congo and support those illicit networks that are causing so much suffering to the Congolese people.

JAY: Right. Just let me switch topics. I know your expertise is on Congo, but Congo’s not that far from Mali. What is your take on the situation there? You have–one point of view says this is a French play/intervention to defend its resources, the untapped resources of Northern Mali, and the others say this is an independence/national struggle of the Tuareg people that’s been hijacked by al-Qaeda type elements. What’s your sense of what the truth is here?

CARNEY: Well, I mean, it’s really a combination of both. If you look at French engagement in Africa, recent engagement, we see they were at the forefront of calling [for] the overthrow of Gaddafi regime in Libya. We saw that they intervened in Côte d’Ivoire with the electoral battle between Ouattara and Gbagbo. So now we see that there in Mali. So the French have been quite active militarily on the continent of late, which is consistent with their colonial history.

And whether you’re talking about the French or the United States, what we see, unfortunately, is an increase in the militarization of the African continent. And what we see taking place in Mali in part is a result of this increased militarization, whether you’re talking about the bombing of Libya that resulted in arms being dispersed throughout the region, whether we talk about the United States and its programs of training military officials in Mali–the coup that took place in Mali was led by a U.S.-trained soldier that upended a democratically elected government that only had about two months left to go before elections.

So we see, whether it’s France or whether it’s the United States, this heavy investment in the militarization of the African continent. We’re now told that the United States looked to have a presence in 35 African countries to do special operations, are right next-door in Niger. The New York Times reported this week that there’s a possibility of U.S. setting up a drone base there.

So at its core, the destabilizing of, you know, North Africa and other parts of the African continent, we see the West, whether it’s France, the United States, pushing hard on this military offensive, as opposed to–if truly they wanted to help the African continent, even if it was a question of fighting terrorism, as they state, the best antidote is to make sure you have stable regimes, make sure you have viable economic opportunities for Africans so that they’re invested in the institutions in their countries. And we do not see this kind of investment in democratic institutions, kind of investment in education and health and other sectors of the society that can buttress and strengthen these very weak African nations, who can then in turn serve as a bulwark against terrorism to the degree that it exists.

So there’s a twofold challenge that I see. One, for those of us who are here in the U.S. and in Europe, we have to push harder, we have to be better organized, we have to confront this whole militarization effort on the part of the West led by France, led by the United States and the U.K. coming in now. We really have to educate the American public, the European public, as to the destructive nature of the increased militarization on the African continent.

And then, in looking at the continent itself, we see the incredible weak states, where there is little defense against whatever will that the West wishes to impose on Africa. That’s–Africans really have to be better organized to defend their interests. It’s not by accident that we don’t see as much of that, the instability and the Western intervention in Southern Africa, as we do elsewhere.

[unintel.] the Southern African Development Community is relatively well organized. If they were not well organized and unified, Robert Mugabe would not be in power today. One would venture to say that the West would have already found a way to depose the Mugabe government.

So the answer lies, both inside and outside of the continent, in organization, organizing in a way to defend the interests of African people, whereby Africa does not continue to be a playground for external powers, whether it’s [crosstalk]

JAY: Thanks, Maurice. Thanks very much for joining us.

CARNEY: Alright. Thank you. Thank you, Paul.

JAY: 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.

One half of the reason why the “market” has finally been reacquainted with gravity is its realization that the previously reported Spanish kickback scandal, which incidentally has been known for over two weeks to most if not the algos that push stocks higher, is refusing to go away. As El Pais summarized below, the graft revealed in this ongoing political fiasco threatens to take down everyone in the Spanish ruling PP, from PM Rajoy, who received more than €300,000 over the years, and on to the lowest rungs of political corruption.

The other half of the reason for today’s Italian stock market collapse is the well-known to our readers scandal involving Italian bank Monte Paschi, which also refuses to go away due to its massive political implications three weeks ahead of the Italian elections. Yet the reason why little if anything has been mentioned about what may soon be a nationalization of the third largest (and just as insolvent) Italian bank in the mainstream US press is the resulting humiliation for the current ECB head, ex-Goldmanite Mario Draghi, who has been aggressively pushing to become a bank supervisor of all European banks as ECB head, yet with every day new revelations emerge about how epically he failed to supervise a major Italian bank right under his nose as head of the Bank of Italy.

The latest in this developing scnadal which not even the market can ignore any more comes once more from the Bank of Italy, which has once more changed its story. Recall that as recently as January 23 Mario Monti vowed in Davos that “nobody knew nuthin”:

• BANK OF ITALY SAYS MONTE PASCHI HID DOCUMENTS ON TRANSACTIONS

This was a sentiment that was vouched by the Bank of Italy itself, which pled complete ignorance and accused then-BMPS management of everything.

Turns out Monti and the Bank of Italy both lied.

And now that it has to change its story once more, it is instead blaming the fact that it had no authority to act over what has emerged its own inspectors discovered were derivative irregularities as early as mid-2010. As Reuters summarizes, what we first said two weeks ago: “The roots of the corruption and derivatives scandal at Monte dei Paschi all stem back to when Draghi, now president of the European Central Bank, was chief of Italy’s central bank from 2006 to 2011.“

So now that the Bank of Italy can no longer plead ignorance, what is the defense? Why inability to actually do anything.

From Reuters:

The Bank of Italy (BoI) says it did everything in its powers to oversee Monte Paschi, including forcing it to raise new capital and applying behind the scenes pressure to force out its executives, who left last year.

Last month, the BoI approved 3.9 billion euros ($5.3 billion) of state loans needed by the ailing Siena bank to shore up its capital.

But the BoI, under Draghi’s leadership, is under fire for not acting faster to sanction those managers and make its doubts public even though its inspectors had spotted the derivatives contracts at the center of the scandal back in mid-2010.

However, the senior BoI source stressed that the decision on launching a sanctions procedure, involving publicly blaming and fining bank officials, does not depend on the BoI governor and its five member executive board, but on the bank’s inspectors and then a series of lower committees.

“The inspectors are the only people responsible for initiating a sanctions procedure so if they don’t find anything in the course of their inspection then it’s not possible for the top management to start the process,” said the source, who asked not to be named.

“We instruct the staff to be absolutely free from any influence from us, to present exactly the case, so if a sanction is decided then they present a proposal to the board and the board decides on the actual implementation of the sanctions.”

In the summer of 2010 BoI inspectors uncovered two opaque derivatives contracts that could cost Monte Paschi 720 million euros and are now at the center of fraud investigations, yet did not propose that sanctions be launched.

That decision “had nothing to do with the board,” the official said, though he added that Draghi was shown the inspectors report.

He declined to say whether he thought it was a good decision not to propose sanctions at that time.

Why was the BoI caught lying? Same as every other time: a media leak.

That 2010 inspectors’ report was leaked to the press and sparked much of the current criticism of the BoI because the sharp criticisms of Monte Paschi’s accounts and operations made by the inspectors were not followed by pressing action.

The BoI did not summon Monte Paschi’s executives, now under criminal investigation, until November 2011, after Draghi had left to head the ECB. It did not launch a sanctions procedure – which is still not completed – until the following year, after the officials had left the bank.

And the piece de resistance:

“We may perhaps appear to be slow, but I think we are deliberate,” the official said. He also stressed that although Monte Paschi failed to comply with the BoI’s requests, the wrongdoing was already done at the time of the 2010 inspection. “What took place afterwards was to try to disguise the losses but it wasn’t a recurrent or growing pattern of misbehaving,” he said.

Deliberate indeed: very deliberate in covering up fraud, and pretending the situation is fixed when in reality anyone with half a brain now realizes that despite the endless pumping of liquidity by the same ECB that Mario Draghi is now in charge of, things on Italian bank balance sheets are uglier than ever, and just getting worse by the day.

This comes from the people who continue lying every single day, telling any idiot who still believes them that “Europe is fixed.”

And the worst is that nobody knows just which other Italian (at first, at least) will blow up next, certainly not Italian shareholders which just dumped local stocks with a vigor not seen since the July near-bankruptcy of Spain, resulting in the Italian stock market plunging 4% or the most in six months.

More on this scandal here, here and here.

One half of the reason why the “market” has finally been reacquainted with gravity is its realization that the previously reported Spanish kickback scandal, which incidentally has been known for over two weeks to most if not the algos that push stocks higher, is refusing to go away. As El Pais summarized below, the graft revealed in this ongoing political fiasco threatens to take down everyone in the Spanish ruling PP, from PM Rajoy, who received more than €300,000 over the years, and on to the lowest rungs of political corruption.

The other half of the reason for today’s Italian stock market collapse is the well-known to our readers scandal involving Italian bank Monte Paschi, which also refuses to go away due to its massive political implications three weeks ahead of the Italian elections. Yet the reason why little if anything has been mentioned about what may soon be a nationalization of the third largest (and just as insolvent) Italian bank in the mainstream US press is the resulting humiliation for the current ECB head, ex-Goldmanite Mario Draghi, who has been aggressively pushing to become a bank supervisor of all European banks as ECB head, yet with every day new revelations emerge about how epically he failed to supervise a major Italian bank right under his nose as head of the Bank of Italy.

The latest in this developing scnadal which not even the market can ignore any more comes once more from the Bank of Italy, which has once more changed its story. Recall that as recently as January 23 Mario Monti vowed in Davos that “nobody knew nuthin”:

• BANK OF ITALY SAYS MONTE PASCHI HID DOCUMENTS ON TRANSACTIONS

This was a sentiment that was vouched by the Bank of Italy itself, which pled complete ignorance and accused then-BMPS management of everything.

Turns out Monti and the Bank of Italy both lied.

And now that it has to change its story once more, it is instead blaming the fact that it had no authority to act over what has emerged its own inspectors discovered were derivative irregularities as early as mid-2010. As Reuters summarizes, what we first said two weeks ago: “The roots of the corruption and derivatives scandal at Monte dei Paschi all stem back to when Draghi, now president of the European Central Bank, was chief of Italy’s central bank from 2006 to 2011.“

So now that the Bank of Italy can no longer plead ignorance, what is the defense? Why inability to actually do anything.

From Reuters:

The Bank of Italy (BoI) says it did everything in its powers to oversee Monte Paschi, including forcing it to raise new capital and applying behind the scenes pressure to force out its executives, who left last year.

Last month, the BoI approved 3.9 billion euros ($5.3 billion) of state loans needed by the ailing Siena bank to shore up its capital.

But the BoI, under Draghi’s leadership, is under fire for not acting faster to sanction those managers and make its doubts public even though its inspectors had spotted the derivatives contracts at the center of the scandal back in mid-2010.

However, the senior BoI source stressed that the decision on launching a sanctions procedure, involving publicly blaming and fining bank officials, does not depend on the BoI governor and its five member executive board, but on the bank’s inspectors and then a series of lower committees.

“The inspectors are the only people responsible for initiating a sanctions procedure so if they don’t find anything in the course of their inspection then it’s not possible for the top management to start the process,” said the source, who asked not to be named.

“We instruct the staff to be absolutely free from any influence from us, to present exactly the case, so if a sanction is decided then they present a proposal to the board and the board decides on the actual implementation of the sanctions.”

In the summer of 2010 BoI inspectors uncovered two opaque derivatives contracts that could cost Monte Paschi 720 million euros and are now at the center of fraud investigations, yet did not propose that sanctions be launched.

That decision “had nothing to do with the board,” the official said, though he added that Draghi was shown the inspectors report.

He declined to say whether he thought it was a good decision not to propose sanctions at that time.

Why was the BoI caught lying? Same as every other time: a media leak.

That 2010 inspectors’ report was leaked to the press and sparked much of the current criticism of the BoI because the sharp criticisms of Monte Paschi’s accounts and operations made by the inspectors were not followed by pressing action.

The BoI did not summon Monte Paschi’s executives, now under criminal investigation, until November 2011, after Draghi had left to head the ECB. It did not launch a sanctions procedure – which is still not completed – until the following year, after the officials had left the bank.

And the piece de resistance:

“We may perhaps appear to be slow, but I think we are deliberate,” the official said. He also stressed that although Monte Paschi failed to comply with the BoI’s requests, the wrongdoing was already done at the time of the 2010 inspection. “What took place afterwards was to try to disguise the losses but it wasn’t a recurrent or growing pattern of misbehaving,” he said.

Deliberate indeed: very deliberate in covering up fraud, and pretending the situation is fixed when in reality anyone with half a brain now realizes that despite the endless pumping of liquidity by the same ECB that Mario Draghi is now in charge of, things on Italian bank balance sheets are uglier than ever, and just getting worse by the day.

This comes from the people who continue lying every single day, telling any idiot who still believes them that “Europe is fixed.”

And the worst is that nobody knows just which other Italian (at first, at least) will blow up next, certainly not Italian shareholders which just dumped local stocks with a vigor not seen since the July near-bankruptcy of Spain, resulting in the Italian stock market plunging 4% or the most in six months.

More on this scandal here, here and here.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has expressed his country’s willingness to attend future nuclear talks between Iran and the six major world powers (the P5+1).

Speaking at the 49th Munich Security Conference on Monday, the Turkish minister proposed the formation of 5+3 group in the talks over Iran’s nuclear energy program with the inclusion of Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said on Sunday that the next round of comprehensive talks between Iran and the P5+1 — China, Russia, France, Britain, and the US plus Germany — would be held in Kazakhstan on February 25, 2013.

Iran and the P5+1 have held several rounds of talks with main focus on Iranian nuclear energy program. The last round of negotiations between the two sides was held in Moscow in June 2012.

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

Iran argues that as a signatory to the NPT and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it is entitled to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

Meanwhile, Israel as the only possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, is widely known to have between 200 and 400 nuclear warheads.

The Israeli regime rejects all the regulatory international nuclear agreements — the NPT in particular — and refuses to allow its nuclear facilities to come under international regulatory inspections.

SF/SS/MA

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has backtracked on his promise to conduct peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar on the grounds that the militant group’s office in the Arab sheikhdom might be used for other purposes than talks.

According to a statement issued by Afghan presidential office earlier this week, Karzai will not hold talks with the militant group until Qatar produces a memorandum declaring that the Taliban office would not be used for any “political purpose”.

“This office should be used only as an address for talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban… This office should not be used for any other purpose,” it added.

Karzai said earlier this month that he would hold peace dialogue with the Taliban leaders in near future.

Last year, the Taliban announced reaching a preliminary agreement with Qatar to open a liaison office in the Arab state.

Earlier this week, Afghan president also accused foreign powers of ‘plotting’ against the war-wracked country’s peace process.

“Any effort to conduct peace talks individually is not an effort for peace but it’s a plot by the foreigners, aimed at weakening Afghanistan,” said Karzai at a conference in the capital, Kabul.

The Afghan president, without pointing at any particular country, said he had told the US government during his recent visit to Washington that “no foreign party must try to take the Afghan peace process in its hand.”

The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 under the pretext of fighting terrorism.

The invasion removed the Taliban from power, but the country remains insecure despite the presence of tens of thousands of US-led forces there.

MAM/JR

Munich’s Security Conference is held annually. This year marks the 49th session. Dozens of countries participated. Hundreds of world leaders attended.

They included heads of state, foreign affairs and defense ministers, as well as other senior figures. Active engagement was prioritized. Current and future security challenges were discussed.

In 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin took full advantage. He pulled no punches. He sharply criticized US foreign policy. He called it:

“very dangerous (in its) uncontained hyper-use of force — military force — in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts.” US imperialism, he stressed, “overstepped its national borders in every way.”

“(U)nilateral illegal actions have not resolved any single problem. They have become a hotbed of further conflicts.”

“We are seeing increasing disregard for the fundamental principles of international law….No one feels safe! Because no one can feel that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them.”

“Of course, such a policy stimulates an arms race. The dominance of force inevitably encourages a number of countries to acquire weapons of mass destruction.”

Putin also addressed a “unipolar world.” He called it one “in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day, this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.”

He added that “We are constantly being taught about democracy. But for some reason those who teach us do not want to learn themselves.”

America deplores democracy at home and abroad. It prioritizes unchallenged dominance. It demands what it says goes. Russia supports peace, not war. It favors diplomatic conflict resolution.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov attended this year’s Conference. Itar Tass headlined “Moscow calls on West not to impose outside values on peoples of Middle East, Africa.”

Lavrov told participants:

“We all aspire for stability and conditions for sustainable development in the Middle East and in Africa, we want the peoples of countries there to be able to move towards the democracy and wellbeing, to have guaranteed human rights, smooth supplies of hydrocarbons and other vital resources.”

“If those are our joint objectives, then, we may agree on transparent and clear rules, which should be used by all players in their practical actions.”

“Agree that we all will be supporting the democratic reforms of the changing countries, but not to impose an outside value scale, acknowledging the variety of development models.”

“Should agree that we shall be supporting the peaceful settlement of the inner state conflicts and stopping of violence via conditions for an inclusive dialogue with involvement of all national political groups.”

“Should agree that we shall refrain from outside interference, especially by force, without a clear mandate from the UN Security Council and from any unilateral sanctions. That we should continuously and firmly fight extremism and terrorism in all forms, should demand observation of rights for ethnic and confessional minorities.”

“Approaches of our Western counterparts cause many questions.”

“Does support for change of regimes justify terror methods? Is it possible to be fighting in one situation against those who you support in another one?”

Lavrov said answers to key questions “should be found jointly, especially regarding final objectives for the efforts to settle crises in countries of the Euro-Atlantic region, which have more uniting aspects rather than discrepancies.”

Russia categorically opposes force. It wants Syrians alone to decide who’ll lead them. It wants no external interference. It’s got international law on its side.

Earlier Lavrov expressed concern about Israeli aggression on Syria. He called it “unacceptable.”

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak also addressed Munich participants. He admitted Israel’s involvement.

He said “what happened in Syria several days ago (is) proof that when we said something we mean it….and we say that we don’t think it should be allowed to bring advanced weapons into Lebanon.”

Israel committed naked aggression. It was unrelated to cross-border weapons transfers. Israel’s objectives aren’t clear. It may be to goad Syria to counterattack.

Doing so would risk greater war. It could become regional or global. History proves small conflicts at times become major ones.

Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani warned Israel, saying:

 ”The world is witnessing a vengeance carried out by the West, particularly the US, and some backward elements in the region against resistance.”

He urged regional countries to distance themselves from Israel. He said “the Islamic awakening movement in the region would give a proper response to the Zionist regime.”

On February 3, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) said “Israeli Aggression Reveals Israel’s Role in Destabilizing Syria.”

Assad responded publicly for the first time. He said Israel acted in “collaboration with hostile external powers.” Syria’s able to confront challenges. It’ll repel aggression. Destabilizing Syria won’t work. Iran offers full support.

On February 2, Voice of Russia contributor Konstantin Garibov headlined “Israel’s air attack against Syria heralds new regional conflicts,” saying:

Doing so entails great risks. Russia’s Foreign Ministry condemned Israel’s attack. It called it “an unprovoked attack against a sovereign state.”

Syria declared the right to respond. International law permits justifiable self-defense. Lebanese political scientist Imad Rizk called the attack’s timing “symptomatic.”

Netanyahu “returned to big politics.” He forming a coalition government. He’s negotiating for strategic advantage. He’ll deal with Washington’s new Secretary of State.

 ”It looks like the attack became the US and Israel’s joint declaration” of war on Syria.

Vladimir Putin said “Israel will keep delivering blows on facilities or forces participating in the Syrian conflict. They would be either Islamist groups of troops loyal to Bashar al-Assad. I can foresee that as the crisis becomes worse, Israel could expand its participation in such attacks.”

Israel allegedly fears Islamic extremists. Supposedly it’s concerned about ties to Hamas and Hezbollah.

Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Oriental Studies analyst Vladimiri Sotnikov believes “It would be a nightmare for Israel.”

It’s likely what Israel prefers. It needs enemies to justify belligerence. Peace, calm and stability defeat its agenda.

As foreign minister in 1982, Yitzhak Shamir explained why Israel attacked Lebanon. A “terrible danger” existed, he said, “not so much a military one as a political one.”

On June 6, 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon. Fighting lasted nearly a year.

An Israeli staged false flag was pretext. Arafat was falsely blamed for Abu Nidal militants’ attempted assassination of Israeli UK ambassador Shlomo Argov.

Israel got the war it wanted. Around 18,000 Palestinians were massacred. Southern Lebanon remained occupied until May 2000. Israel still illegally holds Sheba Farms.

It’s a 14-square mile water-rich area near Syria’s Golan. It’s been lawlessly occupied since 1967 along with Ghajar, a bordering Lebanese village.

Sabra and Shatila remain symbols of Israeli ruthlessness. At the time, Ariel Sharon was defense minister. He ordered the slaughter. He let Phalangist fascists do his dirty work.

Palestinian civilians were massacred in cold blood. Women were raped multiple times before being killed. Children were murdered like adults.

Whole families were shot, stabbed, bludgeoned to death, or buried dead or alive under homes. Some were tortured before dying. Bodies were decapitated.

Corpses were charred and violated. Eyes were gouged out. Faces were unrecognizable.

Israel maliciously planned it. Sharon led it. He called it “ridding the world of the center of international terrorism.” Orwell couldn’t have said it better. No one to this day was punished. Israel massacres with impunity.

Haaretz contributor Gideon Levy said “Israel does as it pleases.” Rogue states operate that way. Criticizing them is called “heresy and treason.”

Israel overflies Lebanon’s airspace with impunity. It’s “taken for granted.” It bombards whatever it calls dangerous. It “invade(s) any place, settle(s) anywhere. It may do (almost) anything.”

It does any damn thing it wishes. Washington offers full support. They’re imperial partners. They jointly plan aggression. They get away with it because who’ll stop them?

“(A)nything allowed (is) shaped (in) Israeli consciousness.” It’s based on largely baseless assumptions. Notions about being surrounded by hostile Arabs don’t wash.

It bears repeating. The only threats Israel faces are ones it invents. It menaces regional neighbors and humanity. It prioritizes Middle East dominance.

It wants regional rivals eliminated. It wages unprovoked naked aggression. Israel alone has weapons of mass destruction. Using them is prioritized if threatened.

“(T)o hell with all the troublesome questions,” said Levy. Only what Israel wants matters. Rule of law principles apply to others. “Israel is allowed to do anything.”

It gets away with mass murder and much more. Its right is divine, it claims. It doesn’t matter what others say. Only Israeli interests count.

Saying so claims Jewish exceptionalism, specialness, and uniqueness. Israeli hardliners say they’re God’s “chosen people.” They have a divine right to commit naked aggression. Spurning human rights comes with the territory.

They can do any damn thing they wish. They debase moral values and ethical principles. They threaten Jews and non-Jews alike. They endanger humanity.

They need to be stopped before they kill again. In response to Israel’s May 2010 Mavi Marama massacre, former Congressman Dennis Kucinich asked colleagues to sign a letter to Obama, stating:

“It is not acceptable to repeatedly violate international law. It is not acceptable to shoot and kill innocent civilians. It is not acceptable to commit an act of aggression against another U.S. ally.”

“It is not acceptable to continue a blockade which denies humanitarian relief. It is not acceptable to heighten tensions in a region while the United States continues to put so much blood and treasure on the line.”

“No one questions the right of Israel to defend its border. (Doing so) does not extend to shooting innocent civilians anywhere in the world, anytime it pleases.”

“Israel must account for our support, for the lives of our soldiers, for the investment of billions from our taxpayers.”

“Israel owes the United States more than reckless, pre-meditated violence waged against innocent people.”

It’s hard imagining anyone in Congress today this forthright. It’s likely why Kucinich lost his March 2012 primary reelection bid. Dark forces targeted him. The Israeli Lobby wanted him ousted.

They went after Cynthia McKinney the same way. Doing the right thing is costly. The Israeli Lobby ran her out of Congress twice. Ruining her political career became policy.

Virtually no one in Congress criticizes Israel. Doing it risks being a career ender. McKinney believes principle matters most. Her soul isn’t for sale. Hopefully, Kucinich feels the same way.

He’s free to keep doing what’s right. Voices for truth and justice are badly needed. The most perilous time in world history demands they speak out. Imperiled humanity depends on it.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

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

http://www.dailycensored.com/mosow-to-west-hands-of-middle-eastafrica/

Israel claims it bombed a weapons convoy, while Syria claimed that a research facility was hit. Who is right?

Both.

Time reports:

Israeli warplanes struck several targets inside Syria overnight Tuesday, including a biological weapons research center that was reportedly flattened out of concern that it might fall into the hands of Islamist extremists fighting to topple the government of Syrian president Bashar Assad, Western intelligence officials tell TIME.

The irony is thick, as the U.S. is directly backing the Islamist extremists fighting to topple the Syrian government.

Time continues:

A Western intelligence official indicated to TIME that at least one to two additional targets were hit the same night, without offering details. Officials also said that Israel had a “green light” from Washington to launch yet more such strikes.

But the U.S. isn’t just an arm-chair quarterback … it may directly join in the action:

One Western intelligence official told TIME the U.S. military was poised to carry out similar airstrikes around Aleppo if rebels threaten to take sites associated with weapons of mass destruction in that region.

In the bizarro world of American and Israeli propaganda, arming Al Qaeda rebels or bombing Syrian assets does not count as “intervening” in a war:

Though no country has intervened in Syria’s civil war directly …

In diplomatic terms, surgical strikes launched in the name of preventing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction tend to be well-tolerated by the international community, especially when the attacks are not publicly acknowledged. Israel still does not officially acknowledge its secret 2007 destruction of a Syrian nuclear reactor.

“I’m not going to give any condemnation of Israel or rush into any criticism,” British foreign secretary William Hauge told the BBC on Thursday. “There may be many things about it that we don’t know, or the Arab League or Russia don’t know.”

What does this mean?

The endless war on terror has been re-branded through propaganda. There are no new wars launched by America and its allies. There are simply “kinetic actions“, and “covert operations” carried out in secret.

Postscript: The official narrative says that these endless series of wars secure our national defense and stimulate the economy.

In the real world, however, top American economists say that endless war has ruined our economy and hurt the vast majority of Americans.

And security experts — including both conservatives and liberals — agree that waging war in the Middle East weakens national security and increases terrorism. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

Israel claims it bombed a weapons convoy, while Syria claimed that a research facility was hit. Who is right?

Both.

Time reports:

Israeli warplanes struck several targets inside Syria overnight Tuesday, including a biological weapons research center that was reportedly flattened out of concern that it might fall into the hands of Islamist extremists fighting to topple the government of Syrian president Bashar Assad, Western intelligence officials tell TIME.

The irony is thick, as the U.S. is directly backing the Islamist extremists fighting to topple the Syrian government.

Time continues:

A Western intelligence official indicated to TIME that at least one to two additional targets were hit the same night, without offering details. Officials also said that Israel had a “green light” from Washington to launch yet more such strikes.

But the U.S. isn’t just an arm-chair quarterback … it may directly join in the action:

One Western intelligence official told TIME the U.S. military was poised to carry out similar airstrikes around Aleppo if rebels threaten to take sites associated with weapons of mass destruction in that region.

In the bizarro world of American and Israeli propaganda, arming Al Qaeda rebels or bombing Syrian assets does not count as “intervening” in a war:

Though no country has intervened in Syria’s civil war directly …

In diplomatic terms, surgical strikes launched in the name of preventing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction tend to be well-tolerated by the international community, especially when the attacks are not publicly acknowledged. Israel still does not officially acknowledge its secret 2007 destruction of a Syrian nuclear reactor.

“I’m not going to give any condemnation of Israel or rush into any criticism,” British foreign secretary William Hauge told the BBC on Thursday. “There may be many things about it that we don’t know, or the Arab League or Russia don’t know.”

What does this mean?

The endless war on terror has been re-branded through propaganda. There are no new wars launched by America and its allies. There are simply “kinetic actions“, and “covert operations” carried out in secret.

Postscript: The official narrative says that these endless series of wars secure our national defense and stimulate the economy.

In the real world, however, top American economists say that endless war has ruined our economy and hurt the vast majority of Americans.

And security experts — including both conservatives and liberals — agree that waging war in the Middle East weakens national security and increases terrorism. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

US Vice President Joe Biden says Washington and Paris agreed on a need to hand over the French led war in Mali to a UN mission.

“We agreed on the need to as quickly as reasonably possible establish the African-led international mission in Mali and as quickly as is prudent transition that mission to the United Nations,” Biden said on Monday after a meeting with French President Francois Hollande in Paris.

Biden arrived in the French capital on Sunday to hold talks with Hollande over several issues including French war in the West African country of Mali.

He said on Saturday that US praised France’s war launched in Mali on January 11 under the pretext of halting the advance of the fighters in the African country.

He said the US “stands with France and other partners in Mali” and “provides intelligence support, transportation for the French and African troops and refueling capability for French aircraft,” there.

He added that the fight “may be far from America’s borders, but it is fundamentally in America’s interest.”

It came as French planes reportedly carried out airstrikes around Kidal and Tessalit in Mali’s far north from Saturday night into the early hours of Sunday.

Hollande visited the Malian capital, Bamako, on Saturday, and told Malian that French troops would stay in Mali as long as necessary.

Thousands of people in Mali have been forced to flee their homes amid the French war, which involved some 3,500 troops on the ground supported by warplanes, helicopters and armored vehicles.

Analysts believe behind the military campaign are Mali’s untapped resources, including oil, gold, as well as the uranium in the region.

SAB/JR

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

Is housing in an echo boom? Though the jury is still out, it seems a risk-on speculative fever has returned to some housing-related equities.

Speculative bubbles often produce an “echo boom” a few years after the bubble has burst, as the cultural/institutional memories of the asset’s spectacular gains remain operative long after the initial boom/bust. Is the much-hyped housing recovery an organic, sustainable trend, or is it merely a speculation-driven echo boom that is doomed to fade?

Given the unprecedented stimulus that the Federal Reserve has applied to the housing sector via multi-trillion dollar purchases of mortgages and its gargantuan money-printing/bond-buying efforts to suppress interest rates, it is not really possible to claim housing is in an organic trend; that would first require an end to Fed support and a normalization of the mortgage market and interest rates.

Roughly a third of all existing home sales in many markets is not organic demand by households, it is speculation by flippers or investors chasing yield in a near-zero (real) yield environment. High levels of speculative activity could be nurturing a false confidence in permanently rising demand that is actually temporary.

For context, recall that there are about 75 million homeowners, about 50 million with mortgages, and over 19 million vacant dwellings in the U.S. In this context, 60,000 dwellings is statistical noise.

Next up: the housing bubble in home prices, using the San Francisco Bay Area as an example:

The initial $1.1 trillion in Fed mortgage purchases and massive home-buying subsidies issued by the Federal government triggered an echo boom in 2010 that soon rolled over. The current uptrend started in early 2012, when lenders began restricting inventory by keeping foreclosed and defaulted houses off the market.

Is this uptick a speculative “echo boom” that is not sustainable? Charts of housing-sector stocks may offer some clues.

XHB is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) of homebuilders. This has roughly tripled off its lows and almost regained the lower boundary of its bubble-top price range in 2006.

Drywall/sheetrock manufacturer USG is a proxy of demand for construction materials. USG traced a classic bubble spike and collapse in 2006, and has recently risen to 2005 levels around $30, roughly triple its lows.

Weyerhaeuser Co. is another proxy of demand for construction materials. WY has returned to its bubble-top highs reached in 2007. This raises a question: can demand for lumber be equal to the 2007 levels when only 1/3 as many new homes are being built?

Sherwin-Williams also reflects construction/renovation demand. SHW exceeded its housing-bubble levels back in 2010, and has followed an exponential line higher since January 2012.

It certainly appears that some housing-related stocks have reached heights that far exceed the modest uptick in new-home sales. Is this the market forecasting stronger profits ahead and speculators front-running the housing recovery? Has the speculative push outrun the modest gains of actual home construction and sales?

Though the jury is still out, it seems a risk-on speculative fever has returned to some housing-related equities, and that euphoria generally ends badly for those coming late to the party.

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

Is housing in an echo boom? Though the jury is still out, it seems a risk-on speculative fever has returned to some housing-related equities.

Speculative bubbles often produce an “echo boom” a few years after the bubble has burst, as the cultural/institutional memories of the asset’s spectacular gains remain operative long after the initial boom/bust. Is the much-hyped housing recovery an organic, sustainable trend, or is it merely a speculation-driven echo boom that is doomed to fade?

Given the unprecedented stimulus that the Federal Reserve has applied to the housing sector via multi-trillion dollar purchases of mortgages and its gargantuan money-printing/bond-buying efforts to suppress interest rates, it is not really possible to claim housing is in an organic trend; that would first require an end to Fed support and a normalization of the mortgage market and interest rates.

Roughly a third of all existing home sales in many markets is not organic demand by households, it is speculation by flippers or investors chasing yield in a near-zero (real) yield environment. High levels of speculative activity could be nurturing a false confidence in permanently rising demand that is actually temporary.

For context, recall that there are about 75 million homeowners, about 50 million with mortgages, and over 19 million vacant dwellings in the U.S. In this context, 60,000 dwellings is statistical noise.

Next up: the housing bubble in home prices, using the San Francisco Bay Area as an example:

The initial $1.1 trillion in Fed mortgage purchases and massive home-buying subsidies issued by the Federal government triggered an echo boom in 2010 that soon rolled over. The current uptrend started in early 2012, when lenders began restricting inventory by keeping foreclosed and defaulted houses off the market.

Is this uptick a speculative “echo boom” that is not sustainable? Charts of housing-sector stocks may offer some clues.

XHB is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) of homebuilders. This has roughly tripled off its lows and almost regained the lower boundary of its bubble-top price range in 2006.

Drywall/sheetrock manufacturer USG is a proxy of demand for construction materials. USG traced a classic bubble spike and collapse in 2006, and has recently risen to 2005 levels around $30, roughly triple its lows.

Weyerhaeuser Co. is another proxy of demand for construction materials. WY has returned to its bubble-top highs reached in 2007. This raises a question: can demand for lumber be equal to the 2007 levels when only 1/3 as many new homes are being built?

Sherwin-Williams also reflects construction/renovation demand. SHW exceeded its housing-bubble levels back in 2010, and has followed an exponential line higher since January 2012.

It certainly appears that some housing-related stocks have reached heights that far exceed the modest uptick in new-home sales. Is this the market forecasting stronger profits ahead and speculators front-running the housing recovery? Has the speculative push outrun the modest gains of actual home construction and sales?

Though the jury is still out, it seems a risk-on speculative fever has returned to some housing-related equities, and that euphoria generally ends badly for those coming late to the party.

At least 22 people are killed and 24 others injured after a concrete truck slammed into a bus transporting workers near Al-Ain city in the UAE.

The truck crashed into the bus carrying 46 Asian workers on Monday during rush hour , General Hussein al-Harithi, director of Abu Dhabi traffic police said.

Harithi said that the 22 victims were killed, while the wounded were taken to Ali Ain hospitals, some of them by helicopter.

The accident could have been caused by faulty brakes and failure to leave a safe distance between vehicles, the official added.

Migrant workers, make up a majority of the resident population of the UAE, and account for 90 percent of its workforce.

The UAE is constantly criticized for its poor living and working conditions provided for foreign workers. They lack rights associated with citizenship and face a variety of restrictions on their rights as workers.

PG/JR

A general view shows Abbottabad, Pakistan (AFP Photo / Adnan Qureshi)

A wildlife zoo, an adventure club, paragliding, restaurants and waterfalls — it’s all part of a $30 million project the Pakistani government is undertaking to improve the image of Abbottabad after Osama bin Laden was killed in the town in 2011.

­A brand-new amusement park in the small town will reportedly be finished in eight years. Once fully complete, the 50-acre riverside entertainment park will include restaurants, a heritage center, artificial waterfalls, a wildlife zoo and running tracks.

The Pakistani government has announced a public-private partnership project in a bid to revive tourism and sports activities in Abbottabad, which lies about 120 kilometers from the Islamabad airport.

Though not much evidence remains of the assassination raid, and bin Laden’s compound is a pile of rubble, the once-popular landmark still does not attract as many people as it did before the US operation.

Pakistani officials have denied the Osama bin Laden raid has anything to do with the project, which they claim is solely intended to improve the town’s image after the killing of the world’s most-wanted terrorist.

“We are working to promote tourism and amusement facilities in the whole province and this project is one of those facilities,” Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Sports and Tourism Minister Syed Aqil Shah was quoted as saying by AFP.

On Sunday, the first phase of the five-stage project began on three major tourism projects in Hazara, including water sports in Khanpur-Haripur, eco-tourism in Naran-Kaghan, and the amusement park project at Harno in Abbottabad, Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported.

Twenty percent of the income earned through each project will be spent on the development of the respective area, and residents will be given priority for jobs, Dawn said.

It has been almost two years since Abbottabad, a quiet town of 500,000, awoke to the news that Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been killed by US Navy SEALS in his compound on May 2, 2011.

While instability has wracked most of Pakistan in recent decades, Abbottabad has remained free of violence and suicide bombings. A favored summer destination for rest and relaxation, wealthy Pakistanis often visited the area for weekend retreats.

The incident soured relations between the US and Pakistan, whose leaders said that America had left them in the dark about the raid.

This combination of two photographs show, at top, ongoing demolition works at the compound where Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was slain last year in the northwestern town of Abbottabad on February 26, 2012, and at bottom, the same compound with the main building no longer standing following the completion of demolition works on February 27, 2012 (AFP Photo / Aamir Qureshi)

Saudi Arabia, whose leaders have constantly supported militancy in Syria, has condemned Israel’s recent airstrike on a Syrian military research center as a “flagrant violation” of the country’s territorial integrity.

Saudi Press Agency (SPA) on Monday quoted the Saudi Cabinet as condemning “the Israeli aggression against Syrian territories which it considers a flagrant violation against the territories of an Arab state and against its sovereignty.”

The Syrian army said in a statement on January 30 that two people were killed and five others injured in an Israeli airstrike on a research center in Jamraya, located 25 kilometers (15 miles) northwest of Damascus.

On January 26, Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal called for militants fighting against the Syrian government to be given sophisticated weapons, including anti-aircraft weapons.

Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former intelligence chief and brother of the Saudi foreign minister, said, “What is needed are sophisticated, high-level weapons that can bring down planes, can take out tanks at a distance. This is not getting through.”

In December 2012, the Saudi regime pledged to allocate 100 million dollars in aid to the Western-backed Syrian opposition, reiterating its recognition of the so-called National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said that Riyadh would assign the money to the Syrian opposition to assist them in fighting against the Syrian government.

The Saudi minister further called on all Syrian opposition groups to unite under one leadership.

KA/SS/MA

 Tensions are escalating since North Korea’s launch of a satellite into orbit on December 12, 2012. Overwrought news reports termed the launch a “threat” and a “provocation,” while U.S. National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor called it “irresponsible behavior.” Punishment for North Korea was swift in coming.

North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 was just one of 75 satellites that a variety of nations sent into space last year, but Pyongyang’s launch, and a failed launch earlier in the year on April 12, were the only ones singled out for condemnation. [1] In Western eyes, there was something uniquely threatening about the Kwangmyongsong-3 earth observation satellite, unlike the apparently more benign five military and three spy satellites the United States launched last year.

We are told that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, the official name for North Korea) used the satellite launch to test ballistic missile technology. But the North Koreans could hardly have sent their satellite into orbit by slingshot. The Kwangmyongsong-3 was equipped with a camera intended to help assess the nation’s natural resources and forest distribution and to collect crop estimates. The Western press was quick to scoff at the satellite as having no rational economic purpose. Although the satellite failed to become operable, a common enough experience for nations putting their first satellite into space, the intent was to support much-needed ecological recovery in North Korea and to aid agricultural planning.

Specialists argue that the DPRK’s Unha-3 missile, used for the launch, is not a suitable candidate for delivering a nuclear warhead. According to analyst Markus Schiller of Schmucker Technologie in Germany, for North Korea to “become a player in the ICBM game, they would have to develop a different kind of missile, with higher performance. And if they do that seriously, we would have to see flight tests every other month, over several years.” [2] The North Korean missile “was developed as a satellite launcher and not as a weapon,” Schiller says. “The technology was suited only for satellite launch.” Brian Weedan, a space expert at the Secure World Foundation, agrees, and points out that the missile took a sharp turn to avoid flying over Taiwan and the Philippines. “That is definitely something more associated with a space launch than with a ballistic missile launch. It’s not what you would expect to see with a missile test.” [3]

The Unha-3 is simply too small for the job of delivering a nuclear warhead, even assuming that the DPRK had miniaturized a nuclear bomb, an endeavor requiring significant time and effort. The North Koreans would also need to develop a long-range guidance system and a reentry vehicle capable of withstanding the heat of returning through the atmosphere. Experts consider the DPRK to be years away from achieving such steps. [4]

In regard to North Korea’s satellite launches, Lewis Franklin and Nick Hansen of Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation remark, “The oft-repeated phrase ‘readily convertible to an ICBM’ posed by non-technical policy experts is engineering-wise unsupportable.” They explain that while other nations have utilized ICBMs for sending satellites into space, conversion of a light missile like the Uhha-3 into an ICBM “requires considerable redesign and testing, and no country has taken this route.” [5]

The other aspect of the launch that the U.S found so provocative was its violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1874 of June 12, 2009, which enjoined the DPRK from conducting “any launch using ballistic missile technology.” That resolution was prompted by a North Korean nuclear test. Yet, when Israel, Pakistan and India — all non-signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — not only performed testing, but proceeded to build substantial nuclear arsenals and missiles capable of delivering nuclear payloads, no action was forthcoming. This double standard has not gone unnoticed in the DPRK, which understands that the distinction between the North Korean case and that of Israel, Pakistan and India hinges on the latter three nations being U.S. allies, while for decades it has been the target of Western sanctions, threats and pressure.

Interestingly enough, India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapon-capable ballistic missiles at around the time of North Korea’s failed satellite launch on April 12, 2012. [6] The Indian and Pakistani missiles did not carry satellites; these were purely military tests, a fact which did not perturb the Obama Administration. Criticism was reserved for North Korea alone, while in regard to India’s test, U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner merely noted that the U.S. has a “very strong strategic and security partnership with India.” [7] Following Pakistan’s launch, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland’s only comment was, “What’s most important is that they do seem to have taken steps to inform the Indians.” [8] These mild remarks contrasted with the vociferous abuse poured upon North Korea for its non-nuclear capable missiles carrying satellites.

Since the April ballistic missile launches, India and Pakistan have continued their tests, including India’s test of a nuclear-capable ballistic missile fired from underwater, part of its program to develop submarine-based nuclear missiles. [9] India conducted its underwater ballistic missile test on January 27, only a few days after the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on North Korea for putting a satellite into orbit.

When North Korea launched its satellite, India condemned the launch as “unwarranted,” and termed it an action adversely impacting peace and stability. [10] That same day, India test fired its nuclear-capable Agni-I ballistic missile, again without complaint by the U.S. [11] And just days after passage of the UN Security Council resolution against the DPRK, Japan put two spy satellites into space, both aimed at North Korea. [12] Not surprisingly, these missile launches evoked no complaint from U.S. officials.

South Korea successfully placed its own satellite into orbit on January 30, 2013, with the complete support of the U.S., which only added to North Korea’s growing sense of irritation over the blatant double standard. The hypocrisy is quite breathtaking. The U.S. sits atop the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, possesses the largest military machine on earth, regularly invades or bombs other nations, threatens nations who refuse to bend to its will, turns a blind eye to tests of ballistic missiles by India, Pakistan and Israel, and it condemns the small nation of North Korea for engaging in “provocative” behavior by sending a peaceful satellite into space.

The DPRK bears the distinction of being the only nation to have a UN Security Council resolution in effect banning it from launching a satellite. Yet, the international outer space treaty affirms that outer space “shall be the province of all mankind,” and that “Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind.” [13] Note the language used here: “without discrimination of any kind.” This is absolutely unambiguous. The treaty does not say “except when the powerful choose to deny this right to a small nation.”

Western analysts argue that when a UN Security Council resolution contradicts international law, it is the resolution that takes precedence. That view makes a mockery of international law, which ceases to have any meaning when it can be discarded at will by imperial dictate.

The UN Charter tasks the Security Council to deal with matters relating to “threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, or acts of aggression.” The DPRK Central Committee of the Workers Party of Korea explains that its satellite launches for peaceful purposes “bear no relationship with the issues of international peace and security.” Moreover, the Security Council has never seen fit to take issue with such nations as the United States and Japan “that are speeding up militarization by launching innumerable spy satellites.” [14]

Sensing that the DPRK’s impending satellite launch would present a welcome opportunity, the U.S. started lining up support for imposing further sanctions on the DPRK well before the launch took place. Already the most heavily sanctioned nation on earth, North Korea’s economy could only suffer more damage from new sanctions. That was precisely the Obama Administration’s aim.

In anticipation of North Korea’s missile launch, South Korea under the ever-hostile administration of Lee Myung-bak, worked with other nations to identify the few remaining international bank accounts held by North Korea which had not yet been closed due to U.S. pressure. The hope was that North Korea could be completely blocked from engaging in international trade. The Lee Administration, too, perceived the missile launch as an opportunity to inflict further economic damage on its neighbor to the north. [15]

The Chinese advocated resuming the six-party talks, which were last held in December 2008. “China really believes that we ought to re-engage with North Korea,” U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke remarked, but “we don’t believe that we should be rewarding their bad behavior by sitting down and talking with them.”  U.S. diplomats adamantly ruled out talks. During negotiations in December 2012, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice bluntly told a Chinese diplomat that his nation’s resistance to additional sanctions was “ridiculous.” Rice demanded that North Korea face “consequences” for its satellite launch. [16]

U.S. officials are fond of saying that they will not reward the DPRK for its “bad behavior” by talking with its officials, but one cannot help but wonder: just whose behavior is bad? North Korean officials, whose nation exercised its right under international law and put a peaceful satellite into orbit, a right granted to all nations, and who want dialogue, or U.S. officials, who petulantly refuse to engage in negotiations, and who only know how to bully and intimidate?

The first task was to get China onboard with the concept of imposing new sanctions on its neighbor. High-ranking U.S. and South Korean diplomats met with their Chinese counterparts in Beijing on December 17, 2012. The Chinese opposed sanctions, preferring a prudent response. “The Chinese side repeated its stance that it wants to keep peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula,” a South Korean diplomatic source revealed. But the U.S. had “a strong willingness” to impose sanctions. “The U.S. is also sending a message to China that it will have no choice but to beef up its military readiness against North Korea’s threats unless a resolution is adopted at the U.N. Security Council.” [17]

The United States had already taken a number of steps to increasingly militarize its relations with South Korea in recent months, and it is probable that the threat to expand the U.S. military presence in the region finally persuaded the Chinese to back UN sanctions, despite their inevitable destabilizing effect. A U.S. military buildup in the region would serve a double purpose, aimed not only at North Korea but surely China as well. The Chinese were also keen to avoid straining relations with the U.S, an important trading partner.

Once the U.S. and South Korea won Chinese agreement for a UN Security Council resolution, the Obama Administration had a wish list of harsh measures that it wanted to implement via the resolution. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland announced that the Obama Administration’s plan was “to continue to increase the pressure on the North Korean regime. And we’re looking at how best to do that, both bilaterally and with our partners going forward. Until they get the message, we’re going to have to continue to further isolate this regime.” Responding to a reporter who commented that North Korea “has long wanted direct talks with the U.S.,” and asked if the U.S. would consider that or stick to the six-party format, Nuland dismissively replied, “We and our partners are not in the business of rewarding them.” [18] There would be no talks of any kind.

U.S. negotiators insisted that the UN Security Council pass a resolution rather than a presidential statement, so that it would carry more force. Under pressure, the Chinese relented. The specific sanctions to be imposed were another matter. There the Chinese were more successful. The U.S. wanted to maximize the damage that would be inflicted on the North Korean people. Chinese Ambassador to the UN Li Baodong said, “The initial draft prepared by the UNSC contained a number of sanctions, but China believed that such measures would not be helpful in defusing the situation and would only cause harm to the North Korean economy and the lives of its people. As a result of more than a month of protracted negotiations, these provisions were removed from the final draft of the resolution.” [19]

UN Security Council resolution 2087 passed unanimously on January 22, 2013, ordering the DPRK to cease launching satellites, and that “any further such activities” would result in its “determination to take significant action.” A number of measures were imposed, including travel bans and asset freezes on specified individuals involved in the DPRK’s space program and banking officials assisting in its financial dealings. Asset freezes were also slapped on the North Korean Committee for Space Technology and North Korean banks and firms involved in the space program, essentially blocking those organizations from engaging in normal international financial transactions. [20]

The U.S. and South Korea immediately began planning further sanctions that they could impose on a bilateral basis. The U.S. had already stopped food aid to North Korea many months beforehand. Among the alternatives the U.S. and South Korea discussed were stepping up inspections of North Korean ships and ways to hamper North Korean ships from travelling near the Korean Peninsula. [21] The U.S. Treasury Department wasted little time in implementing its first set of bilateral sanctions, acting the day after passage of the UN Security Council resolution. It announced that all assets under U.S. control would be frozen held by two North Korean bankers and Hong Kong-based Leader International Trading Limited. [22]

South Korea had already revised its Public Order in Open Ports Act so that it required entry clearance for container ships having visited a North Korean port during the prior 180 days; an increase from the earlier 60 day limit. A South Korean official said that Seoul intended to target shipments into and out of the DPRK. “We are considering sanctions in marine transport. Now that we have already set the legal grounds, we will start talks with other countries over additional sanctions.” [23] The intention is to cut maritime supply routes to North Korea.

Pressure on North Korea is two-fold: economic sanctions and military presence. In the midst of UN Security Council deliberations, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta called for the reorientation of NATO, to “broaden the scope of our alliance security discussions beyond European and regional issues.” The U.S. has led the expansion of NATO military operations first in its bombing operations in the Balkans, then later in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. The aim is for NATO to support aggressive U.S. military operations, across all continents that adjoin Europe and the Mediterranean. “In particular,” Panetta continued, “I strongly believe that Europe should join the United States in increasing and deepening defense engagement with the Asia-Pacific region…The bottom line is that Europe should not fear our rebalance to Asia; Europe should join it.” [24]

However, there is one thing one can say about the North Koreans.  They are never cowed by imperial bullying.

Shortly before passage of the UN Security Council resolution, the DPRK sent a message to the United States, calling for negotiations to settle security concerns. That message apparently went unanswered. [25]

As soon as the UN resolution passed, the Foreign Ministry of the DPRK issued its response, stating that it “flatly rejects the unjust acts of the UNSC aimed at wantonly violating the sovereignty of the DPRK and depriving it of the right to launch satellites for peaceful purposes. The hostile forces are seriously mistaken if they think they can bring down the DPRK with sanctions and pressure.” The Foreign Ministry asserted that the “DPRK will continue to exercise its independent and legitimate right to launch satellites for peaceful purposes while abiding by the universally recognized international law on the use of space for peaceful purposes.” Furthermore, “the DPRK will continuously launch satellites for peaceful purposes.”

Noting that U.S. hostility remains unchanged, the DPRK Foreign Ministry concluded that “the prospect for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula has become gloomier,” and so “there may be talks for peace and stability…but no talks for the denuclearization of the peninsula.” North Korea, it said, “will take steps for physical counteraction to bolster the military capabilities for self-defense, including nuclear deterrence…to cope with the evermore undisguised moves of the U.S. to apply sanctions and apply pressure against the DPRK.” [26] First a peace settlement must be reached; only then can talks on denuclearization can proceed.

Events on the Korean Peninsula are heading in a potentially dangerous direction. New sanctions on the DPRK and the refusal of the Obama Administration to engage in dialogue have eliminated any exit strategy. North Korea, feeling threatened, may conduct another nuclear test to further develop the best defense it has against military aggression and to assert its independence. However, South Korea promises “very grave consequences” if it follows that path. [27] The U.S. has made similarly threatening statements.

According to South Korean presidential national security advisor Chun Yung-woo, consequences must be imposed on the DPRK that it finds intolerable. North Korea must choose between nuclear weapons or its survival, he declared. “No other options must be allowed.” [28]

Ratcheting up pressure on the DPRK, the U.S. and South Korea kicked off joint naval military exercises in the East Sea on February 4, 2013, including the nuclear submarine USS San Francisco. “Through this joint military exercise, we will be able to deliver a message to North Korea that if they engage in a defiant act, it won’t be tolerated,” warned Jung Seung-jo, chairman of the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff. [29]

North Korea has always responded in kind. When approached diplomatically, it negotiates and when threatened, it resists. Neither the U.S. nor South Korea is open to dialogue at the present time. Both are bent on exacerbating tensions.

China is attempting to dissuade the DPRK from carrying out another nuclear test, aware of the dangers that U.S. and South Korean aggressive reaction could present. But even if North Korea refrains from conducting another nuclear test, it is clear that the U.S. is seeking a pretext — any pretext — to squeeze North Korea harder, and it may not take much to plunge the Korean Peninsula into a terrible crisis.

Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and on the Advisory Board of the Korea Truth Commission. He is the author of the book Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem, and the Pursuit of Profit.

http://www.amazon.com/Strange-Liberators-Militarism-Mayhem-Pursuit/dp/1595265708

Notes

[1] http://www.satelliteonthenet.co.uk/index.php/2012

As David Atkins over at Digby’s place noted in regard to this wingnut, “Republicans are reaping what they sowed. They rode this circus to power for 30 years using the Southern Strategy and now they get to live with it. Try as they might, the RNC isn’t going to get away from this anytime soon. They can run Marco Rubio for President all they’d like, but countless politicians like this guy will be making headlines for years and years to come, wiping away Republican support from decent-minded communities everywhere.

Here’s more from Lee Fang’s article Rachel mentioned in the clip above: Meet Jason Rapert, the Koch-Backed Evangelical Steering Arkansas’s Radical Abortion-Restriction Effort:

On Wednesday, the Arkansas legislature lurched forward with a radical measure to ban most abortions if a fetal heartbeat is detected within six weeks of a pregnancy, a requirement experts say will force the state to insert a probe into a woman’s vagina to detect.

The bill also penalizes doctors who perform abortions after the arbitrary cut-off date with a Class D felony, carrying up to six years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. The chief sponsor of the measure is Republican State Senator Jason Rapert, a fiddle-playing financial planner with his own evangelical outreach center that hosts mission trips to Uganda, Ghana and the Philippines. He has been among the loudest anti-abortion politicians in the state, and has sponsored a number of other radical bills, including a very strange effort to organize a constitutional convention to give state legislatures power over the national debt limit.

Here he is at a Tea Party rally from 2011, not only complaining about Obama’s Ramadan event but also warning the president that his people have had enough of “minorities” running the country (emphasis added):

RAPERT: I hear you loud and clear, Barack Obama. You don’t represent the country that I grew up with. And your values is not going to save us. We’re going to take this country back for the Lord. We’re going to try to take this country back for conservatism. And we’re not going to allow minorities to run roughshod over what you people believe in!

[…]

In another part of the same speech, Rapert proudly declares himself a birther and attacks the state Supreme Court for knocking down a ban on gay adoptions as example of “minority interests running roughshod over you and me.”

While Rapert certainly enjoys wide support in many corners of the evangelical movement (here he is Rev. John Hagee), what interests me is how many white-shoe corporations stepped in to support his candidacy last year. A look at his final campaign finance report reveals direct corporate dollars and corporate political action committees sponsored by companies supposedly friendly to women:

Here are some examples: Southwestern Energy Company PAC gave $2,000; ARCH PAC, of Arch Coal, gave $1,000; Eli Lilly and Company gave $500; Lisa Allen, an executive with Cox Communications, gave $1,000; Nucor Corp PAC of AR gave $500; AT&T Arkansas PAC gave $2,000; Verizon gave $1,000; and American Electric Power PAC gave $500. Read on…

Go read the rest for more on his donors, including as the title of the piece notes, the Koch brothers. Here’s more on him from Think Progress:

Rapert’s other proposals include amending the U.S. Constitution to give state legislatures control of the federal debt limit and for the absolute elimination of all parole for state prisoners.

The leader of the foreign-backed Syrian opposition coalition has once again expressed readiness for holding dialogue with the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib, who heads the National Coalition for Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, said on Monday that negotiating with Assad would not be treason.

On Wednesday, Khatib announced that he is ready for “direct discussions” with representatives of the Syrian government in Cairo, Tunis or Istanbul.

However, he added that there are “basic conditions” before holding talks with the Syrian officials over the crisis in the Arab country.

For the second time on Friday, Khatib said that the government should release prisoners as a gesture of goodwill in exchange for talks.

The so-called Syrian National Coalition and other foreign-backed opposition groups have insisted in the past that President Bashar al-Assad must step down before any negotiations.

Many people, including large numbers of security forces, have been killed in the turmoil that erupted in Syria nearly two years ago.

In a key speech on January 6, Assad stated that Damascus was always ready to hold talks with the opposition and political parties and that he would call for a “comprehensive national dialog” after the terrorist activities stopped in the country.

The US and its allies, who are supporting the anti-Damascus militants with funds and weaponry, continue to demand the downfall of the Assad government.

PG/JR

In a rare move for coastal preservation, New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo is rebuking the trend of knee-jerk rebuilding and rampant coastline development by proposing a buyout of flood-prone properties damaged by Superstorm Sandy to restore as wetlands and other “natural buffers.”

An image of coastal community, the Rockaways, after Sandy swept through. (Photo: ma neeks via flickr) On Friday, the Governor’s aides presented their hurricane response plan, including the proposed buyout program, to federal officials. The state is proposing to spend as much as $400 million of the $51 billion disaster relief package, which Congress approved last week, on the purchase of the “10,000 or so homes built on the 100-year flood plain.”

As NBC Meteorologist John Morales wrote on Twitter, “Finally! Someone proposes a better idea than ‘we shall rebuild!'”

The New York Times reports:

Residents living in flood plains with homes that were significantly damaged would be offered the pre-storm value of their houses to relocate; those in even more vulnerable areas would be offered a bonus to sell; and in a small number of highly flood-prone areas, the state would double the bonus if an entire block of homeowners agreed to leave.

The land would never be built on again. Some properties could be turned into dunes, wetlands or other natural buffers that would help protect coastal communities from ferocious storms; other parcels could be combined and turned into public parkland.

“At one point, you have to say maybe Mother Nature doesn’t want you here. Maybe she’s trying to tell you something,” Cuomo told the New York Daily News. And last month in his State of the State address, the Governor alluded to the plan, declaring “there are some parcels that Mother Nature owns.”

The widespread destruction caused by Sandy has renewed the call for the preservation of protective coastal features, such as wetlands and dunes, and enhanced scrutiny of intense coastal development–particularly in the face of global warming-enhanced storm systems. The proposed purchase program is evidence that governments may be heeding nature’s call.

“Sandy showed us that coastal states and communities need effective strategies, tools and resources to conserve, protect, and restore coastal habitats and economies at risk from current environmental stresses and a changing climate,” said Margaret A. Davidson of NOAA’s Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management.

The state is still waiting on approval from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, but Cuomo is reportedly optimistic that details of the program will be announced in the next two weeks.

Rajoy tried to assert some confidence in Spain this morning (#Fail) but the realization of the potential for fraud tape-bombs being everywhere in Europe’s financial and political elite appears to be pricing in. All five of Italy’s largest banks are halted currently (all down 8-12% from Friday’s open) as the broad stock markets continue to sink (despite short-selling bans – so don’t blame them nasty bearish speculators). Even more dramatic is the blow-out in European financial credit spreads. The Subordinated financials spread has been on the rise from the first day of 2013 – and has now seen its biggest 3-week loss in over 14 months! There is a way to play this trend in the US…

• *UBI BANCA HALTED AFTER FALLING 4.6% IN MILAN :UBI IM
• *MEDIOBANCA SHRS HALTED AFTER FALLING 4.9% IN MILAN :MB IM
• *BANCO POP SHRS HALTED AFTER FALLING 5% IN MILAN :BP IM
• *UNICREDIT SHRS HALTED AFTER FALLING 7.4% IN MILAN :UCG IM
• *INTESA SHRS HALTED AFTER FALLING 4.9% IN MILAN :ISP IM

European sub financials have smashed wider all year – biggest loss in 14 months

with Spanish stocks plunging back to bonds reality (and EUR still disconnected)…

as Spanish bond spreads start to decompress from a previous unreality…

all of which has happened post-LTRO as that free-money may just have had the effect we said…

as Italian Bank stocks (all banned from short-selling) continue to plunge…

and if you want to play this trend – EUFN (the US-based European Financial ETF) has not pulled lower (yet) as risk increased in Europe…

Charts: Bloomberg

Rajoy tried to assert some confidence in Spain this morning (#Fail) but the realization of the potential for fraud tape-bombs being everywhere in Europe’s financial and political elite appears to be pricing in. All five of Italy’s largest banks are halted currently (all down 8-12% from Friday’s open) as the broad stock markets continue to sink (despite short-selling bans – so don’t blame them nasty bearish speculators). Even more dramatic is the blow-out in European financial credit spreads. The Subordinated financials spread has been on the rise from the first day of 2013 – and has now seen its biggest 3-week loss in over 14 months! There is a way to play this trend in the US…

• *UBI BANCA HALTED AFTER FALLING 4.6% IN MILAN :UBI IM
• *MEDIOBANCA SHRS HALTED AFTER FALLING 4.9% IN MILAN :MB IM
• *BANCO POP SHRS HALTED AFTER FALLING 5% IN MILAN :BP IM
• *UNICREDIT SHRS HALTED AFTER FALLING 7.4% IN MILAN :UCG IM
• *INTESA SHRS HALTED AFTER FALLING 4.9% IN MILAN :ISP IM

European sub financials have smashed wider all year – biggest loss in 14 months

with Spanish stocks plunging back to bonds reality (and EUR still disconnected)…

as Spanish bond spreads start to decompress from a previous unreality…

all of which has happened post-LTRO as that free-money may just have had the effect we said…

as Italian Bank stocks (all banned from short-selling) continue to plunge…

and if you want to play this trend – EUFN (the US-based European Financial ETF) has not pulled lower (yet) as risk increased in Europe…

Charts: Bloomberg

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Ten years ago, Katharine Gun, then a 28-year-old British intelligence officer, saw an e-mailed memo from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) that confirmed for her in black and white the already widespread suspicion that the U.S. and U.K. were about to launch war against Iraq on false pretenses.

Doing what she could to head off what she considered, correctly, an illegal war of aggression, she printed a copy of the memo and arranged for a friend to give it to the London Observer. “I have always ever followed my conscience,” she said, explaining what drove her to take such a large risk.

Those early months of 2003 were among the worst of times — and not just because the U.S. and U.K. leaders were perverting the post-World War II structure that those same nations designed to stop aggressive wars, but because the vast majority of U.S. and U.K. institutions including the major news organizations and the nations’ legislatures were failing miserably to provide any meaningful check or balance.

The common excuse from politicians, bureaucrats, editors and other opinion leaders was that there was no way the momentum toward war could be stopped, so why take on the career damage that would result from getting in the way. And if Ms. Gun were made of lesser stuff, she might have hidden behind a similar self-serving excuse or found solace in other comforting rationalizations, like the government must know what it’s doing, or what do I, a Mandarin-to-English translator, know about Iraq.

But Katharine Gun could smell a rat, as well as the sulfur of war, and she would not put her career and comfort ahead of the slaughter and devastation that war inevitably brings to innocent people. In that, she distinguished herself, just as many others in positions of authority disgraced themselves.

Missing WMD

In fall 2002, Iraq’s leader Saddam Hussein shocked the world by agreeing to a very intrusive U.N. inspection regime with inspectors crawling all over suspect sites in Iraq, though not finding one “weapon of mass destruction.” Since Iraq’s inventory of WMD was the main casus belli, things were getting downright embarrassing. Even a few in the domesticated “mainstream” media in the U.S. and U.K. were feeling some discomfort in merely feeding off the official statements of President George W. Bush and co-conspirator Prime Minister Tony Blair.

At that key moment, the U.S. and U.K. leaders intensified their effort to get the U.N. Security Council to approve the kind of resolution that would enable them to attack Iraq with at least a thin veneer of legality. We know from the Downing Street memos, which were leaked two years later, that U.K. Attorney General Peter Goldsmith had told Blair in July 2002 that, absent a new Security Council resolution, war on Iraq would be illegal.

So, in early 2003, the focus was riveted on the U.N. Security Council where Bush and Blair were having trouble rallying the three other recalcitrant permanent members — France, China and Russia — to support war on Iraq. Already facing that resistance, Bush and Blair were not about to brook interference by the non-permanent members. Thus, word went out to the U.S./U.K. intelligence services to ensure that none of those upstart nations did anything to complicate U.S./U.K. plans for war.

Accordingly, the NSA intensified electronic collection on those countries’ representatives (as well as on officials of the three obstinate permanent members). The Bush administration wanted to learn immediately of anything that could help win the Security Council’s approval of a resolution to make the attack “legal.”

On Jan. 31, 2003, NSA’s Frank Koza, head of “Regional Targets” (RT) sent a “HIGH-Importance,” Top Secret e-mail to Britain’s NSA counterpart, GCHQ, where Katharine Gun worked. The e-mail asked that British eavesdroppers emulate NSA’s “surge” in electronic collection against Security Council members “for insights … [on] plans to vote on any Iraq-related resolutions … the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to US goals or to head off surprises. … [T]hat means a … surge effort to revive/create efforts against UNSC members Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, as well as extra focus on Pakistan UN matters.”

Koza’s “surge” instruction left no doubt in Gun’s mind that Bush and Blair were hell-bent to have their war — legal or illegal — and that she had been correct in dismissing recent assurances by GCHQ management that she and her co-workers would not be asked to cooperate in facilitating unprovoked war.

As Gun explained later to Marcia and Thomas Mitchell, authors of The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War, she calculated that if people could see how desperate Bush and Blair were to have an appearance of legitimacy for war, “Their eyes would be opened; they would see that the intention was not to disarm Saddam but in fact to go to war.”

She made a copy of the Koza memo, walked out with it in her purse, and eventually gave it to a friend with contacts in the media. The London Observer got hold of it, was able to establish that it was authentic, and on March 2, 2003, two and a half weeks before the attack on Iraq front-paged the text of the memo with an accompanying article.

The report shook the government of Tony Blair and caused consternation on several continents. In the U.S., however, it was not a big story. For the New York Times, whose editors were either cheering on false articles about Iraq’s WMD or going into a self-protective career crouch, it was no story at all.

The U.S. intelligence agencies stonewalled any media inquiries and the journalists quickly moved on to the main event, embedding themselves inside the U.S. military as war correspondents. The story from Gun’s document — indicating a major spying initiative to coerce sovereign countries to support an unprovoked war — simply didn’t fit with the narrative of “good guy” America taking on “bad guy” Iraq.

Despite the spying, Bush and Blair failed to win approval from the Security Council to invade Iraq, forcing Bush and Blair to lead a “coalition of the willing” and counting on the cowardice and complicity of the U.S./U.K. mainstream news media to ignore the inconvenient truth about the illegality of the invasion.

Confession and Charge

Gun soon confessed to what she had done. She later explained to the Mitchells: “I’m pretty rubbish at telling lies … and I try to be an honest person. … I have to say that I’ve only ever followed my conscience. And it, my conscience, is such a nuisance.”

On Nov. 13, 2003, she was charged with violating the UK’s Official Secrets Act. She planned to plead “not guilty,” stressing that she acted to prevent imminent loss of life in an illegal war.

Gun’s pro bono lawyers insisted that the Blair government produce the opinions of U.K. Attorney General Peter Goldsmith on the legality of the war but the government refused. It was already widely known, well before the leak of the Downing Street memos, that Goldsmith initially advised that an attack on Iraq would be illegal without a second U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing it, and that, only after intense consultation with several lawyers from the White House, Goldsmith showed the required flexibility and changed his mind.

Blair was not about to release such damning documents. Even the usually docile UN Secretary General Kofi Annan finally got around to acknowledging the obvious and agreeing that the attack on Iraq was illegal, albeit Annan found his voice only well after the butchery was underway.

So, when Gun’s case came to court on Feb. 25, 2004, her lawyers did not need to argue that trying to stop an illegal act (a war of aggression) trumped Gun’s obligations under the Official Secrets Act. The Blair government clearly did not want to let Lord Goldsmith’s dirty laundry hang out on the line. Within half an hour, the prosecution dropped the case and Katharine Gun walked.

The Sam Adams Award

For her courage and commitment to principle, Katharine Gun was the second recipient of the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. The citation read at the presentation on April 14, 2004, noted that:

“Heeding the dictates of conscience and true patriotism, Ms. Gun put her career and her very liberty at risk trying to prevent the launching of an illegal war. That she is here with us today and not in a prison cell bespeaks a tacit but clear admission by her government that the US/UK attack on Iraq in March 2003 was in defiance of international law.

“Ms. Gun’s beacon of light pierced a thick cloud of deception. She set a courageous example for those intelligence analysts of the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ who have first-hand knowledge of how intelligence was corrupted to ‘justify’ war, but who have not yet been able to find their voice.”

Commenting on Katharine Gun’s courage and integrity, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Dan Ellsberg had this to say:

“No one has had this story to tell before, because no one else — including myself — has ever done what Katharine Gun did: tell secret truths at personal risk, before an imminent war, in time, possibly, to avert it. Hers was the most important — and courageous — leak I’ve ever seen, more timely and potentially more effective than the Pentagon Papers.”

Fast forward to Jan. 23, 2013, in the Debate Chamber of the Oxford Union where the tenth annual Sam Adams award presentation was held before a packed house of Oxford students. Ms. Gun, her husband, and their four-year-old daughter shed their coveted privacy long enough to allow Katharine to be one of two former Sam Adams Award winners to present this year’s award.

The other was Coleen Rowley, former FBI special agent and counsel at the Minneapolis bureau, who blew the whistle on FBI and other shortcomings before 9/11 and was named one of the three Persons of the Year by Time Magazine in 2002. The Sam Adams award is named for the late CIA analyst Sam Adams who challenged false assessments of Vietcong and North Vietnamese troop strength during the height of that conflict.

The 10^th annual Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence was given to Thomas Fingar, the consummate intelligence professional who led the U.S. National Intelligence Council from 2005 to 2008 (and is now a professor in Stanford’s overseas program at Oxford).

Fingar supervised the drafting of the eye-opening National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 2007 on Iran, which differed markedly from previous estimates in assessing that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon at the end of 2003 and had not resumed such work — and key finding revalidated every year since by the Director of National Intelligence in formal testimony to Congress.

With the help of that honest assessment, U.S. military leaders and other honest officials were able to beat back pressure from Vice President Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives for an attack on Iran during 2008 — the last year of the Bush administration. (See Bush’s own memoir, Decision Points, page 419.)

Heading Off Wars of Choice

The poignancy of the moment was not lost on the audience at the Oxford Union. After Katharine Gun read the citation (text below) for the award to Tom Fingar, she turned toward Fingar, and suggested that if honest professionals like him had been supervising U.S. and U.K. intelligence analysis in 2002-2003, the warping of intelligence to support plans for war would have been prevented. And Gun could have avoided the painful choice that her conscience required.

It was quite a spectacle: One “spy” who tried her best (but failed) to stop the Iraq war was giving the Sam Adams award to another, more senior intelligence official who, simply by adhering tightly to the professional ethos of following the evidence wherever it leads, played a huge role in stopping war on Iran.

Also “giving evidence” (in British parlance) on Jan. 23 at the Sam Adams Award evening at the Oxford Union were three other former awardees besides Gun and Rowley — former U.K. ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, former NSA executive Thomas Drake and, video-linked from asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Julian Assange of WikiLeaks.

Other Sam Adams associates also spoke briefly, including former U.K. MI5 officer Annnie Machon and two of the three U.S. diplomats who resigned on principle before the attack on Iraq — Ann Wright and Brady Kiesling. Oxford Union President Maria Rioumine joined me in introductory remarks; still other associates made the trek across the Atlantic, at considerable personal expense, just to be there to honor Thomas Fingar.

Iran: Always Iran

There is yet another poignant back story here. In 2006, as Thomas Fingar was settling into his position as chief analyst for the entire U.S. intelligence community, the threats from the West and Israel directed at Iran were proliferating in an alarming way, and the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program was just in the planning stage.

Amid the calls for military action against Iran, Katharine Gun came out of seclusion and wrote an op-ed titled “Iran: Time to Leak.” Her article appeared on March 20, 2006, the third anniversary of the U.S./U.K. invasion of Iraq.

Apparently unaware of the paradigm shift toward honesty in drafting U.S. intelligence estimates, Ms. Gun drew on her own experience and tried to motivate analysts to blow the whistle when necessary, as she had done three years before:

“Truth telling and whistle blowing [continue to be] crucial after a war as ill advised as Iraq – at least it allows us to piece together the facts – but it’s too late to save lives. Where are the memos and emails about Iran now?

“I urge those in a position to do so to disclose information which relates to this planned aggression; legal advice, meetings between the White House and other intelligence agencies, assessments of Iran’s threat level (or better yet, evidence that assessments have been altered), troop deployments and army notifications. Don’t let ‘the intelligence and the facts be fixed around the policy’ this time. …

“As the political momentum builds toward a military ‘solution,’ it would be wrong to wait until the bombs have fallen on Iran and families destroyed before finally informing the public.”

Only when the Fingar-supervised NIE, Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities, emerged in November 2007 could Katharine Gun (and the rest of us) understand that integrity had been restored to the estimative analysis process. It would be extremely difficult to attack Iran with that NIE on the books. No need to leak this time.

Not to say pressures to attack Iran have disappeared. Ironically, it was Julian Assange, the Sam Adams award winner in 2010, who alerted the Oxford Union audience (via videolink from the Ecuadorian embassy) of a DreamWorks movie, “Fifth Estate,” now in production. WikiLeaks somehow got hold of the script, which paints a much more ominous picture of Iran’s nuclear intentions and capabilities and takes the customary U.S. mass-media potshots at WikiLeaks and Assange.

Not to over-use “ironic,” the timely leak of that transcript to WikiLeaks will give those of us who remain committed to combating falsehood and pro-war propaganda advance time to expose the film for what it is and dissect its none-too-subtle objectives. No rest for the weary, as the expression goes.

Meanwhile, with the example set by Thomas Fingar, and the systems he has put in place to ensure intelligence assessments are not “fixed around the policy” — as the 2002 Downing Street Memo famously depicted the fabrication of the case for war with Iraq — there is reason to hope that yet another “war of choice” can be thwarted.

Following is the citation read by Katharine Gun to accompany the award to Thomas Fingar:

“Know all ye by these presents that Thomas Fingar is hereby awarded the Corner-Brightener Candlestick, presented by Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence.

“In 2005, when Tom Fingar assumed responsibility for supervising the preparation of National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs), the discipline of intelligence analysis had been corrupted on both sides of the Atlantic. We know from the Downing Street Minutes of July 23, 2002 that ‘the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy’ prior to the US/UK attack on Iraq.

“Integrity and professionalism were the only cure. Dr. Fingar oversaw the landmark 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran, which concluded with ‘high confidence’ that Iran had halted its nuclear weapon design and weaponization work in 2003. That NIE was issued with the unanimous approval of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. Its key judgments have been revalidated every year since by the Director of National Intelligence.

“The Estimate’s findings were a marked departure from earlier assessments of Iran’s nuclear program.  That it was instrumental in thwarting an attack on Iran is seen in President George W. Bush’s own memoir in which he complains that the ‘eye-popping’ findings of the 2007 NIE stayed his hand: ‘How could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?’

“Presented this 23rd day of January 2013 at Oxford University by admirers of the example set by our former colleague, Sam Adams.

Chris Huhne was urged by his son to come clean over the speeding fine row that has ended his career, explosive text messages reveal.

The furious texts from Peter Huhne, then aged 18, have emerged following the disgraced politician’s guilty plea.

The revealing messages come after Huhne announced his resignation as an MP, following pleading guilty to perverting the course of justice.

The foul-mouthed messages can be revealed for the first time today after they were read out in court.

In one, Peter told his father: “We all know that you were driving and you put pressure on mum. Accept it or face the consequences. You’ve told me that was the case. Or will this be another lie?”

The former Energy Secretary replied: “I have no intention of sending Mum to Holloway Prison for three months. Dad.”

Peter tried again: “Are you going to accept your responsibility or do I have to contact the police and tell them what you told me?”

“Discuss it with Mum,” replied his father.

The messages were sent between in 2010 and 2011 and showed Huhne’s efforts to speak to his son, who had been left distraught by his parents’ break-up.

At one point, his teenage son told his father: “I don’t want to speak to you, you disgust me.”

Chris Huhne then wrote: “I understand that I have really offended you but I hope that the passage of time will provide some perspective… I love you and I will be there to support you if you ever need it.”

His son responded: “You are right – the perspective involves me getting angrier with every day that goes by. You just don’t get it.”

Here are some more of the text messages read to the court:

2010

June 28

Chris Huhne: “Peter, just to say, I’m thinking of you and I love you very much. It would be great to talk to you, Dad.”
Peter Huhne: “Fuck off.”

Huhne had tried to write a letter to his son, sparking a negative reaction:

July 22

PH: “So nice to see our entire relationship reduced to lies and pleasantries in that letter. Do you take me for an idiot? The fact you said your parents were happier as a result of their divorce was disgusting…”
“You are the most ghastly man I have ever known. Does it give you pleasure that you have lost most of your friends?”

December 25

CH: “Happy Christmas. Love you, Dad.”

PH: “Well I hate you, so fuck off.”

December 28

CH: “Tiger, Have you had any news from St Peter’s yet? Love Dad”

No answer

CH: “Congratulations, I’m really proud of you, Dad.”

No answer

CH: “Well I’m proud and I love you, Dad.”

PH: “Leave me alone, you have no place in my life and no right to be proud. It’s irritating that you don’t seem to take the point. You are such an autistic piece of shit. Don’t contact me again, you make me feel sick.”

2011

May 21

CH: “I do hope your exams are going okay, despite everything over the last few weeks. Thinking of you, love you, Dad. PS It’s grandad’s birthday today.”

PH: “Don’t text me you fat piece of shit.”

The attempts by Huhne’s legal team to get the case thrown before his 11th-hour guilty plea have also been made public for the first time.

The politician’s legal team, led by top QC John Kelsey-Fry, sparked hours of legal argument with an application to get the case dismissed, as well as one to have the trial stayed because of an abuse of process.

Huhne had repeatedly denied the allegations, which first emerged through newspapers in 2011 – a year after he left Vicky Pryce for PR adviser Carina Trimingham, who worked on his Lib Dem leadership campaigns in 2006 and 2007.

Dismissing the claims as “simply incorrect”, he stepped down from the Cabinet to fight the charges.

While Pryce denied the charge on the grounds of marital coercion, Huhne did not enter a plea, as it became clear his lawyers would fight the case.

Reportable for the first time today Kelsey-Fry, who reportedly charges up to £20,000 a day for his services, embarked on attempts to stop the case from coming to trial, branding the prosecution’s case “at best gossamer thin”, claiming the evidence was all circumstantial.

But prosecutors said the combination of evidence led to the finger pointing at Huhne as the person behind the wheel – despite his claims he could not remember the offence.

The former Cabinet minister had a history of speeding and, with nine points, was already in danger of losing his licence, they said.

(Image: Paying Bills via Shutterstock)Chris Hedges gave this talk Saturday night in Brooklyn at the People’s Recovery Summit.

The corporate state has made it clear there will be no more Occupy encampments. The corporate state is seeking through the persistent harassment of activists and the passage of draconian laws such as Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act–and we will be in court next Wednesday to fight the Obama administration’s appeal of the Southern District Court of New York’s ruling declaring Section 1021 unconstitutional–to shut down all legitimate dissent. The corporate state is counting, most importantly, on its system of debt peonage to keep citizens–especially the 30 million people who make up the working poor–from joining our revolt.

Workers who are unable to meet their debts, who are victimized by constantly rising interest rates that can climb to as high as 30 percent on credit cards, are far more likely to remain submissive and compliant. Debt peonage is and always has been a form of political control. Native Americans, forced by the U.S. government onto tribal agencies, were required to buy their goods, usually on credit, at agency stores. Coal miners in southern West Virginia and Kentucky were paid in scrip by the coal companies and kept in perpetual debt servitude by the company store. African-Americans in the cotton fields in the South were forced to borrow during the agricultural season from their white landlords for their seed and farm equipment, creating a life of perpetual debt. It soon becomes impossible to escape the mounting interest rates that necessitate new borrowing.

Debt peonage is a familiar form of political control. And today it is used by banks and corporate financiers to enslave not only individuals but also cities, municipalities, states and the federal government. As the economist Michael Hudson points out, the steady rise in interest rates, coupled with declining public revenues, has become a way to extract the last bits of capital from citizens as well as government. Once individuals, or states or federal agencies, cannot pay their bills–and for many Americans this often means medical bills–assets are sold to corporations or seized. Public land, property and infrastructure, along with pension plans, are privatized. Individuals are pushed out of their homes and into financial and personal distress.

Debt peonage is a fundamental tool for control. This debt peonage must be broken if we are going to build a mass movement to paralyze systems of corporate power. And the most effective weapon we have to liberate ourselves as well as the 30 million Americans who make up the working poor is a sustained movement to raise the minimum wage nationally to at least $11 an hour. Most of these 30 million low-wage workers are women and people of color. They and their families struggle at a subsistence level and play one lender off another to survive. By raising their wages we raise not only the quality of their lives but we increase their capacity for personal and political power. We break one of the most important shackles used by the corporate state to prevent organized resistance.

Ralph Nader, whom I spoke with on Thursday, has been pushing activists to mobilize around raising the minimum wage. Nader, who knows more about corporate power and has been fighting it longer than any other American, has singled out, I believe, the key to building a broad-based national movement. There is among these underpaid 30 million workers–and some of them are with us tonight–a mounting despair at being unable to meet even the basic requirements to maintain a family. Nader points out that Walmart’s 1 million workers, like most of the 30 million low-wage workers, are making less per hour, adjusted for inflation, than workers made in 1968, although these Walmart workers do the work required of two Walmart workers 40 years ago.

If the federal minimum wage from 1968 were adjusted for inflation it would be $10.50. Instead, although costs and prices have risen sharply, the federal minimum wage remains stuck at $7.25 an hour. It is the lowest of the major industrial countries. Meanwhile, Mike Duke, the CEO of Walmart, makes $11,000 an hour. And he is not alone. These corporate chiefs make this much money because they have been able to keep in place a system by which workers are effectively disempowered, forced to work for substandard wages and denied the possibility through unions or the formal electoral systems of power to defend workers’ rights. This is why corporations lavish these CEOs with obscene salaries. These CEOs are the masters of plantations. And the moment workers rise up and demand justice is the moment the staggering inequality of wealth begins to be reversed.

Being a member of the working poor, as Barbara Ehrenreich chronicles in her important book “Nickel and Dimed,” is “a state of emergency.” It is “acute distress.” It is a daily and weekly lurching from crisis to crisis. The stress, the suffering, the humiliation and the job insecurity means that workers are reduced to doing little more than eating, sleeping–never enough–and working. And, most importantly, they are kept in a constant state of fear. Ehrenreich writes:

When someone works for less pay than she can live on–when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently–then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The “working poor,” as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else.

It is time to halt the sacrifice of the working poor. It is time to empower the 30 million low-wage workers–two-thirds of which are employed by large corporations such as Walmart and McDonald’s–to fight back.

Joe Sacco and I spent the last two years in the poorest pockets of the United States, our nation’s sacrifice zones, for our book “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.” We saw in Pine Ridge, S.D., Camden, N.J.–the poorest and the most dangerous city in the nation–the coalfields of southern West Virginia and the produce fields of Immokalee, Fla., how this brutal system of corporate exploitation works. In these sacrifice zones no one has legal protection. All institutions, from the press to the political class to the judiciary, are wholly owned subsidiaries of the corporate state. And what has been done to those in these sacrifice zones, those places corporations devastated first, is now being done to all of us.

There are no impediments within the electoral process or the formal structures of power to prevent predatory capitalism. We are all being forced to kneel before the dictates of the marketplace. The human cost, the attendant problems of drug and alcohol abuse, the neglect of children, the early deaths–in Pine Ridge the average life expectancy of a male is 48, the lowest in the Western Hemisphere outside of Haiti–is justified by the need to make greater and greater profit. And these costs are now being felt across the nation. The phrase “the consent of the governed” has become a cruel joke. We use a language to describe our systems of governance that no longer correspond to reality. The disconnect between illusion and reality makes us one of the most self-deluded populations on the planet.

The Weimarization of the American working class, and increasingly the middle class, is by design. It is part of a corporate reconfiguration of the national and global economy into a form of neofeudalism. It is about creating a world of masters and serfs, of empowered oligarchic elites and broken disempowered masses. And it is not only our wealth that is taken from us. It is our liberty. The so-called self-regulating market, as the economist Karl Polanyi wrote in “The Great Transformation,” always ends with mafia capitalism and a mafia political system. This system of self-regulation, Polanyi wrote, always leads to “the demolition of society.”

And this is what is happening–the demolition of our society and the demolition of the ecosystem that sustains the human species. In theological terms these corporate forces, driven by the lust for ceaseless expansion and exploitation, are systems of death. They know no limits. They will not stop on their own. And unless we stop them we are as a nation and finally as a species doomed. Polanyi understood the destructive power of unregulated corporate capitalism unleashed upon human society and the ecosystem. He wrote: “In disposing of a man’s labor power the system would, incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological, and moral entity ‘man’ attached to the tag.”

Polanyi wrote of a society that surrendered to the dictates of the market. “Robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the effects of social exposure; they would die as victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, crime, and starvation. Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighborhoods and landscapes defiled, rivers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials destroyed. Finally, the market administration of purchasing power would periodically liquidate business enterprise, for shortages and surfeits of money would prove as disastrous to business as floods and droughts in primitive society. Undoubtedly, labor, land, and money markets are essential to a market economy. But no society could stand the effects of such a system of crude fictions even for the shortest stretch of time unless its human and natural substance as well as its business organizations was protected against the ravages of this satanic mill.

The global and national economy because of this “satanic mill” continues to deteriorate, and yet, curiously, stock market levels are close to their highs in 2007 before the global financial meltdown. This is because these corporations have been able to suppress wages, slash social programs and bilk the government for staggering sums of money. The Federal Reserve purchases about $85 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities and Treasury bills every month. This means that the Fed is printing endless streams of money to buy up government debt and toxic assets from the banks. The Federal Reserve now owns assets, much of them worthless, of $3.01 trillion. This is triple what it was in 2008.

And while corporations such as Citibank and General Electric loot the Treasury they exact more pounds of flesh in the name of austerity. General Electric, as Nader points out, is a net job exporter. Over the past decade, as Citizens for Tax Justice has documented, GE’s effective federal income tax rate on its $81.2 billion in pretax U.S. profits has been at most 1.8 percent. Because of the way General Electric’s accountants play with tax liabilities the company actually receives money from the Treasury. They have several billion dollars paid to them from the federal government into company bank accounts–and these are not tax refunds. The company, as Nader argues, is a net drain on the Treasury and a net drain on jobs. It violates a host of environmental and criminal laws. And yet Jeffery Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, was appointed to be the chairman of Obama’s Jobs Council. Immelt’s only major contribution to the jobs initiative was to get rid of 37,000 of his employees since 2001. Jim McNerney, president and CEO of Boeing, who also sat on the Jobs Council, has cut over 14,000 jobs since 2008, according to Public Campaign. The only jobs the CEOs on the Jobs Council were concerned with were the ones these CEOs eradicated. The Jobs Council, which Obama disbanded this week, is a microcosm of what is happening within the corridors of power. Corporations increasingly terminate jobs here to hire grossly underpaid workers in India or China while at the same time stealing as much as fast as they can on the way out the door.

As Michael Hudson has pointed out, financialization has created a new kind of class war. The old class warfare took place between workers and bosses. Workers organized to fight for fair wages, better work hours and safety conditions in the workplace as well as adequate pensions and medical benefits. But with a country of debtors and a government that must also borrow to continue operating, Hudson says, we have changed the way class warfare works. Finance, he points out, controls state and federal policy as well as the lives of ordinary workers. It is able to dictate working conditions. The financiers, who insist that cuts be made so governments can repay loans, impose draconian austerity and long-term unemployment to, as Hudson told a Greek newspaper, “drive down wages to a degree that could not occur in the company-by-company clash between industrial employers and their workers.”

The former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, testifying before Congress, was quite open about the role of debt peonage in keeping workers passive. Greenspan pointed out that since 1980 labor productivity has increased by about 83 percent. Yet real wages have stagnated. Greenspan said this was because workers were too burdened with mortgage debts, college loans, auto payments and credit-card debt to risk losing a job. Household debt in the United States is around $13 trillion. This is only $2 trillion less than the country’s total yearly economic output. Greenspan was right. Miss a payment on your credit card and your interest rates jumps to 30 percent. Fail to pay your mortgage and you lose your home. Miss your health insurance payments, which have been spiraling upwards, and if you are seriously ill you go into bankruptcy, as 1 million Americans who get sick do every year. Trash your credit rating and your fragile financial edifice, built on managing debt, collapses. Since most Americans feel, on some level, as Hudson points out, that they are a step or two away from being homeless, they are deeply averse to challenging corporate power. It is not worth the risk. And the corporate state knows it. Absolute power, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote, depends on fear and passivity.

The only way to break this fear and passivity is to organize workers to break the cycle of mounting debt. And the first step to achieving independence from debt–the primary form of political control by the corporate state–is to raise the minimum wage. There are other solutions–forgiving mortgage and student debt, instituting universal health care, establishing a nationwide jobs program to rebuild the country’s Third World infrastructure, and green energy–but none of this will happen until we are able to mount a sustained mass movement that discredits the corporate state. This mass movement will arise, as Nader says, when we mobilize around the minimum wage.

The lowest-grade worker at the General Electric plant that makes high-tech health care devices outside Paterson in Totowa [New Jersey]–a pay grade known as the D 04–was just raised to $14,555 a year. That is under $8 an hour. The plant’s highest-paid hourly employee, known as D 16, earns $22,000. Immelt makes over $11 million a year. This vast disparity in income, and this wage abuse, is played out in every corporation in the country. No one in Washington intends to challenge it.

Only 11.3 percent of workers in this country belong to unions. This is the lowest percentage in 80 years. And nearly all these unions, and especially the AFL-CIO, have been emasculated by corporate power.

Nader is right when he warns that we are not going to be assisted in this effort by established unions. Union leaders are bought off. They are comfortable. They are pulling down at least five times what rank-and-file workers make. Nader says we have to mount protests not only outside the doors of Walmarts and General Electric plants, not only outside congressional offices, but outside the doors of the AFL-CIO. There is no established institution inside or outside government that will help us. They are all broken or complicit. But there are the 30 million working poor who, if we organize to break the system of debt peonage that holds them hostage, may be willing to rise up. We are bound with many chains and shackles. We will have to break them one at a time. But once we rise up, once we are able to threaten the corporate systems that keep us supine through fear, we will unleash a torrent of energy and passion that will confirm the worst nightmares of our corporate overlords.

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Around 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning, four dozen unionized Cablevision workers gathered outside of an executive’s door in the company’s Brooklyn office and demanded to speak to him, citing Cablevision’s “open door” policy. The workers, who voted to join Communication Workers of America (CWA) over a year ago, were upset over how contract negotiations were going–they felt that Cablevision was not addressing union concerns about pay, benefits, pensions and job security. An hour later, says CWA, the still-waiting workers were shocked to be informed by management that 25 of them were to be fired.

CWA believes that the firings were illegal retaliation, noting that the 25 workers were all key union leaders within the workplace.

“It’s definitely illegal,” says fired Cablevision worker Jerome Thompson. “[Cablevision is] basically messing with my family, my livelihood, my health benefits… What they are doing is creating an atmosphere of fear and doubt for the union. This is part of their union-busting strategy to … have all these other guys afraid to join the union or even be involved.”

The company, however, disputes the union’s interpretation of events. 

“A small number of Brooklyn technicians refused to work on Wednesday after several requests to return to their jobs. Therefore, Cablevision took legal and appropriate steps to maintain adequate staffing and ensure its Brooklyn operations are not disrupted,” wrote Cablevision in a emailed statement to Working In These Times.

“That is an absolute lie,” says Thompson. “We did not refuse to go to work. We just wanted to exercise Cablevision’s open door policy, and we said once we were able to get five minutes of their time that we would go back to work.”

A partial video of the interaction with management, released by CWA, shows workers stating they are ready to work, but wish first to speak to management under the companies’ open-door policy. “We’re not refusing,” several say.

Cablevision, however, emphasized repeatedly in telephone conversations with Working In These Times that the workers refused to go back to work. The company also denies the union’s charges that Cablevision  has not bargained in good faith.

“Cablevision has had 17 bargaining sessions with the CWA union … with several more scheduled in the coming weeks,” Cablevision wrote to Working In These Times. “We have reached tentative agreement with the union on more than 20 contract issues.”

However, CWA says that the company has bargained only on “minor issues” and not what the union views as “major issues.”

“All the issues we have agreed to were all basically things stated in the company’s handbook,” says Thompson. “The union has put a wage proposal [on] the table, and [Cablevision] blatantly did not want to talk about it. They don’t want to talk about pensions. They don’t want to talk about health benefits. They want us to have people outside of our collective bargaining unit in our area. They don’t want us to have an independent arbitrator hear firings.”

Thompson fears that the company is drawing out the negotiations in an attempt to get the union decertified. Under U.S. labor law, if after a year, a company hasn’t reach an agreement with union, members can vote to decertify.

The union, however, says it is not going to back down. On Thursday morning, CWA held a rally of over 100 workers and drew statements of support from several New York City elected officials.

“This is a blatant attack on workers,” said New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio in a statement. “It’s unacceptable, and we won’t stand for this kind of reprehensible intimidation in Brooklyn or in any borough. Cablevision must be held accountable.”

CWA union organizer Erin Mahoney says that CWA has filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) seeking an injunction to reinstate the workers. That process, however, can take five to six months.

Until they get their jobs back, Jerome Thompson says, he and the other fired workers plan on protesting every day. Thompson believes that the union “still has a lot of strength” within Cablevision.

Cablevision disagrees, saying in its statement, “The CWA union represents a small number of employees in Brooklyn, and the overwhelming majority of Cablevision employees have a direct relationship with the company. The last time Cablevision employees voted on CWA union representation, in June, Bronx technicians voted by a nearly 3-to-1 margin against joining the CWA union.”

But Thompson thinks Wednesday’s actions by Cablevision backfired, lending strength to the union: “The guys I know inside are more upset at Cablevision, because they know if they can fire me for nothing then they can fire them for nothing as well.”

French film director Francois Ozon (AFP Photo / Francois Lo Presti)

(19.6Mb) embed video

The man behind 8 Women, the enfant terrible of French cinema, François Ozon has earned a reputation for breaking conventions and taboos. The daring director told RT what triggered him to shoot his latest movie, In The House.

­“This film is about inspiration. Where does inspiration come from? It’s true that it’s everywhere. People often ask me; how do you find your stories? The stories are around us. You should just open up your eyes, or open a magazine, look out the window and imagine things. I think that the need to tell a story is a way of escaping reality. It’s a way of escaping from daily routine. I think that everyone needs that. That’s the reason people go to the cinema and read books. Art enables us to escape into the imaginary world.”

Films by Ozon are recognizable by their suspense and tension. However, according to one of the most sophisticated French filmmakers, his primary objective is not to take the public by surprise.

In The House (image from kinopoisk.ru)

­“I don’t try to surprise filmgoers above all. I try to do what I want to do, to follow my desire. And my desire is not to surprise at all cost. I just try to have an impression for myself of doing something different, not to repeat myself, even if I know that I repeat myself from one film to another. But I want it to be exciting. When you make one or two films a year, you’ve got to have tons of energy. A film is a lot of work. If you don’t want to do something new and embark on the new territories, then why create anything at all.”

In The House (image from kinopoisk.ru)

­The author of Grand Illusion, Jean Renoir said that a director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it into pieces and makes it again. Is it Ozon’s principle too?

“I’m more like Fassbinder who said that he was constructing a house with different rooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, a dining room, etc. And he said that when after he dies, others would judge what his house was like.”

His latest drama, In The House, which depicts an unusual pupil-teacher relationship, was awarded the top prize at the San Sebastián International Film Festival, as well as the Jury Prize for Best Screenplay.

“The house is a closed space where things happen. It’s true that I often need to limit the space in my films to find out what’s going on inside. This could be from my father who was a biologist and carried out experiments on animals in cages. He often put several animals in the cage and looked what would happen. Perhaps, making films is a bit like that for me too.”

In The House (image from kinopoisk.ru)

­How does a director, who studies the peculiarities of the human psyche in each of his films, usually work with actors?

“I prefer that we have relations based on trust between the actors I work with and myself. I don’t work in conflicts. I want things to happen smoothly, so we should trust each other. My role is to provoke the desire to look at my actors, to observe them. There are actors whom you want to look at, and those who you don’t feel like watching at all. So, I want others to want to look at my actors.”

Ozon says things always go wrong on set, but sometimes ‘good accidents’ happen.

“When you’re making a movie, you can’t prepare for everything. Once you’ve written a script and started shooting, nothing is like you’ve expected. Shooting is always full of problems. It’s raining when it was supposed to be sunny; the actor is not the one you wanted, so on and so forth. The job of a director is to adapt to these problems, or not to adapt and to say, I won’t shoot under these circumstances. But in this case, you’d have to be Kubrick or Spielberg. I don’t have the choice, so I shoot when I’m supposed to.”

­Valeria Paikova, RT

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Q: In what international comparison does the U.S. rank lower than its educational test scores rankings?

A: Childhood poverty.

“Today, 22 percent of our children live in poverty. The U.S has the second worst infant mortality rate among industrialized nations,” details America’s Report Card 2012, a report supported by First Focusand Save the Children to highlight the condition of children in the U.S.

Research has shown for decades that education, health and safety outcomes for children in homes struggling with poverty remain some of the greatest challenges facing this country. As America’s Report Card 2012 explains:

“We are falling behind because we are ignoring these problems. England has reduced child poverty through policies enacted with the goal to eliminate child poverty by 2020, while America has seen rising poverty levels and no national push to reverse that trend. But we can do better.”

Less often acknowledged is the fact that impoverished children are likely to be “doubly disadvantaged” — both by consequences of living in high-poverty homes and high-poverty communities. One response to the disadvantages of high-poverty communities included the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) implementing the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) for Fair Housing program in the mid-1990s:

“MTO recruited more than 4,600 families with children living in severely distressed public housing projects in five cities (Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City). HUD offered some MTO families the opportunity to use a housing voucher to move into private-market housing in lower poverty neighborhoods and did not make the same offer to others.”

Data from the two comparison groups have provided a basis for long-term analysis of whether addressing community characteristics could improve the outcomes of high-poverty children in education, health and safety.

That research on MTO, “The Long-Term Effects of Moving to Opportunity on Youth Outcomes” (2012), details that despite efforts to address community-based disadvantages connected with poverty, long-term data show:

“Overall, MTO had few detectable effects on a range of schooling outcomes, even among those children who were of preschool age at study entry, and few detectable effects on physical health outcomes. In other outcome domains, the long-term survey found that MTO had patterns of effects that were similar to, but more muted than, those the interim follow up survey found, with favorable patterns among female youth–particularly on mental health outcomes–and less favorable patterns among male youth.”

This report is a sobering, although incomplete, message for confronting the negative consequences of poverty and inequity in the homes, communities and schools of American children.

The Doubly Disadvantaged Children in Poverty

Despite the apparent ineffectiveness of the program, MTO represents a bold policy commitment to confronting poverty and inequity in the lives of children:

“These patterns [school dropout, low test scores, and delinquency] have led to a longstanding concern that neighborhood environments may exert an independent causal effect on the life chances of young people. Because low-income individuals comprise nearly one-half of the 8.7 million people living in census tracts with poverty levels of 40 percent or higher (Kneebone, Nadeau, and Berube, 2011), poor children growing up in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty may be ‘doubly disadvantaged’–they face potential risks from growing up in a low-income household and in an economically poor neighborhood.”

While the report and program address many aspects of MTO’s impact on children’s lives, the data concerning education may hold the most important cautions for the current education reform movement, particularly as MTO data impact debates about in-school reform versus wrap-around models for education reform.

Wrap-around education reform, as exemplified by programs like the Harlem Children’s Zone, has received uncritical praise in the media, as well as from President Obama and Michelle Obama. Advocates of wrap-around models for education reform believe that, alongside in-school reform measures, the conditions of a child’s home and the parents themselves require support in order for better educational outcomes to be achieved.

Yet some have rejected wrap-around models, endorsing school-only reform, because, as Michelle Croft and Grover J. Whitehurst of the Brookings Instituteargue, “[t]here is no compelling evidence that investments in parenting classes, health services, nutritional programs, and community improvement in general have appreciable effects on student achievement in schools in the U.S.”

MTO represents a less well publicized effort to help children overcome not just home disadvantages but also community inequity.

In most reform efforts, the policy focus remains on the schools themselves as a mechanism to overcome poverty indirectly. While the debates about how to reform education and how to address poverty remain contentious, the evidence is growing that poverty and inequity are reflected in and perpetuated by community-based public schools, suggesting that school-only reform is inadequate.

Decades of data–for example, results from the SAT–have detailed a strong correlation between family income/parental education and student test scores. More recently, the evidence also reveals that schools and students are strongly impacted by the communities within which they sit.

One analysis, “A Rotting Apple: Education Redlining in New York City” shows that New York communities are segregated by economic status, and in return, the children in high-poverty neighborhoods attend schools that serve concentrated inequity and struggle with low test scores. High-poverty neighborhoods surround high-poverty schools, and evidence suggests those schools reflect the inequity of the neighborhood, but fail to overcome it.

As Pedro Noguera explains in the report’s preface:

“Unfortunately, this same pattern of disparity is found in students’ access to good schools and to all of the opportunities that accompany this access. As this report from the Schott Foundation reveals, more often than not, the opportunity to learn and to attend a high performing school is largely determined by the neighborhood in which a child lives.”

A similar national study, “Housing Costs, Zoning and Access to High-Scoring Schools,” confirms that inequity in the home and community determines students’ access to high-quality opportunities in their schools:

“With these challenges in mind, policy leaders have taken a number of steps over the past few decades to expand access to high-quality education for disadvantaged groups….While all of these efforts deserve careful consideration, none directly addresses one of the central issues that limit educational opportunity for low-income and minority children: their disproportionate concentration in low-performing schools.”

MTO, too, failed to produce the outcomes expected on this front: for example, the program’s attempt to move children out of high-poverty neighborhoods did not guarantee they would attend higher quality schools. In fact, as the report lays out, the schools attended by the children whose families received vouchers were “still usually in the bottom one-fourth of the statewide performance distribution” — giving proof to the deep complexity of what is required to effectively address the multiple disadvantages of children living and learning in poverty.

Moreover, these “doubly disadvantaged” children are likely to find inequity of opportunity continues beyond K-12 schooling as well.

At City Limits, Norm Fruchter, reporting on college readiness and neighborhood demographics, explains that college access parallels access to high-quality schools for children in impoverished neighborhoods:

“…After a decade of reform efforts, ZIP code and income are still the major factors predicting college success for New York City’s high school graduates. Is Demography Still Destiny?, a study recently conducted by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform (AISR), found that the college readiness rates of the city’s high school graduates were strongly and negatively correlated with the percentage of black and Latino residents in the city’s neighborhoods.”

In the context of the research linking home, community, and educational inequity in the U.S., the disappointing findings about the impact of MTO highlight the inevitable failure of attempting to overcome poverty indirectly— by adopting in-school reforms including Common Core State Standards (CCSS), Teach for America (TFA), Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools, and value-added methods (VAM) of teacher evaluation — rather than confronting poverty directly, through social programs that impact food security, job security and healthcare.

The MLK Imperative: Addressing Poverty Directly

In a 2010 speech celebrating a new era in high-stakes testing based on CCSS, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan invoked “the American promise of education as the great equalizer.”

Duncan’s rhetoric reflects the current education reform focus on school-based education practices as levers to eradicate social inequity and poverty.

The research findings related to education from the long-term implementation of MTO suggests once again that indirect methods of overcoming poverty–school-based reforms focusing on standards, tests, and teacher quality–are misguided, regardless of political promises.

Recently, drawing on her work at FairTest, Lisa Guisbond challenged school-based education reform and its connection with equity and opportunity goals:

“If Rev. King were with us, he would surely see that schools in poor communities remain both severely segregated and underfunded. This affects class size, access to science labs, books, art and music. It also affects teachers and principals, many of whom quickly burn out and leave a challenging school or the profession itself.”

While the evidence is overwhelming that education inequity in American schools must be addressed, Guisbond adds: “Facing test-driven accountability, many schools have narrowed curriculum by reducing or dropping untested subjects such as social studies, science, art, music and gym.…As with other failures of educational opportunity, the impact has been greatest in schools that serve low-income youth, particularly students of color.”

Just as the data from the MTO experiment show no clear positive outcomes for academic achievement by high-poverty students, three decades of school-based high-stakes accountability have not raised test scores and may have lowered graduation rates. Accountability policies have also not closed the achievement gap.

School-based education reform has had ample time in multiple versions to impact positively the greatest problems facing public education: Inequity of opportunity in the lives of children reflected in and perpetuated by their community-based schools. But these reforms have failed repeatedly.

One alternative approach has been ignored, however. In 1967, Dr. King offered animperative, “Final Words of Advice,” that could serve education reform well in terms of shifting commitments away from school-based policies and toward social reform:

“In addition to the absence of coordination and sufficiency, the programs [addressing poverty] of the past all have another common failing – they are indirect. Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving something else.

“I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective – the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income….

“We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished.”

While many commitments to education reform–CCSS, TFA, KIPP, and VAM–are entirely school-based and indirect attempts to fulfill Duncan’s claim of “education as the great equalizer,” ambitious efforts such as MTO and the Harlem Children’s Zone also remain indirect solutions for poverty that depend on the schools as mechanisms for social reform. As long as reform remains indirect, thus focused on the schools, wrap-around methods and ambitious programs such as MTO are likely to be ineffective in terms of academic improvement or closing the achievement gap.

Inequity in schools must be addressed through reform, but food insecurity, healthcare and job security policies must also be implemented as direct action against poverty that will then provide the context within which education reform can succeed — as Dr. King declared nearly five decades ago.

The corporate profit share of national income is near a post-World War II high. The share of income going to the richest 1 percent is almost at its pre-Depression peak.

These would seem like impressive accomplishments, but the process of upward redistribution, from Joe Sixpack to Joe Six Houses, is a never-ending struggle. Toward this end, Louisiana Governor and Republican wunderkind Bobby Jindal, has just proposed replacing the state’s income tax with a sales tax.

Sales taxes will generally be more regressive than income taxes for the simple reason that low- and moderate-income people will spend a larger share of their income than upper income people. That means that the portion of income that wealthy Louisianans save will escape taxation, imposing a larger burden on low- and middle-income families in any revenue-neutral shift.

However, saving is only part of the story in this picture. Wealthy Louisianans are likely to spend more time and money outside of the state than less affluent residents. Insofar as wealthy Louisianans spend money at out-of-state vacation homes or Parisian shopping trips, they will be creating a tax gap for the less affluent and less well traveled to fill.

In fact, fans of economics will likely point to the problem of Louisianans stepping over the border (less than an hour away from the state’s major cities) to escape the sales tax on purchases of big-ticket items like televisions and refrigerators. This will leave an even larger burden for the sales tax to cover, which will fall especially hard on those who may not have access to a car or who for other reasons might not find it as easy to take advantage of such tax-evading tourism.

So, this shift from an income tax to a sales tax looks like a big step forward in the process of upward redistribution. It’s easy to see why Jindal is considered a leading contender for the 2016 Republican nomination.

Needless to say, the wealthy dislike state income taxes every bit as much as they dislike federal ones. Insofar as they gain complete control of state governments, they will take the opportunity to shift the tax burden lower down the income ladder.

They may get help in this process from one of the widely talked about tax reforms at the federal level: limiting the total amount of tax deductions that can be taken. While this may sound like a progressive measure – requiring that everyone pay their fair share of taxes – this limit could put pressure on state governments to reduce taxes on the wealthy.

With the restoration of the Clinton-era tax rates, the highest-income taxpayers are facing a marginal tax rate of almost 40 percent. This means that almost 40 percent of the state income tax paid by the wealthiest taxpayers is, in effect, paid by the federal government, since it comes directly off their taxes.

However, if there was a cap on deductions which most of the wealthiest taxpayers actually hit, then the burden of state income taxes would fall fully on the wealthy people in the state. Needless to say, the wealthy in New York, California and other relatively high tax states will raise much more objection to state income taxes when they are paying 100 cents on every dollar rather than 60 cents on every dollar of the tax. A likely outcome will be lower state taxes on the wealthy and higher taxes and/or reduced services for everyone else.

The picture looks even less appealing when we consider that contributions to charity are likely to be excluded from the cap. This means that if a wealthy person feels bad about homelessness so that she contributes $100,000 to a charity to shelter the homeless, the federal government will pick up $40,000 of this tab. However, if she and others in the state consider sheltering the homeless to be an obligation of government that should not depend on the kindness of the wealthy, the taxes to cover the cost will be fully borne out of their own pocket.

It’s hard to see the rationale for this asymmetry, but wait: it gets worse. Suppose our rich person gives $100,000 to an opera that he and his rich friends patronize. The federal government will pick up $40,000 of that contribution, but zero for the state government’s efforts to shelter the homeless. Suppose that our rich person decides that his friend should get a $1 million annual salary to run the opera. Well, the feds are on the hook for 40 percent of his friend’s salary, but still not contributing to the state’s efforts to shelter the homeless.

The point here should be clear. The effort to cap deductions is not actually about making the rich pay higher taxes; it is about putting pressure on state governments to cut back their services. President Obama proposed limiting deductions to a 28 percent rate regardless of individuals’ tax rate. This policy makes sense as a way of getting more tax revenue from those who can most afford to pay it. Capping the deduction does not. There is a reason that Republicans support it.

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Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay. Welcome to this week’s edition of The Ratner Report with Michael Ratner.

Michael now joins us from New York. Michael’s the president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He’s chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. He’s also a board member of The Real News. And he’s got all kinds of other hats, too.Thanks for joining us, Michael.MICHAEL RATNER, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS: It’s good to be with you, Paul.JAY: So tell us what you’ve been following this week.RATNER: Well, other than getting a slight flu and a cold, I made it over to Sundance, which is the big film festival in the United States. And there I saw some films that just are–very depressing is the best way to say it–about what’s happened in America and what’s happened to the issues of torture and the rehabilitation of the CIA. The film I saw there was called Manhunt. And it’s supposedly the real story, with the real CIA agents, of how they murdered or killed Osama bin Laden. The film has the real agents in it. It has the women who were on the team. It has a man named–a CIA agent named Marty Martin, who supposedly led the team as an analyst, and then overall in charge of the team.So the first thing you recognize about a film called Manhunt is that to get the authority of the CIA to give up these agents’ names, they had to do a film that the CIA was going to like. And let me tell you, the CIA is going to like this film, or they liked it if they saw the cut before, because, first, it justifies–and completely justifies–torture. It essentially says–not essentially; it says openly that torture is how we got the clues that allowed us to kill people from al-Qaeda all over the place, including track down Osama bin Laden. And they have as the talking head in the film–and this is where I was almost ready to run out of the movie theater–they have Jose Rodriguez. Jose Rodriguez was in charge of the counterterrorism section of the CIA in the first decade, or part of the first decade, of 2000 to 2010. He is the one who destroyed the tapes of the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, supposedly waterboarded, or according to government documents, 183 times. Those tapes, the videos, were destroyed by Jose Rodriguez, who was in charge of that whole operation. Now, what was incredible is he stood on that screen, he was on that screen talking to these whole Sundance fancy upper middle class, middle class audience, saying first [unintel.] techniques, you know, shaking people, slapping them around, that’s not torture. And then the four last techniques, while he didn’t use the word, he said, that’s how we got what we needed; we have to use techniques like waterboarding, we have to use drones; that’s what we’re about. And they never say in the film–and that’s why it’s–in one way why it’s such a slanted film–they never say, this is the man, Jose Rodriguez, who actually got rid of the very videotapes of the waterboarding. So you have Rodriguez saying that. Then you have Marty Martin, who’s no longer at the CIA but apparently made a lot of money afterwards, Marty Martin again saying that, yes, these techniques are absolutely necessary. And one of the great ironies, which if people have seen Zero Dark Thirty, which is the sort of supposedly based on the truth, but the more narrative form of how they got Osama bin Laden–it’s the Kathryn Bigelow film. If you see that, in both of these films, in Manhunt and in Zero Dark Thirty, there’s the incident that happened up in Khost in Afghanistan, which is where a doctor from Jordan came in and he blew up and killed a half a dozen CIA agents, maybe more, including a woman who was involved or in charge of that base, a CIA person named Jennifer, who actually appears in the film Manhunt–and, of course, all the CIA agents are crying about how she got killed.But the incredible irony about how she got killed, about how Jennifer got killed by a person who wore a explosive belt, the Jordanian doctor, into that military base in Afghanistan, the incredible story they follow in Manhunt–and what they say is this Jordanian doctor was really angered by the Iraq War, and he started blogging against America, etc., etc., from Jordan. Eventually his house gets raided by some combination of the U.S. and their Jordanian intelligence agencies, and allegedly he turns and becomes an informant for the United States. I say allegedly because the United States made the mistake of trusting him. He comes up to that military base to give them a lead of how they’re going to reach Osama bin Laden, and what does he do? He wears an explosive belt. Because they trust him so much, they don’t inspect him, and he blows up these CIA agents.Now, I say irony about the film Manhunt and its basically lauding of interrogation techniques like waterboarding is because if you look at the Iraq War, a key link in selling the Iraq War to the United States was the claim, the claim that Saddam Hussein was supporting al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Where did that, quote, evidence come from, evidence that was used by Colin Powell, our secretary of state, at the UN? It came from the torture of a man named al-Liby by the CIA. It was false evidence, not real evidence. So here you have the irony of a CIA that is supporting torture, supporting waterboarding, being blown up by a man who is angry because of an Iraq War justified in part by a false relationship between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.Let me step back for a second and let’s go to a bigger picture. So you have Manhunt, which justifies the CIA waterboarding, torture, etc. Then you have Zero Dark Thirty, which while it’s been–enough written about it to fill a phone book, the majority of the opinions that I respect, including my own (and I saw the film), is that that film justifies torture, opens with torture (the agent eventually gets acclimated to torture), and of course doesn’t show what we did as a result of these wars to Muslims all over Afghanistan and Iraq, Pakistan. But it justifies torture, in my view, Zero Dark Thirty. You put that together with Manhunt, Zero Dark Thirty justifying torture, and you add to that two films that I think most of your viewers will be familiar with. One is called Argo, which is the recent film about how the CIA successfully helped get some people who had been–or wouldn’t have been held hostage after the Iranian Revolution in ’79, and got them out of Iran, and how the CIA played a heroic role in that. And then a film called Green Zone about the green zone in Iraq, where again there’s an avuncular CIA agent in that film getting the truth that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So now you have four films–Zero Dark Thirty, Manhunt, Argo, and Green Zone–all incredibly justifying and really rehabilitating a CIA that is known for and should be known for what it really does, which is to assassinate people and infiltrate legitimate institutions all over the world. And that’s all in the last couple of years. So what we’re seeing now in the media is really the justification of torture in two major films, and in four films really a rehabilitation of a CIA that I spent much of my life fighting against what it did in Central America, in South America, and over the world. And it leads me to, really, the last point I want to make for this talk today on torture in film, because one of the trials going on right now are the military commissions at Guantanamo. A military commission’s an illegitimate form of trial. They were set up 11 years ago by President Bush. We expected them not to be continued by President Obama. He of course continued them. They’re not like military–they’re not like court martials, they’re not like regular trials. They’re set up after the crimes have been committed, and the rules are all slanted. Those are going on in Guantanamo as we speak. And one of those people on trial now in the so-called 9/11 conspiracy case is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, if we circle back to the beginning of this talk, in Manhunt is the person who was allegedly waterboarded–not allegedly; he was waterboarded 183 times. I say allegedly because Jose Rodriguez, who is the one who destroyed the tapes of those waterboardings, says in the Manhunt film, it wasn’t really waterboarding 183 times, it was 183 pitchers of water, as if that’s somehow better. Once you get to one waterboarding, it seems you’re at 183. But in any case, we would actually know what’s going on had Jose Rodriguez–someone who I believe is a war criminal–had Jose Rodriguez not destroyed the tapes. So that trial is going on now in Guantanamo. And it’s a farce. It’s been a farce for 11 years. So it’s going on in Guantanamo. It’s a farce then; it’s a farce today.So, recently what happened is you go down to that trial, and there’s a glass window in front of you. You can’t hear anything in the courtroom. If you’re a reporter or if you’re a human rights person, you can sit behind that glass window and watch, and they feed the trial into you so you can hear what’s going on. And there’s someone who sits next to the judge with the red button, and when there’s something that’s classified that comes up in the trial, that person hits the red button and cuts off the feed so that I as a reporter or a human rights person cannot hear the classified material. None of that’s good. I object to it. It’s all bad. They classify everything. But what happened recently was really astonishing, apparently even to the judge. The feed is coming in to the reporters. All of a sudden what’s happening in the courtroom is shut off. And the judge doesn’t even know why it’s shut off. Apparently, unbeknownst to the judge, there’s another CIA person somewhere outside that court (it’s hard to believe the judge didn’t know this) somewhere with another red button. That person cuts off stuff going on at trial so the reporters can’t hear it even if the judge didn’t order it cut off. The judge, to his credit at least, or maybe to at least his credit that he thinks he controls the courtroom when he really doesn’t, got outraged and said, this isn’t going to happen anymore; I control the red button; you don’t. So the trial just goes on like that with farce after farce after farce. And the next thing that’s happened in that trial, which also is going to throw the whole thing into a tizzy: there’s only been two people convicted by trial at Guantanamo in all these many years–all these many years. And both of those trials, both of those convictions seem to be in jeopardy. One has already been overturned because they tried the person on a conspiracy count–….So there’s only been two people tried at Guantanamo by trial. Those two convictions are in great jeopardy. One has already, as I recall, been overturned because he was tried for conspiracy–that’s bin Laden’s alleged driver. And according to the court of appeals now, there’s no such crime of conspiracy that can be tried by a military commission. So that conviction is gone. But, of course, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 conspirator, is on trial for that very act, conspiracy. So the prosecutor at Guantanamo is saying, I don’t want to try him on this; he’s going to get–this conviction may be reversed; let’s not try him on this. The government, the Obama administration, says, no, no, we want to keep going forward on a conspiracy. It may be that they can’t prove anything but a conspiracy. So you have that craziness of the trials.This would have all been avoided had they brought Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the others to New York to try them as they were supposed to do, as Eric Holder supposedly wanted. And then Obama overruled Eric Holder, and then Congress got into the act. So you have these farces going on at Guantanamo. You still have a Guantanamo that’s open with 187 people there. And I’ll end on this really not optimistic note. When Obama took office 4.5 years ago, or just over 4 years ago, he promised to close Guantanamo in a year, issued an executive order to that. He appointed a special person to close Guantanamo, Ambassador Fried. Ambassador Fried was in the State Department. His one portfolio: close Guantanamo. And guess what happened a couple of days after Obama took office this time, when he just got–took the oath again? Mr. Fried no longer has a job to close Guantanamo; that office to close Guantanamo at the State Department has been closed. And now Ambassador Fried is in charge of the sanctions against Iran and Syria.So we no longer have an office to close Guantanamo. It looks to me, Paul, sadly, that something that was an abomination 11 years ago continues today. Guantanamo, indefinite detentions, and rump kangaroo trials continue. And so you put that all together, we have movies justifying all of this behavior, torture, etc. This country has gone a long way on the road to perdition.JAY: Alright. Well, one question. Go back to Sundance. How did the audience react to that film?RATNER: Oh, I’m really glad you asked that, Paul. Manhunt received standing ovations, particularly when the CIA agents took the stage. They were there. Two of the women were there and Marty Martin were there. And of course, you know, in some way it’s–understandable is not the right word, but to the audience, it looked like these CIA people were heroes. They saved us. They were looking for Osama bin Laden for years. They eventually found him. And that’s why we haven’t had a terrorist attack or that’s how they at least, you know, got to kill Osama bin Laden. So they took the stage and everybody cheered for them. So it was disheartening to see that. And as we left the theater, the people basically said that to us, because there were some people who objected to the film and said, well, you know, what about the destruction of the tapes, what about the waterboarding, isn’t this torture, and they said, we just know that these people are keeping us safe.I do want to say that it’s unclear what exactly was going on, because we also saw the best single film at Sundance, which people will see soon in this country because it was bought and it’ll be distributed in 15 markets, and that’s–[‘krOliz] was the director and Jeremy Scahill was the person they followed. He had written Blackwater. And that film was called Dirty Wars. And that’s about the drone wars going on in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, throughout the Middle East, and the consequences of those drone wars for the peoples not only in those areas, but mainly in those areas, but the blowback that’s going to have in the United States. That film also got a standing ovation. So it could be different audiences, it could be same audiences, etc. But I would say that it was impossible, impossible to make headway against what has now become, I would–the idea or the principle in this country that torture works. It was used to capture Osama or to kill Osama bin Laden, and we needed it when we needed it, and it’s justified. I mean, that sense, you have to say that Obama, despite banning the worst aspects of torture, was a total failure. Had he actually prosecuted someone like Jose Rodriguez or the people who wrote the memos or the people who carried out the waterboarding or Cheney and Bush, who ordered the waterboarding, we wouldn’t be having films like Zero Dark Thirty and Manhunt which justified torture. So I laid this, obviously, at the feet of President Bush. But Obama, for allowing this to be–for allowing torture to become essentially a political football–and I wish it were still that–but to essentially be something that people can now justify in this country, I lay that at the feet of Obama.JAY: Alright. Thanks for joining us, Michael.RATNER: Thank you, Paul.JAY: 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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Fabio Capello (RIA Novosti / Vitaliy Timkiv)

(22.6Mb) embed video

The Russian national team are preparing for a friendly against Iceland in the Spanish city of Marbella on Wednesday. The game will be regarded mainly as a test for new players in the squad.

­This year will be key for coach Fabio Capello, who is determined to guide Russia to their first World Cup since 2002. The Italian has enjoyed a dream start as Russia’s head coach. They top their World Cup group with a perfect record of four wins from as many games.
However, it’s 2013 which counts, where Russia will be looking to ensure passage to Brazil next year.

The friendly with Iceland will give Capello a good chance to look at some fringe players — something the Italian is looking to do.

“The most important thing from this training camp, which is a bit longer than usual, is that the new players, especially those who are young, get the chance to feel at home within the squad,” says Capello. “But also so they get to understand what I want from them, and also what the other players expect of them.”

Warm weather training camps are nothing new for the Russian national team. They were first introduced under Guus Hiddink, who took his side to Turkey. Capello has chosen Marbella in Spain as his destination.

The 66 year old has one eye on next month’s crucial World Cup qualifier with Northern Ireland but the Italian admits the game against Iceland won’t help him much while playing against an apparently similar opponent.

“Iceland is a team that like to keep possession and there playing system is completely different. They don’t like to play long ball football up to a target man, like Northern Ireland do, so the friendly with Iceland won’t really help us in preparation for this game,” he said.

Once again, Andrey Arshavin and Pavel Pogrebnyak have failed to make the cut. Capello explains that the former Russia captain is not getting enough first team football for his club side Arsenal.

Marat Izmailov is also not included, but it seems as though the Italian is prepared to give the Porto midfielder a chance in the future.

“The Russian season hasn’t started yet following the winter break, while the Portuguese campaign is in full swing. Therefore Izmailov would have been in a completely different physical condition to the rest of the squad if he joined our training camp,” admits Capello.
“I have already booked a trip to Portugal, and will be watching Izmailov in Porto’s Champions League clash with Malaga.”

Capello has yet to taste defeat during his reign as Russia’s head coach. Although Wednesday’s game with Iceland is only a friendly, the 66 year-old will be determined to keep his side’s unbeaten record intact. And that would provide his squad with a good confidence boost ahead of what will be one of their toughest assignments in Group F, when they take on Northern Ireland in Belfast at the end of March.

North Korea plans to conduct two nuclear tests at once, or in quick succession, South Korea said. The prediction is based on satellite data that allegedly uncovered an uptick in activity at two tunnels at the North’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site.

“There is a chance that the southern tunnel is a decoy, but we aren’t ruling out that the regime will conduct nuclear tests simultaneously at both tunnels,” South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo quoted a military source as saying.

Testing multiple devices at the same time could be part of an effort to produce smaller nuclear warheads that could be mounted on missiles, the source said.

Earlier reports suggested the test will take place before February 10 — the start of the Lunar New Year. Other reports have claimed the test will fall on February 16, the birthday of late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

The US and South Korea recently launched a joint naval drill in the Sea of Japan, east of the South Korean port city of Pohang, AFP reported. A US nuclear-powered submarine and other warships are taking part in the war games. The three-day military exercises are widely considered by observers to be a warning to Pyongyang.

“The exercise includes at-sea operating training, detecting and tracking a submarine, anti-air and anti-ship live fire training and anti-missile training,” Yonhap news agency quoted a military official as saying.

Seoul’s chief nuclear envoy, Lim Sung-nam, left for Beijing on Sunday to meet his Chinese colleague as part of last-minute diplomatic efforts to dissuade Pyongyang from another atomic test.

Over the past week, North Korea has issued a series of daily warnings threatening action over the UN sanctions imposed for its launch of a long-range rocket last December. Pyongyang has pledged the “toughest retaliation” if the sanctions are not lifted.

North Korea conducted two previous nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009. In 2012, Pyongyang proclaimed itself a “nuclear state.”

The first test was believed to have had an explosive yield of about one kiloton, while the second was twice as powerful. The atomic bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945 had a yield of about 15 kilotons. One kiloton is the equivalent of 1,000 kilograms of TNT explosives.

A Japan Airlines (JAL) Boeing 737-800 series jet liner takes off from Tokyo’s Haneda airport on February 4, 2013 (AFP Photo / Yoshikazu Tsuno)

Health warnings have been issued across Japan as the thick smog engulfing China has begun to move over the island nation; pollution levels across the country are reportedly skyrocketing.

­”Access to our air-pollution monitoring system has been almost impossible since last week, and the telephone here has been constantly ringing because worried people keep asking us about the impact on health,” an environment ministry official told AFP.

Air pollution over western Japan has far exceeded government standards recently — up to 42 percent in some cases — straining the already-tense relations between the two Asian countries.

“China is our neighbor, and all sorts of problems happen between us all the time,” local resident Takaharu Abiko told AFP. “It is very worrying. This is dangerous pollution, like poison, and we can’t protect ourselves. It’s scary.“

Japanese officials and scientists have said that citizens should not panic over the pollution, as the smog was not as bad as in similar incidents two years ago. In 2011, a cloud of suffocating smog hung over western Japan for several days.

Authorities have also warned that people with respiratory illnesses and small children should take extra care to protect themselves from the health hazard.

More air pollution will arrive in western Japan on Tuesday, the Japanese Ministry of Environment said, adding that the country’s skies will start to clear by Wednesday.

About three weeks ago, China was struck with a major upsurge in air pollution levels. By the end of January, the government was forced to announce that the air pollution presented a health threat. The increase in pollution is mostly a result of the boom in factory manufacturing in China.

The photos below show various sites in China that experienced heavy air pollution in recent days

This combination of photos shows a file photo of the Guotai Chambers building from the historic Jingshan Park (top) during heavily polluted weather on January 31, 2013, and during clear weather (bottom) on February 1, 2013 (AFP Photo / Ed Jones)

This combination of photos shows a section of the Beijing skyline (top) during heavily polluted weather on January 30, 2013, and during clear weather (bottom) on February 1, 2013 (AFP Photo / Ed Jones)

This combination of photos shows a file photo of Beijing’s Forbidden City during heavily polluted weather (top) on January 31, 2013, and during clear weather (bottom) on February 1, 2013 (AFP Photo / Mark Ralston / Ed Jones)

In Europe we are at a new stage of class confrontation. Despite the systemic crisis not only of finance but of the whole of the mode of accumulation and reproduction of ‘financial market capitalism,’ this system has been able to maintain itself. Its transnational power — largely sustained by the nature of European integration and policies — has not been seriously cracked, despite the massive destruction of public and private goods, which is constantly becoming more extreme, deepening the great crisis.

In Europe, an ‘oligarchy’ has increasingly gotten hold of various powers; it is becoming radicalized and sees the moment as having come in which brutally to accelerate the dismantling of social and democratic gains, notably by profiting from the ‘crisis of public debt,’ generalizing austerity policies which, in turn feed the crisis.[1]

The strategy of systematic de-democratization is aimed at creating conditions for brutal austerity policy whose breadth of damage and suffering for the populations has begun to be visible, notably in the countries of southern Europe. One could indeed wonder, as Hervé Kempf does in Transform! No. 10 (2012),[2] if we are still living in a democracy. Due to the profoundly neoliberal nature of the EU’s very structure, the crisis is taking on a particularly acute and destructive character there. Jean Paul Fitoussi observes:[3]

Destroying Human Capital

“Much current policy in Europe has the effect of reducing the debt while at the same time destroying an increasingly large human capital.”

The headlong rush toward austerity and ever more authoritarian forms is bringing us to the edge of an abyss, with the danger of a collapse that could drag societies into chaotic turbulence. However, opting out of the Euro, not to say the disintegration of the EU, is no alternative[4] inasmuch as the logic governing the Euro and the EU and plunging our societies into the great crisis — for example, the financialization of the economy, making wage workers and territories compete against each other, social dismantling and impoverishment of societies, privatization and commodification, the authoritarian transformation of governmental and state entities — is equally at work at the level of countries, regions and enterprises. The deep causes of the great crisis of ‘financial market capitalism’ are to be sought in the over-accumulation of money capital, which develops simultaneously with a chronic weakness of accumulation and growth.[5] The Euro, in its present conception, transmits this logic, but we can perfectly well imagine another Euro, another European Central Bank, another way of treating the problem of public debt, another set of regulations and treaties favouring not competition but cooperation.

We do not know the timing and the forms of the earthquakes to come. But we do know that we have, to the greatest extent possible, to build up the power of interpretation, strength, the capacity for cooperation and political intelligence to be able to resist and at the same time open up the construction site for a deep refoundation of Europe. And to be able to refuse a nationalist approach that would mask the true nature of the conflict with the forces of capital and would run the risk of pitting against each other populations which suffer from the same logic. The history of the dismantling of Yugoslavia shows the degree to which ruins can generate mortal dangers. In a period when, in different countries, the categories of populations in the process of breakdown and who feel increasingly socially and culturally depreciated, lose trust in the institutions, political representation, ‘living together’ and solidarity as concepts governing societies, and the extreme and populist right find a very favourable terrain in the growing divisions with which to work. The strategies of the financial markets and of the big shareholders, just like EU policies, intensify the regional asymmetries at the European level, which inevitably create or exacerbate gaps between large regions and nurture nationalist postures. The transformation of the ‘market states’ of a neoliberal character into ‘authoritarian states’ also creates a favourable terrain for the extreme and populist right.

War of Position

In the face of the submission of public and political life to the requirements of the financial markets, to make the demand for a change of logic grow and propose completely new political paths to open up such a perspective constitute major challenges for the left. Despite the importance of the struggles and movements of recent years in a great number of countries, despite their creativity and their energy, they have rarely brought success. The dominant forces have tried everywhere to divide and disarm the subaltern classes. In our countries, the place and the role of trade unions are the object of unprecedented political and ideological attacks whose impulse often comes from EU orientations. However, at the same time, important and sometimes general strikes have grown in number. Occupy-type movements in Spain, Greece and elsewhere have shown the potential for resistance and mobilization to hold one’s head high in the face of political and ideological pressure in an increasingly tense social context, in search of an alternative logic and new political practices.

I do not share the view of those who characterize the present period as one of insurrection, as is sometimes done, notably by pointing to movements of the Occupy-type, which, certainly, know how to pose the basic questions, mobilize and influence public opinion, but without (at least for now) being capable of developing a durable struggle for the defence of common interests.[6] The present phase of confrontation rather seems marked by the coexistence of very contrasting phenomena: on the one side, protests, resistance, the emergence of new struggles and new actors, multiple attempts to re-make society, to reconstruct solidarity and a collective; on the other side, a strong sense of powerlessness and anxiety, of isolation, all of which produces resentments, withdrawal and notably the sense, among the most impoverished populations, that politics cannot / does not want to do anything for them.[7]

The current situation in Greece shows the extent to which one cannot yet know whether it is hope or fear that will win the day, in the same way as the French elections revealed a real potential for the Front de Gauche, but also its fragility. Greece is the first country where — in this context — an ‘earthquake election’ occurred, dramatically and profoundly upturning the political system that had been stable up to that point.[8] This was not just an election but the rise of a movement rooted in society, borne by political actors, movements and citizens who were able to pose the question of power at a moment when the parties which had up to then been dominant collapsed due to their records (on the national and European levels), which have been disastrous for the various societies. Syriza was able to build its programme and its activity by combining in an original way numerous forces in society in order to become at once a political coalition, a movement carrying the demands of political representation, a programme integrating many questions developed by the movements and the space in which popular unity manifested itself.[9]

“The Greek elections were elections that realigned classes. Syriza had gotten the highest percentages among the active population and particularly among wage workers in the private sector, the public sector, the unemployed, students and inhabitants of the poorest cities of Attica… Never before in the period after the end of the dictatorship (1974-2012) has there been an electoral moment with such a high degree of social polarization.”[10]

In receiving broad support for its alternative proposals Syriza was able to modify the relations of forces in a spectacular way. In this way the troika’s (European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank) strategy could, for the first time, be seriously threatened.

In other European countries, we cannot speak of ‘earthquake elections’; however, there are increasing attempts at going beyond the fragmentation of the alternative left and of occupying the space to the left of social-democracy whose crisis continues. Certainly, social-democracy has been able to win some national elections when, rejecting austerity policies, the voters punished the right in power. In these cases, the return of social democracy to power does not in any way mean a ‘new departure’ in the direction of an alternative inasmuch as social democracy nowhere goes beyond the horizon of social liberalism and the EU’s neoliberal-based construction. For this reason, social democracy has not managed to project themes different from those of the right nor has it found new responses to the great crisis. In many countries, being in power and having itself put in place the austerity regime in Europe, social democracy has been heavily penalized, as in Greece, Spain, Portugal… The lasting crisis of social-democracy and of its main political choices opens, on the one hand, a space for the critical, alternative and radical left, but, on the other hand, blocks any prospect of a left majority for change.

The alternative left can indeed try to take up the challenge of this ‘historic window’[11] which has opened in this framework of a growing rejection of neoliberal logic and of the non-response of social democracy to the need for a change. It faces the need to position itself completely autonomously vis-à-vis social-democracy, but at the same time it must develop a strategy aimed at constructing new cultural and political majorities that cannot exist without a significant portion of the citizens, voters and activists who are situated close to social democracy. In numerous countries one of the conditions for creating a movement of dynamic agglomeration is the capacity to go beyond the fragmentation characteristic of the critical left. In this respect, there are not only selective attempts to constitute electoral alliances but also forms of common ‘fronts’ able to generate new political dynamics, beyond just the adherents of the parties involved.

For some years now, processes of new constructions have been in place, of which the most visible are now Syriza in Greece and the Front de Gauche in France. The fact that it is the Front de Gauche and not the NPA (New Anti-Capitalist Party) that has emerged in France’s political landscape demonstrates that there is a need, to the left of the PS, for a political dynamic not limited to organizing protest and which does not define itself as anti-PS (Socialist Party) and which tries to have direct weight on the terrain of the relation of political forces. The harshness of the confrontation, the extreme difficulty of scoring successes in the struggles, the relation of forces disadvantageous to those of resistance and struggle, have motivated a number of protagonists to look for new alliances beyond traditional ones, and this within both national and European spaces.

Strategic Issues

Bob Jessop[12] has proposed a determination, on the basis of an analysis of the economic, social, ideological and political conjuncture, of the strategic possibilities for actors aiming at social transformation in this specific period. The relative weakness of the dissenting forces before the explosion of the great crisis did not make it possible seriously to endanger neoliberal hegemony during the crisis. As a result, we find ourselves, in terms of the goal of going beyond the system, in a defensive phase of the struggle, which leads us to define our strategic objectives in terms of a ‘war of position.’ The critique of the true causes of the great crisis can and must be developed in the most radical and audible way possible, which was done very successfully in the presidential election in France through the ‘learning meetings’ organized by the candidate of the Front de Gauche, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Not only was the financial sphere the object of a radical critique but also the entirety of the mode of accumulation and reproduction in the framework of ‘financial market capitalism,’ with its consequences for public space, the real economy, the state of public finances, democracy, the social situation, work and the individual. At the same time it was a matter of daring to pose the question of power, which Syriza was able to do and which is a factor of credibility in mobilizing people.

The necessary change of power, the refoundation of democracy on new bases, a new type of social and ecological development — these are challenges for all of society, which cannot be delegated to political organizations alone. Rather, social and political actors are called upon to help citizens acquire a true power of interpretation, which will in great part condition their capacity to position themselves to go beyond the sense of powerlessness, to unite and to act collectively. The formation of a social and ideological bloc that can be a vehicle for change is the heart of the strategic issue. Today, the victims of the crisis are fragmented, divided and sometimes in conflict with each other. An alternative political project has to be able to crystallize the interests of groups and fractions of society, which, though certainly not identical, can converge. Starting with a first core, Syriza was able to conceptualize a programme by relying on what was worked out by social and political movements and by intellectuals and thus aggregate multiple forces. Between radical critique and alternative proposals, the ‘missing link’ of a concrete political strategy has begun to find, in a situation of particularly harsh confrontation, the beginnings of a response.

The constitution of a common European space superimposed on national spaces obviously poses completely new questions from the point of view of political strategy. Indeed, the transnational terrain, with a ‘multilevel’ system of governance, a system of multipolar authorities, gives rise to divisions but also offers opportunities to construct a pluralist radical left contributing to overcoming traditional divisions on the national level.[13] Since its foundation in 2004, the Party of the European Left (EL), which groups more than 30 very diverse parties (members and observers) from a great number of countries (including some outside the EU) has been trying to become effective as a European political subject developing a radical critique of the EU’s mode of integration and neoliberal policies, all the while projecting the idea of ‘another’ Europe, of a social, solidary, democratic, feminist and ecological Europe. At the level of the European Parliament, it is the GUE/NGL group that brings together the deputies of the critical left. For ten years now, the Transform! network has gathered institutes, research centres and journals from different countries connected to the alternative left, and it fulfils the function of a European foundation of the EL.[14] In fact, at the moment of the erosion of neoliberal hegemony, the precise analysis of the contradictions and potential on the basis of which a left strategy can be conceptualized, the search for convergences between social and political forces contesting the dominant logic, the formation of a European political subject of social transformation as well as new alliances, all of these become issues of great importance and call for tools to deal with them.

Gather Forces at the National and European Levels

In the face of the crisis and its dramatic consequences, the search for unity and the formation of new alliances — at the national and European levels — become essential questions for all social and political actors positioned on the left. A new social and political dynamic is indispensable to counter discouragement and, against this background, the extreme right and to put forward the formation of coalitions in favour of ‘democratic ruptures.’ If, at the core of complex societies organized at the level of nation-states the constitution of a cultural and political bloc able to carry a new hegemony (to the quite non-homogeneous subaltern classes) presupposes a long-term process punctuated by political initiatives from the top and from the bottom,[15] such a perspective, at the European level, has not at present even been contemplated.

For some years now, discussions and experiments in the movements, within the trade unions and in the left, have turned around the question of an articulation between struggles at the national and the European level. One of the great complications lies in the EU’s system of multipolar power, as well as in the challenge for the radical left to develop an original strategy, and this in the context of “the current double crisis, that of capitalism and that of Europe, [which] opens up a historic window of opportunity for the whole of the left and for the radical left in particular.”[16]

For ten years now, counter-summits and social forums reflecting a minimal anti-liberal consensus have been able to make progress, but we cannot stay at that level if we are to create forces capable of coming together in the defence of the interests of the populations and for another logic in Europe. It is not a question of organizing a general debate — among trade unions, movements and parties — but of seeking cooperation between forces whose orientation, notably as regards European issues, is sufficiently convergent to really modify the relations of forces and to contribute to the emergence of a new dynamic. The model of the World Social Forum has become inadequate in the territory of the EU where there is confrontation with a very established oligarchy, with concentrated powers and common and everyday institutions on the social, political and ideological levels. The multiplication of protests is certainly necessary, but protests alone, no matter how many there may be, are not enough to alter the relations of forces in an appreciable way. The constitution of true coalitions with new power is indispensable, and this requires a qualitative leap as regards the creation of spaces for work and struggle. Recent experience with the Greek elections has shown that the alteration of the relations of forces in a country, such as Syriza was able to effect, has consequences for all of Europe, but it requires processes of a similar kind elsewhere.

It is because it responds to current needs that the idea of an Alter-summit is rapidly making headway. We want, by clearly defining the line of confrontation, to “realise the convergence of forces and their concrete unity in action,“[17] to create an important political event, visible on a European scale, built with a multitude of actors in our countries, represented and projected by personalities who count, in order to say loudly and clearly that the only way to continue to “make Europe” is to refound it and that we know how to propose some major axes of this new logic that the people need. A process of construction[18] associating different actors from all the parties of Europe — unions, social and altermondialist movements, feminists, networks of intellectuals and appeals for another Europe coming from different countries as well as from representatives of the EL — has begun to get going, emerging from the space that makes up the Joint Social Conference.[19] It is by bringing to life a new ambition and in demanding a change of policies and of power that we can promote awareness, meetings and mobilizations. In recent years we have noticed how close the analyses and proposals emanating from many forces in Europe are. Today we need to translate these convergences into concrete political acts in order really to modify the existing state of things. In the battle between resistance and austerity policies in Europe, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) has, for the first time, rejected a treaty and shown a somewhat greater willingness to cooperate with social movements.

Cooperation between social and political forces, even with considerable convergence of views, is a difficult matter. And one can easily understand why. However, taking account of the dramatic situation and of the strong convergences between different actors, the moment has come to invent new relationships, obviously with full respect for everyone’s autonomy, which presupposes the invention of new forms.

Concretely, the Alter-summit is planned for spring of 2013 in Athens. Before then a large European meeting will take place in Florence on November 8 — 11, initiated by the Italian social movements, ten years after the first European Social Forum in 2002. It will be a working meeting to move ahead in establishing convergences, deepening analyses, developing alternatives and building alliances.

Elisabeth Gauthier is director of Espaces Marx (France), member of the managing board of transform! europe and member of the national committee of the French Communist Party. This article was published first in French in the journal Lignes, October 2012 and Transform! in English.

Notes

1.Numerous articles in the bi-annual journal Transform!, published in several languages, regularly analyse and comment on economic, social, political and ideological developments. Issue 10/2012 contains a section on democracy. All the articles are available in several languages at www.transform-network.org

2.Hervé Kempf, “From Oligarchy to the New Challenge of Global Politics,” in Transform! 10/2012.

3.Le Monde, May 26, 2012.

4.Francisco Louça, economist and Coordinator of Portugal’s Left Bloc, describes what the disastrous consequences would be of Portugal’s exit from the Euro in Transform! 10/2012.

5.See Joachim Bischoff, “Dauerstand Schuldenkrise. Die endlose Kurzfrist-‘Reparatur’ des Euro-Systems” [The Enduring Debt Crisis: The Endless Short-Term ‘Repair’ of the Euro System], Supplement to the journal Sozialismus, 7-8/2012.

6.See Armando F. Steinko, “May 15 and the Spanish Revolution” in Transform! 09/2011.

7.Cécile Braconnier shows in her investigations that abstention in France now has a class character.

8.Gerassimos Mosconas, “Shooting Horses in Cold Blood,” July 6, 2012. www.policy-network.net.

9.Michaelis Spoudalakis, contribution on the occasion of the summer university organized by the Party of the European Left and Transform! in Portaria, Greece, July 2012.

10.Gerassimos Mosconas, “Shooting Horses in Cold Blood,” July 6, 2012 www.policy-network.net

11.Gerassimos Moschonas, “The European Union and the Dilemmas of the Radical Left: Some Preliminary Thoughts.” In: Transform! 09/2011.

12.Bob Jessop, “Left Strategy”. In: Transform! 10/2012.

13.See Gerassimos Moschonas, “The European Union and the Dilemmas of the Radical Left: Some Preliminary Thoughts.” In: Transform! 09/2011.

14.At present, the network gathers 25 member organizations from 18 countries. It organizes conferences, participates in numerous European initiatives and publishes a monthly Newsletter and a bi-annual journal in several languages.

15.Armando F. Steinko, Contribution on the occasion of the summer university organized by the Party of the European Left and Transform! in Portaria, Greece, July 2012.

16.See Gerassimos Moschonas, “The European Union and the Dilemmas of the Radical Left: Some Preliminary Thoughts.” In: Transform! 09/2011.

17.Felipe van Keirsbilck (organizer of the Joint Social Conference), “Five Reflections on the Altersummit Process.” Contribution on the occasion of the summer university organized by the Party of the European Left and Transform! in Portaria, Greece, July 2012.

18.www.altersummit.eu.

19.A space for European work which has been active for several years now, where trade unionists are very much present, www.jointsocialconference.eu.

The Bolshoi ice palace under construction in Imereti Valley, Sochi (RIA Novosti / Mikhail Mokrushin)

The Sochi Winter Olympics will cost Russia over $50 billion, five times more than original estimates, according to an Olympics preparation commission. By 2013, Russia completed 70 percent of the needed facilitates, spending $36.7 billion in total.

­The 2014 Sochi Winter Games are turning out to be the most expensive Olympics ever. The Sochi Games are estimated to cost even more than the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, which cost $40 billion, believed to be the most expensive in history.

That total was more than double the cost of the London 2012 Games, which were estimated at $19 billion.

Some explain the expensive price tag over the fact that the city of Sochi did not have most of the needed infrastructure. Jean-Claude Killy, chair of the International Olympic Committee’s coordination commission for the Sochi Games, said that 85 percent of the infrastructure had to be built from scratch.

Igor Nikolaev, director of the Strategic Analysis Department at FBK, told Nezavisimaya Gazeta that the lack of infrastructure was one of the reasons for the huge expense: “There was really a lot that needed to be built in order to prepare for the Olympics, including infrastructure.” He added that the huge estimates cannot be taken literally, since they were artificially inflated by the Olympics’ private sponsors.

So far, sponsors have spent $24.6 billion, and costs are expected to increase to $33 billion.

Many of Russia’s largest companies are Olympic sponsors, and are seeking to have as much of their expenses as possible qualify as Olympic expenditures. However, not all of their work will qualify as such, Nikolaev explained.

“For example, a company building or renovating its corporate hotel, tries to qualify the expenditure as part of the Olympics’ cost. That helps them to strengthen their bargaining position. You can be sure that then they will ask something in return [such as preferential tariffs, tax breaks, etc.],” Nikolai said.

The $50 billion sum is not a final estimate, and total costs could approach $66.7 billion, he said.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, the head of the Olympic preparatory commission, has proposed that Krasnodar region Governor Aleksandr Tkachev offers tax breaks for companies involved in Olympic construction.

The Olympics preparatory commission, established in mid-January by Russian President Vladimir Putin, is tasked with supervising all work on the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

A question of cost

Legal experts have claimed that individual tax breaks are excluded from Russian tax legislation; if tax breaks were introduced, they must therefore be applicable to all Olympic investors.

Evgeny Timofeev, partner and head of tax firm Goltsblat BLP, has proposed that the Krasnodar region’s 2.2-percent property tax rate be applied to the Olympics — if a company spends $230 million on the construction of a building, it would receive $5 million in tax breaks, he explained.

In total, 378 federal facilities and 46 regional are being built for the Sochi Olympics. Of these, only 13 are sport-related; the others are related to infrastructure and accommodation. 

Of the main Olympic facilities, only six have been completed — the preparatory commission has reported a shortage of over 22,000 workers at construction sites.

(Photo: George Bridges/ Getty)Today, to honor the Feb. 4 centennial of the birth of Rosa Parks, the United States Postal Service has issued a Rosa Parks stamp. Last year, a stone carving of Parks was added to the National Cathedral. In 2005, she became the first woman and second African American to lie in honor in the nation’s Capitol and, through a special act of Congress, a statue of her was ordered placed in the Capitol.

Yet these tributes to Rosa Parks rest on a narrow and distorted vision of her legacy. As the story goes, a quiet Montgomery, Ala., seamstress with a single act challenged Southern segregation, catapulted a young Martin Luther King Jr. into national leadership and ushered in the modern civil rights movement. Parks’ memorialization promotes an improbable children’s story of social change — one not-angry woman sat down, the country was galvanized and structural racism was vanquished.

This fable diminishes the extensive history of collective action against racial injustice and underestimates the widespread opposition to the black freedom movement, which for decades treated Parks’ political activities as “un-American.” Most important, it skips over the enduring scourge of racial inequality in American society — a reality that Parks continued to highlight and challenge — and serves contemporary political interests that treat racial injustice as a thing of the past.

A more thorough accounting of Parks’ political life offers a different set of reasons for the nation to honor her. Laboring in the 1940s and 1950s in relative obscurity, Parks and her colleague E.D. Nixon were among a small group who sought to transform Montgomery’s NAACP into a more activist branch, determined to register their dissent, even if they could deal no significant blow to white supremacy. With Nixon as branch president and Parks as secretary, they pushed for black-voter registration, legal justice and school desegregation — and Parks traveled the state documenting white brutality and legal malfeasance. The summer before her bus stand, she attended a two-week workshop at Highlander Folk School, an interracial, adult organizer training school in Tennessee, to organize for the implementation of school desegregation.

Knowing well the cost of bus resistance (a neighbor had been killed for his resistance, the young Claudette Colvin manhandled) and having made numerous personal stands against segregation that went nowhere, Parks understood the cost, danger and likely ineffectiveness of her stand. And yet “pushed as far as [she] could stand to be pushed,” she did it anyway. When, to her surprise, her arrest galvanized a mass movement, she worked hard to sustain it over the next year.

Her stand led to significant economic and personal hardship for her family. In the early days of the boycott, both Rosa and Raymond Parks lost their jobs. Eight months after the boycott ended, still unable to find work, in poor health and continuing to face death threats, they left Montgomery for Detroit. There she did not rest, but joined with new and old comrades to fight the racism of her new hometown and American society more broadly.

One of the greatest distortions of the Parks fable is the way it portrays her as meek, missing the resolute political sensibility that identified Malcolm X as her personal hero. Arriving in Detroit in 1957, she spent more than half her life fighting racial injustice in the Jim Crow North. Describing the city as the “promised land that wasn’t,” the Parks family lived in the “heart of the ghetto” and found racism in Detroit “almost as widespread as Montgomery.” Having volunteered on his upstart political campaign, Parks was hired by the newly elected Rep. John Conyers in 1965 to be part of his Detroit staff, where she worked on issues such as police brutality, open housing, welfare and job discrimination — the plagues of Northern racism.

Her long-standing political commitments to self-defense, black history, economic justice, police accountability and black political empowerment intersected with key aspects of the Black Power movement, and she took part in numerous mobilizations in the late 1960s and 1970s. An internationalist, she opposed U.S. involvement in Vietnam, demonstrated at the South African embassy to condemn apartheid and contested U.S. policy in Central America. Eight days after 9/11, she joined other activists in a letter calling for justice, not vengeance, insisting the U.S. must work with the international community and warning against retaliation or war.

To the end of her life, Parks continued to stress the enduring need for social change, reminding Americans “not [to] become comfortable with the gains we have made in the last forty years.” That lifetime of steadfastness and outrage, tenacity and bravery, is what deserves national veneration.

Doing justice to Parks’ actual legacy thus requires something of us — something much harder than a stamp or a statue. Rosa Parks’ courage was the ability to make an independent stand, even though she and others had done it before and nothing had changed, and even when she well-understood the harm that might befall her. She made those stands over and over throughout the course of her life.

Honoring her legacy means summoning similar audacity. It requires acknowledging that America is not a postracial society and that the blight of racial and social injustice is deep and manifest. It entails a profound recommitment to the goals for which she spent a lifetime fighting — a criminal justice system fair and just to people of color, unfettered voting rights, educational access and equity, real assistance to the poor, an end to U.S. wars of occupation and black history in all parts of school curricula. Finally, it means heeding her words to Spelman College students: “Don’t give up, and don’t say the movement is dead.”

© 2013 The Slate Group LLC

Jeanne Theoharis is professor of political science at Brooklyn College and is the author of numerous books and articles on the civil rights and Black Power movements, the politics of race and education, social welfare and civil rights in post-9/11 America, including the biography, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks.

(Photo: George Bridges/ Getty)Today, to honor the Feb. 4 centennial of the birth of Rosa Parks, the United States Postal Service has issued a Rosa Parks stamp. Last year, a stone carving of Parks was added to the National Cathedral. In 2005, she became the first woman and second African American to lie in honor in the nation’s Capitol and, through a special act of Congress, a statue of her was ordered placed in the Capitol.

Yet these tributes to Rosa Parks rest on a narrow and distorted vision of her legacy. As the story goes, a quiet Montgomery, Ala., seamstress with a single act challenged Southern segregation, catapulted a young Martin Luther King Jr. into national leadership and ushered in the modern civil rights movement. Parks’ memorialization promotes an improbable children’s story of social change — one not-angry woman sat down, the country was galvanized and structural racism was vanquished.

This fable diminishes the extensive history of collective action against racial injustice and underestimates the widespread opposition to the black freedom movement, which for decades treated Parks’ political activities as “un-American.” Most important, it skips over the enduring scourge of racial inequality in American society — a reality that Parks continued to highlight and challenge — and serves contemporary political interests that treat racial injustice as a thing of the past.

A more thorough accounting of Parks’ political life offers a different set of reasons for the nation to honor her. Laboring in the 1940s and 1950s in relative obscurity, Parks and her colleague E.D. Nixon were among a small group who sought to transform Montgomery’s NAACP into a more activist branch, determined to register their dissent, even if they could deal no significant blow to white supremacy. With Nixon as branch president and Parks as secretary, they pushed for black-voter registration, legal justice and school desegregation — and Parks traveled the state documenting white brutality and legal malfeasance. The summer before her bus stand, she attended a two-week workshop at Highlander Folk School, an interracial, adult organizer training school in Tennessee, to organize for the implementation of school desegregation.

Knowing well the cost of bus resistance (a neighbor had been killed for his resistance, the young Claudette Colvin manhandled) and having made numerous personal stands against segregation that went nowhere, Parks understood the cost, danger and likely ineffectiveness of her stand. And yet “pushed as far as [she] could stand to be pushed,” she did it anyway. When, to her surprise, her arrest galvanized a mass movement, she worked hard to sustain it over the next year.

Her stand led to significant economic and personal hardship for her family. In the early days of the boycott, both Rosa and Raymond Parks lost their jobs. Eight months after the boycott ended, still unable to find work, in poor health and continuing to face death threats, they left Montgomery for Detroit. There she did not rest, but joined with new and old comrades to fight the racism of her new hometown and American society more broadly.

One of the greatest distortions of the Parks fable is the way it portrays her as meek, missing the resolute political sensibility that identified Malcolm X as her personal hero. Arriving in Detroit in 1957, she spent more than half her life fighting racial injustice in the Jim Crow North. Describing the city as the “promised land that wasn’t,” the Parks family lived in the “heart of the ghetto” and found racism in Detroit “almost as widespread as Montgomery.” Having volunteered on his upstart political campaign, Parks was hired by the newly elected Rep. John Conyers in 1965 to be part of his Detroit staff, where she worked on issues such as police brutality, open housing, welfare and job discrimination — the plagues of Northern racism.

Her long-standing political commitments to self-defense, black history, economic justice, police accountability and black political empowerment intersected with key aspects of the Black Power movement, and she took part in numerous mobilizations in the late 1960s and 1970s. An internationalist, she opposed U.S. involvement in Vietnam, demonstrated at the South African embassy to condemn apartheid and contested U.S. policy in Central America. Eight days after 9/11, she joined other activists in a letter calling for justice, not vengeance, insisting the U.S. must work with the international community and warning against retaliation or war.

To the end of her life, Parks continued to stress the enduring need for social change, reminding Americans “not [to] become comfortable with the gains we have made in the last forty years.” That lifetime of steadfastness and outrage, tenacity and bravery, is what deserves national veneration.

Doing justice to Parks’ actual legacy thus requires something of us — something much harder than a stamp or a statue. Rosa Parks’ courage was the ability to make an independent stand, even though she and others had done it before and nothing had changed, and even when she well-understood the harm that might befall her. She made those stands over and over throughout the course of her life.

Honoring her legacy means summoning similar audacity. It requires acknowledging that America is not a postracial society and that the blight of racial and social injustice is deep and manifest. It entails a profound recommitment to the goals for which she spent a lifetime fighting — a criminal justice system fair and just to people of color, unfettered voting rights, educational access and equity, real assistance to the poor, an end to U.S. wars of occupation and black history in all parts of school curricula. Finally, it means heeding her words to Spelman College students: “Don’t give up, and don’t say the movement is dead.”

© 2013 The Slate Group LLC

Jeanne Theoharis is professor of political science at Brooklyn College and is the author of numerous books and articles on the civil rights and Black Power movements, the politics of race and education, social welfare and civil rights in post-9/11 America, including the biography, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks.

Israel claims it bombed a weapons convoy, while Syria claimed that a research facility was hit. Who is right?

Both.

Time reports:

Israeli warplanes struck several targets inside Syria overnight Tuesday, including a biological weapons research center that was reportedly flattened out of concern that it might fall into the hands of Islamist extremists fighting to topple the government of Syrian president Bashar Assad, Western intelligence officials tell TIME.

The irony is thick, as the U.S. is directly backing the Islamist extremists fighting to topple the Syrian government.

Time continues:

A Western intelligence official indicated to TIME that at least one to two additional targets were hit the same night, without offering details. Officials also said that Israel had a “green light” from Washington to launch yet more such strikes.

But the U.S. isn’t just an arm-chair quarterback … it may directly join in the action:

One Western intelligence official told TIME the U.S. military was poised to carry out similar airstrikes around Aleppo if rebels threaten to take sites associated with weapons of mass destruction in that region.

In the bizarro world of American and Israeli propaganda, arming Al Qaeda rebels or bombing Syrian assets does not count as “intervening” in a war:

Though no country has intervened in Syria’s civil war directly …

In diplomatic terms, surgical strikes launched in the name of preventing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction tend to be well-tolerated by the international community, especially when the attacks are not publicly acknowledged. Israel still does not officially acknowledge its secret 2007 destruction of a Syrian nuclear reactor.

“I’m not going to give any condemnation of Israel or rush into any criticism,” British foreign secretary William Hauge told the BBC on Thursday. “There may be many things about it that we don’t know, or the Arab League or Russia don’t know.”

What does this mean?

The endless war on terror has been re-branded through propaganda. There are no new wars launched by America and its allies. There are simply “kinetic actions“, and “covert operations” carried out in secret.

Postscript: The official narrative says that these endless series of wars secure our national defense and stimulate the economy.

In the real world, however, top American economists say that endless war has ruined our economy and hurt the vast majority of Americans.

And security experts — including both conservatives and liberals — this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

What is it with this economy? The Dow hits 14,000, the unemployment rate rises in January, and GDP actually falls in the last three months of 2012. Could it be that what’s good for the stock market is bad for the rest of the economy? Could it be that captains of industry like weak labor markets, high unemployment, low wages — and a Federal Reserve that has to use ultra-low interest rates to try to keep things afloat?Getty

Well, yes, but the story is also richer and more complicated.

Basically, the economy is still weighted down by the legacy effects of the financial collapse of 2008 — mortgages that exceed the value of homes, students staggering under the weight of college loans in a dismal job market, retired people for whom low interest rates mean low returns on savings, corporations looting pensions, and above all flat or declining wages.

It all adds up to a very weak recovery — but the common element is insufficient purchasing power on the part of ordinary families. And this is about to be compounded by Fiscal Cliff II, namely Congress and the president deciding that what the economy really needs is a bracing dose of deflationary budget cuts.

What exactly happened in the last quarter of 2012 to cause the recovery not just to stall — but to actually shrink the economy by a tenth of a point? According to the Commerce Department, there were multiple factors.

Exports slumped, business purchases to replenish inventory slowed, but here is the sentence that screams out: “Real federal government consumption expenditures and gross investment decreased 15.0 percent in the fourth quarter, in contrast to an increase of 9.5 percent in the third.” In other words, cut government spending and you undermine a fragile recovery.

There was a little good news amid the bad news. Revised numbers indicate that the economy generated jobs in 2012 at a rate of about 32,000 a month more than first reported. But hidden unemployment — part timers not finding full-time jobs — rose again in January and wages have remained basically flat. The economy’s gains still go mainly to the very top.

Seemingly, President Obama has moved off the deficit-hawk kick that marked his posture in 2010 when he appointed the Bowles-Simpson Commission, and 2011 when he agreed to a budget deal with massive cuts and automatic triggers adding up to about $4 trillion in deficit cuts over a decade.

Seemingly, too, the corporate-led “Fix the Debt Campaign” — millionaires and billionaires telling the rest of America to tighten its belt for the greater good — isn’t getting a great deal of traction. Our friend Paul Krugman last week wrote a column, “Deficit Hawks Down,” saying that we should pity this crowd — for all the money they’ve spent, they keep being contradicted by events.

But despite the sheer unreality of their claims, the austerity lobby keeps winning by defining the terms of debate. Nearly everyone, right, center and left, is arguing about the economic recovery in terms of what the debt-to-GDP ratio should be in 2023.

That is the wrong question. The right question is: how do we get a stronger recovery going now? With robust growth, especially of wages, the debt ratio will come down. Excessive budget cutting in a depressed economy slows growth and worsens the debt ratio, but with the exception of Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, and your faithful blogger, that’s not a point widely made in the debate. (Let’s also credit Jamie Galbraith, Bob Reich, Larry Mishel and Dean Baker.)

But our gang doesn’t get invited into the rooms where deals are cut, and isn’t having much influence on what passes for debate among what Krugman calls Very Serious People, namely the debate among Obama, the Republicans, the Wall Streeters, and the suite of deficit-hawk lobbies underwritten by billionaire Pete Peterson.

In 1945, the debt ratio was much larger than today — 120 percent of GDP versus today’s 72 percent. But anyone in 1945 urging that the main economic issue was the debt ratio in 1955 would have been laughed out of town. The main issue was how to re-employ 12 million returning G.I.s

Yet consider what passes for debate today.

President Obama, newly in deficit-dove mode, declares that we have achieved so much deficit reduction that we need “only” about another $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over a decade to stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio by 2022. Obama’s budget actually cuts net public investment to achieve that goal. It cuts public investment!

Then, the center-left Center on Budget and Policy Priorities re-calculates the numbers, and pronounces that it will really take “only” $1.2 trillion in deficit cuts over a decade (counting saved interest costs) to stabilize the debt ratio.

Whoopee, only $120 billion a year in budget cuts a year and we hit the target.

And then the progressive EPI re-computes the data yet again, and figures that we can get to the holy grail of a stable debt ratio with only $670 billion in further deficit cuts — and very helpfully challenges the entire premise that deficit reduction is the road to recovery.

Uh-oh — the center-right is not amused.

The Pete-Peterson-funded Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget takes offense and warns that we really need another $2.2 trillion in new deficit cuts.

Rudy Penner, director of the CBO in the Reagan era, declares stabilizing the debt ratio at its current level of about 70 percent is not enough.

In this priceless twist of economic logic, Penner warns:

“Imagine facing the next recession with a debt-GDP ratio already above 70 percent. It is almost certain that we shall have another slump before 2022.”

Yes indeed, Rudy, if we listen to folks like you and follow a fiscal policy of slash-and-burn, we are guaranteed to have another slump between now and 2022 — quite possibly a continuing slump for the entire decade.

People: this is the wrong debate. Has any of these worthies taken a macro-economics course? If you slow down growth by excessive belt-tightening, tax revenues fall and the deficit goes up. You can’t just assume that very dollar of deficit reduction equals a dollar credited to reduction of the debt ratio.

For budget wonks, this very useful piece by EPI’s Ethan Pollack lays it all out.

President Obama should read every word of this.

In what passes for the debate about the budget and the economy, two other details keep being overlooked: The main driver of rising deficits over the long term is Medicare. You fix Medicare by reforming the larger health system of which it is a part, not by sandbagging the rest of the budget and economy.

And speaking of economic contraction, one other key item somehow got lost in the shuffle. As part of President Obama’s tax deal with House Speaker John Boehner raising taxes “only” on the richest one percent, America’s working people got a big tax increase when both parties agreed to let the two-point cut in the payroll tax expire.

So since January 1, wage and salary workers have had two percent less income to spend. That’s a huge hit — as if every American worker suddenly took a two percent pay cut. The tax deal amounted to a big tax increase on the bottom 99 — terrible policy distributively, terrible policy macro-economically.

(Some liberals worried about the drain of the two-point tax break on the Social Security trust funds, but that money should be made whole by transfers from general revenue; reducing the burden of the regressive payroll tax was a huge gain for progressivity.)

In sum: unless we stop obsessing on cutting the debt ratio as an end in itself, we are condemned to a decade of economic underperformance.

President Obama got some nice political lift from his re-election and his new, more assertive tone. But he (and the economy) are still dragged down by the undertow of bad economic assumptions that continue to contour the debate.

© 2012 The Huffington Post

Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect magazine, as well as a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the think tank Demos. He was a longtime columnist for Business Week, and continues to write columns in the Boston Globe and Huffington Post. He is the author of A Presidency in Peril: The Inside Story of Obama’s Promise, Wall Street’s Power, and the Struggle to Control our Economic Future, Obama’s Challenge, and other books.

What is it with this economy? The Dow hits 14,000, the unemployment rate rises in January, and GDP actually falls in the last three months of 2012. Could it be that what’s good for the stock market is bad for the rest of the economy? Could it be that captains of industry like weak labor markets, high unemployment, low wages — and a Federal Reserve that has to use ultra-low interest rates to try to keep things afloat?Getty

Well, yes, but the story is also richer and more complicated.

Basically, the economy is still weighted down by the legacy effects of the financial collapse of 2008 — mortgages that exceed the value of homes, students staggering under the weight of college loans in a dismal job market, retired people for whom low interest rates mean low returns on savings, corporations looting pensions, and above all flat or declining wages.

It all adds up to a very weak recovery — but the common element is insufficient purchasing power on the part of ordinary families. And this is about to be compounded by Fiscal Cliff II, namely Congress and the president deciding that what the economy really needs is a bracing dose of deflationary budget cuts.

What exactly happened in the last quarter of 2012 to cause the recovery not just to stall — but to actually shrink the economy by a tenth of a point? According to the Commerce Department, there were multiple factors.

Exports slumped, business purchases to replenish inventory slowed, but here is the sentence that screams out: “Real federal government consumption expenditures and gross investment decreased 15.0 percent in the fourth quarter, in contrast to an increase of 9.5 percent in the third.” In other words, cut government spending and you undermine a fragile recovery.

There was a little good news amid the bad news. Revised numbers indicate that the economy generated jobs in 2012 at a rate of about 32,000 a month more than first reported. But hidden unemployment — part timers not finding full-time jobs — rose again in January and wages have remained basically flat. The economy’s gains still go mainly to the very top.

Seemingly, President Obama has moved off the deficit-hawk kick that marked his posture in 2010 when he appointed the Bowles-Simpson Commission, and 2011 when he agreed to a budget deal with massive cuts and automatic triggers adding up to about $4 trillion in deficit cuts over a decade.

Seemingly, too, the corporate-led “Fix the Debt Campaign” — millionaires and billionaires telling the rest of America to tighten its belt for the greater good — isn’t getting a great deal of traction. Our friend Paul Krugman last week wrote a column, “Deficit Hawks Down,” saying that we should pity this crowd — for all the money they’ve spent, they keep being contradicted by events.

But despite the sheer unreality of their claims, the austerity lobby keeps winning by defining the terms of debate. Nearly everyone, right, center and left, is arguing about the economic recovery in terms of what the debt-to-GDP ratio should be in 2023.

That is the wrong question. The right question is: how do we get a stronger recovery going now? With robust growth, especially of wages, the debt ratio will come down. Excessive budget cutting in a depressed economy slows growth and worsens the debt ratio, but with the exception of Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, and your faithful blogger, that’s not a point widely made in the debate. (Let’s also credit Jamie Galbraith, Bob Reich, Larry Mishel and Dean Baker.)

But our gang doesn’t get invited into the rooms where deals are cut, and isn’t having much influence on what passes for debate among what Krugman calls Very Serious People, namely the debate among Obama, the Republicans, the Wall Streeters, and the suite of deficit-hawk lobbies underwritten by billionaire Pete Peterson.

In 1945, the debt ratio was much larger than today — 120 percent of GDP versus today’s 72 percent. But anyone in 1945 urging that the main economic issue was the debt ratio in 1955 would have been laughed out of town. The main issue was how to re-employ 12 million returning G.I.s

Yet consider what passes for debate today.

President Obama, newly in deficit-dove mode, declares that we have achieved so much deficit reduction that we need “only” about another $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over a decade to stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio by 2022. Obama’s budget actually cuts net public investment to achieve that goal. It cuts public investment!

Then, the center-left Center on Budget and Policy Priorities re-calculates the numbers, and pronounces that it will really take “only” $1.2 trillion in deficit cuts over a decade (counting saved interest costs) to stabilize the debt ratio.

Whoopee, only $120 billion a year in budget cuts a year and we hit the target.

And then the progressive EPI re-computes the data yet again, and figures that we can get to the holy grail of a stable debt ratio with only $670 billion in further deficit cuts — and very helpfully challenges the entire premise that deficit reduction is the road to recovery.

Uh-oh — the center-right is not amused.

The Pete-Peterson-funded Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget takes offense and warns that we really need another $2.2 trillion in new deficit cuts.

Rudy Penner, director of the CBO in the Reagan era, declares stabilizing the debt ratio at its current level of about 70 percent is not enough.

In this priceless twist of economic logic, Penner warns:

“Imagine facing the next recession with a debt-GDP ratio already above 70 percent. It is almost certain that we shall have another slump before 2022.”

Yes indeed, Rudy, if we listen to folks like you and follow a fiscal policy of slash-and-burn, we are guaranteed to have another slump between now and 2022 — quite possibly a continuing slump for the entire decade.

People: this is the wrong debate. Has any of these worthies taken a macro-economics course? If you slow down growth by excessive belt-tightening, tax revenues fall and the deficit goes up. You can’t just assume that very dollar of deficit reduction equals a dollar credited to reduction of the debt ratio.

For budget wonks, this very useful piece by EPI’s Ethan Pollack lays it all out.

President Obama should read every word of this.

In what passes for the debate about the budget and the economy, two other details keep being overlooked: The main driver of rising deficits over the long term is Medicare. You fix Medicare by reforming the larger health system of which it is a part, not by sandbagging the rest of the budget and economy.

And speaking of economic contraction, one other key item somehow got lost in the shuffle. As part of President Obama’s tax deal with House Speaker John Boehner raising taxes “only” on the richest one percent, America’s working people got a big tax increase when both parties agreed to let the two-point cut in the payroll tax expire.

So since January 1, wage and salary workers have had two percent less income to spend. That’s a huge hit — as if every American worker suddenly took a two percent pay cut. The tax deal amounted to a big tax increase on the bottom 99 — terrible policy distributively, terrible policy macro-economically.

(Some liberals worried about the drain of the two-point tax break on the Social Security trust funds, but that money should be made whole by transfers from general revenue; reducing the burden of the regressive payroll tax was a huge gain for progressivity.)

In sum: unless we stop obsessing on cutting the debt ratio as an end in itself, we are condemned to a decade of economic underperformance.

President Obama got some nice political lift from his re-election and his new, more assertive tone. But he (and the economy) are still dragged down by the undertow of bad economic assumptions that continue to contour the debate.

© 2012 The Huffington Post

Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect magazine, as well as a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the think tank Demos. He was a longtime columnist for Business Week, and continues to write columns in the Boston Globe and Huffington Post. He is the author of A Presidency in Peril: The Inside Story of Obama’s Promise, Wall Street’s Power, and the Struggle to Control our Economic Future, Obama’s Challenge, and other books.

On Tuesday evening MPs will vote to approve, or disapprove, of same-sex marriage. It is a historic step and many find it remarkable that the measure will be proposed and introduced by a Conservative cabinet minister – not least half of the party’s own MPs.

On the day before the crunch vote, which could see up to a third of the 303 Tory MPs, including some cabinet misters, turn against her Bill, culture secretary Maria Miller understandably wants to focus on the merits of the legislation rather than “simply party politics”.

But speaking to The Huffington Post UK in her Department for Culture, Media and Sport office, Miller is keenly aware of the internal politics she has to navigate since being appointed to the cabinet last year and taking on the equalities brief from Lib Dem Lynne Featherstone. While her Bill looks set to pass on its merits, the fallout for the party and prime minister remains unclear. Winning the vote thanks only to the support of Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg would not look good.

“There is clearly going to be differences of opinion on something such as equal marriage,” she observes – perhaps a slight understatement. “As a party we have treated this as a conscience issue for people to vote in the way they feel is right for them”.

But what about suggestions wavering MPs are being leaned on to vote in favour? That’s not very free. “It’s been absolutely clear from the prime minister and from me and from anybody who is involved in the Bill, there is absolutely no pressure on any individual Member of Parliament. It’s a conscience vote, and for me it is very important to respect people’s beliefs,” the culture secretary insists.

Her comments may be taken by some in Westminster as a bit of pre-spinning ahead of tomorrows vote. It’s one this for Conservative whips to pressure Tory MPs to vote the way they want. But it’s far more embarrassing if it turns out they are just ignored.

Miller notes that some Labour and even Lib Dems may vote against the Bill. But it is within the Conservative Party that opposition runs deepest, even if national polls suggest the public is in favour. Over the weekend 23 current or past chairmen of local Conservative Party Associations urged David Cameron to delay the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill — concerned it would damage the party’s prospects in 2015.

Miller, the MP for Basingstoke since 2005, says it is “important to take note” of what they said. But is firm in her refusal. The government will not back down. “What I will not be doing is stopping the legislation moving forward, it’s important we have a fair approach to marriage.”

“Marriage is an important part of our society it’s a vital way that people can publically state their relationships and I don’t think it’s for the state to stand in the way of that happening simply based on someone’s sexuality. Simply being gay is not a good enough reason not to have that available,” she says.

Given the rift in the party over the issue, Miller is clearly keen to avoid widening it with overt criticism of those opposed. “Putting in place something which is about tolerance is not going to work if you are intolerant of views that are contrary to those expressed within the Bill,” she says. Expect a similarly understanding tone tomorrow in the Commons.

The Bill is expected to pass the comfortably. But cheerleaders have raised concerns, and opponents have crossed their fingers, that it will get bogged down in the Lords. In the past Miller has refused to rule out the use of the Parliament Act to force the legislation through. A question she dodges. “What I am focused on here is making sure this Bill, which I believe has got widespread support, goes through the House in the usual manner, you’d expect us to remained focus on that.”

Conservative opponents of the Bill are particularly incensed that they are being asked to support a measure that was not included in the party’s 2010 manifesto.

MP David Burrows, one of the leading figures opposed to the Bill, makes this point today on HuffPost UK when he laments the government pushing though the measure “without an electoral mandate”.

But Miller says Burrows and his allies headed for the ‘no’ lobby are simply wrong, pointing to a document authored by Theresa May published during the campaign. “It’s clear, it was in our ‘Contract for Equalities’ that went out at the last election to have a look at how equal marriage might work.

“We have now undertaken the largest consultation that has ever been held by any government in this country and we have been discussing this issue really since the general election. There has been widespread discussion.”

ALSO: MPs Target Anti-Gay Marriage Group Over ‘Misleading’ Leaflets

For many the sight of a Conservative minister, the party of Section 28, introducing a gay marriage bill is extraordinary. But Miller rejects the idea that this should come as a surprise. Up until this point she has been very deliberate and measured in her answers. But she is more animated when it comes to defending the party as a whole rather than tiptoeing down the awkward division within. “Conservative government’s have done things for generations which are progressive, all the way back to the position the party had on the slave trade,” she says.

“I think it a natural progression for marriage, something that has evolved over centuries anyway. It’s important we treat people fairly; it’s what most people want whether they are gay or whether they are straight. We want as society to treat people fairly, that’s what we are doing that’s why it’s an important progression. It’s a progression in the same way recognising women and men who are married as being equal in the 19th century.”

Some opponents worry about progress, about a ‘slippery slope’. Why, if two women can marry, why can’t two women and one man? Why can’t one man and his dog?

“I stick in the realms of reality,” Miller says. “This is about making sure marriage is there for all couples that want to express a long term commitment to each other,” she says.

Opposition comes not just from within parliament, but from religious groups outside. In particular the Church of England and Catholic Church, that have been outspoken in their disdain for Miller’s Bill.

An extensive attempt has been made to satisfy the churches fears that they will be forced to conduct gay weddings by the European Court. But the so-called ‘quadruple-lock’ that makes it illegal for the Chuch of England to conduct same-sex marriages, while allowing other religions to hold them if they wish, has not quelled the opposition.

“I think you need to differentiate between whether or not the churches agree with the concept of equal marriage, or whether or not they agree with whether the protections there are sufficient,” Miller says.

“The Church of England does not agree with the concept of equal marriage. That is for them and for them to discuss as we move forward.”

Did Miller, who is a member of the Church of England that is railing against her Bill, have doubts about the rights and wrongs of allowing gay weddings? “No. None at all.”

Miller says having Christian faith is “a mainstream thing” it’s not on the margins. “What we are saying marriage is not on the margins, if gay people want to marry it should be mainstream for them as well.”

“I think what you would find if you speak to a majority of people in this country, whether they have a Christian faith or not, all the polls would suggest there is a widespread support for marriage to continue to evolve.”

“This is another way marriage can evolve. I don’t see there is a conflict there, quite the opposite.”

Given the furore surrounding same-sex marriage it is easy to forget that Miller’s department, DCMS, may have expected for the limelight to move on after it bid farewell to the Olympic Games.

But the acquisition of the gay marriage Bill has changed that. What crossed Miller’s mind when she realised it came with her promotion to the cabinet in September? “To be able to make sure we move forward with the right thing to do, the fair thing to do for our society … to be part of that process is something of which I feel very proud.”

Also on HuffPost:

Republicans and Immigration Pinata

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Daryl Cagle, CagleCartoons.com

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Mexico’s War Against Hunger

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Dario Castillejos, Cagle Cartoons, Dario La Crisis

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On Saturday, I wrote about the numerous New York City officials (including multiple members of the US House of Representatives) who have predictably signed onto the Alan-Derwshowitz-led attack on academic freedom at Brooklyn College. This group of Israel advocates and elected officials is demanding that the college’s Political Science department rescind its sponsorship of an event featuring two advocates of the BDS movement aimed at stopping Israeli occupation and settlements.In 1999, then-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani threatened to cut off funds for the Brooklyn Museum unless it withdrew art exhibits he found “offensive”. Photograph: AP Photo/Gino Domenico

The threat to academic freedom posed by this growing lynch mob is obvious: if universities are permitted to hold only those events which do not offend state officials and “pro-Israel” fanatics such as Alan Dershowitz, then “academic freedom” is illusory. But on Sunday, that threat significantly intensified, as a ranking member of the New York City Council explicitly threatened to cut off funding for the college if his extortionate demands regarding this event are not met. From a letter to BC President Karen Gould, issued by Council Assistant Majority Leader Lew Fidler and signed by nine other members of the City Council (the full letter is embedded here):

“Among this City’s diversity – and the student body of Brooklyn College – there are a significant number of people who would, and do, find this event to be offensive. . . .

“A significant portion of the funding for CUNY schools comes directly from the tax dollars of the people of the State and City of New York. Every year, we legislators are asked for additional funding to support programs and initiatives at these schools and we fight hard to secure those funds. Every one of those dollars given to CUNY, and Brooklyn College, means one less dollar going to some other worthy purpose. We do not believe this program is what the taxpayers of our City – many of who would feel targeted and demonized by this program – want their tax money to be spent on.

“We believe in the principle of academic freedom. However, we also believe in the principle of not supporting schools whose programs we, and our constituents, find to be odious and wrong.“